I regret that I was not present when the Minister was making his statement. There are a certain number of things which I should like to mention. The first is that I was somewhat disturbed by a statement that I read in the speech of the president of the Irish National Teachers' Association at the congress in Tramore when he said that the machinery for the adjustment of salary questions which was introduced by the previous administration had come to an end some weeks ago, that it was being reconstructed at the moment. I am sure that it is pretty generally appreciated that under the machinery of conciliation and arbitration set up it has been possible for the representatives of the primary teachers, the Department of Education and the Department of Finance to come, at the conciliation level, to an agreement reasonably satisfactory to all parties. When that machinery was set up it was intended to be a permanent machine which would eliminate as far as possible friction and agitation in relation to salaries and other matters affecting the financial position of the teachers. I do not know what can have happened when it can be stated that the machinery came to an end some weeks ago. I should like to have from the Minister an assurance that there is no gap or difficulty there such as I understood from speeches made in the House appears to have arisen in relation to the Civil Service.
For a very long period the lack of satisfactory machinery of that kind has militated against the teaching profession devoting themselves to what I call the clinical work of pedagogy and the development of the professional approach by giving to the public in the best possible way the fullest possible advantage of their professional experience. The same assurance is required with regard to the secondary and vocational teachers. I felt that, with the establishment of that machinery and the satisfactory way in which the present Minister found it to work for him, we had definitely arrived at a time when the friction with regard to pay and salary scales would be eliminated and not only would there be more satisfactory co-operation in purely educational matters between the teaching organisations generally and the Department, but the teaching organisations generally, who are the people with practical experience of the work in the schools, would be better able to devote their individual and organised attention by mutual exchange of opinions and experience to educating public opinion on the work that is being done in the schools and inspiring more satisfactory confidence on the part of the people in the work being done. I feel there is a very definite ministerial function to be operated by the Minister for Education in that matter.
Without going into matters that might appear to be critical or controversial I want to say that my experience in the Department of Education rather suggested to me that the purely ministerial function, as such, was somewhat absent from the Department to a fairly substantial extent for some years past with the result that other ministerial influences invaded the Department. Various pet notions of the Minister here and the Minister there introduced matters that were not necessarily a proper part of the pattern of the general departmental approach and distorted the approach of the Department to general problems and deprived, shall we say, the Civil Service side of the Department of Education of the assistance that is undoubtedly the proper discharge of the pure ministerial function.
It is imperative for the Department of Education that the Department itself be relieved of the charge of being bureaucratic in its approach. The Minister has now sufficient experience of the Department to appreciate that the Civil Service side of the Department of Education is as devoted in a vocational way to the work they have in hands as many of the members of the religious orders who carry out the work of education throughout the country. They require that the ministerial function will be properly exercised alongside them and part of the ministerial function ought to be the protection of the Department from the fads of other Ministers here and there.
While there has been a lot of satisfactory comment, there has also been a lot of criticism of the approach to the new spelling of Irish. I was very much surprised to find that the Department of Education, and the experience of the Department of Education, was hardly sought at all in connection with the initiation of that work and that the matter was finally decided almost entirely outside the Department of Education. I do not want to discuss the excellence or otherwise of the decision but it is almost inconceivable that that was done.
The matter of university scholarships for students doing their examinations entirely through the medium of Irish was, I think, introduced without any serious consultation with the Department of Education on the one hand or the universities on the other hand and modifications might be necessary in particular schemes of that kind to which it might be useful to give some thought.
The Minister mentioned that certain examination was made to see what can be done to increase the number of trained primary teachers. I am rather disappointed that the Minister has not been able to avoid the thorns put in his path by, say, the Minister for Finance in that matter. I feel that there is no more urgent problem in the Department than the provision of at least additional women national teachers. I was very sorry that I was not able to succeed myself in that connection 12 months ago. I think it must react very much on the general educational system that the Minister is not able to make a definite statement on the matter. I hope the Minister will be able to assure us in his reply that provision will be made immediately for the training of additional women teachers. In our whole educational scheme, the only teachers who get fundamental training in their work are the primary teachers. The difference between the results achieved in later years by students who have gone through the primary schools and been taught by teachers who had two years' training in the primary training colleges and the results achieved by students who went, say, through the junior schools, and were taught by teachers who had not got systematic training in the art of teaching, such as is given in the ordinary training colleges, is in my opinion very marked. I feel that the private schools reflect in the results they are able to achieve a lack of systematic training of the teachers.
You have a problem in the junior private schools and you have a problem throughout a fairly large part of the country in the matter of untrained primary teachers. We want additional training for women, particularly, and more training facilities for men. However, you may not want an additional college for men in the same way as you want it for the women.
A more definite approach is needed in the case of unqualified primary teachers throughout the country. There is a large number of them. A number of them have many years' experience, won their spurs, and reached a very high stage of qualification. Something may have to be done to establish them as qualified teachers, but something must be done to prevent the appointment, year after year, of additional girls, in particular, who are not qualified. They are put into primary schools and will, perhaps, be permanently retained there through the lack of qualified teachers.
I feel that when there is a lot of opinion as to the different ways in which primary teachers should be prepared for their avocation, there is no better way than to pass them through training colleges specially designed for them. In that connection, I suggest there is a necessity for raising the status of the professors in the training colleges and reviewing, in the light of improved status, the class and the character of their work.
I am glad to know that the Minister is directing such a determined advance in the work of building new schools. There is, however, a problem in relation to the repair and maintenance of schools which I think requires, say, a conference between the Department and members of the Hierarchy. The Minister has drawn attention to the usefulness of the consultative committee set up in Dublin in regard to new schools. I think something on the same lines might be attempted in regard to the repair and maintenance of schools. There are one or two disgraceful cases of lack of repair of schools that have come to my own notice, particulary in the last few months. I know of one Irish-speaking district in which the language is flourishing, and in which the long traditions of our race, of a literary and linguistic kind, are fully maintained. The school there is really a disgrace to civilisation. I should not like to put down a question to the Minister to ask how many panes of glass out of the total number in that school were completely broken, how many were cracked, how many were stuck with pieces of cardboard and wood, how many slates were off the roof, how many bricks out of the wall or how many holes there were in the floor.