I move:
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that qualified secondary and vocational teachers who are nationals of Ireland and who have had suitable teaching experience in Northern Ireland or Britain should on returning to teach here, be given credit on a basis commensurate with their services in these areas for the purpose of computing salary payable by the Department of Education, and that similar credit should be given to those who have already returned.
This motion has been on the Order Paper for several years, certainly up to three years. Since it was first put down, the position has changed to some extent. Up to three years ago, Irish nationals, graduates of our universities and trained here, who took up teaching in Northern Ireland, were not given credit for that service for the purpose of computing incremental increases paid by the Department to secondary teachers. Since the motion was put down, I am happy to say that the Minister's predecessor saw the light of reason, saw the gross absurdity of treating Northern Ireland, part of our national heritage, as a foreign country as far as our teachers were concerned and rectified to a limited extent that anomaly.
It is true to say now that our teachers who obtain suitable experience in appropriate secondary schools in Northern Ireland are given limited recognition for incremental purposes when they come back here. I think the ceiling on that recognition is something like four or five years. I have been taken a little by surprise tonight and my brief is not as full as I would like it to be but I am sure the recognition given is restricted and is not retrospective. It is fair to say that the concession is a limited one indeed. However, it is better than nothing at all.
Emigration is a great national problem in this country. We suffer from what it is now the vogue to call brain drain. Many of the best of our graduates, particularly our arts graduates, who feel they have a dedication to teaching find it necessary to emigrate and seek work in other countries and in the North of Ireland. They do that for economic reasons. Teachers here are badly paid, particularly secondary teachers. They are amongst that section of the community whose sense of idealism and dedication is taken for granted and abused by the nation at large. There have been some improvements in recent years but they do not go far enough.
A graduate of any of our universities who obtains the H.Dip. and takes up teaching in a secondary school will, in his first year, be paid a very modest salary indeed. He would normally get about £300 a year basic salary from the school but this will be supplemented, if he has the H.Dip., by £200 incremental salary in the first year. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong in this. In other words, in the first year, he will work for approximately £10 a week, which is substantially less than a labourer's wage. It is true that in the second year the incremental salary increases to £500. At no stage in his career, even after years of service, can it be said that a secondary teacher is justly rewarded by reference to the yardstick of emoluments in other professional employment.
We are all conscious of that. There is now a growing concern at the neglected state, finance-wise, of education in this country, a growing awareness of the relative meagreness of our investment in education, a growing consciousness of the great productive value of investment in education, a growing concern about these problems which is dawning in the Department of Education.
In passing, and because this is the first occasion I have spoken on an educational topic in this Dáil, I should like to extend my congratulations to my colleague from North-East Dublin, Deputy Colley, on his appointment as Minister. I have great expectations from his Ministry and I hope they will be fulfilled. I feel that this motion, which caters for this aspect of our educational policy, could give him an opportunity of bringing a fresh outlook to bear on this question. I would ask him to approach it with a very open mind. There is a scarcity of certain types of teachers in this country, a scarcity of honours graduates for teaching maths and science in particular. These are the fields of technological education to which we must look for our economic advancement in the future.
In the circumstances, it seems to me to be quite unreasonable not to draw on the potential source of supply of good teachers from among the ranks of the hundreds of Irish graduates who are working in the teaching profession in Great Britain. These are graduates who are most anxious to return to this country, men who have spent ten or 12 years in Britain, have married an Irish girl over there, whose children are now growing up and who are most anxious to bring them back to this country for their rearing and schooling. That is a problem we should approach in a compassionate frame of mind— the problem of the man who wants to come back to his own country to rear his children here in a Christian society. It makes a mockery of all our lamentations about emigration if we say to these people: "You are not fit to come. We want you to come back here and work for buttons. You start at the bottom of the scale like a green graduate fresh out of university."
Quite apart from those considerations, it makes good sense to encourage these people to come back here and to employ them where there are suitable openings. Our motion is carefully worded. We are seeking this concession for qualified teachers who have suitable teaching experience in Northern Ireland and Britain. We are not asking the Minister to make it an open house for unqualified persons, even if they are Irish nationals, to come here. The Minister can hedge the concession with whatever restrictions he thinks fit. If he would accept the principle that these people are entitled to a chance to return to their native country, he would be doing a good day's work and certainly would be meeting our case.
Last year, at a meeting of the Education Ministers of Europe, an offshoot of the Council of Europe, a motion was unanimously passed in the presence of the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Dr. Hillery, which called for free interchangeability of teachers throughout Europe. Free interchangeability presupposes a state of affairs which makes interchangeability a practical proposition for the individuals concerned. It presupposes that if an Irishman has worked in suitable conditions in, let us say, France, perhaps teaching English for a few years, and wants to come back here to teach French, he will get credit for his service and will not be at a tremendous financial disability. It presupposes that if a graduate of one of our universities teaching maths or science in an English grammar school finds an opportunity of coming back here, he will not be put at a financial loss. It is futile to subscribe to motions like this at the Council of Europe, pious expressions, unless we face up to their economic realities. I can only presume that, in subscribing to that motion at the Council of Europe, Deputy Hillery, by implication, accepted the desirability of the financial adjustment I speak of. He has left it up to Deputy Colley to implement the pious aspirations.
In most professions it is true to say the new graduate gains much from acquiring technical training and experience outside of the environment in which he is going to spend his life. I suppose 95 per cent of the bright young engineers and technicians in Irish industry today have left the university and acquired their technical training outside this country. I know that companies like English Electric and GEC operate most attractive apprenticeship schemes for graduates and these are availed of on a large scale by our graduates. They come back to our growing industries and help to put us on our feet. Applying the same reasoning to the teaching profession, it can truly be said that service outside this country is most certainly not going to do anyone any harm. If there is any notion abroad that it is going to do harm, then the sooner it is scotched the better. The cross-fertilisation of ideas is always stimulating.
At some time in the next decade, we are going to enter a united Europe. Our present identities will be submerged to an extent, and, in a world which is getting smaller every day, it surely makes sense that we should recognise that and act accordingly. Amongst those who would benefit most from this concession are the religious orders, the Irish Christian Brothers, for example, who are more affected, perhaps, than anybody else by the scarcity of good maths and science teachers; should they choose to bring a man back from one of their schools in Liverpool or Glasgow, they are immediately put at a disadvantage.