I should like to ask the Minister a question. On the 20th May, I addressed a question to the Minister, in respect of a certain number of schools in the City of Dublin, as to the attendance at each class and the number on the roll at the last normal date on which the information was available.
I asked yesterday about certain information which I got this morning. I mentioned the intention for which I wanted it. I desire to draw the Minister's attention to the following facts: In the Central Model infants' national school we find that the junior infants are divided into two classes, with 80 pupils on roll in the first class and 61 in the next. In that school you have nine classes. In every one of them there are more than 50 children on the roll. In the Model School (girls) you have 13 classes, and in four of these there are more than 50 on the roll. In Gardiner Street convent school there are 27 classes. In 14 of the classes there are more than 50 children on the roll. In seven of these classes there are more than 60 on the roll, and in three more than 80. In one class there are 86 on the roll, in another 82, and in another 88. In St. Vincent's (senior) girls' school, North William Street, there are more than 50 children on the roll in eight out of the 15 classes. In the junior infants there are 111 children on the roll. 89 children were in attendance on the date on which the information was given to me. A note on the return states that the number on roll in April was from 65 to 67 on the average, and that since May the number had increased to 111. In the North William Street convent boys' school, there are more than 50 children on the roll in ten out of the 14 classes. Two of these are junior infant classes. In the first junior infant class there are 94 on the roll, and 75 were in attendance on the date on which the information was given. In the second class, 76 are on the roll. 57 were in attendance on the date on which the information was given. In the Girls' Lower Rutland Street school there are more than 50 on the roll in four out of nine classes. In the infant girls' school, Lower Rutland Street, there are more than 50 on roll in six out of the seven classes. In the senior infant classes you have 67, 62 and 63 in classes. In the Pro-Cathedral boys' national school, you have more than 50 on the roll in five out of ten classes. In the Pro-Cathedral infant boys' school you have more than 50 on the roll in five out of eight classes. In three of these classes you have more than 60 on roll. There are two classes in which there are more than 80. In St. Patrick's No. 1 boys' school, there are more than 50 on roll in six out of 14 classes, and in three of these you have more than 60 on roll. In one class there are 75 on roll. The attendance on the date for which the information was given was 66.
Quite apart altogether from anything which has been said by the Minister with regard to his policy for the use of Irish in infant schools, and quite apart from the ideal that he held up before us this evening, if the children in these classes were being looked after by their mothers, will the Minister seriously tell us, when we consider what primary education means for such a large number of the people in the City of Dublin, that we can afford to have the basis of our primary education laid on classes of over 50, of 60 and of 82 in the case of infants? Will he tell us what is happening in this city when we find in a school in this city that you can have 111 infants on the roll in one class?
