Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (17th Dáil) – Wednesday, 5 Feb 1964

Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

"That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration."—(Deputy P. O'Donnell).

Mr. Desmond

When speaking earlier this evening, I mentioned the importance of career guidance officers. We must examine this matter very carefully. We must ask if there is any record in any rural national school of the progress being made by a boy or girl reaching school leaving age and his or her suitability for a certain type of employment. Try as they may, national teachers are not and cannot be expected to be specialists as regards the suitability of pupils for a particular type of work. Because of that, it would be well if the Minister would bear in mind, when people are being sent abroad on specialised courses, that a number of officers from his Department should receive training for this special work.

Equally important would be the keeping of a special file or record regarding the progress of each boy or girl, and when the boy or girl is leaving school, the record should be available to the guidance officer for examination and for discussions between him and the child's parents. I would not be in favour of a hit or miss affair. I know it would cost money and that we would need many inspectors, and I know that an inspector would probably have to spend many days in each school examining the file of each boy or girl who has reached the school-leaving age, but ultimately all of that would be worthwhile.

At present there is this awful vacuum—parents not knowing the capabilities of their child, and very often believing that the boy or girl is exceptionally clever but blaming the school teacher if the child fails to pass an examination. All this is happening because there is no real co-operation between all the parties concerned regarding the future of boys and girls leaving school. If we could adopt this system, it might mean that ultimately boys and girls would not be put into jobs which are dead-ends. If boys and girls by such advice and guidance can be led along the road to suitable forms of employment, then their future years will be happy and content, and equally important the economy will benefit by it.

Like other Deputies, I am glad to know, from the Minister's answer to-day, where these new technical school buildings are to be erected. It is only natural that we in Cork are happy about the result. Beyond that, I do not intend to discuss vocational education on this Estimate. It is not that I consider it unworthy of discussion—I believe it is vital that we do discuss it—but because I am disappointed with the Minister. I believe there was never a better Minister for Education in this House than the present Minister but I do not believe in expressing praise when we must be critical. Last May, the Minister held a press conference. I am not condemning him, but I think it would have been better if he had come first to the House. I am not saying that the press should be denied any available information but Ministers, probably in all Governments, seem to adopt the line that has been common practice for many years in England and America, that is, to go to the public first and then come back to the elected representatives. Therefore, I consider that only when the Minister's full proposals are known here, can we discuss them in their entirety.

They may be very good—I hope they are. The Minister can be sure of one thing, that is, the 100 per cent co-operation of Labour Deputies. Perhaps we may be critical in so far as we may think his proposals may not go far enough but I suppose it is a healthy sign if we want to go further. Perhaps when the Minister is introducing his Estimate for the coming year in the next month or two, we may hear more about the matter. Then we will be in possession of more detailed information. Because of that, I do not propose to discuss any matter affecting vocational schools tonight.

In regard to secondary schools, I shall just say I am in agreement with the many members who have drawn attention to the inadequacies of the capitation grants. No matter what I might say, I would merely be repeating what other Deputies have already said. In the years during which the Minister has been Minister for Education, he has been tremendously successful, but I should like to see a greater spirit of co-operation between his Department and the various secondary teachers' organisations because co-operation can bring great results. I shall leave it at that.

I wonder if the Minister has had an opportunity of examining the situation which affects boys and girls, but particularly boys, arising from the introduction of a new system by the Minister for Finance. Kerry and Cork, and, I suppose, Clare to some extent, were once able to send their quota of young boys up here to the Civil Service. The tragedy now is that the number of vacancies in the executive officer grade are very limited and the so-called re-organisation of the Service has affected the Department of Education and must affect the Minister when boys are being denied the right to sit for examinations for the clerical officer grade. I should like the Minister to study this matter between now and when he introduces his Estimate, to find out what the position is as against what it was in the secondary schools —in the Christian Brothers' schools and many other schools—which used send their boys for good positions which have now been closed to them. Unfortunately there are very few alternatives available. I know that the alteration was not caused by the Minister for Education but the Minister and his Department must have noticed a falling off in the employment which was available to these boys.

Another minor matter which I should mention is one to which I referred many years ago and it would be well if the Minister could have a word with the people concerned about it. About September every year, every newspaper is cluttered up with advertising material from various secondary schools, convents and so on, relating to the examination results which have just been announced. That in itself is all right but what is unfair is the publication of names with asterisks after them denoting honours. I think it is unfair—and I do not mind what school is involved—to the pupils, some of whom may, by a few marks, just have failed in the examination. It can cause jealousy in parishes between parents. Surely these schools should be satisfied with stating they presented so many pupils for such an examination, so many got honours, so many passed, leaving the names out altogether. If they want to publish the names, then do not segregate and show A as having got honours, B as having just got through and C, the child of a neighbour, as having failed. Advertising is big business with many schools. I should like the Minister to take some steps to prevent this publicity because, to say the least of it, it is causing a great deal of annoyance in rural Ireland.

I come now to the most thorny question of all, the Irish language. In this House, and outside it, people hold different views. Throughout the 26 Counties, people are divided in their approach to the subject of Irish. Since I became a member of this House, I have held to a certain line. I have never offered any apology to anyone for doing so and may God grant that I shall never have to change it. At the moment, however, I find myself at a crossroads. Here, I should like to tell a true story. It may provide an answer to those who are most critical of the Irish language.

Two years ago, I happened to be in the west of Ireland. Moving down towards the Minister's county, I passed through the village of Spiddal. It was a pleasure to hear two men there speaking in Irish. One man was having a few words with a neighbour who was engaged in drawing seaweed. Eventually they parted company and the man drawing the seaweed went down to the strand with his donkey. His wife had filled a bag at low water. What struck me most forcibly was that that man talked to his wife in Irish; he talked to a little boy in Irish. Now the donkey was slow to move and I noticed that he spoke to the donkey in English. It was to the ass he spoke English. Whether or not the donkey came from the Gaeltacht, I just do not know but the episode goes to show that in Spiddal, at any rate, the only one who did not understand Irish was the donkey.

I said I find myself at a crossroads. Looking back now on our school days, there are those of us who realise that what we learned then was what I might describe as Irish Irish. There were no aitches in it. Whether he likes it or not, the Minister for Education has a responsibility. We have had changes over the years. My only ambition now is to try to get to the root of the trouble and see where we are going. Are we divided so much, one against the other, that those who are against Irish can point the finger at us?

Go through the old Irish books. There is no aitch. There was no aitch in an tAthair Peadar, an tAthair Peadar who was such a pleasure to read. Irish then was written in Irish characters. See the difference today. It is a big difference. Take the simple word "", it appears today as "chaith". We are told that the introduction of the aitch is for the purpose of modernising and improving the language. We cannot have it both ways. Take the words " sé" that is now "chuaigh sé". I ask the Minister is that an improvement?

I have in my possession an old Irish-English dictionary of 1822 or 1823, a big volume by O'Reilly. There is no such thing as an aitch in it. Presumably the people were modern then and apparently Irish was all right then. Apparently the Irish we were taught by those excellent teachers who studied Irish and did their best to encourage a love of the language in the boys and girls in their charge was good enough. Remember, they were teaching Irish as it was well and truly known, and without any aitches.

Quite candidly, I worry as to whither we are going. I have in mind a little girl of six. She has been at school for about two years. She is only one of many. This is not a case of just one school because I thought it only right and proper to find out what was happening in different schools in order that I might make a comparison. This small child started off in the ordinary way. Last year there was a change and the children were switched from ordinary spelling to phonetic. I admit that when I heard these little children pronouncing the letter "c" as "k", I was stumped. They do it in Cork, whatever about the other counties. When we were going to school, we were told there was no such thing as the letter "k" but only "c". But little girls between the age of four and five were told that a "c" was a "k" because they were spelling in Irish. They were told to pronounce "e" as "eh", "o" as "ogh" and "u" as "ugh". These children may get over that, but now what do we find? Little children, who were making a hand even of these phonetics, are faced with something that is going beyond the bounds in regard to Irish.

Let us take this example. The teacher is giving an English lesson. He tells the children that "c-a-t" is pronounced "cat", that "a-n" is "an" and that "a-i-r" is "air". The children are doing their best to learn these words as written in English. An hour afterwards, they are doing Irish. The same word is written in English. The Irish letters are forgotten. This time "c-a-t" is down again but now they are told it is "cat" with the Irish pronunciation. The word "a-n" is down and they are told it is "an" and the word "a-i-r" is down and they are told it is "air". Are we to continue in that way? Who is responsible for it?

I know some people are vindictive about the Irish language. Whether through ignorance or something else, we hear them claim, for instance, that Ballyvourney Irish is different from Connemara Irish. But we know that an Englishman from London and one from Yorkshire could hardly understand one another. We do not have to take notice of such carping criticism. But it is a sad thing for Ireland when little children have to write Irish in English letters and put in "h's" all over the place. It is also heartbreaking for genuine enthusiasts of the Irish language.

I know there are extremists on both sides of the fence. There are some who are vicious in their opposition to the language and some vicious in their love of the language, ready to condemn anyone who says a word against it. The saving of the language can only be left to those trying to steer a middle course, those who believe in the language, who want the language, but who must be critical of these impositions on the children by persons behind the scenes. Their Irish is so different from that of the man who wrote:

Bhí fear ann fadó darb ainm dó Séadhna ....

or the man who wrote:

Beir beannacht óm chroí go Tír na hÉireann

Bán cnuic Éireann óig.

What was wrong with the Irish of those days? What was wrong with the mentality of the people who wrote such beautiful Irish? What is wrong with those who slaughter the language and try to make fools of little children year after year in the schools? What is to happen to weekly papers such as Amárach in which the true Irish appears week after week? It is a paper that gives me great pleasure because the Irish there is the Irish we learned with no “h's” in it, so different from the newspapers and periodicals putting in “h's” everywhere and writing everything in English letters.

I am prepared to say the Minister is as anxious to see Irish prosper as anyone, but I say the tampering with Irish as we knew it is ruining the language. Let us come together before it is too late to see to it that the cranks prepared to alter the language to suit ourselves are put in their places and the old traditional ways of writing and talking Irish retained.

Mr. T. O'Donnell

There is a general feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction throughout the country at the silence and inactivity of the Minister and his Department since the headline-hitting pronouncement made last May regarding the future of Irish educational policy, particularly with regard to the new idea of comprehensive schools. The problem of bringing Irish education into line with modern developments and of gearing our educational policy to meet future needs is a colossal one. Silence and inactivity are two things we do not want at present. There are numerous problems to be tackled in the field of education. During the course of this debate, which has been a prolonged one, every aspect of those problems has been referred to by other speakers. In the primary schools we have the problem of over-crowding, bad buildings and the consequent need for the extension of existing schools and the acceleration of the school-building programme in general. These are very big problems waiting to be tackled. In regard to secondary education, we have the inadequacy of the present facilities and the inadequacy, in particular, of the capitation grant. In this matter of secondary education we must make a determined effort to ensure that secondary education is made available to all who seek it.

To reach that desirable objective, we still have a long way to go. Then in the fields of vocational and technical education, there is need for reorganisation, need to bring our technical schools into line with modern developments, to provide new courses, to meet new advances in various fields of technology. However, the most serious deficiency in our educational system is the absence of adequate research facilities and the absence of adequate statistical information on the availability, demand and other aspects of education.

This lack of statistical information and of research facilities has come very forcibly to light in recent times in the course of the discussions on the question of comprehensive schools. After the fullest examination of the present facilities available, rather than pick out certain areas and decide to put a new comprehensive school in such a location, maybe there is another approach to any given location. Maybe if the present facilities were extended and if suitable transport were provided, the problems could be solved in a certain area. There are numerous questions which cannot be answered because of the lack of scientific surveys and statistical information. It is a matter of vital necessity that full-scale research units should be set up within the Department of Education. It is important that it should examine the problem and then set about tackling it. As the Americans have put it: you must know how to show how.

On this question of educational research, it would be remiss of me if I did not pay tribute to the work of the Federation of Irish Secondary Schools. Within the past year, they have produced two documents which are very valuable contributions to educational research. While complimenting that organisation and paying tribute to them, I maintain it is only going half way to solving the problem and it is most unfair if this question of educational research is left in the hands of voluntary organisations.

Another aspect of education in which I am most interested for reasons which I am sure the Minister knows well is that of university education. The facilities available at the present time are totally inadequate. In most parts of the country university education is the prerogative of the well-to-do or the brilliant few who are fortunate to secure scholarships. In the field of university education, just as in the field of secondary education, we must accept the principle of equality of opportunity. At present that is being denied to a large proportion of our secondary school-going pupils.

I am conscious of this fact because of efforts which have been made by a public-spirited body of people in the constituency which I represent who have carried out research into the question of the facilities for university education in Limerick and the surrounding areas. The Limerick University Project Committee has over the past three or four years carried out an educational survey of Limerick City and County and the adjoining counties. That survey has shown that there are 14,000 secondary school pupils in this area, a figure which represents one-sixth of the entire secondary school-going population of the country. The vast majority of those 14,000 pupils will never have a chance of pursuing a university course. Do we intend to continue the pesent policy of denying the opportunity of pursuing a university course to such a large section of our people?

I am aware that this campaign to secure a university for Limerick has in certain higher places—let me put it that way—been looked upon with a certain amount of amusement. There are people who consider that this campaign is being directed by a small group of daydreamers or idealists. I want to make it quite clear that we in Limerick are deadly serious on this matter. The survey carried out shows there are 14,000 secondary school-going pupils in this area. We have established beyond all doubt that there is an excellent case for the provision of a constituent college of the National University of Ireland in Limerick.

The case for the establishment of a university college in Limerick was put before the Commission on Higher Education two years ago and an invitation was extended to members of the Commission to go to Limerick and to examine the case on the spot. Up to the present that has not been done. The latest information I have is that members of the Commission intend to visit Limerick. I sincerely hope so.

We have found it strange that members of the Commission on Higher Education have visited Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Germany to study higher educational facilities and have not yet come down to examine the case that has been put for the establishment of a college in Limerick. I put it to the Minister that no other body in this country has put before the Commission a case so bristling with facts and figures and that it is up to the Commission to visit Limerick and give our case the consideration it deserves.

We do not want our claim for a university in Limerick to be decided behind closed doors here in Dublin. We do not want a repetition of what happened during the past year, when a member of the Commission on Higher Education came to Limerick and, in the course of a lecture on another subject, made an attempt to belittle our claim. Subsequently, when challenged in the public Press, he discreetly withdrew.

Limerick's claim to a university is based on the simple principle of equality of opportunity for all in higher education. Our claim, as I said, is backed by factual and statistical evidence. If the Government accept the principle of equality of opportunity in higher education for all our post-secondary students, Limerick's claim must be recognised, and justice must be done.

I want once and for all, to make it quite clear that the idea of a university for Limerick is not just wishful thinking by a group of idealists. The demand for a university is widespread and unanimous, and it is supported by every public body and organisation in the area. As I said, to put it in a nutshell, we want a constituent college of National University. I believe we are entitled to it and we are determined to keep on fighting until we get it. So far as Limerick's claim is concerned, the people will not take "No" for an answer.

Dr. Browne

Because of the delay in the presentation of this Estimate, this is probably not a very valuable debate to bother about. Presumably we will be hearing from the Minister again very shortly, and we will have another opportunity of discussing the points at issue. At the same time, I should like to say a few words at this stage, because of a recent statement made by the Minister in regard to myself.

One is in difficulty as a Deputy at Question Time in so far as the Minister is given tremendous scope and a Deputy is restricted. Fortunately there is no such restriction now, so long as I keep within the rules of order.

I very much resent the Minister's approach to being questioned on his activities, at Question Time in the Dáil. Recently he used a particularly facetious answer in order to develop his theme, as he put it. He said that the Deputy was against any improvement in education, and he went on to say that the only person who was wasting his time was the Deputy. The Deputy was asking a particular question and looking for information to which he was entitled, and that question will come back to the Minister tonight. That is a function of a Deputy in the Dáil.

The Minister is in a very difficult position because he came into this House deeply bedded down in the tail feathers of Mr. de Valera in County Clare. He was a particularly obscure Deputy——

Dr. Hillery

The Deputy will have to get some of the rottenness out to-night and then he can go home and sleep. It is a good catharsis. He should get it out of his system and he will feel better. It is better than treatment.

Dr. Browne

Listen, like a good man. At best he was a not very spectacular spare part of the Fianna Fáil Party——

The Minister is responsible for any statement he makes in the House. The question of officials does not arise.

Dr. Browne

——in order to carry on their vendettas against Deputies or organisations or groups inside and outside the House.

There can be no doubt on the part of anyone who studies the records of the activities of the Department of Education over the past 40 years— and the best study of a record is a study of its achievements and failures —that, taking into consideration the intense competition there is for failure in those benches in regard to the different Ministers—and we have such failures in Forestry, Fisheries, Agriculture, Industry and whatever you like— the one Department which gets not the red but the golden rosette for achievement of failures, is the Minister's Department. We had a succession of Ministers one worse than the other, and time after time we listened to exactly the same line from Ministers for Education as we got in this recent speech. Mañana! Tomorrow! The day after tomorrow! Live horse and you will get grass! A big drive to increase primary schools! A tremendous drive to increase secondary school scholarships!

Dr. Hillery

It is done.

Dr. Browne

Tremendous records of achievement in the case of the universities! New developments in relation to technological education— and always the dream was in the pigeonhole, deep in dust.

Dr. Hillery

The schools were there. All that is wrong is the Deputy's jealousy.

Dr. Browne

There was nothing but the evidence of the Minister's inefficiency, the Minister's futility, the most futile of all being the present incumbent.

Futility, incompetency, inefficiency are all the one thing but there is another more serious charge I should like to make against the Minister. I put down a Parliamentary Question last week to the Minister and I shall read in detail his answer because what arises from it is rather important. I asked him whether applicants suitably qualified under the terms of the advertisement for the post of Curator of the National Gallery made application for the post; if so, how many; whether they were considered for appointment; if so, why no appointment was made; why it had been found necessary to readvertise the post; whether the terms of the second advertisement were identical with those of the first; and if not, how they differed. The Minister replied to me in the following terms:

The position of Director of the National Gallery was advertised in July last. When the applications were received the Governors and Guardians of the Gallery felt the scope of the competition should be widened by offering a higher scale of salary for the post. Such higher scale of salary having been sanctioned, the post was readvertised early this month.

The Minister is not hard of hearing, I hope.

Dr. Hillery

What is wrong with the Deputy now?

Dr. Browne

Patience, patience; I am going on to deal with it. It will be noted that in that question I asked whether the terms of the second advertisement were identical with those of the first, and if not, how they differed, and the total of the Minister's reply was that a higher salary scale had been sanctioned. There was no reference whatever to any change in the terms of the advertisement. The advertisement issued in July for a director stated that the salary for his very important post would be £2,300 to £2,800 for a man. The post is whole-time, pensionable, and these are the desirable qualifications: (1) a university degree or equivalent qualifications from an art history institution of international standard: (2) knowledge of at least one modern continental language; (3) knowledge of the Irish language; (4) experience of art gallery administration with knowledge of the care of pictures.

Those were the terms of the first advertisement. The second advertisement had the change in salary as mentioned by the Minister—for a man £2,500 to £3,275. Then, there was this important difference: there were essential qualifications—the Minister did not mention this and there was no mention of essential qualifications in the first advertisement. Among the essential qualifications were: satisfactory experience of art gallery administration, with knowledge of the care and display of pictures; general suitability otherwise to discharge the duties of the position.

There is not a modicum of honesty about it. I want the Minister to investigate it. I want to know whether the Minister has been a party to this in any way, whether he was aware that this had taken place, if he approved of the first set of qualifications, if he felt the first set of qualifications were intelligent qualifications which would be likely to get a good, suitable person; I want to know if he believed—and he presumably sanctioned them—in the efficacy and the wisdom of these qualifications. Having done so, why did he not see that the two people were called at least, having had the basic qualifications? Whether they were appointed or not was unimportant.

The important thing was that certain basic qualifications which these people had were advertised for and those two people were turned down without interview. Why did that happen? They were not called for interview—merely informed that the position was to be readvertised. This is a very serious position. I do not know to what extent the Minister is involved: I am not making any charges against the Minister until he has had an opportunity of replying. I know the name—I have been given it—of one of the people who made this approach to Mr. White. For the time being I do not wish to disclose that name. If the Minister wishes to investigate these allegations and feels I should give him the name of the person against whom I am making this allegation, I shall be prepared to do so, so that he can be facilitated in his investigations.

This is a very important post. It carries a salary of £2,500. On the face of the evidence I have, it reeks of jobbery. It has, I think, an even more serious significance in that I know that my colleague, Deputy McQuillan, repeatedly questions the Taoiseach and Mr. MacAteer is continually hectoring the authorities in Northern Ireland on the question of religious apartheid in the North of Ireland. If these facts are true, as set out by me, surely we have given the people in the North a perfectly giltedged charge to make against the Dublin authorities that when it comes to jobbery, we are certainly in every way their match?

That is the position as I see it for the present. Any further information I have I shall make available to the Minister, should he wish me to do so. I think it is a matter which should be the subject of an inquiry; it would be very wrong if an appointment were made in the circumstances. It is clear that a very serious wrong has been done to these two people who bona fide felt this was an honest attempt to find the best man for the job and I think, probably as most people do— as a race we are regrettably good at this kind of thing—we seem to have lost our sense of humour because those who drew up this advertisement, I should have thought, would have been mindful of the cynical Dubliner when they inserted at the bottom of the advertisement this ultimate in cynicism: “Personal canvassing of members of the Board is prohibited.” That should be good for a laugh with Jimmy O'Dea any day, especially when members of the appointing body are canvassing the prospective appointees.

Such hypocrisy—and God knows we have a fair record of it in affairs of this kind—must surely be one of the best specimens extant.

In regard to the Minister's absurd suggestion to me that I spend my time wasting his time and that I was against any improvement in the education provisions, I wish to draw his attention to the debate in 1958, five years ago, where he will find that between 35 and 40 columns are taken up by me in discussing the Estimate for the Department of Education. In that debate, I made many of the suggestions which are now common property and being made by everybody on all sides of the House. It was a contribution based on statistics and factual information and it was the product, in the main, of information which at that time I received with courtesy from a reluctant Department but a well-mannered Minister.

The only thing I am seriously concerned about is a suggestion by the Minister that it is about time that people stopped saying—this was in June or July—that the majority of our people do not go further than the national school. That seems to me to suggest complacency on the part of the Minister and the satisfaction of the Minister with the present state of affairs. I attach no serious significance to the Minister's protestations about what he is going to do when he grows up, the day after to-morrow and so on, because I have listened to that for a long time from people occupying his post, but I am concerned about the suggestion that post-primary education is to any significant degree available to our young people.

I shall give the Minister some facts so that he may reconsider his optimistic assessment of his Department's achievements and failures over the past few years. How do you decide, in the absence, as one Deputy recently pointed out, of an intelligent, serious, statistical section in the Department of Education, a section in any way useful and properly staffed, what the exact position is? It is very difficult to find out the true position regarding education. We can find out only whatever suits the Department's PRO, that is, the Minister, whatever rosy picture he wants to paint of the Department's inactivities. The position is capable of statistical foundation and analysis but when we come to ask a simple question and an important one, such as: "How many children are at present in classes in the city of Dublin?" whether it is upwards of 40 or 50 or 60 or 70, the Minister does not know. He does know but he does not care. It is easy, as is true of so many Departments of State here, to rest on another man's wound. It is some other person's children who are going to the slum schools——

Dr. Hillery

I told the Dáil today that that problem is being dealt with but the Deputy is not interested in that, but in statistics. To him, these children are just statistics.

Dr. Browne

I have been asking that question for the past ten years and I have been getting the same answer and so far as I know, nothing significant is happening——

Dr. Hillery

Yes, there is.

Dr. Browne

——except that there is a continuing movement of population from the deserted villages of rural Ireland into Dublin, with the result that whatever the position was when I first asked the question, it is infinitely worse now and the Minister does not even know the size of the problem. He does not even know the extent of the problem. So that is one of our difficulties in trying to deal with the situation in regard to education. The indifference of the Department to its own responsibilities over the years has been such that whenever they wanted any kind of advice at all, they looked into their own hearts, they found themselves being reassured of their doing a very good job, they would carry on and think that that was all that was required.

Anybody who questions or criticises is told he is "wasting my time", he is taking up the time of these busy bureaucrats. God only knows what they are doing. They certainly are not running the Department of Education. But, these are the only replies one gets from the Minister—inferences.

However, I think it is possible by use of inferences of one kind or another to try to decide what does happen to the youngsters who end school at 14 years of age. There is one fact which would have been interesting if the Minister had pursued it in any way, if he could bring it up to date. I do not know what the position is now. All I know is that there has been no significant change. In spite of the Minister's scholarships scheme, there has been no significant change in the apparatus of our educational system since certain figures were made available and they were figures available on travel permits in regard to status of people leaving the country. In relation to females they were: 55 per cent were domestic: 34 per cent were factory workers. The rest were nurses, clerical workers, and so on. That is, 90 per cent—nine out of ten—of these youngsters whom we send out of this country—as Mr. Hauser said the other day in his survey regrettably, some of them to become prostitutes on the streets of London—are being sent out by the Department of Education with the only qualification to earn their living their bare hands.

That is an achievement for an educational system, is it not? The poor youngsters. Who could blame them when they end up, as so many have done, in the way that they have done?

In relation to men, unskilled labourers represented 13 per cent; agricultural workers 70 per cent. The rest are industrial workers. I suppose they were coolie labour industrial workers. They may or may not have been. Seventeen per cent were skilled workers—I will put it that way—and the other rough 80 per cent—eight out of ten—of these young boys went out and the diploma we gave them, the degree we gave them, the qualification we gave them in order to fight their corner in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and everywhere else was, again, their bare hands. And nobody cares. Nobody took any serious steps to see that if we cannot stop emigration at least we can try to ensure that when these youngsters do emigrate they are not doing the coolie labour in those countries, that they are able to take up their jobs, whether it is as office workers or professional workers or other workers, at a status which most of them are perfectly well talented for and equipped for in their minds. It is merely an accident of birth that they end up as coolie labourers, an accident that they were born in the Republic of Ireland which has no regard for the intellectual, physical or technical capacity of the vast majority of its young people, a society which is based on the strictly completely utilitarian materialist philosophy that if you can pay for it you can have it. It does not matter whether it is comfort in old age or health when you are sick or education when you are a youngster, if you cannot pay you cannot have. That is a beautiful upending of the Christian virtues which we so loudly profess from time to time. It would make you vomit.

If the Minister would shut up interrupting me, the Deputy would hear it. It is very difficult to discuss such a nebulous proposition as these comprehensive schools. However, they certainly are in no position to alter seriously the sad depressing picture which I have already given in regard to the broad picture of the education of our children at present.

I gave the end product of our schools. A skivvy or a manual labourer are words with a really offensive connotation, I know, but is it not appalling that that, in the majority of cases, is what our primary schools turn out — domestic servants for Britain?

I want to nail one thing once and for all and that is this question of the post-primary education and the very high percentage which the Minister alleges our children get. This was dreamt up by the Department a long time ago. The Minister is not the first one to think up this piece of ammunition. I should like to read out the answer to a question which I received today from the Minister. Here are the figures for the amount of time a child spends in one of these post-primary educational institutions:

	Part-time day students	Part-time evening students
1959-60	104 hours	56 hours
1960-61	104,,	53,,
1961-62	120,,	54,,

It seems to me that the provision of scholarships is completely inadequate—not only the number of scholarships but also the amount of those scholarships. We live in a country where most of the population are Catholics and most of them happen to have large families. For that reason, it is a very big sacrifice for a man, no matter to what grade he belongs, but particularly to the white-collar worker or the manual worker, to say to a child of 14, 16 or 17 years: "You go on and try to get into a secondary school and then try to get into a university or Bolton Street, or one of these places." That man will be at the loss of that child's tiny earnings, admittedly, but some earnings, if he went out as a messenger boy or a newspaper vendor or whatever it might be. A man with a big family—the bigger the family, the bigger the sacrifice—is at the loss of those tiny earnings from 14 to 20 years, or whatever period it might be that the child would be at a secondary school or university. He has to feed and clothe the child and to provide it, I suppose, with pocket money now and again—and he has to do that for the second, third, fourth, fifth, up to the ninth or tenth child. Quite clearly, most families find they simply cannot do it.

As a result of the absolute inadequacy of scholarships made available by the local authorities, the family cannot afford to be at the loss of the income and certainly they are not in any way compensated for the loss of that income by the local authorities' relatively tiny contribution. A lot of people say that the Brothers who run the secondary schools do not ask very high fees. That is quite true. It is a pity they have to ask any fees at all. Whatever the fee may be, whether £2 or £3 a term, or a year, it is not the most important thing to the parent. The factors I have mentioned are even more important than the fee. The fee, of course, on top of that, adds to the difficulty of the parent, especially where there are four or five sons.

Therefore, I think that while the Minister is floundering around in his indecision about the future pattern of our educational services, he should try to use the short cut to giving youngsters a better chance of higher education, the better opportunities to higher education given to all of us who have been lucky enough to get it. He should try to extend in a very big way the scholarships available to young children so that any child who passes a particular standard in the Leaving Certificate could automatically qualify for a scholarship, but a significant scholarship, a scholarship which would make it possible for that child—an assessment can readily be made in relation to the needs of the young person who is growing up to make him completely independent of a parent— to make him independent and at the same time, make it possible for the parent not to be called on to make too great a sacrifice for developing that child's mind to the fullness to which it was intended it should go when God gave him a mind, in a craft or profession or whatever it might be.

One of the gravest sins you can commit against a human being is to take this wonderful thing, the human mind, and foreshorten it, to destroy it at a certain age, to prevent its development at the age of 14 or 15, or whatever it is, and where its normal intellectual development might lead on to create a physicist, a mathematician, a fine physician, an architect, an administrator, or any of these things which so many of these children are quite capable of becoming, if we would only give them the opportunity, if we were not too mean or too selfish to give them the opportunity, because there is plenty of money in the country, it appears, to be spent on many other things like drink, racing, tobacco and such things. I believe the priorities should be the development of the young mind, giving the opportunity, the realisation of the ambition of the youngster who wants to develop his talent whatever it may be, whether it is the talent of the mind or a talent in the form of an art or craft in the hands.

This we deny to a very considerable number of our children and each year we hear this—we are served up with it and the Minister will know what I am talking about—this placebo in order to lull us asleep for another year with the idea that there is a wonderful scheme around the corner. Most of us have been waiting for a very long time and such schemes have not turned up. In the meantime, the boats are being loaded with these youngsters going off to these awful unknown places, cities like London, completely unprepared for the strains and stresses of life in that type of society. It is the greatest crime which our society has committed against our youngsters in the past 40 years. Our failure has been a real crime against the innocents.

I do not understand why the Minister has this extraordinary attitude. I know he is in grave danger. I think there has been a vendetta going on between the controllers of the secondary schools and his Department for a very long time. It seems to me that he has allowed himself to be drawn into that vendetta. He is very foolish to allow that. I have had my own experience in a Department and he knows my attitude to voluntary bodies generally. Ideologically, I do not agree with them, but I take this view as a practical politician: my attitude always was that these people may not be doing a very good job, or a job that I think is done well, but at least they are making some contribution towards dealing with the problem which needs attention. The attitude we had in the Department of Health always was: "We have enough on our plate already without trying to take away in any way from what these people are doing or to take the responsibility which they are willing to take".

The Minister's attitude to consultation is a puerile one; it is an immature one. The essence of consultation is the acceptance of your own—possibly this may sound arrogant—superiority, the fact that you are able to make up your own mind. There is nobody higher than the Minister in his Department. The religious orders, secondary school teachers, the ordinary primary school teachers, Deputies and Senators, the ordinary general public, the parents and pupils, all may have their own ideas; they may be right or wrong, but we all have the right, first to express these ideas and, secondly, to a fair hearing by the Minister. There is nothing wrong with listening to people. God knows, I have listened to people from all sides; sometimes I take their advice and sometimes not; but the essence of the Minister's position is that he must make the final decision. Again, nobody has fought harder than I have to establish that principle in this House, that nobody outside this House will make the final decision on any important question or policy concerning the community except the Minister in charge of the Department, that that power is vested in him under the Constitution and nobody can take it from him.

In the sense of that security, why is the Minister so shy of meeting other people, of discussing this matter with anybody who has any view on it? Listen to their views, sift their ideas, steal their ideas, use their ideas, reject their ideas—but there is nothing wrong with a man in his position, no humiliation, no loss of position, no lése majesté in listening to somebody. He may gain little or nothing but he has lost nothing by doing so. Some may be hotheads but some are people who have been in this particular line of education for a very long time. Why is it the Minister will not consult with any group or body within reason who are anxious to discuss the very important changes he proposes to make in regard to our educational system? It is possible that he could create a sort of crash programme for extending educational opportunities to these youngsters who are doing one or two hours a week in a vocational school, and get them going in a proper training schedule in a secondary school as a result of consulations with the existing secondary school authorities. Ask these authorities to what extent they can extend their amenities, to what extent can they provide additional facilities; ask them, if we were to provide the money for capital building, would they be able to speed up the provision of these amenities. If we increase the transport services—if, as is stated in one of the memoranda, the radius is increased from six miles to 12 miles—will they supply the amenities in the school?

These seem to me to be simple propositions which might prove to be workable propositions. They are certainly propositions made bona fide to the Minister to help him in his present dilemmas. To what extent has he consulted with the existing authorities in relation to his proposal with regard to comprehensive schools and in relation to the new announcement he made today with regard to a national plan for technological education? He made that announcement, of all times, at Question Time. He suddenly blossomed forth with this national plan for technological education.

One does not know the real cause for that extraordinary decision. However, what about the proposal? To what extent has it been discussed with the vocational committees throughout the country? Do they agree with it? Do they think it is feasible? Do they think it is practicable? Are the areas right? Can he give us any more detail of this blueprint? He says some of the provisions are imminent. The blueprint must be very far advanced. Perhaps he can give us more details in his closing speech about what he proposes to do. Where does he propose to get the teachers? What courses does he propose to follow? What will his objectives be with technological colleges situate in the heart of rural Ireland? He may have sound answers to these questions, but I think he should do us the common courtesy of telling us about these things on his Estimate and not let us learn them from Press conferences, chamber of commerce dinners, or golf matches in County Clare, or wherever he happens to be when these ideas strike him.

I want now to talk about something which is special to myself and on which I am giving a completely personal view. It is not the Labour Party view, as far as I know. It is in relation to corporal punishment. I have spoken on this on many occasions, but I think it is worth repeating. Are we ever going to take the rod out of teaching? I do not think the Minister knows this, but he will not get a single, reliable, up-to-date child psychologist who will defend the use of corporal punishment.

The record of the Department is this. In 1953 grants were sanctioned by the Department, but were not spent by the Board of Works, to the total of £1.9 million. In 1955, grants of £3.2 million were unspent and, in 1957, £3.9 million were unspent. I have the greatest admiration for Deputy O'Malley. I think he is a good Parliamentary Secretary, an efficient one, who is interested in his Department and is running it extremely well; but I do not see how, with the best will in the world, he is going to make any serious change in the activities of the Board of Works when it comes to the building of schools. It is quite clear they have failed completely over the years to clear up this chronic, running ulcer of rotten decrepit schools.

I remember the late Deputy Moylan telling us years ago that one thousand schools were unfit for human habitation. That is still virtually true, and he is dead a long time now. We have had a remarkable expansion in the building trade. The Taoiseach talked about it the other day. It is moving, he says, at top pitch at the moment. But what is it building? Intercontinental hotels, all sorts of luxury establishments of one kind or another in Shannon, West Cork, Dublin, Donegal and various other places. I am not objecting to these things, but, again, surely it is a question of priorities? Surely in a sane society, concerned for its young people, concerned for its own good, it would be regarded as quite wrong and intolerable that one thousand derelict schools should be in existence at any one time in that society?

I do not know how many children could be put in a school. Say the average is 50 or 60 and multiply that by one thousand. Those youngsters have to spend their educational lives in one of these horrible houses or schools, to which we would not go ourselves and to which we would not send our own children. How can we tolerate this for other people's children if we are not prepared to do it for ourselves, just because so many of us have had access to Belvedere, Blackrock, Clongowes and all these other places? Why is it we are prepared to look on when lovely little children in the back streets of Dublin and of our other cities and towns are driven into these horrible hovels in order to try to get an education?

Of course, they learn the dreadful aesthetics of living in such surroundings. They cannot get any sense of appreciation of the beautiful and the lovely because they never see it. One of the extraordinary and inexplicable facts about the INTO is that they have accepted this position and do not tell their teachers that, where a school has been declared condemned, their teachers should be withdrawn from that school until the Minister replaces it. Some serious action should be taken so that some end is put to this completely dilatory inefficiency of the joint activities of the Department of Education and the Board of Works.

The money, apparently, is there. It is not being spent fast enough. What is the reason for that? What projected building programme have you for the next five years or ten years? When are you going to get rid of this backlog of one thousand schools requiring replacement or major repair? What will happen to the youngsters in them? Have you any feeling for the youngsters who have to go to these horrible places to be educated or for the unfortunate teachers who have to work in these insanitary and unhygienic buildings? How can they take any serious interest in their job if they are working in these conditions? I am absolutely amazed at their continued patience at the position.

Anybody who tells me this is not a privileged society can be shown many aspects of this society, but probably in our schools the difference between the "haves" and "have-nots" is most clearly seen: the wonderful buildings in our secondary schools, in the Belvederes, in the Clongowes, and so on, the magnificent playing grounds, the swimming pools—every possible recreational amenity. Then go down to Church Street, Blackhall Place or any of these places and you will see youngsters swinging around lampposts on the end of ropes—the two societies, the two nations, 40 years of achievement of failure by the Department of Education.

In my own constituency, Ringsend School have asked the Minister on many occasions what action he proposed to take about it and the only action is the usual, no action. The school is there, and as far as I can see, he does not intend to make any significant change in it in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the unfortunate people see next door to them the biggest hotel in the city, the Intercontinental being erected. Opposite, there is the American embassy. While that is their business, we should have some concern for our young people and, above all, the Minister should have some concern for these people. He should feel a personal sense of responsibility that these scabrous type of buildings should still be there and our young people should have to go to them. We give them little enough. They go to classes of 50, 60, or 70 pupils in which they learn little or nothing. At least while they are there, they should be comfortable.

I do not know how the teachers tolerate from the Department the size of so many of the classes in the city of Dublin. I know well it is easy for me to talk about corporal punishment when teachers are faced with 70 infants whose parents beat them. I suppose it becomes a serious problem for the teacher working in overcrowded, unheated buildings, but that is no justification. That is merely another indictment of the Minister. It is not the children who should be punished for the Minister's failure or the Department's failure. The Minister deserves to be criticised and to be told of the magnitude of the failure of his Department, of his own personal failure since he took over that Department.

Deputy Byrne dealt very well with the absurd decision not to give recognition to teachers who took training in Britain. There is absolutely no justification for that attitude. As Deputy Byrne pointed out quite rightly, most of us got our post-graduate training in Great Britain and were glad to get it there. We came back then and we were able to give the benefit of our experience in looking after our own people here. It seems to me to be a particularly mean-minded remark on the part of the Minister when he said if we took this step, we would encourage people to go abroad and we might not get back the best of them; it might be that we would get back the rejects of another system. That is a completely scandalous remark but it is typical of the superficial thinking of the Minister on this important question.

One of the most important things the Minister must learn to do is to appreciate that he is in charge of a very run-down Department, a Department whose status and prestige in the country it would be difficult to conceive as being lower than it is at present because of this failure in practically every field in which it operates. That this contempt for the Department's activity is fully justified can be proven to anybody who chooses to examine the position as it is in this country and, most of all, who examines the products of the educational system, the failure to provide equality of opportunity, the creation of a rigid class system, of privilege for the wealthy, the perpetuation of the old pre-Rising son-of-the-manse mentality. If you were born in the right bed, then you went to the top because your parents could afford to put you at the top. In our society, no matter how talented or how gifted a youngster might be, if he is not lucky enough to choose the right father and mother, the right bed to be born in, then the emigrant ship and the doss-house in Camden Town or domestic service in Lyon's Corner House is the only prospect which this so-called Christian society offers to the unfortunate youngsters.

Mr. Jones

Ní raibh sé ar intinn agam labhairt ar an Meastachán seo ach gur spreag an Teachta Colley mé. Mar a dúirt sé, beidh seans eile againn ceist na Gaeilge a phlé agus go dtí go dtiocfaidh sé ní dhéanfaidh mé tagairt di ach amháin focal a rá maidir leis an feabhas atá tagtha ar an méid Gaeilge a bhíonn ag na páistí ag teacht amach as na scoileanna. Deireann an Teachta go gcreideann sé go mba chóir duinn níos mó ama a thabhairt do labhairt na Gaeilge, go bhfuil an caighdeán go holc imeasc na ndaltaí ag fágaint na scoileanna dhóibh. Sin rud amháin atá ar ár n-intinn go léir—go mba chóir am a thabhairt do labhairt na Gaeilge seachas ábhar ar bith eile ins na scoileanna ach ní dóigh liom— agus táim cinnte nach í tuairim an Aire leis í—go bhfuil torthadh na hoibre seo go holc i measc daltaí. Tosnaíonn siad i nGaeilge ins an scoil agus leanann siad de sin agus i gcionn trí mbliana nó mar sin, ní bhíonn aon rud eile á dhéanamh acu.

Silim nár ghá a rá gurb é an caighdeán muinteoireachta fé ndear sin. Níl aon locht le fáil ar obair n-oidí. Bionn bun-eolas maith fáite ag na daltai agus muna mbeadh ní bhead ar a gcumas dul isteach ins na meánscoileanna agus na h-ollscoileanna.

Thagair an Teachta Ó Deasmhumhan don chóras atá ann anois maidir le litriú na Gaeilge agus, i dteannta leis na ceisteanna eile i dtaobh na Gaeilge, beidh seans eile againn an cheist sin a phlé.

Maidir leis an méid a dúairt an Teachta Dr de Brún i dtaobh "corporal punishment", sílim go gceapann an Teachta go bhfuil sin go forleathan ar fud na tíre. Ní chreidim go bhfuil an tslat á cur i bhfeidhm chomh minic sin agus, pé scéal é, bfhéidir gur i bhfad nios géire an rian is féidir a chur ar mheon an duine ná mar is féidir a chur ar a chorp.

It is regrettable that a Deputy should say that the standard of Irish at the present time is due in any way to the fact that the standard of teaching is not what it should be. If that is the case, the training colleges which have been training teachers and the best advice which could be given, are at fault. The teachers have been carrying out the mandate as they got it, and teachers have been saying for years that there should be more emphasis on the spoken word.

Deputy Colley's statement tonight that the fact that our young children are not talking Irish is the fault of the teaching in the schools would hardly bear critical examination.

I should not like to let pass a reference made by Deputy Dr. Browne. He has what I can only describe as a bee in his own bonnet and is continually speaking about beatings. The most severe type of punishment that can be used is punishment mentally inflicted, and that was practised here tonight very successfully by him—or at least he attempted it.

Minister for Education (Dr. Hillery)

Tá nós agam, agus Meastachán na Roinne dhá thabhairt isteach agam, tuarascáil i nGaeilge a chur ar fáil agus aistriúchán a sholáthar chomh maith. Tar éis na diospóireachta agus na cainte go léir, ní bhíonn aistriúchán agam, agus, mar sin, labhraim i mBéarla ar fad.

I dtosach báire, ba mhaith liom tagairt a dhéanamh don Teachta Pádraig Ó Dómhnaill a labhair roimh Nollag agus a dúirt nár rinne mé tagairt ar bith ins an óráid a thug mé do cheist na Gaeilge. Ba mhaith liom a chur in iúl dó gur lua mé san óráid sin an obair atá dhá déanamh ag an Athair Colmhán Ó hUllacháin i gColiste Rinn Uí Ghormáin fé choimirce na Roinne Oideachais. Bfhéidir go bhfuil dearmad déanta ag an Teachta ar an obair sin. Ina dhiaidh sin, do labhair sé, i mBéarla ar "compulsory teaching through Irish". Níl a leithéid ann. Níl aon mhúineadh éiginteach tré Ghaeilge mar sin. Níl a leithéid ann.

I introduced the Estimate in Irish and gave a translation in English so that there would be no bickering about the use of Irish. Since I cannot have a translation of what I say at the end, I deal with it in English. There is a wide range to be covered but tonight it is important for me to deal with Deputy Dr. Browne who, I notice, has departed rather hurriedly. He covered the whole range of what politics in Ireland should be and launched some personal attacks on what he called corrupt practices, brutalities and teachers making children take a line —he did not say indoctrination— through physical force.

While a lot of this must be excused —and I do excuse what can happen when a man starts imagining things— I must deal with what he said about the Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery. I agree that I am the responsible Minister for the National Gallery, but the Governors and Guardians constitute an autonomous body, established by law, to which the Government make appointments. The people on it have been appointed over the years—many of them in my term—and are people of repute, all people of standing and all people who give their services to the Board voluntarily. I am keenly aware of their continuing interest in the welfare of the National Gallery. None of them has anything to gain from his position on that Board. As I say, they are an autonomous Board and when they are making an appointment they make the conditions of the appointment, but the moneys come through me and so they are sanctioned by me.

The salaries must be sanctioned by me but the changes in the advertisements referred to, other than the change in salaries were made by the Governors. They had a perfect right to do that. However, I sanctioned the extra salary in order to attract a better qualified or more suitable person for the post. The governers had told me the first advertisement did not attract what they regarded as the most suitable and best qualified applicants possible. They were deeply concerned with filling this post with the best possible person, and that is as it should be because they are the ones best able to judge the qualities of the applicants. If they felt that by raising the salary they would get better qualities then they had a right to do it without incurring the charge of corrupt practice. The mud has been thrown and I doubt if anything I can say can protect them any more than it could protect anybody else from attacks launched on them under the privilege of this House. However, it is my duty to defend them to the best of my ability. My only relationship with them is in the matter of sanctioning the salaries. The rest of what the Deputy said I shall deal with when I come to the details concerned.

There has been such a wide discussion on the Estimate that I shall deal mainly with the broad set-up of our educational system. Firstly, I think I should deal with the primary school, which is the first step in the child's education. In spite of what Deputy Dr. Browne said—it was a contradiction of what every other Deputy had to say—there has been a very great improvement in the number of school places through the building of new schools and the major reconstruction and improvement of existing structures.

Thus, the number of school places was roughly doubled a few years ago, and since then we have been on the road to seeing the clearing off of a backlog which was there for a long time of old and unsuitable schools. We started off on that backlog a long time ago — at the beginning of the State, in fact. Nobody knew exactly how many schools needed to be replaced, but there was a general impression that it was around 1,000. From the experience we have had of replacing schools, we have learned that it is more likely the number will be nearer 2,000. The general situation of the rebuilding of schools, priorities and so on, brought about the situation where each year the number of schools being replaced was only about equal to the number of schools which were falling for replacement, so we had a backlog over a long period even when we were building new schools, no inroads being made in the backlog itself.

It has only been since we were able to almost double the programme that we have been cutting into the backlog of old unsuitable schools and progressing on the road to seeing the end of them. There have been big problems of professional staffs in the planning department; there has been the problem of finance. These problems will be overcome by new techniques, and as Deputies will have noticed, during the year we introduced a new type of school building which can be produced industrially. It was planned and produced by the Office of Public Works in co-operation with a Dublin firm—Messrs. Crowe, I think.

With the introduction of these new techniques, the replacement rate will be even faster. There is no question of complacency. Every Deputy has set his mind to getting rid of the old unsuitable school buildings, and we are doing this as quickly as is physically possible. I do not think there is any other way and if there is another way of speeding things up, it will be adopted.

This year saw the greatest rate of provision of new schools and it is intended that there shall be a further increase in the drive next year. Perhaps many schools would have lasted longer if better cared for. Last year we introduced the system of painting grants to managers who can now get a grant to paint the inside of a school every four years and the outside every eight years. These grants are contingent on other maintenance work being done. This should go a long way towards preserving the new schools.

Heating and cleaning of schools was mentioned by Deputy Barron. Again, we give grants for this and I can now also announce that we intend next year to give a substantial increase in those grants. I am so close to next year's Estimate that I am dealing with both at the same time but it is intended to give a substantial increase in heating and cleaning grants and that will fall to next year's Estimate.

In Dublin and perhaps in other cities, there is the problem of large numbers of classes in national schools. I told the Dáil today that the average class, if we take the number of pupils and the number of teachers, is 29.9 pupils per teacher throughout the country as a whole. In Dublin you do meet those very large classes the existence of which I in no way condone. I do not think they should exist and over the last five years as teachers were made available I and my predecessor have been able to announce an improvement in the teacher-pupil ratio. As the teachers were available we allowed the schools to have an extra teacher to improve the ratio. Over the past three years, the benefit of this fell on the large classes in the larger schools. I had hoped in time as teachers became available we would handle the problem in that way but now, as a result of work done by officers of my Department in surveying the situation and as a result of information received, I am led to hope that reorganisation of classes with perhaps control of enrolment or distribution of enrolment plus the addition of teachers and here and there a temporary building added on to the school, will help us to solve that problem in Dublin in a reasonable time and much quicker than if we had to wait until extra teachers were available to improve the ratio.

Somebody suggested a parents' committee. I dealt with this before and my attitude is that as Minister I must have somebody who is completely responsible to me for the management of a school. I have in one case dealt with a committee and I had the experience of three different groups coming to see me as the same committee, negotiating with them and reaching agreement and then the committee come back and say: "We do not agree with the rest of the committee". You must have one person charged with management of schools and responsible to the Minister. After that, if there could be a group, it would avoid a lot of trouble which we have. One Deputy tonight spoke of punishment of children and I think a parents' committee working with the teachers, could avoid much of that trouble and also avoid something which I see quite frequently—others may not —and that is the teacher accused in the wrong and found after investigation to be blameless but exposed not only to my investigation but too often to questions in the Dáil. A committee could be of help in that.

But there are problems in this. No parent has a right over the children of other people. Unless you get a good representative committee, you might find people who are inclined to know how to rear everyone else's child, taking over the committee. I can see the point in having a consultative committee as long as there is one person, the manager, responsible to me and in authority, and if he selects a committee to help to improve relations and make smoother the running of the school, I could agree with that.

It was suggested tonight that civics should be taught in the national schools. Civics is part of Christian doctrine and history but I feel it should be taught and it is one of the subjects which would be added to the curriculum if we could get the extra half hour which I have suggested should be added to the school day. Physical education and rural science would be others. They are all desirable subjects if you have extra time——

Mr. Gilhawley

Will that push out Irish?

Dr. Hillery

No, I am seeking extra time. I understand from An tAthair Ó hUallacháin that when his studies are completed, it should be possible to reduce the time spent in teaching Irish and still teach it better and with better results. This, again, would be an advantage in that it would allow us to introduce other subjects. I think the standard of Irish taught in the national schools is good. I imagine that the average child—perhaps not all of them —from the average national school has such a knowledge of Irish that if an adult had the same knowledge of a continental language, he would be very happy about it. This is a credit to the teachers and to the pupils. We have standardised and graded the books and I believe the teachers are satisfied that the standard of Irish among the children is rising.

I do not know if there was anything else in relation to the national schools. There was the question of punishment. There is not as much punishment as there is publicity of it but there are cases where I am satisfied that there was punishment out of the ordinary or in the wrong and I deal with these cases quite severely, according to their merits, if you like. I do not publish what I do and I do not believe that it should be part of the punishment of a teacher to have his name dragged through Dáil Éireann and the public Press.

I am sorry Deputy Dr. Browne is not here. Unlike him, I do not like talking about people when they are not present. I will wait until he is back, tomorrow, and then I will talk about him. I do think that he is wronging a great number of people when he comes in here dragging people's names through this House, giving an impression that teachers are a kind of indoctrinators, making children take a certain line under threat of physical force. I do not understand him. He seems to think physical force is wrong but this mental violence to which he subjects these people—he has done it to the art teachers and the other teachers—the anguish they have to go through— this seems to be all right with him. To me, it seems to be all wrong. With him, children are all right but adults must have their characters taken away.

The question of the school-leaving age was raised during the debate and the question of a transition between primary and post-primary education. I find, in reading between the lines, when people ask questions about it, that they think in terms of compulsory education as being always in the primary school, that anything compulsory must be primary and after that you pay for it or you do not and you do not get it at all. Once you think in terms of having schooling beyond 14 years of age, you have to think in terms of post-primary education. The raising of the school-leaving age involves other questions that people do not seem to realise. They think you raise the school-leaving age and everybody stays where he is in school. This cannot happen. You raise the school-leaving age by having teachers and classrooms and a range of courses above the primary level available.

Also, raising the school-leaving age means making education up to, say, 15 years of age compulsory. It is the compulsory thing that comes into our side of it as a Dáil. It is making it legally compulsory. I gave the figures today in the Dáil. At the moment, about two-thirds of the children in the 14-15 age group are attending school voluntarily. There is no need to make a compulsory law for them. If the other one-third, or roughly one-third, wanted to go to school now, there is no room for them. We have to provide the room. So there is no good in making a law for that. What we have to do is make provision and I am certain, because our experience in the past few years showed it, that as we make room, it will be taken up voluntarily, and if you fix a compulsory school-leaving age of 15, it will be necessary only for a very small number because most of our children are anxious to go to school up to 15 when the accommodation is available.

I have some figures on the age groups to make that clearer. I had a look at the figures of people attending post-primary education because one of the morning newspapers yesterday carried an article which said that the Minister—that is, I—in his reply to the debate on the Estimates—I quote now:

is not likely to stress the fact that three-quarters of the children in Ireland receive no formal secondary education and that two-thirds of them are deprived of technical education as well.

I am not likely to stress that because it is not a fact. It is quite incorrect and misleading. I shall give the facts. I have given these facts before—not in the same form—but I have given the facts of the case but the old story keeps coming in all the time. According to the 1961 census, there were in the 14-15 age group 57,503 persons. Of those, there were 36,624 in full-time attendance at school in February, 1962, that is, 64 per cent. Of these 36,624, 32,268, or 56 per cent of the age group, were receiving post-primary education. The position, therefore, for the 14-15 age group is that 56 per cent are receiving post-primary education, 64 per cent are in full-time attendance at school. That is the figure for last year. Things are improving. Each year there are more. In the older age group, 15-16, according to the census, there were 56,462 persons. Of those, 26,111 pupils were attending school full-time, that is, 46 per cent. Of these 26,111, 25,662 were receiving full-time post-primary education or, in other words, of the 15-16 age group, 47 per cent are receiving full-time post-primary education.

In addition to those in those two groups, there are children under 14 in post-primary education, a total of 23,070 that is, in secondary education, and 4,404 in full-time vocational education. Above the age group, over 16, there are children receiving full-time secondary education, 25,327, and full-time vocational education, 5,596. These extra figures might confuse the issue. I want to deal with the figures in the 14-15 and 15-16 age group because these are the people concerned in the raising of the school-leaving age. There is a common error people make in estimating the percentage of our children who get post-primary education. They do it as a simple sum. They take the number of children in primary schools, that is, 500,000, and then they take the number in post-primary schools and divide one into the other. This looks reasonable enough but you cannot express the number of people in secondary schools as a percentage of the people in primary schools because the primary school covers a ten-year age group and the post-primary covers an age group of, say, from two years to six years. That is why you get these inaccurate figures. The attendance can be expressed only as a percentage of the age group that could be there.

This is an annual event with me— making statements on this—and it is necessary each year to do it because again and again the story comes back based on the other sum. All these figures add up to the fact that about 64 per cent of the children aged 14 to 15 years are in full-time attendance at school; that they are using the accommodation we have made available; that, in the past few years, as accommodation became available, they filled it and, at the rate we are going in providing school accommodation and teachers, we should, at the end of this decade, have that age group in full-time attendance at school and it will be possible then to raise the school-leaving age to 15 and to make it compulsory.

Mr. Gilhawley

National school age?

Dr. Hillery

My talk has been in vain—the compulsory school leaving age. When you go up to 15 years, you will have to provide a wider range of courses. You will have to provide secondary courses and vocational courses as well as the course in the national school.

I have given some idea of the post-primary figures and the opportunities. I suppose I should talk about what we need to do in the post-primary level and what I announced we shall do. First, I suppose I should explain that at post-primary level we have had for some time two almost separate departments—the first is the secondary and the other the vocational and technical. These have been almost water-tight departments all the years.

A child wanting continuation education had these opportunities open to him. He could go to a vocational school. In many parts of the country he could, at a small fee, go to a secondary school. If he had money, he might go to a secondary school no matter what the fee. He could win a scholarship to a secondary school— these were limited. Later than that, he could have a university course if he had the money or if he had great ability and won a scholarship.

Coming on this scene it is not an easy thing to formulate a new plan. You had secondary schools and vocational schools in two water-tight departments. You had a scholarship scheme which was not satisfactory and places taken up in secondary schools and universities with people paying for them. Time was bound to be necessary to form some system of complete education. As an interim measure, this Government decided to increase the opportunities for scholarships.

The last Dáil passed the Scholarships Act which allowed the State to help local authorities with their scholarship schemes. The net result, roughly, was that the number of scholarships was increased by about 300 per cent. Their value was brought into line with the fees of schools because hitherto many of the scholarships were of no value to the really badly-off person because, being for such small amounts, they were of use only to a person who had some money.

The figures are, roughly, an increase from 500 odd scholarships to secondary schools to 1,700 odd scholarships since the Scholarships Act became law. This was the immediate and only way of dealing with the situation.

When you increase the number of scholarships available you are coming down from the very brilliant to the less brilliant pupil. If you have an adequate number of scholarships you will have a situation which ensures that everybody with ability will get secondary education. We have not reached that yet but, by so increasing the number of scholarships, we have ensured that opportunity has been opened to a very much bigger number of clever children who do not have to be really out and out geniuses to get scholarships, which was the case when they were so scarce.

The big problem of so changing our system, deciding how and where to invest in it, is something one could not do with a wave of a wand. There are some things that one can see quite clearly should be done. But, in the very complex situation which we have here in our education in Ireland, careful study must be done. I must warn the House that a great deal of money must be spent on education in Ireland and it cannot be thrown away.

There is no part of our educational system which could not improve with more money and any expenditure will have to be done in a planned way after a thorough investigation and as accurate as possible projections on our future needs and on what future Government activity should be. With that in mind, and realising that the greatest economic asset we have is the ability of our people, we were the first country in Western Europe to participate with the OECD in a scheme for surveys in respect of economic investment in education. This scheme applied to countries which are already classed as developed or advanced educationally.

The progress of the national team which has been engaged in the survey and the methods they have employed are regarded so highly that OECD has awarded a number of scholarships to foreign students to come here in order to study the methods being adopted by them. We hope to have the results of their survey available to us this year. Some time before that survey was set up a Commission on Higher Education was established. We hope they will have completed their examinations and deliberations this year, too.

A thorough study has been made in so far as it is possible to make a complete study of our educational set-up and future needs. There will be recommendations on what the State should do. Where money should be invested, how many university places should be available—all these will be on a sound basis of thorough study and will be coming to us during this year. They will sign-post clearly the direction in which we must go, the areas where we must spend our money, the increased money which we must spend. As I say, the House will have to face up to the fact when we have a clear idea, and when it is clearly in focus where we are going, that a great deal of money will have to be made available for education. In the meantime, while waiting for these—somebody said we should set up a commission to postpone them and just to make a lie of that—I went ahead with plans which would fit in, no matter what recommendations were made.

Last May I announced my plans for post-primary education as a blueprint, a broad outline. Some Deputies thought I announced this with the purpose of influencing the Dublin North-East by-election but anybody with the slightest idea of what is involved in formulating an educational plan could not honestly think you could time its completion to the date of a by-election. Funnily enough, Deputy Browne who accused me of announcing it for the by-election accused me of staying silent for the coming by-elections, so that either way I would lose. Heads you win; tails I lose.

It would be a very stupid person, as I say, who would imagine that you could formulate an educational plan in time for a by-election. It requires a lot of time and those who have read it will have seen the number of problems which had to be dealt with in formulating it. It was essential that this broad outline be formed and announced; there could be no progress in the details until that was done, until there was general acceptance of it. It was very well received. That was about eight months ago and since then, two committees have been operating in the Department of Education, one working out revised programmes in various subjects and the other carrying out detailed surveys in relation to the areas in which the comprehensive schools mentioned in the plan would be situated.

The work of planning the programme is well advanced. The programme, as Deputies will remember, is a programme for a common examination which can be taken in a certain range of subjects, from the vocational school subjects, the secondary school subjects, as now taught, and the comprehensive school subjects which will be the total range. Therefore you can imagine that it takes some time to work out that type of new programme but the work is very well advanced. The work of the committee in relation to the areas in which the schools will be situated has reached the stage at which negotiations with the local interests involved have been entered into in relation to the placing and organisation of comprehensive schools.

We are dealing with a new type of building, a new curriculum and a new system of control, and here again a person who expected this to be completed within eight months is more than impatient, when you consider that when we want an ordinary vocational school it may take anything from three to ten years from the time it is decided to build it to the time its erection is set in motion. The plan, as I say, involved a common examination at intermediate certificate level which could be taken by children coming from comprehensive schools, from the secondary schools or the vocational schools. There would be a core of subjects common to all and a range from which others could pick. In the three year course in the comprehensive school, children would be guided to the subjects most suited to his or her aptitudes by a system between the teacher and trained people. We hope to evolve— I think Deputy Colley asked about this—our own testing and it would not be a mechanical testing but something that would go on over three years.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 6th February, 1964.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 5 Feb 1964

Committee on Finance. - Vote 30—Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 5 Feb 1964