(South Tipperary): When I reported progress, I was dealing with the question of facilitating the return of our secondary teachers from Britain and, in the interests of secondary education here, providing the necessary encouragements. There is a scarcity of maths teachers everywhere at the moment. I believe it is true that, in the field of maths, the teaching in Britain, both as regards quality and number, is immeasurably greater than it is in this country. I would, therefore, again appeal to the Minister to consider the question of incremental recognition for those of our graduates who have been teaching in Britain.
In general, as regards education and reciprocal arrangements, it is probable that in the years ahead a higher percentage of our people will advance to Leaving Certificate standard. Notwithstanding all the promises made by the Government, and all the hopes held out in the Blue Book, we shall still have, I believe, a substantial emigration. Reciprocal arrangements exist between this country and Great Britain in relation to university education. If one matriculates here and wishes to study in Edinburgh or London—I do not know with how many universities in Britain these reciprocal arrangements exist—one can go to these universities and graduate from them. There is not the same standardisation as between secondary education here and in Great Britain.
In Britain, they have what is called a General Certificate of Education. I do not know exactly what standard of comparison it bears with our Leaving Certificate, but, certain it is, that, if someone leaves this country and tries to get employment in Great Britain, and states he has a Leaving Certificate from Ireland, that makes very little impact on a prospective employer. Now reciprocity exists where matriculation is concerned and I was wondering whether a similar system could not be established as between the General Certificate of Education in Great Britain and the Leaving Certificate here, so that our nationals would have a certificate that would be recognised in Britain and help them to obtain suitable remunerative employment, if and when they have to emigrate. It might even be possible to arrange for some external examination system through the medium of which they could take some of the British examinations. I do not say that in any desire to disparage our Leaving Certificate or the standard required, but one must recognise that, since we are such a small country, our Leaving Certificate could not have in Britain the recognition their own examinations carry.
With regard to scholarships, Deputy Dillon has mentioned that approximately 80 per cent of the students in British universities are State aided; in other words, they are obtaining their education through the medium of scholarships. In Northern Ireland nearly ten times as many university scholarships are given as are given here. The total expenditure on university scholarships is more than ten times the expenditure in the Twenty-Six counties, and that expenditure is for a much smaller population. These two considerations must bring home to us the amount of leeway we have to make up if we are to hold our own in an integrating and highly competitive world.
This is not a rich country. A few years may show an increasing influx of foreign capital and, perhaps, of foreigners. If our people are to maintain a reasonable position at home and abroad, it is absolutely imperative that a higher proportion of capital investment must be put into education in general, including university education. The Minister has framed regulations covering secondary school scholarships. Judging by the way they are formulated, it seems that the Minister has placed undue emphasis on residential secondary schools. That may be perfectly correct in certain counties, but he has introduced that scheme and made it apply universally. In my constituency, we have a number of very good non-residential secondary schools, and in providing scholarships we can naturally provide a large number for non-residential schools with the same money.
Residential scholarships are, of necessity, more expensive, and with the limited amount of money at our disposal, of necessity, they have to be fewer. Forgetting all about the concept of the old school tie, we are concerned with providing the greatest good for the greatest number. I believe the Minister should give local authorities a free hand, and if they think they can make the best use of the money by being in favour of providing a large number of non-residential scholarships, the Minister should adopt a liberal attitude towards them. He will readily appreciate that they are merely trying to get the best value for the amount of money at their disposal.
Similarly, I think it unwise to tie the number of university scholarships to the number of secondary school scholarships. Secondary school scholarships are desirable, but where you have an area with a number of non-residential secondary schools, they are not quite as necessary as university scholarships. If you take the average middle-income group or lower-income group man, and if there are a number of non-residential secondary schools in his area, he can usually manage— because the charges are pretty low— to get secondary education for his boy or girl, but he cannot reach on the university. That is where the help of the county council comes in, but if you tie the number of university scholarships issued to the number of secondary school scholarships issued, the local body is limited in the number of university scholarships it can provide.
If I were given a certain amount of money in South Tipperary and asked how I thought it could best be disbursed, I should be inclined to throw the emphasis on university scholarships, on the basis that the majority of the people there can get secondary education at the local non-residential schools. Perhaps the boy or girl might have to cycle a few miles, but that would not be a tremendous hardship. It would also mean that they would not have the glamour of going to a posh residential college, but they would get a sound secondary education at a relatively cheap price. The money available to the public body could be used to provide those people with that which they cannot reach on themselves, namely, university education.
I also think the amount of money provided for university scholarships should not be a fixed rigid figure in these days of inflation. The cost of "digs" or residence is rising year by year, and university fees are rising, and the scholarship holder who may start his university career on a certain annual scholarship income, if he happens to come from poor parents, may find in his third or fourth year that costs have risen so much that he is unable to attend the university. Such cases have arisen in my constituency, and I must say that when they were brought to the attention of the Minister, he was quite agreeable and helpful, and we were able to go back to our council and get them to advance further money to meet the costs. It might be better if these scholarships were arranged on some basis and geared to the cost of living figure or something more flexible than the rigid sums laid down at present. None of us have the power of prophecy, but I am sure that residential costs and university costs will continue to mount in the future.
Deputy Dillon mentioned the question of our history books. I mentioned the same point two years ago. Much of our history has been written in an emotional and non-objective fashion. It does little service to our people to over-emphasise the wrongs which an alien Government visited on this country a hundred years ago. To condition the minds of our youth who, within a year, a month or a week of leaving school may have to emigrate to Liverpool, London or Cardiff and to make them feel they are facing a new environment in which everyone is an enemy is not a very helpful starting line. By all means, be factual. Let us chronicle events absolutely as they occur but let us avoid overemotionalism in our teaching of history to our youth. One famous editor of a famous paper always expressed the dictum to his columnists: "Facts are sacred; comment is free." In this matter, facts are sacred but comment should be rational and not overemotionalised. I feel much of our history-teaching presents a rather lopsided picture and ultimately is not good for sane, adult international relations in the world in which we are living.
I must advert to the very palpable hiatus in the Minister's speech, the complete omission of any reference to the Irish language. That omission is all the more palpable when we consider that the Minister has been paying particular attention to equipping and improving his own standard in the language in recent months. A committee has reported and the report has gone to the Minister. I suppose he will reply that the matter is being considered by the Government and that therefore, until the Government have made their pronouncements, his lips are sealed.
One would have liked to have heard whether he intends to carry out the recommendations of the Commission on the Irish Language in part or in whole but he has very pointedly avoided reference to the Commission's report. Our attitude on this side of the House has been made abundantly clear. We favour inducement rather than compulsion. We object to making Irish an obligatory subject in order to secure the Leaving Certificate, to get a job or to get promotion in a job if Irish is not a necessary language in that job. This element of compulsion has created a degree of public antipathy to the language and in the recent Gallup poll which was carried out, and the results of which were published mainly in the Irish Times, it was cynically stated by the majority who answered the questionnaire that the reason they did Irish was to get a job or to get good promotion.
I understand that most of the agitation about the Irish language is for the purpose of establishing it as the spoken language. There are two objectives to which we may address ourselves: the preservation of the language as a cultural heritage or its revival as an everyday spoken language. Its preservation as a cultural heritage will largely stem from the amount of financial help we will be able to pour into the preservation of the Gaeltacht. Its promulgation as a spoken language will not, I think, come from the Gaeltacht because the Gaeltacht is too small. We will have Irish as a spoken language only if the effort comes from the bigger cities, Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.
My view is that it will never be revived as a spoken language. I believe that with every year that passes, that is becoming more and more certain, because in a shrinking world, more people are travelling and there are increased means of communication, all of which developments militate against the revival of the language in a small community, a community with a static, in fact, a dwindling population. Let us not forget that we are the only white race with a shrinking population; in fact, the only dying white race in the world.
While we may all wish, for cultural or nationalistic reasons, to see the Irish language revived, it is more than doubtful if this will ever come to pass. It has no utilitarian value and it has a narrow materialistic stimulus behind it in so far as applicants for jobs know that it helps them to get appointments and promotion and politicians know that it helps them to get votes if they keep on beating the drum and trying to assert that they are greater nationalists than others who have a more rational approach to the subject and that unless you adopt a fanatical approach to the matter you are a second-class citizen.
This year the Minister is providing £2,981,000 for university grants. This is a small advance on last year. In 1958-59, the total provision was £714,000; in 1959-60, it was £989,000; in 1960-61, it was £1,130,000; in 1961-62, it was £1,258,000; in 1962-63, it was £1,954,000; and in 1963-64, it was £2,365,000. There has been a steady advance and a not unreasonable advance from 1958 up to the present.
I have often wondered why no Minister appears to have examined the question of two universities in this city. In each of the cities of London, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, there is one university. Yet we have two universities in Dublin. I do not know of any other city of comparable size which has two universities. Surely economies could be effected and greater efficiency achieved if there were closer liaison or integration between the two establishments in this city?
I recognise that the existence of two universities here is an historical hangover, a hangover largely based upon religious and political problems of days gone by. The same political and religious differences which have caused a partition in our university educational system in Dublin have caused the geographical partition of our country. The religious differences are none of my business. They are matters for the ecclesiastical authorities to resolve in the spirit of the Ecumenical Council initiated by the late Pope John.
In the secular field, some efforts, in the interests of efficiency and economy, should be made to secure a closer integration of the two great universities in this city. I believe there will be difficulties in regard to vested interests which have grown up there, just as they have grown up around the Border. However, if we in the secular field have so far, in a good measure, failed to break down the education partition in our capital city, what hope have we of breaking down the Partition between the Six and the Twenty-Six Counties. This is a problem to which the Minister and the Government might address themselves and let the world see that we can secure in our capital city and at university level a degree of federation, integration, call it what you will. If we are able to do that at university level, it will be a good omen for the future in regard to what we may be able to do ultimately in the field of Partition.
