I do not propose to cover the ground which we have already covered on the Minister's Vote, but, in regard to primary education, Deputy Hannigan to-day referred to the desirability of giving some instruction in domestic economy in girls' schools, particularly in the city areas I would direct the attention of the Minister to a report recently published in Great Britain on the conditions revealed by the evacuation of the urban population to rural districts, and to the fact that a very careful consideration of all the evils which manifested themselves to public attention in Great Britain for the first time on the occasion of that evacuation were traced back to the fact that a very large number of girls ordinarily engaged in industrial occupations entered the marriage state without any training or equipment, good, bad or indifferent, for maintaining a home or rearing a family, which resulted in their living their entire family life under a very grave handicap which pressure of domestic work made it impossible for them to catch up on.
I, therefore, want to impress on the Minister the desirability of providing, in the last year of education in girls' schools, most especially in urban centres, a fairly intensive course of domestic economy which would at least set a girl on the path to the big domestic economy school in Cathal Brugha Street, if her circumstances permitted her to attend it, and which would in any case provide her with a certain fundamental instruction in the elements of reasonable housekeeping, so that when she entered the married state, she would be able to do justice to the position of mother and housewife and discharge the responsibilities of these offices.
The second matter which I want to mention is, in my opinion, a matter of grave injustice. A number of old national teachers were pensioned off years and years ago, before the great work of the old Irish Parliamentary Party was done in securing adequate remuneration for national teachers in this country. The pensions of those old people were founded on the small salaries that were payable before the large advances were granted by the British Treasury after the last war.