Deputy Tunney has given notice of his intention to raise the subject matter of Question No. 24 which appeared on the Order Paper of the 9th instant. This debate is confined to 30 minutes. The Deputy will have 20 minutes to make his case and the Minister will have ten minutes to reply.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate: Higher Education Grants.
Is trua liom go gcaithfidh mé moill a chur ar an Teach agus an cheist seo á h-árdú agam. Ní dhéanfainn é ach go dteastaíonn uaim seans a bheith ag an Aire anois athbhreithniú a dhéanamh uirthi. Tá súil agam go bhfeicfidh sé nach bhfuil ag teastáil uaim ach Cothram na Féinne a thúirt do gach gasúr atá ag freastal ar scoil sa tír seo.
It is with certain reluctance that I delay the House——
Lean ar aghaidh leat.
The Deputy has only 20 minutes in which to state his case. I want order for him.
I do so because I am concerned that, for the purpose of higher education grants it is proposed to credit two honours to a student who obtains honours in the subject Irish. Because the Minister for Education made this proposal only very recently I hope he will be prepared to have a second look at it with a view to guaranteeing that the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity will be honoured. In the matter of education we have struggled and are still struggling to ensure that this principle is honoured.
In the last few decades advances have been made to achieve this laudable objective but there is not equality of opportunity. There are economic and social circumstances attaching to the homes and to certain areas that do not allow equality to every student. Since I came into this House I have said on many occasions I was not satisfied with the curriculum or with the examination system generally because I considered schools were still geared to cater for the middle and upper middle classes.
I have referred to the fact that there was not equality of opportunity for boys and girls attending primary and post-primary schools in Dublin city because, in order to be successful at Irish, it was required of them to have knowledge of the language and of a way of life they had never experienced. When I took Irish language classes with my students I spoke in Irish about, for instance, Georgie Best, Sandie Shaw or Dickie Rock, about flats, about fish and chips, or about anything else in which the students were interested rather than about life on the bog, or at sea, at the forge——
There is nothing wrong with that.
Except that the students had never seen a bog, had never been at sea, had never been on a mountain, had never been to the forge and had never been at a wake. Why should these students be asked to study a language that dealt with a life that was totally unfamiliar? We know there are areas where Irish is still the spoken language. We should all like to see a Gaelic Ireland——
This is the first step.
We encourage students to visit the Gaeltacht areas so that they will become familiar with the language spoken there. Parents whose children speak Irish get a special grant of £10 per child and receive another grant of £20 per child when he attends a post-primary school. We spend approximately £100,000 to encourage students from my constituency and other areas to visit the Gaeltacht to acquire knowledge of the Irish language.
I have referred already to the lack of equality of opportunity in education. It was decided to award grants to children whose parents were not in a position to pay for third-level education. The grants are given to students who obtain four honours in the leaving certificate. However, on the basis of figures given to me by the Minister, it is clear that a student from the Gaeltacht, or one who has the good fortune to go to an all-Irish school, has a five to one advantage in getting an honours in Irish over a student who lives in West Finglas, Cabra, Ballyfermot or any other place in Dublin.
Does the Minister accept that as being fair? Does he accept that that is in accordance with this fundamental principle, this wonderful objective we all have, that in the matter of education there should be equal opportunity? Does he accept that in circumstances where we are advising and exhorting the child from Cabra to go to the Gaeltacht so that he may learn the language which is being spoken by another student who is attending a school in Carraroe, Spiddal, that apart from the fact that he will be competing with that student in the examination, he should be expected to have the same chance in that examination as the master?
When we send students to the Gaeltacht we tell them to mix around and play with muintir na háite. At the same time we are putting those students in competition with the local boys and girls in the matter of education grants. To me it is quite obvious that the proposal is not sustainable in the matter of equal opportunity. Answering a question put by me in respect of last year's leaving certificate examination, the Minister said that of the students from Gaeltacht areas who sat for the examination, practically 63 per cent obtained honours. I am sure that position will be maintained.
I hope so.
Of the students attending all-Irish schools, practically 50 per cent obtained honours. Subtract these figures from the total who sat for the examination and we get less than 20 per cent for the rest of the country. Do these figures not demonstrate the case I am making? The Minister, answering a question put by me, No. 24 on the Order Paper for 10th May last, said that I should be happy when he told me that 5,206 pupils from non-Gaeltacht areas secured grade C or higher. Looking at it in that way, the Minister might appear to be making a case for himself. The case I am making is not for those students who succeeded in passing. When we add to that figure the number of students from all-Irish schools we get, in respect of last year's leaving certificate for which a total of 24,000 sat, only 4,000 from non-Gaeltacht or non-all-Irish schools who passed. I am concerned about the 20,000 students who sat for last year's leaving certificate examination and did not obtain honours in Irish.
Deputy Childers would never have passed it.
My concern is for the 20,000 students. I am concerned for the 22,000 students from non-Gaeltacht and non-all-Irish schools who will sit for this year's examination and who will not get honours. Were it not for the fact that they are competing against the favourites in the matter of Irish they would have had, possibly, an opportunity to get at least honours in Irish.
We all appreciate now that competition in Irish, as the Minister has said, is influenced by the incentive, but who will most benefit from that incentive? It is the student who already has such an advantage over the others—the student from the Gaeltacht, the student who has the good fortune to be living in close proximity to an all-Irish school. If we had all-Irish schools available to all students, if the Twenty-six Counties were a Gaeltacht, there would be no objection to what the Minister proposes. His proposals, I suggest, stand slightly suspect in so far as an effort is being made to demonstrate that this is being done to remove what was called the psychological antagonism which existed to having what was called compulsory Irish.
I wish to say in passing that I was one of the first Members of the House to advocate that the award of the leaving certificate and the intermediate certificate should not be dependent on students passing Irish as a subject. I did so because I had convinced myself that such a requirement was creating a certain fear, a certain anxiety in the minds of the children, which was being transferred to the parents and was manifesting itself in an antagonism towards the Irish language. The Minister has removed that and it is the compensation which presumably he feels he is offering. As far as I am concerned—I have no doubt about this—within a year or two, as a result of what is occurring this year, there will be far greater antagonism towards the Irish language than ever existed because of what was called compulsory Irish. That antagonism will arise because we are introducing a system of inequality which, on the figures supplied by the Minister to me, and which are no record in the Official Report, amply demonstrate that there is a decided advantage for children who have the good fortune either to live in the Gaeltacht or to attend an all-Irish school. I hope that while the proposal is still young the Minister will have a second look at it. I am sure he and his officials have the ability and the desire to introduce some other scheme which will be acceptable——
The Deputy's time has almost expired.
Looking at the clock, I thought I had one minute.
The Deputy will now conclude.
I suggest that the Minister introduces some other scheme which will benefit all the children of the nation equally.
I must say I fail to understand even at this point what the Deputy has in mind in relation to his approach to this matter, or what he hopes to achieve. I would have thought that in regard to his statements in the House in the past he would have been among the first to advocate every reasonable inducement to pupils in the non-Gaeltacht areas to study Irish to a high level and to acquire a mastery of the language. If all past utterances in regard to the importance of Irish mean anything—as far as I am concerned they do—then, equating higher grades in Irish as equivalent to higher grades in two subjects for higher education grants purposes is a very logical move. If in doing this we benefit a higher proportion of pupils from the Gaeltacht as against the non-Gaeltacht areas, we are simply dealing equitably with children from areas where the language is being kept alive, notwithstanding all the forces operating against it.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
Big deal.
Mr. R. Burke
At the same time we should never lose sight of the fact that these Gaeltacht children, from the examination point of view, are at a disadvantage when it comes to English.
As I say, the more I analyse the Deputy's approach, the more I am mystified, but dealing purely with figures, we have the situation, as the Deputy mentioned, where 324 pupils got Grade C or higher in the higher level paper in Irish in the case of Gaeltacht schools, whereas the comparable figure for schools in the rest of the State was 5,506. This latter figure was a commendable one when it is considered that no special inducement was offered. That is an understatement, but with the inducement now offered, I am satisfied that not only will this figure be substantially increased but there will be a large growth in the number of pupils seeking to achieve higher grades in Irish, and surely any Deputy who has an interest in Irish, as have Deputy Tunney and many other Deputies, must welcome this.
But if one examines the figures for those who took the higher level papers in the 1972 leaving certificate Irish examination, an interesting picture emerges. Of the 7,482 pupils who took the higher level examination, 5,530 or 70.5 per cent obtained Grade C or higher; from schools in the Gaeltacht areas, 375 took higher level, of whom 324 or 86.4 per cent obtained Grade C or higher; and from all-Irish schools in non-Gaeltacht areas, 941 took higher level, of whom 788 or 83.7 per cent obtained Grade C or higher. This shows that there is little difference in results as between Gaeltacht pupils and non-Gaeltacht all-Irish school pupils at this level and also that the general standard at this level is very high. These figures demonstrate that so far as pupils who take higher level papers in Irish in general are concerned, no serious disadvantage arises in the case of pupils outside the Gaeltacht areas.
Unless my memory is playing tricks with me, I can clearly recollect the Deputy in this House expressing—and he has done so again tonight—doubts about the wisdom of the policy of compulsion adopted by the previous Government. I suggest that the courage of his convictions should impel him to welcome the policy of non-compulsion being followed by the present Government and the supplanting of compulsion by tangible inducements. One thing above all others that has heartened me in relation to the announcements I made was the degree of acceptance it received from various organisations operating on behalf of the Irish language. It would, I suppose, be too much to expect that even at this stage we could remove it from the realm of party politics, but at least let us not question one and others sincerity or bona fides in this matter.
In conclusion, I wish to express my gratitude to the Deputy who on Thursday last, to facilitate me, agreed to the adjournment of his question until this evening. I want to thank him very much for that. May I say in relation to his statement on Thursday of last week when I was accused of arrogance that—and I think he realises this—there was no question of arrogance, any more than there was a question of arrogance when the tens and twenties of Ministers before me answered questions from Deputies of the Opposition in the form of tabular statements. I hope he will accept that statement.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.55 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 16th May, 1973.