We can welcome what is provided here. It is little and late, but it is better late than never. I hope in the future that the superannuation for teaching bodies in general will be moved into much closer relationship to the Civil Service and other Government schemes than it has been and that we will not have this lagging behind.
One thing that worries me a bit is that it says here it is necessary to amend the definition in the scheme from £200 to £400 to take account of the element in the salary, that is the basic salary, paid by the school. Surely the £400 is already three years out of date? Why write an out of date figure into this superannuation? Why not leave the superannuation figure flexible so that it will apply to whatever figure is agreed on for the basic salary? It seems extraordinary that we have this section of public servants, who are doing an excellent job and doing it very devotedly and wholeheartedly, yet we find the basic element of their salary, which was £400 four years ago, is still at £400, whereas the salary of everybody else in the Minister's Department, from the secretary down, has already been increased at least 30 per cent in the intervening period to take account of the very sharp inflation we have had in the past number of years. The schools cannot pay more at present because the capitation grant, from which the schools pay this meagre sum, has not been brought into line.
I cannot understand the lack of social justice that seems to permeate many of our dealings with outside bodies. I should have thought that, where adjustments are made by means of general wage increases and wage rounds to all the various categories of employees, it would not be necessary for me to get up here in Seanad Éireann or anywhere else to urge justice. A sum of £400, which was paid four years ago, is surely not just today. It needs to be increased by at least 30 per cent.
I cannot understand why our secondary schools should be penalised in this way. We are getting remarkable value from our secondary schools, where the cost per pupil is much less than in any other branch of education. It is at least 40 per cent under the cost per pupil in the vocational education system. I am not saying for one moment that is too high; in fact, it is too low. But this serves to show how inadequate what we are giving is. In our secondary school structure we are simply capitalising on the devoted service by many of the religious who keep the system going by ploughing back their salaries. I do not think that is good enough in the structure of today and I hope that I will not have to get up again in Seanad Éireann after the Budget and make the case that this figure of £400 is four years out of date, that a capitation grant for secondary schools is four years out of date. I call for elementary social justice for all.