We now take Votes Nos. 30 to 34 inclusive. I ask the Minister to move Vote No. 30 and the other Votes at the end of the debate. The Minister has a maximum of 30 minutes.
Estimates, 1987. - Vote 30: Office of the Minister for Education (Revised Estimate).
I move:
That a sum not exceeding £86,239,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1987, for the salaries and expenses of the office of the Minister for Education, certain miscellaneous educational and cultural services and for payment of sundry grants-in-aid.
I have already spoken at some length in this House on the provision for education in 1987, on 8 April last, during the course of the debate on the budget. Today, I am seeking approval for the five Votes, No. 30 to 34, inclusive, which make up the Education group of Votes. I propose, at the outset, to touch briefly on the global figures and to refer in greater detail at a later stage to individual services.
The total gross provision in these five Votes is £1,231 million. This includes Appropriations-in-Aid amounting to £72.5 million. Gross expenditure last year came to £1,120 million. The amount sought for 1987 thus represents an increase of £111 million or 10 per cent. In addition to the amount being provided in these Votes, a further £28.59 million will be received from youth levy funds and will be a charge on the Vote for Labour, No. 38. A further £3.15 million will be received from the proceeds of the national lottery in respect of youth and sports activities and will be a charge on the Vote of the Office of the Minister for Finance.
The gross overall Exchequer provision for 1987, therefore, if one includes the youth levy funds, will come to £1,260 million as compared with expenditure of £1,145 million in 1986, an increase of 10 per cent. If the proceeds of the national lottery are included, the figure is £1,263 million. The provision for capital expenditure for 1987 is £97.525 million. The total non-capital provision, including the youth levy, is £1,162 million, 11.3 per cent more than the outturn for 1986 of £1,044 million. Including the proceeds from the national lottery, the figure is £1,165 million an increase of 11.6 per cent. I know all of these figures may be somewhat tedious in the telling but, of necessity, I must repeat them. The provision for pay and pensions is £954 million which is 82 per cent of the total non-capital provision. No provision is included for any further increases in rates of remuneration. An overall total of £211 million is being provided for non-pay expenditure, 4.7 per cent more than the 1986 outturn.
Much has been said in recent months about education cuts. There is no doubt that if additional funding were available for education it could be used to good effect. I am also fully aware of the difficulties faced by the many diligent and committed people involved in education as they seek to make the best use of the resources available to them. The reality is, however, that the country faces serious fiscal, economic and social problems. This Government have set themselves the unenviable task of taking the stern measures necessary to tackle the underlying problems. These measures include reductions in public expenditure in order to reduce the overpowering burden of national debt, in which the educational sector must play its part. Nevertheless, the Government's commitment to education and the high priority accorded to educational needs even in these difficult times, is clearly illustrated by the fact that this year's allocation is more than 11 per cent greater than the 1986 outturn; at 7 per cent of GNP, represents a greater proportion of national resources than ever before; and amounts to almost 18 per cent of the total Exchequer spending.
Apart from an increase in the overall financial provision other positive aspects of the allocation do need to be stressed. For example, there has been no worsening of the basic pupil-teacher ratios at first and second level despite the new restrictions on the filling of vacancies in the public service; no restriction has been placed on entry to education or limit to educational opportunities; the guidance service has been preserved in post-primary schools; vocational preparation and training courses continue and the transition year option has been approved again for schools in which it had been established; the capital programme has been kept intact.
Deputies will note that responsibility for the national library, including the Genealogical Office, has been transferred to the Taoiseach.
Funding for certain third-level mature students' grants, for women, has been transferred from the Vote for the Department of the Taoiseach and has been included in the provision for the programme to promote equality in education. On a personal note I might say I am very pleased on having been given responsibility for this allocation. It is one which aptly fits in my priorities and philosophy in regard to provision for women in education. It is a small but significant step.
The net estimate for the Vote for the Office of the Minister for Education is £86.239 million or 5 per cent over the 1986 outturn. This provision is required for salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Education and for certain cultural and educational services and grants-in-aid.
Salaries and wages of the staff of my Department will cost £13.323 million in 1987. Although this is an increase of 2 per cent it represents a reduction in real terms in staff resources in view of the increases in rates of pay. At a time when all bodies engaged in education are being asked to make sacrifices, it is well to note that central administration in the Department of Education is playing its full part in contributing to reductions in public expenditure, for example, since the staffing embargo was introduced, a total of 246 posts have been left unfilled in the Department of Education. In the past year alone, 36 posts were suppressed. At the same time, there has been no reduction in the range of services for which my Department are responsible. The allocation for 1987 will require further substantial staff reductions within the Department.
The total operating expenses of the Department come to less than £17 million which is only 1.3 per cent of the expenditure for which the Department are responsible, a very low level of management costs.
The cost of higher education grants continues to increase. The provision being made is £20.6 million, a full 25 per cent more than the 1986 outturn. It is expected that about 11,800 students, compared with 10,139 last year, will be grant-aided in 1986-87. The income eligibility limits and the maintenance elements of the grants in the schemes for 1987-88 have been increased in line with inflation. I might mention here that the difficulties which hitherto held up the payment of these grants to students taking theology and religious science courses have been resolved. An additional 15 per cent is being provided for university scholarships, research grants and fellowships.
The total cost of the school transport service will amount to £38.2 million this year, of which £34.7 million will come from the Exchequer and £3.5 million from charges. The amount of the charges is being increased from £1 to £2 per pupil per term or a maximum £5 per family from September next. These have already been announced. I will continue to keep the school transport service under review to ensure the greatest possible cost-effectiveness. The £1.749 million being provided for the scheme of grants for recreational facilities is an increase of 53 per cent on the 1986 outturn.
The provision for youth and sports activities, on which the Minister of State will speak at length, has again been combined in one grant-in-aid fund as they were in years past. The grant-in-aid fund for sports organisations was introduced in 1970. Since then it has made a very substantial contribution towards sport and leisure activities in the country. The provision being made in this Vote for youth and sport combined for 1987 is £2.134 million. The year 1987 has seen an exciting new development with the launching of the national lottery which has already shown itself to be a great success. The Government have decided that 45 per cent of the proceeds of the national lottery will be applied to youth and sport. On the basis of the provision made in the Revised Estimates this would amount to £3.15 million in 1987.
The net amount sought for the Vote for primary education is £444.015 million, 13 per cent more than the 1987 outturn. Gross pay and pensions of primary teachers, as provided for in subheads C and D, account for 94 per cent of the total gross non-capital provision in the Vote.
Salaries and allocations of national teachers will cost £357.9 million. This is 16 per cent more than in 1986. The increase in the number of national teachers has been very substantial in recent years and has placed a considerable burden on the Exchequer. In 1977, we provided £78 million for 17,400 teachers. In 1987, we are providing £358 million for 21,161 teachers. The number of teachers has increased by 22 per cent in that period.
For the past 25 years additional posts of remedial teacher have been recognised and there are now some 850 such posts. Different levels of ability and attainment must be catered for. Many of these differences can be accommodated in the modern primary school with its emphasis on response to individual needs and group teaching. There are children, however, who fall so far short of average attainment that they need the special help which is met by these remedial teachers. There has been a modest but steady increase in the number of these teachers in recent years and a further small additional number of posts will be established this year with teachers being recruited from the panel.
Superannuation of national school teachers will cost £48.7 million this year, 12 per cent more than in 1986. This is another area where cost increases have been very substantial over the years. The provision for national school teachers' superannuation in 1977 was £13.5 million compared with £48.7 million this year.
We are providing £30 million for the building, equipping and furnishing of primary schools. This provision has attracted some adverse comment as it represents an apparent reduction on the 1986 level. In reality, however, it represents an increase of 6 per cent on the provision for 1986. Despite this substantial increase of 6 per cent the funds available are fully committed as 40 contracts were authorised in January by the previous Minister for Education. It is not envisaged that further major projects for permanent accommodation can proceed to contract this year. It was a major cause of concern and of frustration to me that I found myself mistress of a kitty which was denuded before I came to view it.
There was a better way.
The previous Minister for Education contracted legally the whole capital provision for primary education before I came to office. If that is a better way, it is an extremely odd way.
It was the Minister who had the better way.
While the national school building programme is mainly concerned with the provision of new schools and extensions in developing urban areas and with the replacement of obsolete and unsuitable buildings in rural areas, a substantial sum must be reserved each year for essential works to existing schools. This might entail the replacement of windows, roofs, sanitation, heating systems and similar improvements and does not usually involve the provision of any extra floorspace.
The resources available at present, both in terms of capital allocations and staffing resources within the primary buildings branch of my Department, are such that it could take many years — perhaps as many as seven or eight — to clear the backlog of projects which are seeking to be funded. Every effort must therefore be made to get the most value from the resources we have and to deal, with the least possible delay, with the most urgent accommodation needs. The policy of centralising smaller schools into larger units will continue to make an important contribution to the effective utilisation of facilities. Indeed, the merging of separate boys' and girls' schools into co-educational units and the decline in enrolments in certain urban areas are examples of new developments which provide a renewed opportunity for rationalisation. Such rationalisation, of course, while offering a welcome long term financial savings, must always be firmly founded on the improvement of the quality of education and the optimisation of resources.
The necessity to provide teachers, premises and finance to cater for ever growing numbers of pupils has brought its own considerable challenge in the past 20 years. We are now entering a period which will present a different but a no less important set of challenges. I refer, of course, to the declining birthrate of recent years, which is now beginning or will shortly begin to make itself felt on the pupil population at primary level. The initial levelling off and the subsequent decline in pupil numbers may appear at first glance simply to present an opportunity of reducing pupil-teacher ratios. It is however, a more complex matter than that. There will be an effect on physical facilities resulting in empty classrooms or even some empty schools. This has to be taken into account in planning our capital building programme both as regards the location of new facilities and the construction methods used. There will be substantial implications for the school transport system. This new situation will also present us with opportunities and I intend to ensure that full advantage is taken of them. This Government, as previous Governments have done, will continue to regard primary education as an area of special priority. I hope to use the opportunities presented by falling numbers to identify and examine areas of special need and to divert towards those areas some of the resources which will be released, both teaching resources and support services. I plan to do this in a coordinated way in consultation with all the interests concerned.
The effect of the falling birth rate has already been felt in the training colleges. Overall there are 1,795 students in the colleges this year compared with 2,471 in 1982-83. I am at present engaged in discussions with the representatives of one of those colleges. We had meetings last week. There are more planned for this week and we hope to reach a conclusion shortly.
Mature students are still being dealt with under the special scheme for the colleges. This has been adapted to take account of the new fee structure. School leavers who secure places in the colleges and who satisfy the means test requirements for higher education grants but not the academic requirements may still avail of the loan schemes administered by the Department.
Subhead 3 includes a sum of £500,000 for special assistance for schools in disadvantaged areas. This is a continuation of a scheme initiated in 1984. Since then a total of 155 schools catering for approximately 50,000 pupils have been assisted through the programme. Benefits include special grants for the purchase of books and equipment, the sponsorship of home-school-community liaison initiatives, special inservice training for teachers, funds for the relief of school debts for special disadvantaged urban areas and grants for the purchase of equipment for pre-schools for travellers' children.
Subhead C8 provides for both the special educational project involving Rutland Street national school and the special education projects in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.
The net provision sought for the Vote for post primary education is £498.558 million, 9 per cent more than 1986. The secondary teachers' incremental salary grant will cost £205.7 million in 1987. Allowances for posts of responsibility and special functions will cost £12.6 million, qualification allowances £10.8 million and substitution and part time teachers £4.2 million. A sum of £133.652 million is being provided for annual grants to vocational education committees. In addition, £20.829 million will be received from youth employment levy funds in respect of vocational preparation and training programmes and other ESF-aided courses and a further £12.3 million will accrue to committees from fees and other income. The total expenditure being provided for is therefore of the order of £167 million. The bulk of this money is required to meet the pay costs of the committees' programme. Other costs include third-level VEC student scholarships, grants to students on ESF-aided courses, servicing of capital building loans raised before 1983, youth and sport activities, local contributions for community schools, as well as heat, light, maintenance and other general expenses.
Grants to secondary school authorities will amount to £31.5 million. It has been decided to reclassify as capital the greater portion of the grants paid towards the cost of equipment. The reclassified element of these grants will be a charge on subhead G1 for 1987.
A new comprehensive school is scheduled to open in 1987. This will bring the number of comprehensive and community schools to 60, 16 comprehensive schools and 44 community schools. These schools cater for approximately 39,400 full-time students at the moment. The £46.8 million being provided represents an increase of 10 per cent.
The number of full-time third-level students in the RTCS and technological colleges continues to rise. In addition to the £53.8 million provided for these colleges in subhead D2, £7.761 million will be received from youth employment levy funds in respect of middle-level technicians courses and a further £10.3 million will accrue from fees and other income. Total expenditure on the colleges in 1987 will be about £71.9 million. The revenue from tuition fees represents only 12 per cent of the total cost of education services in these colleges compared with an estimated 25 per cent in the case of the universities. At present approximately three out of every four students in the technological sector have their fees paid by the State, either by way of vocational education committee scholarships or higher education grants or through the expansion of the ESF-aided scheme.
£38 million is included for second-level capital building. Since the introduction of free post-primary education there has been a very substantial investment in the building of secondary, vocational and comprehensive/community schools. Despite the falling birth rate which will soon be evident in primary school enrolments it will be some time before this is felt at post-primary level. Rationalisation will, therefore, be of crucial significance and, as I outlined earlier in this speech and in the debate just concluded, it is a topic I am embracing with some fervour.
The special schools covered by the Vote for Special Schools are not those catering for the mentally and physically handicapped but the special centres for young offenders namely Finglas Children's Centre, St. Joseph's, Clonmel, Trinity House, Lusk, and Cuan Mhuire, Whitehall, Dublin. These centres will accommodate up to 190 boys and 10 girls in 1987. They employ a staff of about 200 including 100 child-care workers. Salaries of the teaching staff are a charge on Subhead C1 of the Vote for Primary Education. The cost of maintaining a young person in these centres is substantial, ranging from just under £12,000 per annum at St. Joseph's, Clonmel, to over £50,000 at Trinity House. Apart from the running costs of these centres, the other major provision is for capital amounting to £2.08 million. This is mainly for the construction of new residential and administrative accommodation at St. Joseph's, Clonmel. Other projects include additional security fencing at Trinity House and alterations to Fingas Children's Centre.
The Vote for Higher Education includes provision for grants-in-aid of the Higher Education Authority and of the recognised institutions of higher education which are funded through the HEA. It includes provision also for grants-in-aid for other institutions such as the Dublin Dental Hospital and Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The net amount sought for this vote is £124.644 million. Grants towards the general expenses of the Higher Education Authority itself will amount to £509,000.
The non-capital grants to the institutions funded through the HEA will amount to £106.604 million. A further £40.7 million will accrue to these institutions from student fees and other income, making a total amount available for current expenditure of over £147 million, an increase of more than 6 per cent. Income from student fees accounts for about 25 per cent of the overall cost.
The provision for capital grants for the HEA institutions comes to £13.9 million. Expenditure will be incurred on final accounts for projects already completed, for example, NIHE Limerick, Albert College extension at NIHE Dublin and UCD Library extension and on projects in progress such as the School of Engineering at UCD.
I am disappointed that we have such a short time for this Estimate. On previous occasions we had more time to discuss education. However, I undertook to provide an analysis of the policy points I have hoped to outline. Of necessity I must now compress them into six minutes. It does not give me any joy to have to read a speech because I prefer to speak informally. However, the question of money and its precise allocation is one that must be faithfully recorded.
I would now like to outline some initiatives I intend to take during my term of office as Minister for Education. These initiatives will encompass all sectors of the education service and will predominantly concentrate on short and medium term strategies relating to specific practical issues. The first is the primary curriculum. The principal educational objective which I hope to achieve in my term of office as Minister for Education is the undertaking and completion of a review of the primary curriculum. This review is one of the key objectives outlined by the Government in the Programme for National Recovery. It has been my personal aspiration for some years, as I have indicated on many occasions, most recently in a public forum, at the teachers' conferences at Easter.
The present curriculum was introduced into our primary schools in 1971. It was widely welcomed at the time by all concerned in the education process and over the intervening years has brought about substantial change. All those involved in this area will agree that a review of these developments after 16 years is both appropriate and timely to analyse its successes and identify what difficulties, if any, have arisen. I would like to pay tribute at this point to the enormous contribution the primary teachers have made to the development of education over all these years in implementing this new curriculum. They have successfully created a very positive attitude towards school itself and the whole learning process and have removed from students' minds any fears they may have had about school.
As I have said I propose to initiate this review in the near future. It will be a joint review involving the Interim CEB and my own Department, whose members will be advisers to the review committee. The review will take into account research data already existing on the primary school curriculum, in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of work and to ensure that the review will proceed as effectively and as quickly as possible.
In my view it will be necessary to have an acceleration in the process of school rationalisation. In order that everyone be fully aware of developments in this area which have already taken place in recent years, I will be publishing an account of the rationalisation process to date. This will be published in conjunction with an assessment of demographic trends. Subsequent to this I will be seeking submissions as to how this can be progressed within a five-year period. It is worth reminding ourselves that in the ten years 1974-75 to 1984-85 enrolments rose by 26 per cent in second-level schools while the number of schools fell by 17. As well as eliminating unnecessary duplication of resources, co-operation between the schools in the same area can make for a greater range of subject options in a very cost-effective way.
Planning for the future is crucial for the successful development of the education service. When this programme is well under way, it will then perhaps be appropriate to examine the possibility of local education structures for the country.
My third objective is inservice teacher training, one of the fundamental elements of the entire education service is the area of inservice training, including that of retraining. Current educational developments in technology, sciences and the arts as well as changes in society have highlighted the very real need for such developments.
One should underline a new and growing feature of the teaching profession — the fact that the age profile of its members will gradually become an older one. This is occurring already and will give rise to a major demand for retraining by these teachers in the near future. It is essential, therefore, that we begin to address this problem and anticipate in such retraining what new skills will be required. The first step will be an updating of the available information and strategies and I hope to commence this in the near future.
I should now like to deal with the question of modern languages. The position of modern continental languages, other than French, in schools has been a source of particular concern to many, including the business community, over recent years. Our involvement in Europe has not resulted to date in any major change in the status of some languages in the schools. The recent accession of Spain and Portugal to the EC underlines clearly the relatively isolated position of Spanish in schools as well as that of, say, German and Italian. I propose to initiate a series of discussions with those directly involved in the teaching of these languages, as well as representatives of the business world, and those involved with the EC Commission. I hope from this to be in a position to establish a programme of language study appropriate to the needs of the students of the nineties.
I wish to deal with the Curriculum and Examinations Board. Since becoming Minister, and indeed long before that, I have become aware of the high level of responsibility and commitment exerted by the Interim Board in relation to the carrying out of its complex remit over two levels of education. I welcome this opportunity to pay public tribute to its chairperson and to each of its members, to its executive officers and to all those involved in its many committees.
The position of the interim CEB is currently due for consideration.
Tá an t-am istigh, mar a deirtear ar scoil.
Túigim. I have indicated to the board that I am currently reviewing all curricular initiatives and when that is complete I intend to take a decision as to how curricular and examination reform will be undertaken in the future.
Let me give the headings of my other points. I would love to speak for two hours more.
I ask for the agreement of the House to give the Minister a minute's grace.
——provided we get a minute's grace.
Unfortunately, there will not be grace for everybody.
There is only grace for some.
That is a disgrace. As long as the grace is not confined to the Minister——
——grace for all. However, my minute will be up if you do not let me at it.
The levity as practised by the Deputies and the Minister is not acceptable to the Chair. We must be quite formal about this matter and ask whether the House agrees——
——with pleasure.
I thank the Deputies for their graciousness.
Third level is another area, in terms of education provision, in which vital and significant developments are already in progress. A task force was established in 1986 to examine admission procedures to third level education and also the administrative procedures in relation to grants and scholarships. I spoke at length on this point last week in answer to a question and there is no point in going over that again. The report is expected to issue shortly and the next stage will follow on that. The report will be a source of very valuable information, while also codifying and making the admission and administrative procedures much easier.
Another recent development of major significance for third level students is the adoption of the Erasmus project, which I spoke about last week. This programme is designed to increase the mobility of students throughout the EC by increased co-operation between educational institutions. A sum of £65 million will be allocated by Europe to this project over a three-year period.
I should like to make three final points.
First, when I visited the teachers' conferences this year one of the points raised at all the conferences was the question of a Teaching Council. The desire of the teachers to have a professional institution to monitor their profession appears to me to be a worthwhile one. I would like very much to develop this idea and with that in mind I have invited the teacher unions to meet me so that we can discuss the feasibility of such a proposal.
Secondly, I have requested the reestablishment of the Equality Working Party of my Department — which seemed to lapse in the previous administration — in order to identify current problems in this area and to submit to me proposals which will improve the equalisation of education provision. This area is one for which I have ensured that money be made available, as real equality of opportunity is an objective I regard as of major importance for my term of office. I am very happy with the progress realised through the current initiative in the sciences and I will be investigating the possibility of a further extension of this programme in the near future.
As you can see, in my term of office I intend to achieve specific and concrete reforms in the education service and also to set down equally specific objectives to be achieved within a realisable timespan. We have a sound education system in this country and with the co-operation of so many committed and dedicated persons who are in the education area we can develop and improve the already high standards for which the Irish education system is so well known. Within our limited resources, the Government and I are determined to provide the best possible programmes for our young people.
Let me thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for the provision of extra time and I thank the Members also. I record my honour at being allocated the post of Minister for Education. I give a commitment to this House and to the country that I will endeavour to work to the best of my ability to carry out the remit which has been given to me.
I commend the Estimate to the House.
Deputy Hussey has 20 minutes.
I will attempt not to take more than five minutes extra, like the Minister. Much has been said as the Minister has pointed out about education cuts. In my view, not half enough has been said, and the Minister has said almost nothing about education cuts. I intend to concentrate on the real situation facing education. This Minister presented this evening the most draconian cuts ever known in the history of Irish education. She has started her term of office disastrously. In her statements, frequently in the media, and again this evening the Minister talks about 11 per cent plus growth in spending. That is totally misleading. Nearly 100 per cent of that increase has gone to meet the increase in teachers' salaries and pensions. The increase for primary and secondary teachers alone is £78 million. With over 8,000 community, comprehensive and vocational teachers in the system, the total increase for all categories of teachers is approaching £100 million. This excludes pay increases at third level or bodies such as training colleges:
I mention that fact as it is very relevant to the debate. The non-pay provision — the nuts and bolts of education, the class equipment, materials, books, heating, cleaning — all have been reduced in real terms, as well as the grants to adult literacy organisations, grants for travellers' children, and — most disquieting of all — the grant to help the children of those deprived families in inner city primary schools in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. School transport charges have been increased again. The Minister when answering a question in the Dáil refused to guarantee the same level of service in September. She has plunged the examination system back ten years by throwing all the progress towards computerisation out the window. On top of all these cuts — which since 31 March the Minister has desperately tried to hide — she has demanded huge cuts in the pay and non-pay bills of RTCs, the Dublin colleges and the universities, the fastest-growing area in education where the ratios are already very poor.
This all amounts to a very sad failure at the Cabinet table. It is sad for education, sad for young people and their parents, sad for teachers and management — these groups who were eagerly assured by this Minister and her leader that education was "special" and that the very minor Fine Gael cuts were "devastating" and could not be contemplated. Then we were treated on radio on the excellent "Education Forum" programme at the end of April to the Minister's assertion that there was "growth in every area". That statement is, and was, false: false when it was made and false still. I intend to show that it was false.
Never was there such a betrayal of trust, such a cynical misuse of democracy, as the performance of Fianna Fáil in the education area before and after the election of February 1987. For four and a half years, this Minister opposed all and every measure which I took or which was taken by my successor, to improve the efficiency and logic of education spending, and she called for more spending in every area. In particular, she championed the cause of teachers' pay and led the call for giving a full £75 million extra to the teachers.
During the election campaign Fianna Fáil candidates attended mass meetings of education groups and assured them that Fianna Fáil would never contemplate education cuts as suggested by Fine Gael, but would restore any cuts over the previous years. If that was not enough, the Taoiseach Deputy Haughey went on the `This Week' radio programme on 15 February — two days before the election — to assure the nation that "the cuts would be counter-productive; the Government would lose more in the end than they would by not proceeding with them". With that piece of dishonest gobbledegook, he gave the teacher unions and the "Partners in Education" campaign great comfort, as evidenced by the secondary teachers' publication Astir March 1987, which details the total assurances of Fianna Fáil, Deputy O'Rourke and Deputy Haughey to them. The Irish Press headline the next day read “Haughey pledge on school cuts is welcomed” and quoted him as pledging to reverse the cutbacks because they would cause “absolute devastation”.
All these assurances were given in the full knowledge of the financial situation of the country, made clear by Fine Gael in unmistakeable form in the January budget. There was, quite simply, a cold, calculated series of manoeuvres by Fianna Fáil to get power at any price, irrespective of who got hurt.
On 31 March — budget day — the confidence trick was complete. Not only were the minor cuts in Fine Gael's budget implemented, with one exception costing a few hundred thousand pounds, but a further £11 million at least was chopped off education. It is indeed a sorry story and an eloquent testimony to this Minister's inability to protect this most sensitive of areas in the face of the implacable, uncaring attitude of this Fianna Fáil Government towards our young people.
No wonder she has tried to conceal the cuts. No wonder she has stalled every inquiry at Question Time with bland, continual waffling and no wonder she waits until the schools have closed and teachers have dispersed before she comes out with the teacher allocations for September — teachers who have just been told that any new appointments will be temporary and that no job is secure.
My job as Opposition spokesperson is to make the Minister deal honestly with her brief and to let the education world know exactly what is going on because it is clear the Minister is afraid to do so.
Let us examine some of the cuts in these Estimates. First, £500,000 taken from subhead A. 3 for Vote 30, by stopping the computerisation of the certificate examinations. To quote the Minister on 13 June 1986 at column 2206 of the Official Report: "I welcome this development, particularly in relation to the examination results". This was the most cost efficient administrative procedure planned by the Department, initiated by me, supported by my Cabinet colleagues as the logical and essential step it was. It is a nonsense to talk, as the Minister has done, about entry to third level being improved while the lynchpin of that process has been removed.
Second, school transport, subhead D. 3, £700,000 gone, school transport charges increased again and the Minister's refusal in a parliamentary question to guarantee even a proper service for September. Who will ever forget the Minister's hand wringing and protests and Dáil motions over school transport? Third, subhead D. 8, £76,000 gone for the Curriculum and Examinations Board. This is a monstrous cut when the schools are crying out for reform and updating. Fourth, subhead E. 1, a cut of £100,000, for cultural and educational bodies. What this really means is adult literacy education, but more of that later.
Primary Education — subhead A. 1 — training colleges — £250,000 gone; and this from a Minister who has vociferously championed the reopening and retention of Carysfort College. The silence on that is deafening. Subhead C. 3 (2) — a cut of £230,000 for those poorest primary schools which the Minister now asserts do not need the money, at a time of the freezing of the capitation grants — which she only mentioned when I dragged it out of her in a Dáil question. Subhead C. 4 (4) — library grants — a cut of £120,000, a drastic more than 50 per cent reduction on this already inadequate provision for primary schools, again, hidden and not mentioned. The Minister should be ashamed of herself.
Post-Primary Education — Vote 32: A. 1 — secondary teachers — £1.0 million gone. Does this mean no guidance or remedial teachers this year, or is it a pseudo saving? I would like the Minister to tell us exactly what that means. Subhead A. 2 — £1,064,000 for vocational committees gone. How can the Minister reconcile this savage cut on vocational schools with her constant eulogising of vocational education? How long will the Fianna Fáil-controlled committees stay silent and refuse to defend their students? In this section of the Estimates, £500,000 is taken from the community and comprehensive schools' running costs, £3,100,000 from the RTCs, £2.65 million from the universities. Those cuts amount to the most devastating attack on third level education ever known in the history of the State. Never was there such a demand for third level education and that demand will grow inexorably every year until 1995, as the Minister well knows. What do she or her Government care for the chances of these young people who will be squeezed out of education by the simple inability of the institutions to cope with the massive staff cuts and obsolete equipment?
In volume terms the cut of 4 per cent by 1988 in the gross pay of the staff of all third level institutions, recently conveyed to the institutions, will have horrendous consequences for the development of this fastest growing sector. Allowing for the normal incremental progression of third level staff and the full effect in 1988 of the present national wage agreement, it is clear that staff cuts of 6 per cent to 7 per cent will be necessary from next September-October if the institutions are to achieve the Government's target. With student numbers increasing by 4 per cent to 5 per cent per annum, it is obvious that student numbers will have to be seriously curtailed, staff will have to become redundant and/or suffer a severe cut in salary. When will the Minister announce the reality of all this? When will the students and the parents be told what this really means?
I would like to make some further comments on these cuts. Almost a year ago, on 13 June 1986, the Minister, then an experienced and presumably expert spokesperson on Education said in the Dáil "Everyone would share the philosophical view that the money should go, first of all, to the disadvantaged and in particular the disadvantaged in primary schools because there it all begins". And later, criticising my increase of the fund to £750,000 as being too small, she said: "But while that amount has increased, so has the problem, which means that the money spread among the number of pupils needing aid is very small"— columns 2201 and 2202 of the Official Report. I could not have said it better myself, and then she cuts £230,000 off these same children. It is below contempt.
Itinerant children are no longer a priority either. The great progress we made for them is being attacked and undone. A despairing Sister Colette, that champion of the travelling people, tells me that in Offaly, Navan, Wicklow, Carlow, Mayo, Clondalkin, County Dublin, every day the travellers' centres are being told by the CEOs of the vocational education committees that their grants are either gone altogether or drastically reduced. And yet in a parliamentary question last week the Minister informed me that she is "unaware" of any CEOs telling of cuts. That is not good enough: it is crassly uncaring.
The organisations dealing with adult literacy, in particular NALA, have been dealt a sudden and demoralising blow by the Minister by a massive cutback in their resources, as well as Aontas, the People's College and the Irish Countrywomen's Association, all being cut by amounts which are tiny by national standards but huge by the budgets these mostly voluntary bodies, are trying to run on — £17,500 for Aontas, £6,000 for the People's College, £11,500 for the Dublin Institute for Adult Education, £7,000 for the ICA, and £13,500 for the National Adult Literacy Agency. I hope the Minister will never burden us again in the House with talk of her own or her Government's concern for the weakest in this country. This is the same Minister who said in this House on 13 June 1986: "We cannot live any longer with this staggering rate of illiteracy since we view ourselves as a modern country with a very advanced education system", (column 2206 of the Official Report). The Minister's posturing, and her honeyed words over the past few years will haunt her every day and I will make sure they do.
The biggest cuts, the pay and non-pay in the vocational, community and comprehensive schools, the RTCs., and the universities, represent a U-turn of staggering proportions. It will tax the ingenuity of all those managements to run their services at present levels, let alone deal with increased numbers. March 31 was a black day for Irish students and the education system, the day when it was clearly seen that education had no champion at Cabinet, and when the particular protection given to our young people and their parents by Fine Gael and the last Government was seen in retrospect as resolute and caring.
Having made a disastrous beginning, the Minister needs to do something to rescue her reputation. There is another side to the education coin, the curriculum and administrative reform which is so desperately needed and which has been put in place for the Minister to act swiftly and decisively. The signs are ominous, and already some dreadful and backward-looking decisions have been made.
I am horrified that the transition year option has been scrapped. This was one of the most progressive decisions made over the last four years, welcomed by everyone, including the Minister. For the Minister to state, "I am pleased to be able to continue the transition year this year for the 74 schools despite the financial problems we face" is nothing but cynicism, seeing that any expenditure for the pupils enrolling in transition year this year, and the per capita grant, could not arise until September 1989. Therefore, the Minister obviously concedes cutbacks like this for the next few years. The Minister said also when announcing her decision to refuse all new applications for transition year, “When the transition year had been sanctioned for the 74 schools last year, no financial provision was made for it, so I am pleased to be able to provide the finances.” Either the Minister is ignorant of the workings of the transition year or she is being dishonest: either proposition is a sorry state of affairs. In the Dáil, almost exactly a year ago, while in Opposition, she waxed eloquent and at great length about the transition year. In a long exhortation to provide resources and allow all schools immediately to have transition years, she said, “the Government should prepare a programme and provide the resources so that all schools still anxious to participate in the scheme will be able to do so from September.” No wonder the schools flooded the Minister with applications — only to be told last week that not one new application would be granted, a disastrous, fundamentally backward decision which all the accusations or self-justification do not hide.
The second area I want to touch on is the standing and achievements of the Curriculum and Examinations Board. No State Board ever justified their existence so rapidly and so devotedly than this board. They have produced reports on major areas of the curriculum and have set in place the new junior cycle certificate and assessment system which is ready and needs the Minister's sanction. Now the education world waits to see if this Minister will grasp the nettle and bring in the legislation to make the board a statutory part of our education development, so that a dynamic and continual flow of ideas from all areas — education, business, agriculture and the social partners — will continually enrich the process of evolution which must go on in the education system. To my dismay, £76,000 has been taken from the budget for the board in a year when there is great work to be done.
Since 1983 this Minister has been calling for curriculum reform, for strengthening the board, for improving their resources. As reported at columns 2209 and 2210 of the Official Report of 13 June 1986, she said "I am not suggesting that the Department should rush the legislation but I hope it will be ready for the autumn." She went on to say, "We should give the Curriculum and Examinations Board the resources it needs to implement recommendations." The legislation was ready and published in the autumn. The Minister, so often on record for praising the board's work, must keep faith with the education world and speedily bring in that legislation.
The board must know where they stand; they must be clear that their functions will include both curriculum and assessment examinations — as the Minister knows, one without the other is simply meaningless. The inspectorate of the Department need to be released from the crushing burden of work on the examination system so that they can return to their primary task — of helping schools and teachers to develop and interpret the curriculum as taught in the schools, and encourage the pursuit of excellence in the classrooms.
I ask the Minister today to stop stalling, to make the brave step of overcoming the counsellors of conservatism and the status quo both inside and outside the Department and to bring to this House the Bill she welcomed last November in its entirety. She will have my full support. The consequences of any further delay on this are unthinkable — a disillusioned board and a further depressed education system.
We mentioned earlier the question of RTCs and VECs in the context of the Green Paper proposals so I will not go into that again.
Despite her attack on the funding of education seen at its most severe in its setback for technological specialists and computer areas in the RTCs and the Dublin Colleges and her attack on the disadvantaged — in complete contradiction to the claims for technological education made in the Fianna Fáil election manifesto — the Minister may have some opportunities to rescue her crumbling reputation. Let her work for the summer months on a rapid response to the reform needs of the system, let her throw aside the traditional Fianna Fáil fear of any legislation which was not thought of first by them, and let her show that her four years on this side of the House was not entirely wasted. It defies belief that she should say in reply to a parliamentary question and referring to the establishment of the Curriculum and Examinations Board, "My intention is to study all the initiatives in curriculum reform which have taken place over the last ten to 15 years before deciding how future curriculum development and related activities should be structured." That is the answer of someone who is either ignorant or afraid of the great work done by the Curriculum and Examinations Board. I do not believe the Minister really meant those depressing and gloomy words. They would put a dead hand on educational progress.
They are a complete and unexplained contradiction of her anxiety in Opposition to proceed with the legislation. To undertake the work that needs to be done in education needs a resolute and courageous Minister advised by people inside and outside the Department who care enough to challenge the status quo. Despite the ominous signs to the contrary, I cling to the hope that this Minister will be such a Minister. If so, I look forward to an autumn and winter of dynamism and excitement in education. If not, it will be a massive failure. I hope the Minister will not let us down.
I was a little intrigued to hear the Minister announce that it gave her pleasure to introduce the Estimate for Education. I am sorry it does not give me any pleasure to respond to her speech as it could hardly give anybody pleasure to talk about an Estimate which envisages very serious and severe cutbacks for young people. It is a big change from the time when money on education was seen as an investment. We talked about growth and investment in education and when we see budgeting in those terms it is very sad to be brought to the point where we have cutbacks on such a scale.
It is intriguing to see that these cutbacks, severe as they will be, have been totally overshadowed by the overwhelming effect of the health cuts. Very little attention has been given to the education budget to date but this Estimate, with its severe surgery on an already amputated education budget, is a bit like the phoney war, its effects will not be felt until September when outrage will be expressed by parents, teachers and children as they try to confront them.
Having listened to the litany of cuts outlined by Deputy Hussey, it is obvious that they are a series of very minor savings to the Exchequer. They will have no substantial effect on Exchequer spending but will have a severe and corrosive effect on the education system, much of which will be crippled and create problems for young people which will cost us dearly in future years. To illustrate my point, I have no better person to support me than the Taoiseach. I will quote from the radio programme "This Week" on the Sunday prior to the last general election, already referred to by Deputy Hussey. Deputy Haughey was asked if he would go ahead with Coalition cutbacks and he responded by saying that in so far as the education cutbacks were concerned he thought it was quite obvious that they would be counter-productive and that if the Government pursued those cutbacks they would lose more than they would gain. I could hardly put the point better. The cutbacks as envisaged and applied will lose for the education system and the Exchequer a great deal more than they would gain. If the cutbacks proposed by the outgoing Government were expected by the Taoiseach to be counter-productive how much more counter-productive will the cutbacks of his own Minister be? A further £11 million is being extracted from the Education budget this year. How can you extract that much money without causing severe hardship?
People who will suffer most from these cutbacks are those already deprived, the disadvantaged and those who live in underprivileged circumstances. The cutbacks as applied to the vocational education committees I find rather strange. The Minister has never lost an opportunity to praise the work of those schools. In the previous debate here this evening and the debate on the Private Members' Bill she went out of he way to be ecstatic in her praise of what was done by vocational schools. Unfortunately, her estimation of those schools does not reflect itself in the budgetary provisions for those schools in the coming year. Many of the schools under the vocational education system will be called upon to make savings of as much as 50 per cent of their running costs in the coming year. How on earth does the Minister expect savings on that scale to be made? How will they be implemented? Or is it envisaged that the lights would be switched off at about 2.30 p.m. on a November evening, or that the heat would be cut down in January, or that young people would be expected to bring to school with them wood for their woodwork classes and metal for their metal work classes?
How are vocational schools expected to live on the budget that they will be given in the coming year? They do not have the range of options open to them that other schools might have. Vocational schools, because of their very location, cannot appeal to parents to supplement their education budgets. Parents in these areas do not have that amount of money and certainly do not have it for education. These parents, in common with most parents these days, are already put to the pin of their collar to provide for their youngsters moneys for schoolbooks, which are disgracefully expensive, for school uniforms, examination fees and all the other essential costs that go with education, without being asked to provide additional moneys to supply essential things like heating, lighting and chalk. Or will the teachers be expected to buy their own chalk, as they did in the bad old days? I see no way whatever that vocational education schools can be expected to live within the budget being given to them this year.
As for all second level schools, I fail to see how they can manage with the teacher allocation that will be theirs when they open in September. Even as things stood, most schools were feeling badly the pinch of cutbacks in teacher allocation. They see no justification whatever, nor do I, for reduction in teacher numbers. What is there to justify this? There is no evidence in second level schools that pupil numbers are on the decrease; as a matter of fact they are not. The Minister said earlier that pupil numbers will be on the decrease in primary schools and that is so, if certain populations trends continue as they expect them to, but there is no decrease whatever in the pupil entry into second level schools.
In some schools the number of students seeking admission is continuing to rise. How can these schools be expected to cope, with their reduced allocation of teachers? How can they provide the range of subjects expected of them? How can they cope with the constant demand for new courses such as vocational preparation and training programmes and transition year programmes? How can they make provision for the additional continental languages of which the Minister spoke? How can they make provision for the greater emphasis demanded for education in the area of social relationships, health education, including drug awareness and all the new area with which teachers are expected to cope in the days in which we live? How can they possibly cope with those demands and yet contend with a reduced teacher allocation? I do not know if it is possible.
We are talking about a time when we want to put increased emphasis on science and technology and there is now a greater demand for equality of subject choices as between boys and girls. How is that demand going to be met? There is greater demand for new and more effective ways of getting a worthwhile education for weaker pupils. We are looking for new forms of assessment such as oral examinations in French. How can we cope with those demands on reduced teacher allocation?
How can the Minister propose to implement her own election promises, fine and lofty as they were? I would remind her of some of those promises. She promised to reactivate links between post-primary schools and industry — a very worthwhile objective but where is the wherewithal to put it in being? She promised to put more emphasis on science and language teaching and asked schools to offer a second European language to assist in our export marketing — a very worthy objective, but how is it to be achieved? She promised to reduce the pupil-teacher ratios at primary level and progressively to do so at post-primary level. She said that she would introduce more reforms and innovations and make provisions for them and would put more emphasis on the teaching of the Irish language. All these were very definite promises made by the Minister during the course of the last election campaign. They were promises that gave us all hope that the future of education would be brighter and better. What good are these promises now when the resources are not being put in place to enable them to be implemented? Surely these objectives were difficult enough to achieve under existing resources but they will be impossible with the severely reduced resources provided in this budget.
Some of the major achievements of recent years stand to be scuttled by the provisions of this budget. Having criticised her predecessors from the Opposition benches for four years, the Minister now stands to undermine some of the Coalition Government's more important achievements, achievements like the development of vocational preparation and training programmes, the introduction of the six year cycle through the Ages for Learning policy, the development of the transition year option. Each of these changes was a forced modernisation and improvement within our schools. With few resources and with the transition year option programme suspended for all new schools, can any guarantee be given that, having accepted each of these changes, schools will not now be in a much worse position two or three years down the road than they were before the Minister took over? This worries me deeply.
Having given an election commitment to the development of the Curriculum and Examinations Board on a statutory basis, what does the Minister now propose to do about that board? This is a question which is being asked very legitimately by Deputy Hussey. How long is this board to continue to be an interim board? How soon is it to be given the kind of budget that will give it the teeth to bring about the very necessary reforms in our educational system? I see the development of this board as being the key to all educational reform, the key to bringing our educational system in line with modern educational systems in every other developed country. It cannot and will not function if it is not provided with a proper statutory status on the one hand and if it is not given the proper financial resources on the other. I see no evidence at all in this Estimate that either is being provided and that saddens me deeply.
I am greatly heartened to hear that the Minister plans to make provision for the introduction of in-service courses for teachers. That is a very good investment in the work force, and is absolutely essential if the aims and objectives of the Curriculum and Examinations Board are to be achieved at any level. I welcome that very sincerely and hope it will be taken in conjunction with the development of the Curriculum and Examinations Board. That is the key to the development of all future educational policy.
As I see it, the effects of the Government cutbacks will be as follows: temporary teachers will replace full time teachers in redeployment programmes in 1988 and 1989. That may sound innocuous in theory, but in practice it will mean that good teachers will be pulled out of the schools, that there will be inevitable increases in class sizes and inevitable restrictions on subject options. Already there are classes almost up to 40 in some post-primary schools. The result of all this is and inevitably will be that discipline problems, already harrowing for most teachers, will increase as class sizes increase and as pupils become disaffected and lose interest through lack of personal attention from teachers. Teachers will inevitably become more and more demoralised as they see their jobs being valued less and less by virtue of the very low commitment of resources by the Department of Education.
Instead of an increase in the number of European languages being taught, there will, in fact, be a decrease; this is happening already. There is already a significant reduction in the number of children being offered German as a subject in second level schools. This has been the subject of concern. This concern has been voiced by bodies like the Confederation of Irish Industry and it was mentioned by the Minister in her pre-election promises. Yet I cannot see how it can be met. The saddest part of all is that more pupils will leave school with poor results as a result of these cutbacks. What will happen to these pupils? The lucky ones will be taken into AnCO courses which cost around £6,000 per course. Where is the saving there? I can see no saving.
I welcome very sincerely the commitment the Minister has made as reported in this morning's papers and in her speech this evening to the development of primary education. There is no doubt that primary education is the cornerstone of our educational system. If we have a sound and good primary system the remainder of the system can take heart from that. If we have a poor, neglected and under financed primary system, the remainder of the system will suffer. I am very glad the Minister has made a commitment that during her term of office she will give increased resources and attention to the primary school system.
The Minister proposes to set up a review body to review the primary school curriculum. I remember the introduction of the curriculum in 1971. It brought a sense of creativity, exploration and excitement to primary schools. It helped in no small way to brighten up primary schools and to make them pleasant places for young people. That curriculum was a great success by any standard. Of course, that does not mean that the time is not now ripe to review it.
It has been mentioned quite frequently in recent years that a number of children come to post primary school level not ready and not having the basic skills to the degree demanded of them in post primary schools. The reason for this may be that even the brightest of young children leave primary school too soon. These children would benefit from remaining for one additional year in the post primary school system. I hope that possibility will not be overlooked. The problem of the transition from primary school to post primary school — from a child centred curriculum to a subject centred curriculum with all the tensions it creates — could be eliminated if there was a more child centred approach to teaching in the junior stages of post primary schools.
My main concern is for the young people who leave school after seven, eight or nine years without having mastered the most basic skills of numeracy or literacy. If the Minister does nothing else during her term of office, I hope she takes every step open to her to ensure that in the future no child leaves the educational system without at least having mastered the very minimum skills of reading, writing and arithmetic — numeracy, literacy and basic life skills.
It is a shame that we have to demand the kind of money we are looking for for adult literacy programmes. These programmes would not arise in the first instance if we were paying proper attention to the primary school programme. Many of the failures of the primary school system could be eliminated if we had a more sympathetic pupil-teacher ratio, if we had more pre-school programmes for children in disadvantaged areas, if we had an area based schools psychological and guidance programme and if we had generally an intervention programme that would catch these people before it was too late and give them remedial teaching at that level.
If the Minister addresses herself to these problems she will grow in my estimation as the year goes on. She comes in a line of very illustrious people who had a vision for education — people like Dr. Hillery, the late George Colley and the late Donogh O'Malley. Those people had a vision, courage and commitment to education. The Minister stands in line with those people and she has a great opportunity to emulate their successes and bring about a renaissance in education but she will not do this if she sets out to fashion the educational system to fit her budget; she must fit her budget to the educational system.
Ní chuireann sé iontas orm na laethanta seo a laghad Gaeilge a úsáidtear so Teach seo go háirithe nuair atáimid ag caint faoi oideachas. Ach cuireann sé iontas an domhain orm nár deineadh tagairt ar bith i ráiteas don Ghaeilge. Dar ndóigh, ta cúis mhaith leis mar tá laghdú san méid airgid atá curtha ar fáil do fhoilseacháin i nGaeilge agus tá laghdú chomh maith leis sin in aon chabhair speisialta dos na scoileanna atá ag teagasc trí Ghaeilge. I dteannta leis sin níl tagairt ar bith — agus is iontach an rud é mar tá an tAire beag, an tAire Stáit, in a Theachta ón Dáilcheantar in a bhfuil daoine a pléann le cúrsaí Gaeilge agus a labhraíonn Gaeilge——
(Cur isteach.)
Beidh seans ag an Aire na ceisteanna a fhreagairt.
Tá sé drochbhéasach bheith ag tagairt don Aire Stáit mar "Aire beag".
Gabh mo leithscéal. An tAire Stáit. Ní raibh sé ar intinn agam bheith drochbhéasach.
Mór nó beag, caithfear dul ag aghaidh leis an díospóireacht.
Ní raibh sé ar intinn agam bheith drochbhéasach don Aire Stáit ach ba mhaith liom a chur in iúl don Aire Oideachais féin gur thug mé cúpla nóiméad di. Tá tábhacht faoi leith ag baint leis an chúram atá ag an Aire Stáit mar tá deacrachtaí ag baint le scoileanna beaga sa Ghaeltacht, mar a thuigeann sé, agus beidh mé ag éisteacht go géar leis an méid a bheas le rá aige sar a mbeidh an díospóireacht seo thart.
The Minister for Education, her predecessor and other Ministers have achieved a little in recent years addressing the question of sexism in education. I want to get this out of the way rather quickly because it is one of the few achievements in education. What I have to say will be relatively brief and direct.
From my experience in this House and in the Seanad there are few other places in which I have found representative parliamentary democracy treated in a less forthcoming way than in matters of education. When I was a Member of Seanad Éireann I repeatedly asked for and got some guidance, but never specific information, despite being promised it as late as November 1986, on many features of the Irish educational system. I asked what were the origins of the control of the system. Advisers to the then Minister of State, Deputy Kenny, promised to write to me to tell me the origin of the patron system. Not a line has appeared from them, nor will it ever appear. Of course the word "patron" did not occur in the Minister's speech because there was not a line of philosophy in it. There was no reference to the control of education as if it did not matter who controlled it, who paid for it, and who took the decisions.
There was not a line in the speech about that much abused word the "ethos" of education even though it has affected the livelihood, the hiring, the promotion and the dispersal of teachers. I am not only talking about a clerical ethos. The subject has been discussed in the journals of education, as to whether the ethos of a school is critical, whether it believes in a romantic theory of education or in the idea of an authoritarian ethos and so on. It does not matter because that word will not be written into a Minister's speech.
I, like the other speakers wish I had hours in which to speak because I have rarely seen a more illiterate abuse of figures, the firing in of figures without any comparative base to previous years and proportions are not compared with proportions in other years. What is the meaning of saying that consultancy services will cost £390,000 this year? It is like saying that bullocks cost so much in Blessington today. It is that level of insulting irrelevance to this House and, as a person interested in education, I object to it. I object to the deceit in the figures, the conscious attempt to deceive this House by suggesting there are increases in educational provision when we know that if the figures were divided by the number of people involved in education there are actual reductions. I am precluded by the Standing Orders of this House from describing what that presentation of facts constitutes, but it is obvious to anyone who wants to draw the conclusion.
A lot of other matters are missing from this speech and it fills me with despair. I join with all the others who have paid tribute to anyone who has ever taught. I was a teacher and I consider it a great privilege. Anyone who has spent a wet day in education knows that we are participating in an educational system that is one of the most unequal in Europe and I challenge the Minister of the day and her officials to disprove that fact.
Can we answer the question, compared to other countries in Europe, can the children of a poor family here go to a national school and say that primary education is free of all charges for books or any other additional charge? Can they say that every child is equal, that every child has an equal chance of finishing the second level cycle? Can they deny that the child of a professional person has 18 times the chance of participating in third level education — I am not talking about finishing — and will they compare those facts with Europe? I am expected to go "ga ga" in this House listening to people talking about review groups. Where is the reference to the Clancy report in the Minister's speech? What does that tell us about educational opportunities and inequality of opportunity? Where is the reference to Hannan's work? The list of scholars is endless, but always there will be this business that we will stay staring at the system and imagine it is equal when it is not. At the end of this year, before the summer is out, before this Dáil will have resumed, quietly, so that questions cannot be asked they will have driven more working-class children away from educational opportunities.
I want to finish this by referring to the paucity and the misery of the people who write these speeches. What are their comments on the absence of creativity in the educational system? I have four children attending primary school and I know something about primary education. I welcome creativity wherever it occurs. What of the people who built all the buildings where walls are fixed and can never be moved back so that rooms might be used as a theatre, who put in floors that could never be danced upon, the people who never bothered about the acoustics of buildings, who organised, when I was Chairman of the Galway/Mayo Arts Committee a special competitive seminar on physical education because they told me that physical education had nothing to do with dance and drama or with modern movement? That miserable attitude is what has turned Irish education into what it is for so many people, a miserable experience deprived of joy and creativity. It has made it so unfortunate for so many parents to look so often at how sad their children are when they come back from the depressing environment and the miserable authoritarian attitudes and the exclusion of parents from participation in education.
There is no reference to all of that in the Minister's speech. There is a lovely bland presentation about the involvement of parents. Can parents be said to be involved in education here when they set their children down outside a wall with railings on top and let them go across the concrete yard into the school, and come out in lines, where a school has not a single room provided in which parents might meet and converse and be part of the educational process? Of course, we had a brilliant reform, derived from God himself or his mother, and that was that they could become involved through either of the two denominational representative organisations, the parents' organisations. One could come up through the National Catholic Parents' Association or its equivalent in relation to the Church of Ireland.
In my constituency today there are two children who have not gone to school for five weeks because their parents from the North of Ireland wanted them to go to a non-denominational school, wanted them to be treated outside the ethos of denominational education. Listening to this lovely exchange this evening one would imagine there was no problem about non-denominational education. I challenge the Minister to survey nationally the case for non-denominational and multi-denominational education in this country, and I will accept the findings but I object to being told that provision should not be made or that provision should be built into an existing system. I certainly do not want to get involved in that argument again. It is a preposterous idea that one could drag one's children out of the religion class and put them in the corridor, or let them out in the "clós" to be "ag súgradh" while the normal children went on, and then one could let them back into the class again. Is that an allowance for freedom of expression? Is it any wonder we have sectarian murders in Northern Ireland when we have that insular bigoted narrow outlook down here?
I will come to the main thrust of what derives in some respects from the words of the great Eamon de Valera who once said we will have to put up with 10 per cent of the children of the country going to second level education while, at the same time, he was looking after his own family very well in the educational institutions of Ireland. Thus it was in the fifties. Thousands of people flocked out of this country, badly educated, educated to work in the building sites and live on the fringes of British society. Of course that is what will happen now.
I will use my remaining time to make a number of positive points. In relation to the Estimate, I do not know who is trying to fool whom but there are a number of basic points which must be borne in mind. The people who will be asked to take the major brunt of the cuts this autumn are the vocational sector. Maybe these figures are just figments of my imagination. No doubt, the Minister's advisers will tell her how they work out and whether they are true, but the budget for 1987 provides for a £2 million reduction in the 1986 provision for second level VEC schools, a 4.8 per cent cut, a £500,000 reduction in the allocation to community and comprehensive schools, £10,000 roughly per school, a £1 million reduction in the RTCs services, and a £100,000 reduction in adult education services. It also provides for school transport charges possibly being increased, vice-principal posts will no longer be ex quota, tariffs can be negotiated and it goes on. Consider the areas in which cuts are being made.
The Minister, speaking to the TUI conference in Bundoran, used the most sinister phrase of all. Speaking to the teachers who worked in the TUI she said, "The mainstream of your activities will be all right. It is the peripheral activities that may have to be cut." Can the Minister, back from Bundoran and the heady days of the conference, tell us what peripheral activities are? Is she referring to the courses that have been referred to already for literacy training for itinerant children? Is she referring to courses for prisoners, to courses taken by women looking for a second chance in education, to courses taken at night by people who never had an opportunity of attending school? Where did that phrase "peripheral activities" come from? Those of us who have gone to the trouble of going to look at the vocational schools know very well that they are open earliest in the morning and latest at night. They are controlled by the State. An Act was passed in these Houses of the Oireachtas that made them more accountable than any other form of education, and it is to that section of education that the eyes of the Minister and her officials were directed in term of carrying the cuts. Will the Minister tell us when replying whether part time posts are safe? Will the posts of the 50 or 60 per cent of teachers who are part time, who provide education in those institutions, be safe? What of the people who were relying on special advantages and assistance?
Let me give an example of the kind of misery I am talking of. Let me quote the figures lest people think I am using them inaccurately. The aid towards buying books in primary schools in 1985 was £719, in 1986 it was £827 and in 1987 it is £846. The capital grants towards the operating costs of a national school in 1985 was £13,236, in 1986 it was £14,445 and in 1987 it is £14,590, but there were other interesting items. There was the question of buildings, furnishings and so forth. I made a point in relation to the provision of assistance towards the question of the Irish language. I do not believe in attacking any Minister, and I wish that the Minister had all the money in the world to spend on education, but it is time that Ministers for Education did one of two things. We need time in this House to debate the philosophy of education and see where we agree or differ. Let us see evidence that the work that is already done is being studied, is being advised to Ministers and is not being replicated by expensive review committees. Secondly, are we happy to live in a society where we can continue to be sure that the children of the privileged, the professional classes, will know for certain that they will participate in third level education while those below those classes will have a different kind of educational experience? There is no point in running around with administrative riddle-me-ree to say that you are reproducing a classless society.
We would all feel better, those of us who have children attending school, to know that before we die or before our children die there will be an opportunity to go to school, to be able to learn independently, to develop critical minds, to be able to participate not in an authoritarian culture but in an open, pluralist one, in buildings that are adaptable and flexible, that use music, that have art and creativity at the centre as the dominating needs of schooling. We will never have that from the misery merchants who are producing one incomprehensible, badly written manual after another.
Secondly, we would like to think that our children are not being produced as slaves for a labour market and told they are to be useful in one kind of skill one year and another kind of skill in another but that they will live as full persons educated for citizenship and told they have the right to practise democracy in school, not brought in a crocodile to see the likes of us taking decisions in Parliament, but educated to participate in democracy in the classroom, to take part in elections and learn how to treat minorities. We would like to think that in relation to culture they will know the meaning of a pluralist and a liberal culture and will not be given a diet of authoritarian half versions of history. We want them to experience the generosity, wonder and greatness of realising that all children are equal. We do not want them in the final class in primary school to realise that a few of them will be going on for secondary, that another few of them will only go half way through secondary——
The Deputy might now bring his remarks to a conclusion.
——and that probably less than half a dozen will go on to third level, all done in the name of the Republic of all equalities. The most bogus republican of them all took most benefits from this system and did least to change it.
I would like to ask the permission of the House to give my colleague, Deputy McCartan, some few minutes at the end of my contribution.
Is that agreed? Agreed?
I always shudder when I come in to speak following Deputy Michael Higgins who, because he has a far better flow and oratory to do so, expresses so very well many of the thoughts I have on education.
The Irish education system both North and South is permeated by privilege and by an undemocratic and sectarian control. There is little doubt that most of our second and third level education is controlled by religious authorities. In Northern Ireland that is also the case and we can see the terrible results there which are due partly to that kind of education. I often quote an interview I read some years ago in a magazine. The interview was with one of the leaders of the provisional IRA, Mr. Danny Morrison, who pointed out that he believed that but for the existence of Roman Catholic schooling in Northern Ireland the terrible sectarian divisions that existed there and which his organisation so ably perpetuate in such a vicious way, could have died many years ago. Obviously, the sectarian divisions and the viciousness of those divisions in Northern Ireland are not so plain in the South, in the Republic, but they are here. We have sectarian education.
The Minister for Education in this House replying to a question of mine concerning the employment of teachers said that the people who control our schools, the religious orders, the Churches, have a right to demand that teachers be practising Catholics before they can be employed in the schools controlled by those religious orders. The Minister is not prepared to take any action to reverse that decision of the managers of Catholic schools. It is an ominous and serious development of which many parents are not aware.
I have had experience of non-Catholics in my constituency who sought to send their child or children to a school run by a religious order. One parent sought permission to have a child remain outside religious classes. Despite the fact that the school concerned is almost fully funded by the State and the teachers' salaries paid by the State, that parent was told that unless she was prepared to allow her child to attend religious classes she need not bother bringing the child to the school at all. That is a totally unsatisfactory and unacceptable facet of our educational system.
There is urgent need for the replacement of our present educational system by a modern, egalitarian, properly-funded and democratically-controlled one. I am sure Deputy Higgins would agree with me that the likelihood of that taking place in the kind of society obtaining here today is practically nil, that it would be possible only in a Socialist society which has a more human approach to people in general. I fervently hope and work for the day when the ethos of our schools will be a democratic one, rather than the ethos of any one Church whether that be Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or any other. Neither should there be an objection to parents who may want to provide a particular type of religious education for their children. As a democrat, as people in this State who pride themselves on being democrats, I believe we must insist that a public education system is not dominated by any particular religion, that no school is established and publicly-funded on the basis of providing education of a particular religious ethos.
To deal specifically with the Estimates before the House I am concerned that the present Minister and indeed the former one have attacked the education of children of the working classes. It is not those people who can afford to send their children to fee-paying schools, or those who can afford to pay for the university education of their children who are being deprived of educational facilities; it is those who cannot afford to pay. It is significant that most of the educational system is paid for by the people who cannot afford to avail of its facilities. Yet we are told we must accept the present position, that it has obtained for generations and must continue.
I know from personal knowledge that the fact that parents have to pay fees — which are called voluntary contributions — that the price of school books rises continously, that they must be replaced almost every year, that money must be found for school uniforms drives more and more families, many living on social welfare, into the hands of legal and illegal moneylenders. There is even a proliferation of what might be described as the more respectable end of the money-lending market offering all kinds of schemes to parents to invest some savings so that they will be able to pay for their children's education. At the lower end of the scale a family with three children existing on social welfare of approximately £90 a week will face bills next September of approximately £350 between school uniforms, fees and school books in addition to all the incidentals that will have to be met in the course of the school year for various pieces of equipment, outings and so on which are essential if the children are to be provided with any kind of a broader education.
The Minister said she has not cut back the provision for education this year but all of those directly involved in education clearly indicate that she has done so. I am sure there is hardly a Member of this House who has not received representations from those involved in the adult literacy area. Equally I am sure there is not a Member who has not received representations from the Teachers' Union of Ireland who are involved in the VECs and third level colleges, who have itemised areas where there have been severe cuts in the provision for their services both in relation to teachers and a whole range of other services. Deputy MacCartan will be dealing with the literacy area so I will not deal with it in any great detail.
It is somewhat dishonest of the Minister to come into the House and make a bland statement in relation to her Department, attempting to give the impression that everything is fine, that by some means or other she managed to preserve a marvellous system of education which was fair in every way and which was adequately provided for. In fact, she gave the impression that the reduced numbers attending primary schools in future years, due to the decline in the birth rate, would solve many of the problems of the Department in relation to the provision of education. That is something which frightens me. She remarked that she does not intend to allow the falling birth rate to affect the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools which, in many cases, is as high as 40 per class. Bad and all as the present system is, it would appear that in the future we will have an even more unequal system, one under which those who are most disadvantaged will be hit even harder.
I have argued with the present and former Ministers in relation to areas which have been designated as disadvantaged. The scheme of designating certain areas as disadvantaged, providing some extra moneys for them, providing links between schools, parents and so on is a good idea. But unless that is done simultaneously with ensuring an adequate pupil-teacher ratio, it will be a waste of money. Practically every school in my constituency say they would much prefer an extra couple of teachers to deal with their many problems, that they would even hand back a couple of thousand pounds if only they could get a few extra teachers in order to reduce class numbers, thereby providing the personal attention which many pupils need because of their deprived background.
I want to make a few points in relation to third level education. It is true to say that that whole area has changed fairly significantly over the past ten years with the growth of the non-university, third level colleges. This has eroded the dominance of universities in that sector while, over that period, student numbers have increased. But it must be said that the participation rates representing the various classes in our society have not improved significantly. That is a fact which can be proven by simple observation in one's own constituency. I am sure it is the case in most urban constituencies, if not in rural areas as well, that the lower the income of your parents the less is the likelihood that you will ever get third level education.
I also recognise that there are problems in relation to the manner in which people are prepared for third level eduction both in primary and second level schools and that in many cases the disadvantages start at primary level. There is a whole range of issues involved which I will not have time to go into tonight. It is ludicrous and discriminatory that people who are academically suitable to enter third level education and deprived from doing so simply because they do not have a sufficient number of points to get a grant.
I know of one case where a young girl has been offered a place in UCD and can take it up next September if she can find the money to pay the fees. UCD have said they are not prepared to waive the fees and the Minister has said she has no responsibility in the matter, that it is a matter for the college. Because this young girl does not have the requisite number of points to qualify for a grant she is to be deprived of third level education. That is an example of the kind of discrimination which is embedded in the whole grants system and in access to third level education. The Minister said she will rationalise the system and make it simpler for people to get into third level education. I hope she applies herself to that apsect of access to third level education as a matter of urgency.
I wish to make one further point in relation to third level education and that relates to our tendency to view the products of our third level system in purely manpower terms, in terms of gearing all our efforts towards producing technocrats or engineers of one kind or another. While it is obviously essential from the point of view of economic development that we have people who are skilled in various economic areas, it is essential that our third level education system takes into account the cultural and even the spiritual needs of our students and of the society they are being educated to serve. If the Minister intends to take any steps to reform our education system, I urge her to apply herself to that aspect. She should not accept willy nilly all the pressures that come from the various economic interests.
I notice that the Confederation of Irish Industry in the past year or two have been making great efforts to influence the kind of education which is being provided and the direction in which it is being pursued. They have produced all kinds of videos and promotional material on the great service they provide and on the need to provide technological education, which is essential in many ways. There is also a social dimension to education and it is important that that be fully maintained and developed. I also urge the Minister to try to ensure that the education of the physically and the mentally handicapped in society is integrated, in so far as it is possible to do so, with the normal education system and with those who are not physically or mentally impaired.
I am obliged to the House and to the Deputies for the opportunity to raise the issue of the adult literacy programme and to nail a lie that has been repeated many times, and again as recent as Thursday last 11 June, in answer to a question which I put to the Minister in respect of the funding that has been afforded adult literacy schemes throughout the country this year. The Minister sought to make the case that funding has been increased by £50,000. The reality is that it represents a decrease of £100,000 over the figure that had been ear-marked by the previous Government in a three year programme allowing for, in 1985, £150,000; in 1986, £350,000 and in 1987, £500,000. That plan was presented to the national adult literacy groups. They expected, right up to mid-1987, to have that money available to them. Half way through this year they are advised for the first time by the Government that their budget would be decreased by £150,000. What that means is that a sum of £46,500 under this heading is made available for this entire year for the city of Dublin. The city of Dublin now has the princely sum of £14,000 to fund all adult literacy schemes with the result that only £3,820 is allocated to the north city area. One scheme in the Coolock area requires £3,500 to survive for the rest of this year. It is not possible, in the way the funds have been allocated, that that can be achieved.
I am taking this brief opportunity to plead to the Department and to the Minister not to treat adult literacy as a marginal area of education. It must be recognised as an integral part of the system. A system that currently spends £4,500 per head on third level education must do better than allocate a mere £85 per head nationally in order to give adult education a fair opportunity to develop and to give the people involved in that scheme an opportunity of getting back to school and of helping their children as they come through school.
First, I wish to comment on the contribution of Deputy Michael D. Higgins. Unfortunately he is not in the House at present. I am rather surprised at the content of his contribution. It paints a picture of education in this country which could not be further from the truth. His description of primary school education as the scene of misery is one which I think anybody will agree is quite untrue. His description of the lack of creativity in the primary school system is also quite untrue. The Department and the educators are to be complimented for developments which have taken place in recent years in regard to the development of creative education at primary school level. Contrary to what Deputy Higgins said, the new developments in school buildings very much reflect the presence of creativity. Deputy Higgins and I visited a school yesterday where such evidence is to be found.
The Minister agreed it is an exception. It is a school on a seven acre site. Where else in Galway West is there to be found a primary school on a seven acre site?
The Minister, without interruption.
It is the type of school building which is now being provided by my Department in place of existing school buildings which are simply being improved. That development is costing the State an enormous amount of money but it lends itself to the best possible type of education and the enjoyment of creative education by our children.
Before Deputy Michael Higgins came into the Chamber I said that his contribution was far from factual. I decry his description of misery in our primary school system. That is not the position. I have always been impressed by what my former lecturer has to say but I am not in agreement with his description of Irish education.
I was referring to some schools. The Minister of State may have listened to me when I was lecturing to him but I wonder did he listen to my contribution.
I am still listening but I was rather disappointed at the description by the Deputy because it could not be further from the truth.
It may be that the Minister's attention was better when I was lecturing him.
The Deputy's description reminds me of the educational system in some of the countries he visited in recent years. I am pleased to have the opportunity to place on the record of the House the Government's commitment to the support of voluntary endeavour in the areas of youth and sport. The area of youth and sport which is vitally important comes under my stewardship. The value and extent of voluntary activity and initiative in these areas are fully appreciated by the Government who, despite the unprecedented nature of prevailing difficulties in relation to the public finances, are endeavouring to ensure that the necessary level of financial support for their maintenance is forthcoming during the current year.
A total sum of £2,134,000 is being provided in the Vote of the Office of the Minister for Education for the purpose of grant-aid towards youth and sport activities. The Government have already agreed to supplement this provision by the allocation of £3.150 million from the surplus proceeds of the national lottery to youth and sport activities and projects. The total fund of £5,284,000 available to me, therefore, represents a reasonable provision to cover essential needs in these areas in 1987, mindful of the very severe financial constraints facing the Government. Of this total provision, a sum of £3,766,500 is designated for expenditure on youth, while the balance of £1,517,500 will be expended on sport. This distribution has been determined having careful regard to the level of activity and expenditure approved for these areas in 1986.
I should like to clarify the position in regard to the division of lottery proceeds arising out of certain comments that were made. The Government have decided that 45 per cent of the proceeds of the national lottery will be applied to youth and sport and on the basis of the provision made in the revised Estimates, this will amount to £3.15 million in 1987. I should like to emphasise that that is on the basis of the revised Estimate. It is clear that the lottery will provide a significant increase in this amount of money to the Exchequer in 1987. The remaining allocation from the lottery has yet to be decided by the Government and there has not been a final decision on the allocation to youth and sport.
The total fund of £3,766,500 available to my Department for support of the voluntary youth work service this year represents positive recognition by the Government, in the face of acute financial constraints, of the value of on-going activity in this area. It means that, in general, grant assistance to youth organisations under the youth service grant scheme, which is the core activity of my Department in this context, will be maintained at, or near, the individual amounts provided to organisations in this way last year. It will also enable continued support, in 1987, for locally based projects on behalf of disadvantaged young people funded by my Department in 1986. All things considered, I believe that a realistic and significant provision has been made by my Department for the continued support of voluntary endeavours by, and for, young people in the area of youth work for the current year.
Ireland has been deeply involved in all aspects of sporting endeavour. The achievements of our sporting heroes and heroines, of whom there has been a remarkably consistent stream for such a small country, have become enshrined in the collective memory or culture of the nation. To a considerable degree Ireland's international profile and status have been built upon and continue to derive strong support from the successful exploits of sports men and women. Sport contributes directly to many different facets of life and industry of the nation. It provides direct and indirect employment for hundreds of individuals, generates wealth which adds significantly to national income, provides a popular and generally accessible opportunity for fitness, health, entertainment, the pursuit of excellence and sheer good fun. Its pervasive presence in Irish life, as well as the value which the Irish place upon it, is easily proven by looking at the nation's newspapers, television programmes and the advertisements that appear in the media. Sport is something that appeals to and has an intrinsic interest for every Irish person.
The Government realise the value of sport to the economic and social life of the nation. They have prepared their plans on the premise that sport represents an area of human endeavour as deserving of public support as any other. In my view the valuable relationship that exists between sport development and the other major areas of national development, the economy, health and welfare, has been insufficiently recognised in the past and valuable opportunities to harness sport development to the pursuit of broader national goals have been sadly lost. In my view the under developed state of sport in Ireland places us at a severe disadvantage compared to other countries with which we compete. We do not have available the organisational resources or the professional expertise to achieve and sustain significant growth in each sport.
Ireland has indulged in its passion for sport and sporting success without being prepared to support an appropriate level of investment in the substantial effort required to produce the end results. I am working on the preparation of a corporate plan for sport which will outline our sport development policy. I can guarantee the House that the financial input will provide as great a return to the country as any other form of investment.
On a point of order, we have been issued with a script by the Minister of State but I cannot find this contribution in it.
It is not in the script. In the field of sport, I am pleased that it will be possible to maintain the level of grant-aid to national sports organisations at the 1986 level and to provide funding again this year for the scheme of grants to outstanding sportspersons. The aim of this scheme is to enable outstanding sports persons to undertake training and competition at the highest level and to compete with distinction in international events. This scheme enables funding to be allocated directly to our most promising athletes to help alleviate the very high cost of training and competition. I am very pleased with the success of this particular scheme and I look forward to Irish sports people, many of whom have benefited under the scheme, continuing to compete successfully with their peers from other countries.
The Government have a policy of promoting sport for all, the philosophy of which is, that every person irrespective of age, sex, at whatever level of skill, ability or commitment has a right to participate in sport. COSPOIR, the National Sports Council, promotes this policy and this year has launched a new scheme to promote sport for all in the primary school sector. Under this scheme, which includes all 3,500 primary schools and about 500,000 pupils, projects designed to enhance awareness of and shape attitudes to sport for all have been invited. Attractive awards will be made under the scheme in conjunction with a commercial sponsor. This current initiative by COSPOIR is directed at a very important target group — those of formative years, for whom positive attitudes to participation in healthy and enjoyable sporting activity, can be effectively inculcated by thoughtfully prepared sport for all programmes in primary schools. In this regard I would like to make special reference to the co-operation and willing assistance of teachers and schools in this initiative and would like to express my satisfaction with the work which they do in this area.
I would like to add, and this is not scripted either, that in addition to that we have a programme to develop mass participation in sport to encourage people to live lifestyles conducive to health through the medium of sport. In this country we tend to attempt to prevent things after they have happened. Sport is a preventative medicine. Its therapeutic and health care value can be of great benefit to the nation and it is along those lines we propose to develop sport.
The area of youth and sport will be kept under review and will, of course, receive every consideration, as circumstances permit, when the Government are deciding on the distribution of any additional income accruing to the Exchequer from the national lottery when the total surplus available for 1987 can be more clearly identified. Accordingly, it represents a substantial response to established need in the difficult financial circumstances prevailing.
The scheme under which these grants for the provision of recreational facilities may be made has proved extremely popular with voluntary bodies since it was introduced in 1985. At all times the level of demand for grants greatly exceeded the resources available for the scheme and by the end of last year there was a considerable accumulation of grant commitments which could not be met from the 1986 provision. The limited funds in 1987 must now be applied solely to existing commitments and there is unfortunately no scope, therefore, for making any further grant allocations at present.
Under the heading of special education special emphasis continues to be placed on the provision of education for handicapped children. Over the years much development work has taken place under different administrations. The early emphasis on special schools for handicapped children has, for the more common and milder forms of handicap, given way to the development of special classes attached to ordinary national schools. There is an increasing demand for the education of handicapped children as near as possible to their homes, on the grounds that this would be educationally sound policy. There will always, of course, be a need for some educational facilities to be provided in centralised establishments, particularly for the rarer handicaps and those handicaps requiring a large investment of staff and equipment. However, my Department are prepared to review such provision in the light of the educational and social needs of the pupils and the resources already available. The committee which was established to consider how special schools might be developed as resource centres in their areas is coming to the end of its work and is due to report in the near future.
During the 1986-87 school year a second allocation of teaching posts was made available to selected centres to cater for children with severe and profound mental handicap. It is hoped to continue this expansion service as resources permit. The provision of additional assistant teachers to provide remedial education for pupils who fall behind their peers in numeracy and literacy in ordinary national schools will continue. It is hoped to do this by the redeployment of teachers from areas of lesser need.
The monitoring committee which was set up to review progress on the implementation of the recommendations of the Government task force in the wake of the publication of the report of the Travelling People Review Body, continues to meet on a regular basis. This committee includes representatives of the travellers and has just published its second annual report. I want to assure the House that I am taking a keen personal interest in the development of education for travelling people. Continued emphasis is being placed on the provision of educational facilities for those travelling children at primary level. Additional special classes are provided as the need arises and there has been a steady growth in the number of pre-schools grant-aided by my Department.
The provision for school transport in the 1987 Estimates for Public Services is £34,700,000. Based on an out-turn on current expenditure of £33,640,000 in 1986, the increase in the net cost of operating the scheme will be £1,060,000 or 3.2 per cent. Based on the allocation for school transport and the expected yield from school transport charges, the gross cost of running the school transport scheme in 1987 is estimated to be £38,200,000, compared to £36,987,000 in 1986. This is an increase of 3.3 per cent.
The difference between the gross and net costs of operating the scheme in 1987 is £3,500,000. In order to provide for this amount, the term charges and concessionary fares will be increased from September 1987 as follows:
|
Category |
September 1986 |
September 1987 |
|
Eligible post-primary junior cycle pupils |
£19 |
£20 |
|
Eligible post-primary senior cycle pupils |
£32 |
£34 |
|
Concessionary fares for ineligible post primary pupils |
£32 |
£34 |
|
Concessionary fares for ineligible primary pupils |
£14 |
£14 |
|
Maximum contribution per family per term |
£65 |
£70 |
The additional yield in 1987 from the increased charges will be of the order of £90,000. The medical card concession will continue to apply in the case of eligible post primary pupils. It is estimated that the number of pupils who will be eligible for and availing themselves of school transport during 1987 will show an increase of about 1,100, or 0.7 per cent, on the 1986 figure.
A provision of £30,010,000 is being made for the national schools building programme. This programme is concerned in the main with the provision where necessary of new schools and extensions and the replacement of obsolete and unsuitable buildings. Included in the provision is a substantial sum for essential improvement works to existing schools — for example, replacement of windows, roofs, sanitation, heating systems and similar works which while not involving the provision of any extra school places as such are nevertheless of importance in maintaining existing buildings in serviceable condition.
A sum of £38 million is being provided in the Estimate for capital projects at post-primary schools during 1987. This capital investment is required in order to provide additional school accommodation in new urban areas where the pupils concerned cannot be accommodated in existing schools within a reasonable distance; to provide increased pupils capacity at existing schools where such is justified by reference to present and projected pupil numbers and to replace existing unsatisfactory classrooms, whether of a traditional or prefabricated type, which have outlived their usefulness.
In order to cater for the rapid expansion in numbers during the late sixties and seventies, over 60,000 places were provided by means of prefabricated accommodation. An ongoing part of the capital programme for second level schools is the eventual replacement over time of such accommodation by permanent type buildings in all cases where it is justified by long term school population needs. The provision of new accommodation or the replacement of existing accommodation is only undertaken after careful assessment of local demographic trends and their implications for future enrolment levels in existing schools, not only in the areas directly involved but also quite frequently in schools in neighbouring areas as well. Finally, to ensure as far as possible cost-effective investment, each proposed new capital project is now examined in the context of school resources generally in the catchment area to investigate, before committing resources, the options for integration or co-ordination of facilities.
In the event of other speakers offering I intend to give part of my time to Deputy Lowry.
Is that satisfactory? Agreed.
These restricted Estimate debates are inherently unsatisfactory, and particularly unsatisfactory for a subject such as education because, in addition to the nuts and bolts of the Estimate, there are serious philosophical matters which need to be discussed. These have been touched on by Deputy Higgins and to a lesser extent by Deputy De Rossa and, in themselves, would form an interesting and very important debate.
It would be an interesting exercise if the survey which Deputy Higgins suggested were taken among the parents of Ireland as to whether they like the denominational system that pertains or if they would like to see a change. I would be prepared to bet a fair amount of money that the survey would show a wish for no change but — and it is important to put this on record — wherever a group of parents wish to provide a multi-denominational or a non-denominational school, the facilities to assist them in doing so will be made available, provided the Department of Education can be satisfied that the project is viable, will continue and is not just a once off fad. I was interested to hear Deputy De Rossa criticise the educational system. He said it should not be dominated by any one religious system. I thought this was somewhat ironic coming from the spokesman for Ireland's real Communist Party which masquerades under the title "The Workers' Party." We know that in Russia there is only one ethos available.
I mention these as some of the interesting things we could go into in more detail and in greater depth if we had more time. We have not, unfortunately, so I will confine myself to speaking on the Minister's speech and on some matters of concern to the constituency which the Minister and I have the honour to represent. I had intended to speak only on some local matters and to draw the Minister's attention to the urgency of ensuring that they would get attention and some priority within her allocation but, having read her speech, I find myself compelled to make some comment on it.
It grieves me to have to say that I consider this speech to be less than frank, and that is to be diplomatic about it. Deputy Hussey in her analysis of it, which was quite devastating, exposed the inadequacies of the Minister's presentation. Somebody who did not know the educational scene and who will not have the advantage of reading Deputy Hussey's analysis might read the Minister's speech and think things are rosy in the educational garden. Of course, there have been some savage and ruthless cutbacks in a number of areas and it behaves the Minister to be frank with the House and the educational sector and to indicate chapter and verse the changes and the reductions that are being made so that they will not come as a surprise or as a bolt from the blue to the unfortunate people in the educational sector. I am sure if they were told about these cuts and if they were rationalised, there might be a better acceptance and possibly a better implementation of them.
An example is the Minister's facile reference to the fact that the transition year option has been approved for schools in which it had been established. As Deputy Hussey pointed out, the Minister was in the forefront demanding that that transition year option would not merely be continued but would be expanded into all schools. That wish on the part of the Minister has gone. The fact that it is not being extended to any extra school is due entirely to a policy decision by the Minister because I was prepared to allow it to be expanded to a restricted number of schools. Because of budgetary constraints it was not possible to allow all schools into it, but it was possible to allow a certain extra limited number of schools in because we have to admit it is still experimental in nature and we have to go slowly in that regard.
I do not know if the Minister is being totally frank about the school transport system and her intentions. She merely gives the cost of it and says she will keep it under review to ensure the greatest possible cost effectiveness. On 9 June Deputy Carey asked the Minister if she was considering a pilot private transport scheme of school buses in County Clare and if she would make a statement in the matter. The Minister said she has made no decision on introducing a pilot project under which the organisation of school transport would be devolved. That was not answering the question "if she was considering a pilot private transport scheme". I know, and the Minister knows, that there were proposals for such developments in the school transport scheme and the Minister should be frank with us and let us know if she is considering them. If she is, she should give us an idea when her considerations are likely to be concluded and if she has any indication at this stage how she will conclude those considerations.
There was what I consider to be a glaring omission from the Minister's speech. I could not see any reference to her plans for the future of Carysfort Training College. We all remember the emotional debates we had in this House when the previous Minister, Deputy Hussey, and myself at the later date, were castigated for the decision taken with regard to the rationalisation of primary teacher training, a decision which involved the phasing out of Carysfort College as a centre for the training of primary teachers. Before I left office I had set up an eminent working party which produced what I thought to be a viable set of proposals for the future of that college which would give it — if you will forgive the word — a meaningful role in education for the future and would also, and this is very important, safeguard the future of the staff. It was not very acceptable to some of the authorities in the college, but I am anxious to know what is happening there because it must be a matter of great uncertainty to the staff not to have their future decided at this stage.
One of the hopes I had for the new role for Carysfort was that it would become a powerhouse for language teaching. As we are confirmed in our membership of a Europe which is becoming more and more integrated, it is becoming more important that our young people should have a facility in at least one modern continental language. That would require a crash programme of language teaching and I had a vision of Carysfort as the engine room for generating an enhanced crash programme of modern language teaching. I also had the vision that in every RTC it would be compulsory for all students to attend a language course so that they would complete their time in the RTC with a fluency in a modern continental language, not necessarily in the grammar of the language, but that they would have colloquial fluency. I am anxious to know if the Minister shares my ambitions in that regard and if she will indicate some activity towards that end.
Another very important matter in train was the investigation of the review of the possibility of setting up a technological university embracing at least the two national institutes in Limerick and Dublin. A distinguished team of local and foreign academics were surveying that scene and I imagine their deliberations must be nearly complete by now. I am anxious to hear if the Minister has the report or expects it since the people in those institutions are anxious for an early decision because it will have considerable importance for the future of technological training and education in this country.
I am disappointed by the lack of a positive statement from the Minister on the future of the Curriculum and Examinations Board. The Bill has been published, but the Minister does not give a commitment to pursue the legislation. We get a rather odd statement in her speech: "The position of the interim Curriculum and Examinations Board is currently due for clarification."
What does that mean?
That is what I should like the Minister to explain when she is replying. Does she intend to proceed with the legislation, will she alter it and, if so, when will we know of the changes? If she intends to pursue it, may we have a commitment that it will be brought to the House when we resume after the summer recess? It is very important that that matter should be clarified because it has been left on an interim basis for far too long.
In-service training was, rightly, one of the Minister's great concerns when she was in Opposition but the couple of paragraphs in her script are delightfully vague about her proposals for that service. It is expensive but terribly important. If the funds are not there to continue it we should at least be told. The bland two paragraphs conceal a lessening of the funds because I am quite certain that if the funds had been increased the matter would not have been presented in such a quiet way. I should like to hear from the Minister in that regard, it is another example of how her script avoids telling us the full truth — I use the words deliberately — about the position in the Minister's Department following the revised Estimates prepared by her and her colleagues in Government. A lot of bad news is concealed under the bland generalties of the script and it is less than proper for the Minister to come into this House on an Estimates debate and to conceal realities from it and from the people.
As I indicated, my primary purpose in intervening was to talk about a couple of matters relating to the constituency which the Minister and I have the honour to represent. Two matters in regard to Athlone come within the Minister's bailiewick. I had indicated to Athlone Regional Technical College that I would make funds available for the purchase of lands adjoining the campus which are strategically placed for the future development of the college. I understand that the VEC, the body with responsibility for receiving and spending these moneys, have been unable to get any decision from the Department on their availability. I am quite certain that the Minister, as a former chairperson of the VEC, an ex-member of the board of management as well as sharing with me the honour of being a Deputy for the town, will want to ensure that these essential and urgent funds will be made available so that negotiations for this strategic——
Did Deputy Cooney provide the funds?
Yes, they were provided for in the capital allocation. I am not asking the Minister to provide extra money as she has a very large capital budget and it is entirely up to her to order the priorities of spending within the ceilings available to her. I was long enough in office to learn that the Minister can order those priorities in such a way as to make available for the County Westmeath VEC the funds needed to purchase the extra grounds at Athlone Regional Technical College. I also provided for funds for the VEC for the purchase of playing fields for Athlone Vocational School. The Minister will be aware that Athlone Vocational School over the last couple of years has developed in an extraordinary fashion. It has become revitalised and is equal, if it does not exceed, in attraction the other post primary schools in the district. However, it needs playing fields to complement it. The ground is there but it needs to be developed and it is a matter for the Minister to order the funds within the allocation available to her to provide much needed playing fields for this excellent school in her home town. I appeal to the Minister not to let us down.
County Longford is also part of our constituency and there is an excellent vocational school in Ballymahon with a very good and active parents' committee who gathered a substantial amount of money towards the cost of building a gymnasium. They went to the United States and ran fund raising activities among emigrants. They also raised a lot of funds locally and accumulated a very substantial sum. I felt that that community effort should be matched by an input from central funds. I agreed to make an allocation to them so that they could build the gymnasium in Ballymahon which would not just be available to the school but to the community. It would be a wonderful facility. I hope the Minister will ensure the ordering of the funds within her disposal and within the allocation of her Department to ensure that that worthwhile project will go ahead.
I also provided funds for Longford Vocational School for the refurbishment of the playing fields attached to it. I told the parents that the granting of funds would be on condition that there would be a contribution from them and that they would raise funds in the community. They set about that task and worked with a will. They raised — and are continuing to raise — a substantial amount of money locally. That effort should be matched and acknowledged by the Department. I ask the Minister, bearing in mind the loyalty of that constituency to her party and the obligations she has to repay that loyalty, not to let down herself, Minister Reynolds, Deputy Abbott, Senator Cassidy, Senator Fallon and Senator Doherty. In fairness to all the constituency colleagues of her party she has an obligation to ensure that she will allocate these funds. They are not asking for any extra, the funds are available and it is a question of her having the political will to deliver on these worthwhile projects.
There was a lot of loyalty in west Galway as well.
Good man, Michael.
Not to mention Wicklow.
I do not think any Deputy in the House would object to such projects going ahead.
I understand that Deputy Cooney wished to give some of his time to another Deputy but if he speaks for much longer he will have nothing to give.
That was on the understanding that somebody might offer from the other benches but, looking around, it is unlikely.
I was advised that there was an agreement in regard to giving your time to another Deputy.
I did indicate that to the Chair. I am almost finished but my speech was so important that I did not want to stint my contribution and acknowledgement of the dedication of the parents and school staffs in Ballymahon, Athlone and Longford. I understand that the Minister had a deputation from Granard Vocational School recently from which she will be aware that the community has raised a considerable amount of money for a gymnasium there. I had not allocated any funds for that, if I had been in office a little longer perhaps I might have managed that as well. However, the Minister could compensate in this regard.
Another point is in relation to adult literacy. The Minister will be aware that a very advanced scheme had been devised in County Longford to combat this problem which is a very difficult one in a rural area. In a large city people in need of literacy training can come forward in a more impersonal and anonymous way but it is not so easy in rural areas. County Longford VEC have done trojan work and have identified many people in need. Unfortunately, that very valuable programme will now be curtailed. I make a plea to the Minister — I do not want to make a sexist remark but women generally are regarded as being more compassionate than men — to ensure that the adult literacy scheme, above all other things in her Department, will not be prejudiced.
I am disappointed that the Minister of State did not advert to the national sports centres. I should like the Minister to confirm that the decision made to locate a sports centre in Athlone will be implemented.
Sports centres are of interest because we saw the greatest political opportunism from the Deputy's party in terms of the national sports centre which they said would be located in Athlone.
I should like to make a brief contribution and to congratulate the Minister and the Minister of State on their speeches this evening. A lot of criticism has been made regarding the Minister's commitment to the vocational sector, to the Gaeltacht and to the people of the Gaeltacht.
Ba mhaith liom comhghairdeas a dhéanamh leis an Aire as ucht an chúrsa ardteistiméireachta atá curtha ar fáil aici i Rosmuc, mar dob i sin ceann des na ceardscoileanna nach raibh an cúrsa sin ar fáil inti. Is maith an rud go bhfuil beart déanta aige ar son Coiste Gairm Oideachais Contae na Gaillimhe i leith na ndaltaí i Rosmuc.
An bhfuil aon rud san scriopt faoi Indreabhán?
Beidh seans ag an Aire freagra a thabhairt ar an cheist sin ach tá mise, agus is dócha an Teachta Higgins, ag cur fáilte roimh an chúrsa ardteistiméireachta i Rosmuc.
Cinnte.
Rosmuc is one of the number of vocational schools that have now got full leaving certificate. The last announcement was made by the former Minister for Education, Deputy Wilson. A similar announcement was made for New Inn school at Ballinasloe. This is a very welcome development.
Do not forget the new community school at Gort.
I should like to speak in particular about the case that has been made for higher education grants. I welcome the fact that the Minister has increased the income limits in line with inflation. It is very sad that, year after year, the same case has to be made at local authority level and with the Department that there are many areas here that should be looked at by the Minister and in particular that there is so little information for parents and students about such basic things as the closing date for application for higher education grants. This has caused problems year after year. This year the closing date has been brought forward. I cannot understand why there is not some information leaflet which sets out very clearly the types of grants available for higher education, vocational education and, ESF grants. I raised this matter in the Dáil on many occasions in the past.
There are many shortcomings in the higher education grants system. It seems unfair that where there are two, three or perhaps more children in the one family attending third level college, no provision is made within the very strict income limits to give even a fee or a maintenance grant to such families. There is no provision relating to any income tax allowance for people on PAYE or other people paying tax. We hear much talk of insurance companies bringing in schemes so that families can provide for finance for higher education. It is sad that we have not looked in any imaginative way at helping people, apart from what the insurance companies are trying to do, in many cases providing bad insurance schemes which will not provide for higher education.
Hear, hear.
There has been much talk by various Governments in the past about the new facilities being provided in primary schools. We all welcome new buildings and extensions and the very fine school built and opened in Craughwell by the Minister of State. As a teacher I have visited many older schools which are looking for extension. They are certainly very dreary places and we urgently need to provide new facilities. It is ironic to hear talk about new schools being opened when there are such dreadful facilities in schools. In my own constituency of County Galway over the past number of years we have seen very bad facilities for parents and children. I raised on the Adjournment with Deputy Cooney last year the case of Labally national school where in one classroom there are two teachers teaching approximately 60 pupils with a partition between the two classes. In this day and age it is deplorable and scandalous that that should be allowed to continue. I hope that contract will be awarded now for that school.
People have grown old dealing with the paper work. The Deputy is quite right.
It is very galling for parents and teachers in those old schools to hear of money being provided for gymnasia and all the modern facilities in the second and third level colleges and universities. That is an area I hope the Minister will look at — the question of improving schools which are in such very bad need of facilities.
I wish the Minister and Minister of State well in their offices and hope that we can improve facilities, particularly at primary school level which is the cornerstone of education. On the review of the curriculum, the primary school curriculum has been very successful. I heard Deputy Higgins speak about imagination, creativity, music and dance. The primary school curriculum helped to bring that about. There were areas where the idea was not embraced with as much zeal as in the majority of schools, but it helped. That has been a success. It is time to review all these schemes. It is very significant that national primary teachers undertook that scheme with great zeal and there was no question of looking for extra money or allowances to bring it in. I was a student in a training college at the time the scheme was piloted through. I saw in my first year in training college that things had to be done according to a very set pattern and in my second year it turned out to be a child-centred primary education programme. I have always wished it well and I have always enjoyed teaching under that programme. I hope the Minister will bear in mind some of the points I have made.
I call now on Deputy Lowry and I am glad that he will not be as restricted as he would have been if he had risen earlier.
With your agreement, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I should like to give part of my 20 minutes to my colleague, Deputy Deenihan, if that is acceptable.
It is not the Chair that agrees to that; it is the House.
Of course.
I should like to congratulate the Minister on her appointment and wish her well in her new role. I am sure she will be quite closely marked by her experienced predecessor, Deputy Hussey. I am happy that the Minister has addressed many of the real and pressing problems. There is an urgent need to change the education system and to put greater emphasis on assessment rather than examinations. At present we have thousands of young students enduring a system which does not make sense — a three hour paper deciding a student's future.
In the present system there is no personality or character monitoring of students and no emphasis is placed on communicative skills. We have the same rigid curriculum as was there in 1922 except that Latin and Greek have been deleted from it. These have been replaced by broader languages which are killed off by over emphasis on writing and grammar. There is too much stress on literature and not enough on language. Language should be the window to literature. A teaching concept should be experimented with. Interchange at the top of a class would stimulate discussion and encourage greater involvement and participation by students.
I regret the limitations and constraints placed by the Minister on career breaks. It is essential that teachers, for whatever reasons, are allowed to recharge their batteries and rediscover their appetite for the very important and demanding role they fulfil. It also affords the opportunity to graduates to gain valuable experience.
The Minister should seriously consider implementing a phased early retirement scheme. How can a teacher with 40 years experience be expected to cope with the strains and demands of the modern classroom? It is demanding too much of a teacher who was trained in the chalk and blackboard era to continue to keep abreast of modern advances and to retain, after a lifetime of service, the necessary energy, motivation and enthusiasm.
I object strongly to the Minister's proposal for a reduction in the number of remedial teachers. One out of every ten children leaves school without an adequate grasp of the curriculum. Many are left behind for the want of attention. They feel rejected and disheartened and enter the main stream and jobs market demoralised and deflated. Surely this growing problem requires to be given priority and adequate funding.
It was with disbelief and anger that I learned of the Department's decision to refuse to issue the schedule of accommodation for the Tipperary Regional College to be based at Thurles. This decision effectively means that the establishment of the college is long-fingered indefinitely or abandoned completely. The Department of Education, various Ministers and all the political parties have accepted the validity of the case put forward by the North Tipperary Vocational Education Committee. I request the Minister to assure the House that Fianna Fáil's pre-election commitments in this regard will not be totally reneged on or completely disregarded.
When the Coalition Government took office in 1982 the allocation in the 1983 Book of Estimates to the 70 governing bodies of sport was £619,000. In 1986 under the Coalition Government the State allocation to sport increased to £1.6 million. The Coalition then introduced the national lottery. This was originally intended to be a sports lottery. The Coalition gave a commitment to divert 55 per cent of the proceeds from the lottery to sport. Its ability to raise money has been a staggering success. It now realised more during the first few months than was envisaged for the first full year. Despite this the Government say they will allocate 45 per cent of £7 million to sport. This type of activity can only be described as fraudulent. Sport is an excellent antidote to drug abuse, vandalism and violence. Young people involved in sport are not generally involved in any anti-social behaviour. Many young people with nothing to do and nowhere to go all day every day will end up locked away in an institution costing the State £800 per week paid for with hard earned taxpayers' money. Does the Minister accept that there is a strong economic argument in favour of much more State aid for sport?
I want to ask the Minister what will happen to the national sports centre. A former Minister for my party set up a committee to examine and consult all the interests involved in sport. That committee presented their report almost six months ago. Will the Minister give a commitment to the House that the national sports centre will be commenced this year?
I intend to be brief in my remarks. As a member of Kerry VEC I am rather saddened that VECs have been singled out more than any other sector of education for drastic cutbacks. Having worked within the VEC for the past two years I realise fully the problems the VECs face. The problems teachers in VECs face are very different from the problems faced by teachers in the religious sector and other sectors of secondary education. For this reason, rather than being discriminated against they should be further funded. In the light of my own experience, and I am sure the Minister's experience, I appeal to her that rather than singling out the VECs for cutbacks they should be given increased funding and every effort should be made to ensure that the teachers and pupils in the VECs are not exposed to any further stress or strain.
VECs have a heavy burden to carry in our secondary education system. There is a distinct possibility that some of the students who are attending VECs will have to buy their own materials when they go back to school after the summer holidays. This may be an exaggeration but I would like clarification from the Minister on it.
I am very disappointed that the adult literacy programmes have been singled out and badly hit by the cutbacks. Adult literacy programmes deal with the most deprived sections of our community, a section who probably were deprived in the post free educational era. These people now have an opportunity to learn the basics of communication. I do not have to point out that basic reading skills are critical in modern society. This proposal has been received with widespread indignation by the people involved in VECs. It will have to be corrected in next year's Estimate.
As a former teacher I am very concerned about the embargo on staffing. This will have a very serious effect on the employment of specialist teachers. My understanding — and I may be corrected on this — is that teachers will not be replaced. There is a school in Tipperary where the woodwork teacher is leaving and the school authorities cannot replace him because they are over the quota. Where a school is under the quota and a specialist teacher has to be replaced, be it maths, languages or whatever, I understand the authorities can employ a teacher only on a part time basis. It will be very difficult to get an honours maths teacher to take on a job for one year. I would like the Minister to clarify that.
The Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, made reference to special education. There is no doubt that as a nation we have improved by leaps and bounds in the provision of facilities for the handicapped. We must ensure that this funding in this time of financial crisis will not be reduced over the next few years. Where schools are to be provided we should go through the various stages with every possible speed. I will refer briefly to the proposed Nano Nagle school for the handicapped in Lixnaw, County Kerry. There is a problem regarding the siting of the school. I appeal to the Department, to site the school in the best interests of the children and to carry out the site examinations and ensure that the various stages are expedited. At the moment over 60 children are placed in a school that has long outlived its purpose. As this school serves all of north Kerry, there is urgent need for a school in this locality. Indeed, the intake is increasing as assessment measures prove to be more effective and as more parents recognise the whole dimension of handicap. I am sure all members agree that whatever the financial crisis this vulnerable section must be helped in every way possible.
I would have preferred if Deputy Fahey were here at the moment as I am about to refer to the funding for youth and sport. The change of policy with regard to the percentage of the lottery to be spent on sport was a total betrayal of youth and of sport. I do not blame Deputy Fahey whom I am sure would like to avail of all the proceeds from the lottery. I blame the people in the Department of Finance. In the Seanad debate on the national lottery, I foretold what took place when it was decided to reduce the funding from 55 per cent to 45 per cent. I pointed out in that debate that in times of crisis sport would take the rap first. This is what has happened. The idea of the national lottery was promoted to ensure that for once in our history sport would be put on a sound financial footing so that we would have the type of facilities needed, so that we could have a national sports stadium, so that we could have better coaching facilities for sport organisations, so that we could have the possibility of setting up a sports centre to house all the various organisations and so that we could fund outdoor activities and ensure that centres like Cappanalea Outdoor Education Centre in County Kerry would be kept going.
There was an Adjournment debate on Cappanalea but there is still a huge question mark hanging over its future. Will the Minister clarify the position as regards the continuation of Cappanalea and indeed the Department's policy on outdoor education and recreation. Outdoor education and recreation is one of the fastest growth areas in the world. Instead of taking funding from these centres, we should increase funding. If the national lottery money was left solely to sport and to youth there would be adequate funding to ensure the continuation and promotion of these centres.
Not alone have these centres an educational value but they have a tourism value. We have many sites that could be developed as recreational and outdoor pursuit centres and they could attract numerous youth groups from the Continent, for example. Great work has been going on in Cappanalea in the fusion of youth groups from the North and the South in activities there. Unless the centre is funded this type of progress will collapse. I appeal to the Minister to be specific in her reply to Cappanalea and in relation to outdoor education in general.
The Minister of State in his speech mentioned that grants were not available this year for the provision of recreational facilities and that the money available would only compete existing ones. Moneys in excess of the £7 million collected from the lottery should be devoted to sport and to the provision of recreational facilities especially as the purpose of the lottery was to promote sport. If we seriously recognised the value of sport we would realise its value in relation to health. A huge amount of money is spent here on curative medicine as compared with the amount spent on preventative medicine by comparison with countries like Australia and other States. If we had a major investment in sport we could bring down our health bill considerably. That is a well documented fact. I know that at the Cabinet table the Minister's colleagues will be pressed for funds too but I would appeal to the Minister for Education to make a special case for increased funding for sport from the lottery.
How long has the Minister to reply to the debate?
Ordinarily, the Minister could use what time was left. The order provided for the Minister to be called not later than 11.50 p.m.
How long did Deputy Deenihan have to speak?
Deputy Deenihan had the time that was in order for him. The Deputy shared time with Deputy Lowry by agreement of the House.
You are aware that no other Deputy is offering and Deputy Deenihan was asked to conclude his speech early. There is no other speaker and Deputy Deenihan could speak if the Leas-Cheann Comhairle saw fit to allow him to speak his full 20 minutes. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle should allow the Deputy to do so.
If Deputy Hussey will resume her seat I will tell her the position.
I will be glad to do so.
Deputy Hussey is completely wrong. The House having called Deputy Lowry, Deputy Lowry having indicated that he wished to share his time with Deputy Deenihan and the House having agreed to that, meant that Deputy Deenihan should conclude at the end of 20 minutes, otherwise, Deputy Hussey would agree, bearing in mind that any other Member from any other party could have come in, we would be cutting across his or her interest. That is precisely the position of Standing Orders. The Chair resents very much that Deputy Hussey in her lack of knowledge of the order presumed to make the statement she made. I am now calling the Minister and asking Deputy Hussey to resume her seat.
In view of the fact that Deputy Lowry was making his maiden speech and was unaware of the niceties of these procedures, perhaps the House would agree to Deputy Deenihan being allowed to finish his speech?
That is only a concoction by Deputy Hussey to thwart the Minister. I am calling the Minister.
I resent that remark just as you resented mine. I hope that the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will apologise.
The Minister, in her own time.
In my own time, thank you. Deputy Deenihan did not appear to be gasping to say something else. He gave a very fine speech to which I listened with great eagerness and I hope to respond to some of the points he made. I welcome the very comprehensive debate which has occurred here tonight on the Education Estimate and I thank all of the Members who contributed to that debate. In particular I congratulate Deputy Lowry. I did not know until I heard the Leas-Cheann Comhairle issuing his comhgairdeas that it was the Deputy's maiden speech. That seems a singularly inappropriate word to use for a gentleman Member for his first speech in this House, for what I hope will be the first of many speeches.
I regret that I had to leave because of a very urgent matter which was brought to my attention but I will try to deal with some of the issues raised here and others, which I cannot deal with, will be referred to my Department for reply.
I regretted greatly the intervention from a Member whom I regarded as my esteemed colleague in my constituency but whose contribution was less than honest in the explanation he gave to this House and which he presumes to give to the people in Athlone, Westmeath and Longford regarding the provision he made for facilities in the educational establishment in the heady weeks leading up to the general election. I did not wish to become political. I always valued a certain bi-partisan approach between Deputy Cooney and me when he was Minister and I assumed that this would continue in a constructive way when I became Minister. However, I am afraid I must refute the comment he made here tonight, more presumably for local consumption and the local papers. His allegation that he provided playing fields at Ballymahon, Granard, and Athlone vocational school and at the regional college is untrue. There was no specific provision for these resources in the Estimate he left behind. When I indicated by my facial expression that I knew this and was going to say so he then said that there was a total provision so one could go bumpety, bump, bump. There was no specific provision for these resources within the allocation he left behind him, neither has there been a disturbance in the capital allocation he left behind him. There was a huge wallop of those resources over which, as I said, I had no control. His allegation in this House tonight that he made provision for those proposals is untrue. In regard to his record of service to his constituents it is remarkable that in the four months since he was elected he has not chosen to make himself publicly available to his constituents in Longford or Westmeath. To come into the House and disturb what was a constructive relationship at political level is mischievous and out of character with what I had assumed was his method of operation. However, once I know that it will make things very simple for me in how I operate. The people of Athlone know well, as they showed in their vote in February, which Deputy they prefer. Two to one is a fair record.
Deputy Cooney referred to the silence on Carysfort. I said in my speech that I had met the sisters there about four weeks ago, and again last Friday, for an hour and a half in my Department. I am conducting each meeting with the sisters. They come at my invitation to the Department and I will make that a feature of the meetings. They have requested that until all negotiations are worked out between the sisters, the staffing and ourselves, matters remain confidential, and I have agreed to that request. I respect their wishes in this regard and will continue to have a deep commitment to the talks which are proceeding with the Carysfort authorities and to working out a solution which will be painful perhaps but which will be an attempt to identify and serve the needs of all concerned. It is completely untrue that there is silence on that issue.
I want to knock another myth raised by Deputy Hussey and Deputy Cooney about the transition year. The transition year is not scrapped. It remains in place for the schools which take part in it already. I was quite intrigued when I got into the Department to read a memorandum of some time in early January regarding a Government decision that the transition year was to be scrapped in toto. For an interval nothing happened and then came a confused decision which on my interpretation was that there was no written Government decision to overcome that earlier decision. Again I smile at the assumptions and assertions. Deputy Hussey was a member of the Fine Gael Government which lasted for about six weeks or so, and she and Deputy Cooney talked so lovingly of a transition year. Of course it was a wonderful concept. Of course it would be admirable if every school in the land could provide a transition year, but they did not provide the resources for such a transition year.
No resources are needed for it.
Deputy Hussey spoke at length tonight and I never once interrupted her. I used to give her that privilege when she spoke here as Minister.
I never——
Perhaps we will have to scrap all those courtesies, but I hope not because we should share a common cause in education. The Curriculum and Examinations Board attracted immense interest in this House tonight. Could it be that we have distinguished people in the gallery? Indeed, they are very distinguished and I paid tribute to them tonight when I spoke about the tremendous dedication and work put in, an enormous amount of it voluntary, by the various course and syllibi committees and by the executive of the interim Curriculum and Examinations Board. That is exactly what they are; they were set up as an interim board. I smiled when Deputy Cooney spoke about his legislation, remembering private conversations, which I would not repeat here tonight, which he and I had on this matter during the 12 months he was Minister. However, if similar provocations arise again in this forum or other fora I shall not hesitate to break the protocol of private conversation regarding all the workings and the legislation of the interim board. I have met with the interim board and I expect to meet them again in the morning. I am engaging them in a very distinguished task in conjunction with my Department. It was wonderful to introduce all sorts of exciting and heady ideas and never have to provide the money for them. I should love to have been in that position.
I note that in all of my remarks from the initiation of the Curriculum and Examinations Board I warned against raising too high expectations about the possible implementation of such proposals when the reality was bound to be so very different. I well remember two years ago huge press headlines reading "Inter-Cert to be scrapped", and visiting classes with children expressing the fear that there would be no intermediate certificate next year. I talked constantly about the raising of such expectations, advocating the planned way in which developments could be announced and funded.
I am sure Deputy Lowry was quite sincere when he spoke about the need for assessment. It should be remembered that assessment has huge implications for young people. It also has huge implications for teachers in regard to objectivity, correct standards and all sorts of things. It would have to be implemented in a very precise, correct way. I have a strong commitment to curriculum reform. To that end I am hopeful that the Curriculum and Examinations Board whose distinguished members I will be meeting in the morning in what I hope will prove to be a fruitful meeting — will come along with me and my Department on a most comprehensive review of the primary schools curriculum I have announced already.
Deputy Quill raised the issue of the schools-industry links, an area in which I am very interested. I was very pleased about three weeks ago to be able to introduce a pilot project in Finglas on the schools-industry links and to allocate finance for that project. It is an example of what I meant about my development programme in education. I have dealt with this matter quite early in a positive manner.
Several Members raised the matter of there being more time available to Members generally to debate Education Estimates. Deputy Cooney raised the matter because, he said he had an hour last year and spoke for ten minutes. I would have wished to have spoken for an hour and a half but was not afforded the opportunity. Perhaps we can press for more time next year.
To those who said I did not make myself clear I should say I have availed of every opportunity on which I have been asked to speak on radio and elsewhere. For example, within a week of assuming office, I took part in an open telephone broadcast lasting one hour. I was available with no screening to any incoming call and answered each one. I do not remember my former Minister for Education having done the same. I have also met various groups and I have not shirked my responsibilities in what I have had to say to them. For example, I have said: "This is your budgetary allocation. That is all I have, I wish I had more but I have not". Delegation after delegation expressed the view that that was the first time they had met any Minister for Education, the first time there was ever such open and honest contact between them and a Minister. Therefore, the allegation of other Members, particularly former Ministers, that I was less than honest is totally incorrect. I would point out also that I spoke in the House in early April on the budgetary Estimates at great length, something many other Ministers did not do.
I emphasise all of the operations of my Department are open to scrutiny and I resent the allegation that questions for written answer are somehow being answered in a bland way, an assertion which Deputy Hussey made with incresing ferocity——
And oral ones as well.
I very much resent that assertion. The Deputy should remember that in this House she frequently stood over the integrity of public servants in the Department of Education. I have nothing but the highest of praise for the men and women working in my Department who deliver such a very fine service to the public and country at large in very difficult circumstances. To cast aspersions on their replies furnished to me and, through me, to the public at large is reprehensible
The criticism levelled was not at the Minister present but rather the fact that replies could be more explicit.
That is another matter but to assert that they were less than honest is completely wrong. With regard to the teaching of languages, again Deputy Cooney referred to his vision of what might happen at Carysfort College with regard to the teaching of languages. It is remarkable that there is no record of that vision whatsoever in the Department. There is the trace of an idea which he had last year, a very worthy one, for the devising of a scheme whereby the teaching of German could be introduced on a more comprehensive basis in post-primary schools. Regrettably, Deputy Cooney did not appear to have followed that up. I make the point because he waxed lyrical about it this evening. As the assertion of dishonesty was being bandied about, it is as well that I make the position clear and perhaps puncture the fine notions espoused on the part of a Department the Deputy left so recently. Deputy Cooney said that the report of the experts in the technological university area is awaited. I would remind him he established that committee and their remit from him was to report in September 1987. He might remember that fact.
Deputy Deenihan's point was directed to the Minister of State but as I have overall responsibility I will reply, that is, about the needs of special children. The Deputy mentioned privately to me the school in which he was interested. He asked that I reply on the matter of outdoor recreational centres in general and the particular one in which he was interested, Cappanalea. I do not have that information with me. I will have it compiled and let the Deputy have it.
I explained to Deputy M. Higgins why I could not be present for his contribution. I am interested in the points he raised with me both privately and in the House this evening about the denominational system of education, the need, as he sees it, of a survey to be undertaken indicating people's wishes for the provision of various types of primary education for their children. Where a case is made to my Department based on the need for a multi-denominational facility, it will be examined. I am at present engaged in negotiations and talks about the Sligo school project along with my colleague, the Minister for Finance, who has expressed a great interest in the matter, understandably it being in his constituency.
In the meantime, will individual parents have to go to the courts?
That is another matter. The Deputy raised the general matter of the provision of such education. I am emphasising the fact that the Department have been most generous and willing to listen to cases put to them, of course bearing in mind the overall financial constraints within which we must labour.
I intend to advise individual people to go to the Supreme Court.
Of course the Deputy may dispense any advice he wishes to his constituents; that is a correct interpretation of his duty as a public representative. I will revert to one point raised, that is about vacancies occurring in schools which are in quota. Deputy Deenihan spoke as though he thought such schools were being provided with teacher hours. They will be provided with a full teacher who will be timetabled to teach full hours, in other words a full-time teacher.
But not on a permanent basis?
No, that is the point to which I am coming. The Deputy spoke as though it was for partial hours only. Pending the working out of the parameters and ramifications of an efficient, workable redeployment scheme — something former Ministers appear to have shirked — which we hope can be achieved with the co-operation of all concerned there being many hurdles to be overcome before it is satisfactorily devised and pending its introduction, hopefully in the academic year commencing September 1988, it would have been incorrect to have embarked on further recruitment of what might be termed permanent teachers until the position becomes clear as to what teachers are currently available following a redeployment scheme. To clear up the point raised by the Deputy, a teacher will teach full hours in the school and not a diminishment of the hours.
In a problem school?
I do not think the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will allow me to elaborate further but I would be prepared to speak with the Deputy again on the matter.
It is often the case at the end of an Estimates debate that the Minister agrees to answer one small uncontentious question. Earlier in the day the Minister said that within a couple of hours she should have clarification regarding the theft of leaving certificate papers. Can she now tell us if that matter has been sorted out?
No, I do not have information yet. Because of the Deputy's assiduous application of her duties as Opposition spokesperson, I have been confined to the House since 7 p.m. The matter is being extensively followed up. Quite a serious incident took place during the Deputy's time in office and I took a very distinctly sensitive and disciplined approach to that matter in the interest of students.
It is not a matter that arises on the Estimates discussions.