Perhaps Deputy Good is more competent to speak on technical education, especially in the City of Dublin, than I happen to be, but we often hear general statements of that kind without any proof being brought forward to substantiate them. I have no hesitation in saying that the standard of education reached in the primary schools, even without taking into account the unfavourable conditions very often under which that education has to be carried out, compares very favourably with that reached in many other countries where the conditions are more favourable. I say that as a result of some experience.
I happen to have been engaged actively in the work of education for fourteen or fifteen years, and for the past twelve years I have been in close touch with the administration and working of education in this country. I know something about the actual work in other countries. When outside this country I have always taken occasion to go into schools to find out the standard of education reached and compare it with our own. I have said more than once, and I say it again, that if I take an average boy or girl who attends regularly at an average school in Ireland, that boy or girl at the age of thirteen or fourteen would compare favourably, and more than favourably, with the standard of education reached by the boy or girl of the same age in any other country. I give my own experience for what it is worth, but it was borne out very recently by a very distinguished scholar and educationist, Father Lambert McKenna, who was chairman of two very important education conferences appointed by the Minister for Education. One of these was an inspection conference held in 1926.
Father McKenna was deputed by his colleagues on the Commission to visit various countries on the Continent, to inquire into the systems of education there and to observe the working of the systems. He made a tour of Scotland, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany and France and visited schools in those countries. On the occasion of the closing of this Commission in reply to a vote of thanks, Father McKenna made the statement that nowhere in any of these countries had he met teachers who were more anxious to do their duty, or who were more capable of doing the duty for which they were appointed, or who were doing it more energetically and enthusiastically than the Irish teachers. I give that to Deputy J. J. Byrne for what it is worth. I believe that the ordinary man in the street if he had to choose between the opinions of Deputy Byrne and Father Lambert McKenna would have no difficulty in choosing the evidence he would accept. I refer to this at some length because such statements with regard to the standard of education in this country are not confined to one particular quarter. I do not know why it is we are so fond of running down education and other things in our own country because they happen to be Irish. It seems to be a failing of our people. Some people think that because our education is Irish, and tending more and more to be so, that it cannot be any good compared with education in other countries. I have a certain amount of suspicion regarding the quarters from which this criticism comes that there is more behind it than appears on the surface, and that it is an attempt to decry our present system of education because we are giving so much attention to our national language.
I have heard it said by some people as a criticism of our system of education that we are spoiling Irish education by introducing or making compulsory the Irish language. I believe that the criticisms of the kind I have mentioned, intentionally or otherwise, are made because there is that opinion in the minds of the people who make them. There is no proof, none whatever, rather is the contrary the case, that the standard of education in the other subjects than Irish has suffered or has fallen in any way by the introduction of compulsory Irish in the schools.
Having dealt with that matter, I go on to speak of what is undoubtedly the one black spot in our system of education at the present time. That is the condition of the buildings in which education has to be carried on. I do not think it is necessary for me to go into this matter at any great length or to show Deputies here or to prove to the House that school buildings in this country are in a disgraceful and deplorable condition. We have good buildings. We have good schools, no doubt, but their number, comparatively speaking, is very few. Let us take the statistics given by the Minister in support of his speech. He tells us that a year or two ago a census was taken by the officials of his Department as to the necessity for schools. There were required 350 new schools, absolutely new schools. In other words, the old buildings had been condemned or it was a case in which new schools had to be built to meet the needs of the population. There were 550 schools required to be enlarged, and 900 schools required minor alterations. In other words, over one-third of the schools of the country required to be replaced, enlarged or altered in some way in order to provide suitable school accommodation. Remember this, that these figures have been arrived at by a census taken by the officials of his own Department, the inspectors, and anyone who has any experience of the inspectors knows that their estimate is a most conservative estimate of what is needed. Then one looked anxiously or listened anxiously—I certainly did—to hear what plan the Minister had to deal with the biggest problem and the most pressing and immediate problem in connection with Irish education. I was most anxious to hear what his plans were and what were his proposals, what scheme he had in view or what plans he had in view to deal with this pressing and urgent problem which affected not only the education of the children, but the actual physical health of so many children throughout the State. Here is what he says—he sums it up in two or three lines: "The Board of Works is trying as fast as it can go to remedy that situation and to provide adequate school accommodation."
The Board of Works, as fast as it can go! We all know how fast it can go, and no one knows that better than the Minister himself, who spent such a long time in charge of the Board. That is the only information the Minister has to give us with regard to this great and most pressing problem. The Board of Works, as fast as it can go, is dealing with the problem. Let us see how fast it has been going. I find from the Estimates for the years 1924-25, 1925-26, 1926-27, taking these three years together, that the amount actually voted by this House for building purposes was £175,000, and the amount actually expended was only £128,000. In other words, there was more than a fourth of the money voted by this House unexpended, because the Board of Works could not, I suppose, go fast enough with the spending of the money. Here we have this year £100,000 on the Estimates, and I wonder how much of that will be unexpended at the end of the year? Will there be a quarter of it? And suppose that all the money voted will be expended, how long does the Minister calculate it will take before he would even catch up with the arrears in the building programme? And by that time, ten or twelve years at the present rate, how many more buildings will be unfit for habitation? I suggest that the Minister is not tackling the problem in the serious way in which this problem has to be tackled and ought to be tackled. If we go into any village in the country in the rural districts we see very fine buildings there put up within the last two or three years for the accommodation of the Gárda Siochána. All over the country you see these. In many cases these very fine buildings are erected for the accommodation of four or five healthy specimens of manhood, but around the corner you will see the miserable and unsanitary hovels very often where fifty, sixty, seventy or a hundred children are huddled together. Surely this is sufficiently serious to be tackled in a more serious manner than that in which the Minister has tackled it. I will take the liberty, instead of quoting from reports of Commissions and Inspections, and the reports of the Department to show the state of the school buildings in Ireland at the present time, to read a letter which I regard as a very human document. It reached me two days ago from a teacher in one of the counties of Leinster. It describes a state of affairs which is not at all an uncommon one in some of our rural districts.
The writer says:—"I beg to bring the following facts under your notice, and ask you for the sake of the teachers, the children and the parents to give us your assistance. This school is built to accommodate thirty-five pupils." I should say that the regulations provide that there are ten square feet of floor space for each pupil. And those who are acquainted with such matters will agree that that is very limited accommodation. The letter goes on: "It has been overcrowded for years. At various times during the past fifteen or sixteen years the question of providing further accommodation has been talked of, but it has got no further than talking of it so far. From the list of averages which I enclose you will see that the number is still increasing, and under the existing conditions I cannot see how we can either teach or live in an overcrowded poisonous atmosphere. We found it very difficult to do so in the summer months, but now with the winter at hand it will be an impossible task. Imagine two teachers and over seventy pupils working in a small room built to accommodate thirty-five pupils. The air is that thick and heavy that it is nothing unusual to have children fainting at their work. I have had to remove children from class to the yard in my arms several times during the past twelve months, and on previous occassions also... I am not exaggerating in the least; any school child or J.A.M. will tell you the same. This school is situated in a very bleak spot on a hill-top, where the children are very often badly clad and badly fed. They are practically all belonging to the working-class and to the small farmer, who is even worse off. It will give you some idea of the poverty of the district when I mention that no matter how willing, they cannot buy any of their books, and I have to supply them with books or leave them sit idle in the school. There is another matter which, to my mind, is a serious one. We have families of children whose parents, God rest them, died in consumption. This is well-known to everyone in the district. Surely it is not a proper place for such children— an overcrowded room from 9.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on five days each week. I could write pages on this matter, but anything I could write would give you no idea of the real state of affairs or of the bleakness and poverty of the district."
That is a letter which describes the conditions which are not uncommon in many of our rural areas to-day. What is the solution? I do not know whether Deputies are acquainted with the system under which grants are made for school buildings. The normal practice has been that when application is made to the Department of Education for the building of a new school, and when the Department is satisfied that a new school is necessary, it recommends that a building grant be allowed equal to two-thirds of the estimated cost of the building. The locality has to find the remaining third and also has to provide a site for the school. In ninety-nine cases out of one hundred the locality means the local school manager, and he has no machinery at his disposal to enable him to raise the remaining third. He may be in a position to provide the site, but he has no machinery at his disposal to raise the proportion of the grant that is required by the departmental regulations. He must go to the people of the parish and get this money by voluntary subscription.
Imagine what happens in a rural parish. The school is necessary, and it may be estimated to cost anything from £1,800 to £2,000. This is not an exorbitant figure. The Education Department, having decided after much delay on the part of the Board of Works, with whom they act in this matter, that a school is necessary, and having made the necessary estimate informs the manager they are prepared to give a grant equal to two-thirds. The manager is asked to raise the remaining £600 or £700. How can a manager in a rural area in Ireland be expected to raise, without any machinery save the voluntary support of his congregation, the £600 or £700 necessary? Naturally he will say he cannot afford to do it, and then begins a long, weary and tedious correspondence with bargaining and haggling between the Department and the manager. Then they say: "We will give you three-fourths if you will provide the remainder." The manager explains that he cannot provide the other fourth, and investigations and correspondence continue. They drag on month after month, and finally the Department agree to give five-sixths. The correspondence begins again, and I have known cases where it has gone for four or five years and nothing has been done in the way of building a school. There are cases in which the Department, after much investigation and many reports from their officials that the locality is so poor that it cannot afford to find the remainder of the money, give a full grant from Government sources.
My suggestion towards a solution of this problem of building schools and for getting rid of the interminable delays that take place in the case of many schools—delays which are entirely due to the question of the provision of a local proportion—is that the whole capital cost of building the new school should be advanced from Government sources. There is no objection that I can see that can be urged against that proposal. I hold that it is not fair to expect the manager to provide, without any machinery for borrowing the money or spreading the loan over a number of years, the capital sum necessary to represent the share of the locality in the cost of the building. If he is able to raise the money in the parish for the building of the school, it is not fair to the present generation of parents who contribute. The building is expected to last 40 or 50 years and successive generations will not be asked to contribute anything. This suggestion has been made on many occassions. I say that is the solution of the problem of the delay in providing new schools and the enlargement of existing schools.
When this question was raised on another occasion I think some point was mentioned that a difficulty would arise from the point of view of the managers —that it would have some effect on what is known as the managerial question. I suggest it will not in any way affect the rights of managers in connection with schools. There are many schools actually vested in the Department, but managers and especially Catholic managers, do not like the idea of vesting schools in that fashion; they prefer to vest them in parochial trustees. The argument is sometimes put up that if the whole of the money for the building of the school was found by the State then of necessity the school must be vested in the State. There is no such necessity and it does not follow that the school must be vested in the State. As a matter of fact there are many schools at the present time built in necessitous areas in which the whole of the money required was found by the State and yet these schools are vested in local trustees. There is no danger so far as the State is concerned in following out that practice in all the schools because in the vesting deed given in such cases there is always provision made that the building must be used as a school for primary education under or in connection with the Department of Education.
In other words, the State gets all the protection that it is necessary for it to get. If that is not done the trustees bind themselves to repay to the State all the money granted by the State for building schools. The State, as I say, has all the protection it needs, and no principle for which anybody or people stand is violated in any way. To prove that there is no such principle violated I need only quote a resolution which was actually passed by a special meeting of the Central Council of Catholic Managers in February, 1927. An extract from this resolution is as follows: "That we are of opinion that the whole of the funds necessary for the building and enlarging of schools should be supplied from Government sources, but on condition that the schools should be vested in trustees as heretofore, and that no change is made in the managerial control." There is no reason why the conditions specified in that resolution should not be granted, even though the whole of the grant is made available from the State. The State is in the best position, better than any other authority, to find the money necessary to erect schools. We know on the Minister's own admission that the building of new schools is a pressing problem.
We know the rate at which that problem is being dealt with, and I suggest to the Minister that this is the most practical method of dealing with it. I trust that he will take steps as soon as he possibly can so to alter the regulations, which have nothing to recommend them, as far as I can see, but antiquity. These regulations were made when conditions were altogether different from what they are now, when the whole idea behind our education system was that it was really a local charge and, in fact, a local matter, when the greater part of the teachers' salaries were found locally, when, in fact, anything that came from the State was only a grant-in-aid to a local body carrying on a school. We have gone a great distance from that in everything except in this one particular. I suggest to the Minister that there is no reason why we should hang on any longer to that archaic regulation which is impracticable for dealing with present-day conditions, and which has completely broken down, for providing new buildings which are absolutely necessary.
I have said much in connection with the provision of actual buildings, but there is another question in connection with it which is of no less importance, namely, the question of upkeep, maintenance, heating and cleaning school buildings—their sanitation generally. On the question of sanitation I cannot really find words strong enough to describe the condition of some of our schools. Many of them have no out-offices of any kind, and I am almost inclined to think that schools that have no out-offices are even in a better position than those that have them. In how many of our rural schools is there anything in the way of effective sanitary accommodation? There is no member of this House who does not know the condition of many of our schools, especially those in rural districts. Schools that ought to be the centres of enlightenment in matters relating not only to spiritual but physical education are often the centres of disease and, even, death. They are indescribably filthy in the matter of sanitary arrangements. We have got so used to these things that they are passed over without much consideration or condemnation, and sanitary officers, school inspectors, teachers, managers and others take all these things for granted and do not seem to realise that they are, as I say, sources of disease and, in many cases, death.
The Minister in his opening remarks did not tell us what he was prepared to do, what he was doing, or intended to do. He did not tell us whether the old system of heating schools, by which boys brought sods of turf under their arm, was to continue. That system continues. In some cases it has been superseded by getting a donkey-load of turf thrown outside the school. That custom prevails in many districts. The children go to school with wet feet and their clothes are wet, but there is no system whereby their clothes and boots can be dried and they have often to sit shivering in school in their wet clothes. In the evening when the classes break up the children are often called on to sweep and dust the school. No one will defend that state of affairs and say that it is satisfactory. What we want to know is, what is the Minister, who is charged with the administration of education in this country, going to do about it? What does he propose to do about it? On whom is responsibility to be placed for this state of affairs?
Surely the physical health of the children in this country is a matter that deserves consideration at the hands of the Minister and of this Dáil. The physical education of the children is the one thing which we seem to neglect very seriously. I have gone into schools in America and it seemed to me that they pay much more attention to the physical side of the children's education than even to the literary side. If they want to show you over their schools they take you first to what they call the Engineering Department where arrangements are made for ventilating and heating the schools. Even on the prairies in Canada you find good, clean, sanitary school buildings. Whatever else you find, you always find the conditions and surroundings of the schools clean and sanitary. That seems to be the primary consideration, and nowhere will you find conditions approaching those which are to be found in many places in this country in regard to the sanitation of school buildings.
I want to impress on the Dáil and on the Minister that this is not the first time that this question has been raised here. Condemnation of our present school buildings and the system of the upkeep of schools has been brought to his notice by members of every Party in the House, because every Deputy knows the conditions that exist. I say that the matter is not being seriously tackled in the way it should be. It is a big problem, but bigger ones have been solved. If we had a Council of Education, as I have often urged, surely this is the kind of matter that would come up for discussion time after time until it was settled. When we urged the establishment of a Council of Education more than once, the Minister said that he did not want it, and whenever a problem came up which required solution he appointed an ad hoc committee which was a Council of Education as regards that particular matter. I suggest that this is one of the subjects that ought to be tackled in that or some other way, and tackled without further delay, because things are getting very serious and they are getting more serious as time goes on. I hope that at the end of this discussion the Minister will have somethings more to say than that the Board of Works are going as fast as they can in their attempts to deal with this matter.
I was dealing in June last with some questions of administration in connection with the Office of National Education and I complained at that time that we had up to that date no issue of the code of rules and regulations with which all teachers and managers were supposed to be acquainted. We had no issue for something like five years, since the Free State Department of Education came into operation, and I said that teachers and managers, and inspectors also, were often at their wits' end to know what in fact the regulations of the Department were on any given matter. Well, four or five months have gone by and no rules have been yet issued. I wonder what has become of them, or are we going to have any more rules and regulations, or is the Minister going to adopt a system wherein every teacher and every manager will be free to act just as he wishes? Of course, if a teacher or a manager does so, he will very soon find out he is going on wrong lines. I do suggest seriously to the Minister that the delay in issuing these rules is altogether inexcusable. He has given no reason for the delay. He does not tell us what is the special difficulty about the matter. The only answer that we can get, when we do raise a question of this kind, is that they hope to issue them very soon, but still the delay goes on. It is a source of very great inconvenience to those engaged in the work of education not to have a codified volume of the rules and regulations under which they are supposed to carry out their work.
Various recommendations were made by the Conference which met two years ago. It was a very representative Conference, comprising managers, teachers, members of the Gaelic League, members of the General Council of County Councils, and many prominent members of the Dáil, including the present Minister for Local Government. Several recommendations were made by that Conference, but as far as I can see scarcely any one of them has yet been put into operation. A recommendation was made in regard to school buildings. I have already referred to that. I would like to say, however, that that representative Conference were of opinion that the untold conditions to which they drew attention called for an immediate remedy if any educational scheme is to secure the desired result. They pointed out that the educational programmes which they were recommending could not effectively be put into operation unless these recommendations were put into operation at the same time. Up to the present, we have had none of these recommendations put into operation. In my previous statement, I have already dealt with the question of books. It was recommended that a new edition of "Notes for Teachers" should be issued, and very great importance was laid on that by the Conference at the time. We have not yet seen these "Notes for Teachers," and we do not know how soon they will be issued.
I should like to say a word or two on the question of school attendance. I might say, A Chinn Comhairle, that I will ask the House to allow me to deal with these matters at some length, because I propose to deal with all matters connected with the Vote at this juncture and not to speak when the various sub-heads come up. I desire to speak on the question of the administration of the School Attendance Act. The School Attendance Act came into operation on the 1st January of last year, and, for the first six months especially, there was a great spurt. The attendance improved very rapidly and the Act was working very well indeed in all parts of the country. However, from reports I have been receiving, during the last six months especially, it would appear that there is a very marked falling off in the attendance again in many districts.
I do not know exactly to what I should attribute that. It may be that the fear of the possible consequences of non-compliance with the Act had a very big effect on negligent parents during the first six or seven months of the working of the Act, but gradually these parents have begun to find out that it did not very much matter, after all, whether the Act was put into operation or not. Consequently, they began to fall into the evil habit again of keeping children at home from school. The standard of attendance that has been reached, even under the working of the Act last year, is comparatively very low. It has increased somewhat on that of previous years, but it is still as low as 77 per cent. An attendance of 77 out of 100 pupils cannot be regarded as being particularly satisfactory.
I have reason to believe from many figures, facts, and statements brought to my notice that it is very doubtful even if it reaches 77 per cent. for the current year. I do not know exactly what is the reason for the falling off in the attendance, but I do think that in many cases the courts have given the impression that cases of this kind are really such as should not be brought before them at all, and that the offence of keeping children at home from school is not nearly so grave as to be found without a light on a bicycle. I believe that an examination of the actual fines in school attendance cases will show that they are very much less than in the ordinary police court cases of lights on bicycles, the absence of names on carts, and things of that kind. It is rather significant, especially in view of the fact that under the provisions of the Act no prosecution is ordinarily brought unless, and until, not only the Guard who has charge of the attendance in that area, but also the superintendant, is perfectly satisfied that it is a case in which a prosecution should be brought—in other words, that it is a case where there is deliberate neglect on the part of the parents to send the child to school. Yet we have courts in many cases giving the impression in the locality, because all these cases and the observations of the Justices are reported in the local Press, that in fact these are cases which should never have been brought. I have numerous instances of that. One cannot, I suppose, take up here specific cases of misstatements by District Justices with regard to the operation of the Act. There have been cases where Justices have said that the Act is a tyranny. Naturally, Guards who have charge of the carrying out of the Act will not be particularly anxious to bring prosecutions before Justices who express their views in that way. The result is that in many districts things are particularly lax in the matter of school attendance and, in some districts, are drifting into the old condition of affairs which existed before the Act was put into operation. I suggest to the Minister that he ought to take counsel with the Minister for Justice in this matter, because although the enforcing of the Act happens to be in the hands of the Minister for Justice, through the Gárda Síochána, still it is of intimate concern to the Minister for Education. I suggest that he should take counsel with the Department of Justice, and see if something cannot be done to tighten up the administration of the Act in those districts in which it is undoubtedly lax.