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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 May 1943

Vol. 90 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Vote 46—Primary Education.

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £2,461,785 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1944, chun Bun-Oideachais, maraon le hAois-liúntas Múinteoirí Scoile Náisiúnta agus Deontas-i-gCabhair, etc.

That a sum, not exceeding £2,461,785, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1944, for Primary Education, including National School Teachers Superannuation and a Grant-in-Aid, etc.

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.

That matter was raised and discussed on the main Vote.

There is a very small group of them and some of them have pensions down to £47 a year. They are people of culture and education; they are now very elderly men and women and they are living in dire poverty. Now, surely, since we are doling out cost-of-living bonuses to everybody, and since we are providing machinery whereunder anybody with an income of £3 a week can apply for a bonus, some regard should be had for this microscopic group of people who served the country to the best of their abilities when they were in the public service. I do not believe that anyone will object if some provision is made to alleviate the circumstances of those people, and I suggest that whatever is done should not be done in a niggardly spirit.

I urge that this group of persons, whose pensions fall far below £100 a year, ought to have their circumstances reviewed, and something should be done to make their declining years moderately comfortable. That is all that I ask. I am not asking that the whole pension code of the national teachers be reopened. These persons can be readily identified. They form a small and diminishing body, mostly elderly people. They have no one to speak for them. They command a small voting power and, as I have said, they are a rapidly diminishing group. I ask the Minister to take them under his special protection and quietly, if needs be, do something so that we shall not have the constant discomfort of thinking them neglected and abandoned in the condition of poverty in which they are at present.

I should like to support the appeal that has been made by Deputy Dillon. I know at least six persons, ex-teachers, living in the conditions which Deputy Dillon has described. I appeal to the Minister to give those old pensioned teachers his sympathetic consideration. I think nobody will question the desirability of making provision for them in their declining years.

Will the Minister say anything with reference to this matter?

I have the greatest sympathy with these teachers who were pensioned towards the end of the last war, but, as I have already explained to the House, I cannot see any prospect of succeeding with the Minister for Finance, who has already informed the House, or me at any rate, that he has had representations from other classes of retired public servants. There may be civil servants or postmen or others who have been pensioned off and whose pensions might also be regarded as comparatively small. I see no hope of doing anything for the pensioned teachers as a class. Anything that is going to be done will have to be done for pensioners as a whole. I think the Deputy will realise that it would be almost impossible, even if agreement is reached and an estimate brought in, to deal with a particular small section. It is almost certain you will have other sections who will say that they are in indigent circumstances and it will be suggested—and what could the answer be?—that all persons in receipt of pensions and receiving a sum below the limit that the Government fixed when they granted these emergency bonuses, should be treated equally with serving officials.

From the discussions I have had— and I have looked into this matter carefully—I am convinced it will be very hard to get an acceptance of the view that pensioned officials can be placed at all in the same category as serving officials, because there are definite conditions of employment affecting the serving officials.

The Government are bound to give them enough to live upon. The Government do not do that, I am afraid, in all cases, but they are trying to do their best to improve the condition of the lower paid officials. As regards pensioned people, I think it will be argued that they are in a certain definite category. They had a contract with the State and the State has fulfilled its part of the contract by paying them the pensions to which they were statutorily entitled and their cases, therefore, cannot be reopened.

I think if the Minister made a fight he would get something for the poor old creatures. There are very few of them.

Motion to refer back (Deputy Mulcahy) not moved.
Vote put and agreed to.
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