I have always held that one of the best investments or, shall I say, one of the best modern investments, in education, was the transport scheme. It is very desirable in the present age that children, in the first instance, be taken off the roads and away from the dangers with which they would have to contend in modern traffic.
However, I should like to make one or two suggestions to the Minister in this regard. In Enniscorthy, we have a temporary school for mildly retarded children—a new school is being built for us at the moment by the Department of Education with the subvention of the local committee—and under the existing transport system we have free transport to the school in Enniscorthy from Gorey, which is about 18 or 20 miles away. There are quite a number of children in outlaying districts but we have managed, by virtue of the assistance of the committee we have, to make arrangements for the majority of these children to be brought into Gorey so that they may avail of the free transport. We are able to do this through the kindness and courtesy of people living in the districts who have helped in every way and I should like to express my gratitude to them.
However, for one or two children who live north of the Gorey area we have not been able to get free transport and, for some time, I have been approaching the Department of Education to try to get clarification on this point, as to whether the Department will arrange or assist in some way in paying for these children who, at the moment, are being carried out of their own private finances.
Our position is that we are responsible for the children in the Gorey area. The funds of the committee for mentally handicapped children in the county are not very big. Funds are raised by having shows and by getting assistance from those who are good enough to support us. We manage to collect an amount in the region of a few hundred pounds a year and out of that money we have to make a fairly sizeable contribution towards the building of the new school in Enniscorthy. We also have to make a contribution towards the school for mildly handicapped children that will be built, I hope, in the near future, in the town of Wexford. It is costing us about £130 a year out of pocket funds to pay for this transport. I have made representations to the Department during the past 12 or 15 months and I received a reply to the effect that the matter was under consideration and then I was further informed that it was under sympathetic consideration. I am asking the Minister now to give it his most sympathetic consideration. A sum of £125 or £130 a year is a lot to the Gorey committee for mentally retarded children but it is very little to the Department of Education.
Dealing with transport as a whole, as I said at the beginning it is one of the best investments that have been made in education so far, but there would seem to be a case for extending the period for the transport of children to primary schools beyond the age of ten if they are outside the three-mile limit which, I think, is the position at the moment. If they are under that, I understand that they go out at an earlier age.
In a family of, say, half a dozen children the position may be that one child is opted into the free transport system at the age of seven or eight years or, perhaps, even six years. Under this scheme, which has been in existence now for about four years, there may be a child who has been carried by this transport system from the time it first went to school but it is suddenly put on the road to walk to school. This child would have no road sense whatever. He is creating a hazard for himself, anxiety for his parents and, I might say, very often a danger to traffic as a whole. This matter should be reviewed.
There is another point, too. If there are three or four children in a house and some of them are available for transport while others are not, it means that the parents have to get one child out much earlier than the others to get him off to school. I am sure the Minister realises that the bringing up of children is by no means easy work. The mother has to work hard, whether she be a farmer, a cottier or whatever she may be, and it does not help to have to have two sets of getting ready, as it were, or two sets of breakfast.
In the evening, too, the children who can avail of the transport may be home an hour before the other children. I think I am right in saying that if such children were going to secondary school the transport would be free but why should the transport be free for those attending secondary school and not for those in primary schools? Why should there be a distance barrier for the children in primary education? That seems to me like class distinction and surely this is what we want to avoid with all the talk of free education that is going on at the moment? For that reason, the Minister should seriously consider extending the scheme. As well as an educational investment, it is a national investment from the point of view of health. The Minister may say that he would like to do this but that it would involve extra money. It is always nice to be able to show Ministers how they can save a little money.
In accordance with this regimented idea of cutting out small schools all over the place and having bigger schools, there have been attempts to close down schools in my constituency. That is all right, as far as it goes. I know of three instances, however, in my country of attempts to close down schools. Let me give them in their order of sequence. The first was a twoteacher school which was built, I think, in 1962. It was perfectly up to date in every way. It was to be closed down and replaced by a parish school in that area. A considerable sum of money would be involved in the transfer to the new school. I was able to point out to the Department of Education the fallacy of their views in that regard and the money was saved.
The second attempt concerned a parish school in my constituency which was being transferred to a curacy school. True enough, this school was an older school—built in 1898. However, it had been reconstructed and was made up to date. Two extra classrooms had to be built to the curacy school which was located on a main road which was a considerable hazard to the children. I mention those two cases to show the Minister how it would be possible to save money for the purpose of putting it into the transport scheme I am advocating. I am not an advocate of the building of schools along or near main roads because of the hazard to children.
It is possible that the article in Studies has been mentioned. Probably the greatest service that has been conferred on Irish education as a whole is contained in the autumn edition of Studies produced by the Jesuit Fathers. It highlights the discussion and contains very erudite articles by people of different denominations in various spheres of education. Let us get our facts right. Our educational system has served us well and, by and large, has been magnificent. For Roman Catholics that has been made available by our religious orders, practically gratis. Small fees have been paid but I am aware of many instances where, when the money was not available, it was not asked for. The education of the religious minority was provided through Protestant philanthropic societies, the Representative Church Bodies and other such people who gave a magnificent system of education which was, shall we say, a complete private enterprise.
The Minister is the custodian of the rights of the people. It is not a success to nationalise education just as it is not a success to nationalise medicine. If you nationalise education you sacrifice it for administration. The article in Studies highlights that fact. Most of the articles were written as a plain exposition of facts.
There is a move in the town of Enniscorthy in my constituency to make some changes in the education hitherto provided there by the Convent of Mercy, the Presentation Convent and the Loreto Convent. The Mercy nuns and the Presentation nuns have been in Enniscorthy for a very long time. The Loreto nuns have been providing a somewhat better type of secondary education, though they deal in a small way, I think, with juniors also. It was decided, first of all, that the Mercy nuns, who have been teaching there for years in their primary school and in what is known as "secondary tops", would get a new school costing about £60,000: their school is 100 years old. Recently, the Presentation nuns built a new school. The Loreto nuns were told that they were surplus and would be phased out although their centenary in Enniscorthy would fall I think the year after next. The Mercy nuns were told that their system would be changed: they were not to have the original school but were to become a secondary teaching institution and were to have a school costing about £120,000. Although the Presentation nuns taught at secondary level, they were told they would no longer be teaching except at primary level.
It is necessary to give the House some idea of the geography of Enniscorthy. The town is situated on either side of the River Slaney. The side on which the Presentation Convent is situated is the bigger side of the town. However, due to housing projections, the size of both sides of the town will probably be equalised in the not too distant future. Quite a number of the young children who will be educated in the primary school will be coming from homes on the Convent of Mercy side of the town and that means that these children will have to cross one of the most dangerous traffic points in the country four times a day. There is no question of public transport being involved because the very farthest any child would have to walk to school would be three-quarters of a mile at the very outside.
Now this scheme may be administratively sound. There are two convents involved, the primary school being on one side of the river and the secondary school on the other. The scheme may look beautiful on paper but there is a definite hazard from the point of view of children crossing the bridge four times a day. That would not be the situation had the original scheme been persisted in and the Mercy Convent been given their school. Indeed, that would have cost much less and the children could have continued from the primary to the "secondary tops".
The idea is, apparently, to keep secondary and primary schools completely separate. That must be the answer in this particular instance certainly. But one should have regard to local conditions. As I have said before, the Department is trying to operate a cut and dried scheme, worked out probably with the aid of a map in Dublin, completely unsuited to local conditions. I asked a question about this and I was told that, even though Loreto had to leave, great benefits would be conferred on them in other areas. Now that, to me, is a completely wrong approach—the Department conferring benefits. The Department is not conferring anything; they are doing certain things with the taxpayers' money and, because it is the taxpayers' money, there should be the fullest consultation with everybody concerned.
Had there been consultation in Enniscorthy before this happened there would certainly have been opposition to the scheme. The Department are spending money in Gorey. They are spending money in Wexford but, because they are spending money, they must not pat themselves on the back, as it were; as I said earlier, for 85 years the religious orders have carried practically the whole burden of education and they have done so with practically nothing. They have led ascetic lives in order to educate people and send them all over the world in the past 85 years and, in the last five years, the Department comes in to take an active part at last in secondary education. I believe they should do that but the fact that they are doing it does not entitle them to dictate. There must be more consultation, particularly consultation with the teaching profession itself. The parents must be consulted. It would be a tragedy if, when we are getting somewhere in our education drive, a system should develop under which the Department would dictate to those who have carried literally the whole burden, unassisted, in the past, those who are fully cognisant of every aspect of it. If there is not consultation the scheme will end in disaster, in overlapping and waste of public money.
In regard again to the article in Studies, I took it the idea behind the Department's scheme was comprehensive schools. I would advise the Minister, “Forget it”. There are areas in which comprehensive schools may be the answer. They may be the answer in the more densely populated areas but they are not the answer in sparsely populated areas. They are not suited to our situation. They will not suit in the East of the country and they certainly will not suit in the West. Good educational standards can be achieved without comprehensive schools. With proper transport there is no reason why the child with a particular aptitude could not have that aptitude educationally developed on the right lines. But more transport would naturally have to be provided to achieve that end. The benefit of higher education does not depend on social stratum. Environment has nothing to do with it. A child from the upper income bracket may possibly be the greatest “thick”, while a child at the other end of the ladder may be near genius. Such a child will be able to absorb all the education available, become a credit to the country and, indeed, a national asset. It would be worth the Minister's while to remember that.
At the moment there is the widest unrest in universities all over the world. To date, there has been very little in Ireland. The greatest unrest originated in Paris. Before the war the number of university students in Paris was 60,000. Today the student population numbers 200,000. The facilities are the same as they were pre-war. Some of the students never see a professor because they never get inside a lecture room. Lectures are relayed by loudspeakers even out in the quadrangle. There is no contact between the students and the professors. That is the situation in most European universities today. There is one exception, Norway. The only agitation that has been taken place in Norway has been agitation in a minor degree by students against students. In Norway the students run everything, even the shop. They have a very big say in administration, when the lectures will be held and so forth. Recently we had agitation here by the architectural students in National University. They protested against the standards because they are not as high as they should be. If that is the case—and there must be something in it when there are such major demonstrations as that—it is, of course, very serious from the point of view of the graduates. If they have not got the educational standards other graduates have, they will not be able to compete for situations which they may seek.
The other demonstrations we have had have been mild. They have been political. We have all been students in our day and we joined anything for the sake of a row now and again. There is no sign of any active disagreement between the professorial side and the students but, as we have seen in other countries, this sort of thing spreads like a prairie fire. I would suggest to the Minister—he may have already done so; I do not know—that without causing any unpleasantness, or without offending anyone connected with the universities, he should call a conference of the professors in the different universities with a view to discussing any grievances which may exist. They could ask representatives of the student bodies to meet them as well. I think the Minister could do this. He seems to be entitled to close down universities and open up others. He seems to have almost unlimited power in the sphere of education.
These things should be thoroughly thrashed out. There is an old saying that a stitch in time saves nine. At the moment Ireland has a record of being quite a stable country, in spite of the Fianna Fáil Government. I know I cannot refer to finance on this Estimate but I do not think the country is financially stable. It is stable so far as demonstrations are concerned. There is a tendency to revolt against constituted authority in the world today. That revolt comes from the students. We should see to it that they have not got an opportunity to start rows. If they have justifiable grievances they should be redressed. There should be meetings and discussions about these things. I would suggest to the Minister that if he does this with all the diplomacy at his command he will be doing a good day's work for the universities.
