Will there be a Minister present?
Adjournment Debate. - Community Schools Deeds of Trust.
Ní féidir leis an Aire bheith anseo de bhrí go bhfuil sé gafa chuig cruinniú agus d'iarr sé ormsa an méid a bheadh le rá aige dá mbeadh sé anseo a léamh agus a rá más gá é a rá agus a léamh.
I am sorry that the Minister is not available for the debate and I regret that it is impossible for some other Minister to have stood in for him to respond to the debate as has been the custom in former debates on the Adjournment. However, I welcome the opportunity through this motion to draw attention to the absence of adequate prior consultation with the unions involved before the recent "evidence" of a decision by the Minister to sign the deeds of trust in relation to community schools. Senator Murphy has indicated an interest in contributing to the debate, and I said that I would stop my contribution in time to enable him to do so.
The proposal for community schools has been on the table for some time and has been discussed actively since 1971. But it has been discussed in a very one-sided way because there has been an absence of adequate information, adequate consultation and genuine negotiation on the very fundamental and basic issues which arise.
Even before tabling this motion I tried to ascertain precisely how the recent speculation about the intention of the Minister for Education to sign the deeds of trust for community schools had surfaced because since March there has been a very considerable degree of momentum following the apparent report of a decision by the Minister that he is going to sign deeds of trust in a matter of weeks. I thought it would be easy to find the authority for this. Presumably I only had to find the reference in a speech by the Minister in the Dáil or even in a speech at a relevant function. Instead, like so much else concerning the issues involved in establishing community schools, it is shrouded in mystery. There is no clear statement by the Minister that he is or is not going to sign the deeds of trust.
There is no clear statement on whether or not there are going to be different deeds of trust in relation to different types of community schools, and there is indeed very little clear evidence on many of the issues on which one would have thought there would have to be open and frank consultation. A motion like this on the Adjournment cannot go into the very basic and vital issues involved, issues of Church/State relations and issues of management and control of these community schools. It can only focus on the absence of adequate consultation with the unions involved since 1971 and right up to this recent apparent decision to sign the deeds of trust within a matter of weeks. Indeed, until the consultations which took place last week with the TUI and today with the ASTI there were no general and detailed consultations with the unions on the subject of community schools as opposed to some reference on a much longer agenda to community schools. Needless to say the unions involved have made several representations since 1972, particularly on the question of teacher participation in the management of the schools; opposing the idea of special places for religious; querying the provisions relating to the security of tenure of teachers and to the position of religious teachers. But representations are not consultation, and they were not based on adequate knowledge of the basis on which the decision is to be taken, of what the possible areas of negotiation might be.
This absence of open and accountable information and consultation has promoted the risk that the differing views—and of course there are differing views and differing interests of the parties involved, the teaching unions themselves, the religious orders, the Department; there are different priorities and different interests — may have become hardened and polarised so that it may be much more difficult to get ultimate agreement. This could prejudice the operation of the community schools and undermine the kind of idea which was there initially and for which there was considerable enthusiasm about the role that the community school could play within the community.
The teachers' unions were not consulted about or involved in the actual drawing up of the deeds of trust. Indeed, there appears to be some evidence that the religious orders who are involved were not consulted in the actual drawing up of the deeds of trust either, and if the Minister were here I would have hoped to be able to get from him some information about who exactly was actively consulted and involved in drawing up the deeds of trust. This is vital to the whole process of consultation, because the deeds of trust as they stand at the moment — from the example of the deed of trust for Tallaght which was reproduced in today's Irish Press and which has been in the Library of the Oireachtas since before Christmas following the tabling of a question by the Labour spokesman on Education — appear to pre-empt in a very important way some of the vital issues which relate to the contract of service or contract of employment of teachers in those schools. This, therefore, raises a very fundamental question about what is the appropriate kind of consultation required. If the deed of trust has pre-empted very vital areas which relate to the contract of service, the contract of employment of individual teachers, this is a strange way of approaching such a vital issue in a democracy—not to allow negotiation on those terms, not to allow the views of the teachers' unions to be very substantially represented at that stage.
The questions which are still unanswered and which should be answered are, first, who was actively consulted in the actual drafting of the deed or deeds of trust for the existing community schools? The second and related question is whether the deeds of trust are to be identical for the different types of community schools, whether they form an amalgamation of existing schools or the creation of a community school initially where there was not a school before and involving the different groups.
Turning again to the question of consultation, it would be less vital to the teachers' unions to be actively consulted in the drawing up of the deed of trust if they had been able to negotiate the contracts of service of their members and if these contracts —whether in draft form or in final form—had dealt clearly with matters which one would expect to be dealt with in the contract of services: matters such as the manner of appointment, of promotion, qualifications, security of tenure and the question of dismissals. If that had been clearly negotiated and there was confidence that the position of teachers was secured in that sense there might be less concern about an absence of consultation on the actual deed of trust.
Unfortunately, as I say, the deed of trust on which there was no consultation has pre-empted or is purporting to pre-empt the very key issues that arise in all these areas, the key issue of appointment; the key issue of promotion especially if you have, as the present deed of trust would purport to put forward, the question of reserved places. How does this affect promotional opportunities? How does it affect employment opportunities generally? Then there are the much deeper issues. Is it reconcilable with the provisions of the Constitution with regard to education to have reserved places for members of religious orders? There is the question of the security of tenure of teachers. Here there is an interesting provision in the deed of trust. I am quoting from the text set out in The Irish Press of today. It is the final provision in relation to the conditions and it states that:
No teacher shall at any time do or say anything which may offend or weaken the religious belief or the moral training in practice of pupils in the school.
I find it difficult to understand what a provision like that means, in the sense that I would have thought a provision of that sort would be superfluous. If it is not superfluous then I must regard it as opening up a whole discretionary area which would undermine the security of tenure of teachers. I know this has caused considerable concern. It is the kind of provision which must make teachers more apprehensive about their general conditions of service and their conditions of employment in the schools. As I understand it, the teachers in some of the schools have been teaching there for up to five years without any written contract of service but only on the understanding that their position will not be "worsened" when a contract is produced.
What does that mean to an individual teacher? Worsened is a subjective kind of word. In whose perspective or in whose opinion will the teacher's position not be worsened? Will it be in the opinion of the Minister or in the opinion of a teacher who under a particular scheme has a certain protection in the employment, particularly those at present under the vocational education scheme?
Again an active and open consultation from the beginning on these issues would have prevented the kind of polarisation which is emerging. The motion necessarily ties me to emphasising this aspect of consultation and relating it to consultation with the teachers' unions. I do not for one moment want to be thought to eliminate consultation with the other interests involved. I must hope that the technicality of an Adjournment motion protects me from being thought only to emphasise consultation with the teachers' unions. There are very many extremely serious issues involved in the whole proposal relating to community schools. When I put the emphasis on consultation it was really because this illustrates another area of education policy which goes on behind closed doors; where documents are produced and nobody is quite sure who is involved in the drafting of them.
Even when there is a generally held view that a decision is to be taken in a few weeks, it is very hard to find the source of that decision. It is very hard to find very hard evidence at all. There is a lack of clarity and openness in the approach. Yet the issues involved are important not only for the teachers who will work in the community schools, but for the parents of children and for the children themselves who will go to the community schools and for the religious orders who will participate in the community schools. There are overriding issues of Church-State relations, of the involvement of Church and the role of the State in relation to our education. These issues should not be submerged but should be fully discussed. They should not be distorted by lack of sufficient information and clarity from the Department and from the Minister concerned. It is appropriate on an Adjournment debate to draw attention to what appears to have been a very serious lack of adequate consultation since 1971 which has aggravated and polarised the dispute so that there is a sense of the different sides now desperately trying at a late stage to protect their own interests and their own priorities in relation to these schools. The danger is that the schools themselves may suffer if they begin to get an image of being places where there is controversy, disputes and so on. This would be bad both in the short- and in the long-term for the education of the children there. I regret that neither the Minister nor any other Minister could be present to hear the points I wanted to make on this and I make way for Senator Murphy and any Government spokesmen to respond to those points.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator de Brún to reply on behalf of the Minister.
I understood that Senator Murphy was to intervene.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Chair did not have any indication that any other Senator wished to intervene.
I thank Senator Robinson for the opportunity of letting me support what she had to say. Like her, I am sorry that the Minister is not here. I have some sympathy with the Minister in the cleft stick in which he appears to find himself but that sympathy is modified by my belief in the old homely proverb about getting out of the kitchen if one is distressed by the excessive temperature.
What is quite mysterious is that the Minister, above all people, should have fallen foul of the teachers' unions on this point, non-consultation. He has had first-hand experience of very long standing frustrations of lay post-primary teachers and he knows how sensitive they are, and with good reason, about the lack of consultation.
In his days as a teacher and in my days as a post-primary teacher, in addition to the whips and scorns of time and the certain knowledge that you were never going to make it to the top in a religious-controlled school there was the further ignominy of not being consulted. This psychology about consultation goes very deep indeed with teachers. Therefore it strikes me as mysterious why the Minister should have omitted this very diplomatic and essential piece of policy. Perhaps it is poetic justice that it is this Minister who is now in this situation, a former president of the ASTI who in his own day courageously upheld the rights of his fellow lay teachers against not only clerical control but against clerical hyprocisy as well. He must know that the teachers unions, the ASTI, the TUI, are no longer the diffident and gentlemanly bodies they were in his time and mine. He must know now that they have considerable clout and it is quite clear from their statements and the statements of their executive officers that they will have no inhibitions about putting that clout to good effect.
I should have thought it would have been basic survival strategy for the Minister to observe the need for consulation. I do not want to wander into the issues behind the dispute. Quite clearly the Minister is in, the perhaps, unenviable position of having to face a confrontation that has been building up for a long time, one that is made all the more ironic in that in some areas religious are closing down schools while in others they are claiming a special and privileged guarantee on staffs.
Again, I am sorry the Minister is not here because I would have liked to have made this personal appeal to him through the Chair and to say that unless he is poacher-turned-game-keeper, or as he might appreciate himself, unless he is quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore, he has the opportunity now of reconciling conflicting interests. As one of his former colleagues in a teachers' union, I urge him at least to postpone the signature of these deeds of trust until full consultation has taken place with teacher unions. That course is demanded of him by not only past loyalty to his erstwhile colleagues but by considerations of prudence and basic survival strategy.
Mar a dúirt mé i dtosach, ní raibh ar chumas an Aire bheith i láthair ins an Teach anseo nuair a bhí an díospóireacht seo ag tosnú mar go raibh sé ag an am sin i gcomhairle le ceann de na heagraíochtaí a bhfuil baint mhór acu le scéal seo na n-ionstraimí iontaobhais.
In summary I would like to say again that the Minister was unable to be here to listen to this debate and to reply to it for the simple reason that at that time he was in consultation with one of the bodies concerned very much with these deeds. He asked me to stand in for him and to reply to the debate as follows.
Tá sé chomh maith agam a shoiléiriú ar an gcéad dul síos thar cheann an Aire Oideachais nach bhfuil rún ag an Aire aon ionstraim iontaobhais d'aon scoil phobail a fháil sínithe nó a shíniú é féin ag an dtráth seo. Ní fíor a rá mar atá ráite san rún atá os comhair an Tí go bhfuil socraithe ag an Aire na h-ionstraimí iontaobhais do na scoileanna atá i gceist a shíniú gan go leor réamh-chomhairle leis na cumainn mhúinteoirí go bhfuil suim acu sa scéal. Go contrártha, ní h-amháin go bhfuil socair ag an Aire go mbeadh cainteanna aige le cumainn na múinteoirí roimh dul i mbun na n-ionstraimí a fháil sínithe ach go mbeadh díospóireachtaí aige fosta leis na páirtithe eile a bhfuil baint acu agus suim acu sa ngnó ionas go mbeadh léargas soiléir aige ar na deacrachtaí agus tuairimí na bpáirithe uilig le h-ionchas go mbeifí in ann teacht ar chomhaontú dul i gcomhairle eatarthu go léir mar gheall ar na pointí éagsúla atá ag déanamh tinnis dóibh ar leithligh.
Chuige sin, bhí cruinniú aige le hAontas Múinteoirí na h-Éireann an tseachtain ghabh tharainn. Tá sé anois direch tar éis bheith i gcomhairle le Cumann na Meánmhúinteoirí agus tá cruinnithe socraithe aige leis na h-údaráis Eaglaiste Caitiliceacha agus leis an gCumann Gairmoideachais in Éirinn go fíor luath. Dá bhrí sin, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, ní fíor a rá nach bhfuil comhairle glachta ag an Aire leis na n-eagraíochtaí agus leis na cumainn go léir a bhfuil baint acu, mar adúirt mé cheana, leis na h-ionstraimí seo. Ní hé amháin go bhfuil comhairle glachta aige leo ach bhí sé ag caint leo agus d'iarr sé orthu a dtuairimí a sholáthar sul a ndéanfadh sé sada faoi ionstraimí a shíniú.
Fiú de thoradh na gcruinnithe cheana féin le dhá chumann múinteoirí, is léir go bhfuil pointí ag teacht chun solais a gcaithfear réiteach a fháil orthu a luaithe agus is féidir é. Níl amhras ná go n-ardófaí pointí eile ag na h-eagraíochtaí eile atá bearthaithe ag an Aire a fheiceail go gcaithfí réiteach a fháil orthu fosta.
Ach níl i gceist ag an Aire—ní miste dom é a rá — aon ní a dhéanamh i dtaca leis na h-ionstraimí a shíniú go dtí go mbeidh na cainteanna go léir thart; go dtí go mbeidh faill aige féin na tuairimí uilig atá curtha, agus atá le cur, ina láthair a bhreithniú go cúramach ina n-iomlán, agus go dtí go mbeidh sé i riocht teacht ar comhairle i leith na ceiste ar fad go mbeidh na páirtithe uilig toilteanach glacadh leo ar ball, tá súil aige.
Ní miste samplaí a thabhairt ar na fadhbanna de shórt nó de shórt eile, atá curtha os comhair an Aire cheana féin. Ní raibh san dréacht ionstraim iontaobhais do hullamhaíodh roimhe seo aon tsoláthar faoi a mbeadh áiteanna ó cheart ag múinteoirí ar bhoird bhainistíochta sna scoileanna. Sin rud, ní nach ionadh, atá ag cur go leor as do chumainn na múinteoirí. Tá sé ráite go poiblí ag an Aire go bhfuil sé féin i bhfábhar an phrionsabail go mbeadh ionadaíocht ag múinteoirí ar na boird bhainistíochta agus tá dóchas aige go mbeifear in ann teacht ar réiteach na ceiste sin chun sástachta gach éinne.
Tá fós an fhadhb ó thaobh chumainn na múinteoirí de go bhfuil postanna sna pobal scoileanna á chur in áirithe do bhaill na n-ord cráifeachta. Is léir go bhfuil a ndearcadh féin ag na h-oird ar an gceist sin, agus tiocfaidh sé i gceist an mbeifear in ann an dá thaobh a mhealladh chun réitigh ar an bhfadhb sin agus gan dochar a dhéanamh do na cúiseanna maithe atá taobh thiar den dá dhearcadh.
Tá pointí eile nach mór a shocrú sul má thiocfaidh an t-am nuair a bheifear in ann críoch a chur leis an ghnó, ach tá súil ag an Aire gur féidir a bheith ag tnúth le deá-thoil agus le comhoibriú ó gach taobh ar mhaithe le bonn creidiúnach a chur leis na pobalscoileanna ar gach aon bhealach agus go háirithe chun leasa na ndaltaí atá ag freastal orthu san bhfad-téarma.
Sin é an dréacht a thug an tAire dhomsa le cur anseo ar a shon agus táim cinnte go bhfuil sé soiléir ón dréacht sin go bhfuil an tAire gafa i gcomhairle leis na heagraíochtaí, sé sin, leis na cumainn mhúinteoireachta a raibh spéis acu sna h-ionstraimí iontaobhais seo.
It is a bit late in the day for consultation. The horse has practically bolted.
I do not agree that the horse has bolted but——
Last week for the first time there was genuine consultation.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator may not interrupt.
The essence of Senator Robinson's argument was that the Minister had not had consultation with anybody. The speech I have put before the House on his behalf clearly demonstrates that the Minister has had consultations with the various bodies who are basically concerned with the signing of the deeds of these schools and that the Minister in fact is ensuring that no deeds will be signed without there being full consultation with lay and clerical organisations. That is demonstrably clear from what I have read and put to the House on behalf of the Minister
I would submit that it is unfair to make the charge that is implicit in this motion, that is, that the Minister is avoiding his duty by not having consultations with the bodies concerned. The Minister is taking every care to ensure that the proper consultations will be held and that no deed will be signed until all parties are satisfied and the rights of all concerned are ensured.
Cad eile a bhfuil sibh ag súil leis? Cad eile atá uaibh? Fiafraím é sin den Teach. Céard atá uaibh ach amháin an dearbhú atá ins an script sin ón Aire nach síneoidh sé aon ionstraim iontaobhais ar son an Rialtais nó ar son na tíre idir aon phobalscoil nó go mbeidh sé sásta go bhfuil na heagraíochtaí éagsúla múinteoirí sásta agus go bhfuil siad i gcomhpháirt leis an rud a shíneoidh sé nuair a shíneos sé é, agus síneoidh agus beidh toradh air agus beidh sé sásúil de réir dlí agus de réir na Críostaíochta.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.30 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 17 May 1978.