Last night the Minister was listening to Deputy O'Sullivan and others calling his attention to the fact that there were 143 old, pensioned national teachers whose pensions at the present time are between 20/- and 30/- a week; that there are 218 whose pensions are between 30/- and 40/- a week, and that there are 700 whose pensions are between 40/- and 50/- a week. If we finish this discussion to-night, he will be telling Deputy O'Sullivan and others who, like ourselves, support the motion with reference to the increase of these pensions, that the country cannot afford to pay these pensioned teachers more than the 50/-, the 40/- or the 30/- a week which, expressed in the terms of money when they were working and earning their pensions, would be very much smaller than the figures quoted. Now, we are told how necessary it is that the higher branches of learning would be financed and manned and developed if we are to strengthen and improve our primary and secondary education.
The Taoiseach merited the suggestion that Deputy Coburn has just made. That is, that people ought to be taught early in their days to study the dictionary meaning of truth and honesty. The Taoiseach was not honest when he suggested that there were people in this Assembly other than the regulated members of his own Party who supported the setting up of the Institute of Advanced Studies. As Deputy Costello indicated, while the proposal was criticised on the Second Stage and on the Committee Stage, we were prepared to keep an open mind until the Government had an opportunity of considering our criticism and, on the Final Stage, when the Government had been given every opportunity to listen to what we had to say, we opposed the Bill, and it was opposed by every other Opposition Party in the House.
The Taoiseach, as Deputy Costello says, gave no explanation, good, bad or indifferent, as to what this proposal will do for the country. He spoke of the great work that has been done by the two schools that are there already. He spoke of the necessity of having a great centre of Celtic studies here. He was not very clear as to what the great school of Celtic studies would do for us beyond saying that we wanted to study our own language in its various forms and in its relation to other Celtic languages. I do not know from what base we can study our own language or relate it to its forms in the past or to its kindred forms in any other of the Celtic countries, unless it is from the basis of the modern language that we have to-day which may be considered to go back, including early modern Irish, to the fourteenth century.
What has the Institute of Advanced Studies, on the Celtic studies side, done for modern Irish? Nothing in the world. There were three small publications. One is an excellent examination of the dialect of Muskerry by Eoin O Cuiv; the second is a similar excellent examination of Cois Fhairrge by Mr. Waldron, and the third is an equally excellent examination of the dialect of Ring. That has been made and it is about to be published by Risteard Breathnach. Beyond that, modern Irish—and by that I mean the early modern Irish from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and modern Irish from the seventeenth century on —has not only been utterly ignored, but some of the most valuable workers have been taken away from that field.
Professor O'Rahilly, the Director of the School of Celtic Studies, is the greatest authority in the world on modern Irish. He had no predecessor in his field; he got no lectures from foreigners in his field; he got no direction from foreigners in his field. He is the greatest authority in that particular class of study; he is the precursor of that study and he has been taken absolutely and utterly away from the whole field of modern Irish. His work is unchallengeable and unquestionable. If you go back to his work, Gadelicu, in 1912, you will note that although more than 30 years have passed, his judgment still stands and the correctness of his work is still there, showing its excellence and the definiteness of his authority. He is taken away from the whole work of modern Irish.
The position is almost worse than that. Take his Measgra Danta and Burduin Bheaga, and his other works. Some are out of print, although they are invaluable material for those working on modern languages, whether in the secondary schools or in the universities. What has Professor O'Rahilly been drafted into under the roof of the School of Celtic Studies? He has been drafted into considering the history of the Goidhils and who they were; into examining the existence of the two Patricks; examining into Irish mythology and writing stories of those times that have no effect on our learning to-day in any kind of systematic or sound fashion. Not only that, but he has been writing stories that Cathal Ó Sandair had not invented Reics Carlo to help him in the examination of detective stories. Without the existence of Reics Carlo, Ó Sandair himself could have examined and perhaps exploded some of the stories that we are now getting as Irish mythology from the School of Celtic Studies and the operations of the amateur detective in these stories might be as near the truth as in the original work.
There has been taken away from the most important ground that could be worked to-day, from the point of view of our language, the greatest authority of his time, and he has been drafted into cosmology. Just as the Taoiseach tells us that no one can tell what good we may get in time from the study of cosmic physics, no one, surely, can tell what good we may get from the examination of Irish mythology that we are getting from the School of Celtic Studies at the present moment. So that when the Taoiseach says magnificent work has been done in the School of Celtic Studies we, who are thirsting for work that will be of advantage to the nation through the strengthening and improvement of the language, deny that there is any great work done there and the Taoiseach cannot point out that any work has been done except the three works I spoke of, which are valuable in their way.
Those most competent to go and listen to the professors there seem to have nothing to say about it except that it is a school in which people are brought together to be lectured from time to time. They lecture people who have no idea, or a very dim idea, of what they are being lectured about. While they may come away from the lecture praising God for all His glories and His astounding works, they can come away from these lectures with very little other benefit. We protested, as Deputy Costello indicated, in all the discussions that took place here on the Bill setting up the Institute for Advanced Studies, that these things should be associated with the university and everything that had happened since has shown that we were right. Infinitely more work for Celtic studies would have been done if those who were dealing with Celtic studies had been left in the universities. A man who is the greatest authority on modern Irish has been completely divorced from that special work.
Similarly, the greatest authority on old Irish in the country has been appointed out of the National University to a post in the School of Celtic Studies. The conditions in the School of Celtic Studies would not allow him to stay there. The greatest authority on old Irish that we ever have had is to-day deprived of his university salary and put on a very small pension from the university because he left it voluntarily in order to go, at the request of the Government I suppose, to the School of Advanced Studies. He is left there, divorced from his university work and his income has been very considerably reduced. That is the contribution the School of Advanced Studies has made to the study of old Irish.
Deputy Dillon rather swept aside the various objections put forward by very many of the different Opposition speakers to this Bill. He opposed it entirely on the ground that it was a monument to the pride of the Taoiseach. To some extent I accept that but accepting Deputy Dillon's argument and his very emphatic statement, I do not understand Deputy Dillon when he modifies his opposition to this proposal after the Taoiseach said that he was going to see that the universities are well financed. I do not think that the adequate financing of universities, the proper staffing and the equipping of them with proper buildings, can be accepted as a price for having higher learning put more and more under State control because this proposal is an extension of the action taken already to put the higher branches of learning directly under State control. The School of Celtic Studies on the one hand and the School of Theoretical Physics on the other hand are entirely under State control. The Taoiseach attempted to controvert Deputy Dillon's statement which rather suggested that the whole administration of the institute was tied up in red tape, but the fact is that that is so. To contemplate the setting up of another body of experts to go and study the stars, to contemplate their going in signing a time book every morning is a thing I cannot do. I do not see any terrestrial results of any great importance to the welfare of the people arising from that study.
There is nothing proposed here but the extension of State control over higher learning and anybody who would accept the statement that the Taoiseach has made now, that the universities are going to be provided for, and on these grounds agree to the setting up of this additional school, would be simply selling the national birthright, that we should have our university free from State control, and selling that for moneys that are properly due to the universities. We consider that the universities should be properly financed to do their work and that they should be kept entirely free from State control.
The Minister indicated that the functions and duties of this school will include the theoretical and experimental investigation of cosmic physics, including astrophysics, cosmic rays, geophysics, meteorology and oceanography. He went on to say that "the possible application of the results of such investigations to problems of national economy" would arise. At a later stage he said that "there are few branches of science which compete with cosmic physics in their value to the life of a nation and where even purely theoretical results find practical application so quickly". He indicated, to put it in homely terms, that "the aim of cosmic physics is to find out all about the world in which we live and to apply that knowledge for the betterment and advancement of human life". Assume that we understood what that meant and assume that we did get some idea as to any particular aspect of our people's lives that was going to be affected by that work in such a way as to improve it, why should we commit it to the Institute of Advanced Studies in order to get it done? Is it not a fact that if, for every new piece of work you tackle, you set up a separate institution, your overheads pile up, and money and personnel are absorbed in just building up the superstructure of an institute when the money could be much better expended and the personnel could be much better utilised in actually doing the work outside the Institute of Advanced Studies?
Did anybody foresee, when the Bill for the setting up of the School of Advanced Studies was introduced here that in six years it was going to require as much financing as the whole of Cork University College? The Minister will not deny that when this £9,000 is added to the £41,500 that was estimated for the institute, the cost to the State of the institute with the new school established in it is going to be as great as the whole of the cost of Cork University College. I wonder could we get any explanation that would convince us in any way that the work that was being done in the institute in the interests of education generally and of higher education in particular, and the results of that work in benefit to the lives of the people generally, were such as would warrant its being put on the same plane as the whole work of Cork University College? I think the Government has gone a bit mad. Deputy Coburn said he consulted a dictionary. It would be very interesting to consult both English and Irish dictionaries on this question. While I sympathise with Deputies who felt that they were at a disadvantage because they had not heard an English speech on the subject, I would assure them that they laboured under no disadvantage at all: that there was as little to be got by way of intelligent comment on what the proposals are out of the English version as out of the Irish version. As far as the Irish version is concerned, if Deputy Flanagan is of opinion that if he had been in to listen to the Minister he would have understood two-thirds of the Minister's speech, he certainly would have found some words in it that he had never heard before. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, with regard to what it calls “cosmical physics”, that:
"In ancient astronomy the word `cosmical' means occurring at sun- rise, and designates especially the rising and the setting of the stars at that time."
One may wonder what stars are rising and what stars are setting on this particular occasion of the setting up of this establishment for cosmic physics. The Encyclopxdia Britannica goes on to say:—
"Cosmical physics is a term particularly applied to the totality of those branches of science which treat of cosmical phenomena, and their explanation by the laws of physics. It includes terrestrial magnetism— the tides, meteorology as related to cosmical causes, the aurora meteoric phenomenon and the physical constitution of the heavenly bodies generally. It differs from astrophysics only in dealing particularly with phenomena in their wider aspects and as the product of physical causes, while astrophysics is more concerned with the minute details of observation."
The Minister gave his own description of cosmic physics in Irish, and the Taoiseach persuaded himself that he gave an explanation of what it meant in English. While not wishing to interrupt the Taoiseach too much in the course of his speech, which he ought to be allowed to make for himself, I endeavoured to get him to give us some information as to what it meant and as to what it was meant to do. All that I could understand from him was that those people who are going to be used for meteorological work here are going to be trained there. Well, if our meteorologists are to be trained in a special institution why not our engineers? Are we going to see a branch of the engineering school attached to the school of higher learning, and why not? Are we going to see a school of chemistry set up there? The Taoiseach seemed to indicate that, because research in tuberculosis was being carried out under a medical council that was distributing grants, there was a great case for setting up institutes in all directions. I submit that the work that is being carried out under the medical council in modern medical research is being done by and through the universities.
On the position of the universities in all this work, I should like to direct attention to a letter from Professor Thomas Dillon which was published, I think, in the Irish Press on the 31st January, 1947, a letter in which he deals with a statement that was made recently on the question of chemical research by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Professor Dillon says:—
"The fine chemical industry first grew in Germany during the 19th century directly out of the universities, where chemistry was studied intensively with liberal financial assistance from the German States. It failed in England because in those days the old universities, Oxford and Cambridge, regarded chemistry as merely ancillary to medicine and unworthy of serious intellectual effort. It thus happened that when war broke out in 1914 the British found themselves short of many products essential for their armies and their industries, and the Government appointed a committee of practical business men to establish a fine chemical industry. This committee failed to do anything, and, as the matter was urgent, it was soon replaced by a committee of chemists, including some from the professorial staffs of the universities.
"This committee insisted that well equipped chemical departments in the universities must be the background of any successful fine chemical industry, and that it was essential for the development of such an industry that the universities should be liberally endowed with money for professorships, lectureships, scholarships, books and apparatus to enable them efficiently to carry on the training of chemists for industry. The British Government, notwithstanding their huge expenditure on armaments, accepted this policy during the war, and afterwards founded the university grants committee, to ensure that the universities would not be left short of money. Thus, as in Germany, these unpractical men founded the British dye industry from which subsequently sprang the artificial silk, plastics, and other fine chemical industries for which England established a reputation between the wars.
"I write this letter because I feel that if these facts had been known to the Irish public the adequacy of our universities would have formed the chief topic of the debate on the proposals of Mr. Lemass."
If we are going to have any kind of study of cosmic physics that is going to do what the Minister for Education suggests that its result will be : that is, to find out all about the world we live in and apply that knowledge for the betterment and advancement of human life, then he should see that the universities were adequately equipped on the physical side and on the chemistry side to give a proper training, and to allow proper research to be carried out in physical, chemical and allied subjects. They are closely related to the educational life of our people, to our industries and to our people's work. Both studies would be carried on and research would be carried out that would make sure that the work that was being done in studying the stars, the oceans and the air would be work that was done from the practical point of view of our people having to live their material and spiritual lives here, and we would not have what is going on in the School of Celtic Studies. We would not have the urgent, modern, real and vital work connected with our language here neglected, and we would not have the talent, the energy and the money running off into the mists and futilities of mythology. We would not have people sitting around professors whom they hardly understand— just feeling that: "Well, it is a grand thing to realise that there are higher realms of thought that we may sometimes hope to attain to."
I say that the Government must be utterly mad to be introducing proposals of this kind to-day. I wonder how much of the Taoiseach's 40-minute speech was hurriedly shifted over to Radio Eireann so that it could be heard with rapture by the unfortunate people who have not fire or fuel on which to make their tea? We oppose this proposal with Deputy Dillon : that this is a place of pride which is being set up ; on the ground that Deputy Cosgrave speaks about— that there is vital and urgent work to be done in relation to disease of animal and plant life—on the ground mentioned by some other Deputies, that provision for teaching in the schools and for a proper, well thoughtout code of education is comparatively neglected, on the ground that this is another step forward in the State control of our universities and on the ground that, though we are now told belatedly that our universities are to be attended to financially, this idea is being developed to the financial detriment of our universities.
It was possible, during the financial stringency of the past six years, from small financial beginnings to rise to an expenditure on this institute as large as the expenditure on the whole of University College, Cork. On those general grounds and on the ground that this higher institute should never have been established, we oppose the motion.