There is very little more I can say with reference to the chief matter that was debated on the Vote, that is, the question of the teachers' strike. I do not know whether Deputies read what I said when I spoke here previously or whether they paid any attention to the comparisons I gave between the proposals in the Government offer and the scales that they were prepared to give and the 1920 scales and, furthermore, with the relative scales in the North of Ireland, for example. The Minister for Finance has reduced the income tax here. That affects the teachers as a body and the comparison, therefore, is still more appropriate because it brings home to those who had not given sufficient attention to that aspect of the matter that the gross figures give quite a wrong impression of the situation. Judging by the way the advertisements that were published by the Department of Education were criticised here, I can only feel that many of the teachers who voted for this strike realised the true position only when they saw the full picture placed before them. I think the figures that I have given, showing the relative position at present here and elsewhere, if carefully examined, should help the teachers to realise that they have made a mistake and that, in the new circumstances, they ought to reconsider their whole position. I think that if they do examine these figures it will have some effect in getting them to alter their attitude. I have stated also, with regard to certain other matters, that the Government clearly explained its position. The Department of Education is at all times available for consultation with the teachers. We do meet members of the teachers' organisation. The inspectors meet their representatives and I meet them, or the secretary meets them, where necessary, to discuss problems affecting them. I mentioned already last night that I do not believe there is an artificial barrier or any artificial restriction upon the number of teachers, for example, who can secure the rating of highly efficient if their work deserves it.
If there was such a restriction, I certainly would do everything I could to remove it, but I do not believe there was. There has never been any instruction, or any advice of any kind, given so far as I have been able to establish to inspectors to limit themselves in that way.
Deputy O'Higgins mentioned the question of teacher-graduates. It is preposterous to suggest that in a matter of this kind, where the Government's proposals would have increased the expenditure on the Primary Education Vote alone by £1,250,000, the few hundred pounds that would have meant a difference one way or the other between men and women graduates could have precipitated the strike. If that is the position, I think that any trade unionist will agree that the negotiations must have been very badly handled. If the position was that I was dealing with the teachers' organisation officially on the basis of the proposal of £1,000,000 or £1,250,000, and that later on when the Government had made its final decision we were told that this was a very important question—the fact is that it has been mentioned here, and I have been told myself also that it has been responsible for a certain agitation being created among women and women graduates in particular—then, whatever feelings one may have about the effect of university education in that particular connection, one does not feel that the matter was handled reasonably or with commonsense. There was certainly no suggestion that there was any question of serious difference or that it was a matter for serious contention between the teachers and myself, and the same applies to the other questions. The object of the teachers' organisation, obviously, was to spread whatever moneys they could get over the great bulk of their members. It takes very large sums of money to effect even appreciable improvements in that way.
I mentioned last night, with regard to the Dublin teachers, what the position was. If argument is made or if points are made about grading and so on, there is the one clear case, the outstanding point probably, the kernel of the situation so far as the teachers' strike is concerned, on which the Government deferred entirely to the official policy of the teachers' organisation.
Therefore, there is no excuse for suggesting that the Government wanted to divide the teachers. It is quite clear that if the Government had pursued its own wishes in the matter, the results might have been different. We were dealing with bodies which we thought represented the organisation as a whole and not with particular sections. When the point arrives that particular sections of the organisation are going to make claims for themselves and are, apparently, not going to be guided by their own executive or to be controlled by it, then obviously we reach a position when there is no use in continuing.
Deputy McGilligan also seemed to suggest that this question of the strike had been—he did not say planned— decided upon, and had been made clear to the Government. How could that be the position in view of the correspondence that I read last night, and in view of the fact that subsequent to that correspondence there was a congress of the National Teachers' Organisation where the question of a strike was defeated? According to an official communication of the 11th February which I received from the General Secretary of the Teachers' Organisation, the following resolution was adopted at a special congress held on February 9th:—
"That Congress rejects the Government's offer and directs the Executive to make further representations immediately to the Government with a view to improving the present offer as regards scales and date of operation, and that the official offer be submitted to a referendum of all the members of the Organisation in the Twenty-Six Counties, this referendum to be by secret ballot on the lines of the C.E.C. election."
I think I am correct in stating that that resolution was carried as against an amendment for strike action.