When the debate was adjourned on Friday I was pointing out that this proposed superannuation scheme inflicted a most unfair burden on the teachers. I mentioned then, and I think it is desirable to repeat it briefly now; that in the financial year commencing on 1st April, 1934, it is estimated that the total cost of the superannuation of teachers will amount to £371,000. Out of that sum the teachers will contribute £260,000 under the proposed cut, and the Minister will be able to add to the £260,000 an investment income of £51,000 from the teachers' side of the pension fund, showing that in the financial year commencing on the 1st proximo, teachers will contribute £311,000 out of a total pension liability of £371,000. From that it will be seen that in the coming financial year the teachers, who were formerly liable to pay only 25 per cent. of the cost of their pensions, will be liable next year for approximately 80 per cent. of the pensions under this arrangement proposed by the Minister. It is not my desire to take next year as a freak year or to take this year as indicating something which will not be common to subsequent years. The Minister, in the course of his speech on the last day, intimated that in the year 1939 the cost of the teachers' pensions to the State would amount to £395,000. So that five years hence that liability in respect of the teachers' pensions must be met by the State, and of that sum of £395,000, a sum of £311,000 will be paid by the teachers themselves. If we take ten years hence and we come to the year 1944, the cost of the teachers' pensions will be £430,000 and of that liability the teachers will have themselves to pay £311,000, or approximately 72 per cent. of the cost of the pensions in the future. It will be seen, therefore, that the real purpose of this superannuation scheme is to impose upon the teachers a levy in respect of pensions three times greater than the levy which they have been held to be liable for in the past. This year the teachers pay over 80 per cent. of the cost and ten years hence their share of the cost of the pensions will be as high as approximately 72 per cent. During the next 20 or 30 years their share of the cost will never be less than 60 per cent., though it has always been admitted that the liability of the teachers in respect of superannuation was a liability to contribute 25 per cent. of the cost of the pensions and the State 75 per cent.
One of the statutory rules governing this proposed scheme, the new scale of pensions, is set out and it provides for the payment to teachers on retirement of one-eightieth of the salary and emoluments for each completed year of service. An effort has been made in the Press to suggest that the teachers under this new scheme are to get the civil servants' privileges in the matter of pensions. But anybody who reads this scheme and compares it with the scheme in operation in the Civil Service knows well that this scheme does not give the teacher the privileges that are given in the Civil Service. Under the Superannuation Act, 1919, the civil servant gets one-eightieth of his emoluments for each completed year of service with a maximum of 48 years. Under the new scheme the teachers' pensions will be calculated on the same basis. But whereas the civil servant gets a lump sum calculated on the basis of one-thirtieth of his emoluments for each year of service, the teacher under this scheme will get nothing whatever in that respect. The teacher, therefore, will be treated similar to the civil servant in the matter of the basic pension, but whereas the civil servant with 40 years' service is to get forty-thirtieths of his annual salary as a lump sum, the teacher will not get that under this superannuation scheme. In that respect this scheme is very definitely worse than the scheme of superannuation that is in operation in the Civil Service.
When we look to the operations of the scheme dealing with the marriage gratuity we find that a marriage gratuity is to be paid to female teachers. But in order to qualify for the marriage gratuity it will be necessary for the teacher to have not less than seven years' pensionable service. I cannot understand at all why seven years were selected as a requirement in the matter of service. In the Civil Service the marriage gratuity is payable where the person has six years' service and it is not necessary that the six years be pensionable service. Under the Civil Service superannuation scheme a person may have two years' temporary service and four years' established service.
If a person has six years' service altogether that person is allowed to qualify for the marriage gratuity and the marriage gratuity is calculated on the basis of the pensionable service. But temporary service is regarded as something that should be calculated in determining the qualifying period. In the case of the teacher, it will be calculated on the minimum service of the seven years required, whereas in the case of the civil servant the minimum is six years. I do not know why the Department prescribes seven years or why there is an insistence on pensionable service. It seems to me that that provision may deprive people of marriage gratuities to which they would have been otherwise entitled. If that were not insisted on in the scheme the teacher would be entitled to a gratuity in some cases where she will not get it.
The Minister's speech featured very strongly the provisions in the case of death, that is to say, death benefits in the case of the teachers who die while in the service. It is proposed in the future that that person's next-of-kin should receive the death benefits if the person should happen to die whilst in the service. Under the existing pension scheme the next-of-kin of the teacher in such a position would be entitled to a return of all the premiums with compound interest in the event of death. Under the new scheme death benefit in the form of a gratuity will be paid to the next-of-kin of the teacher. Could any teacher consider this a good scheme from the point of view of the teacher? I wonder did the Minister for Education discuss the scheme with any elderly teacher.
Under the proposed superannuation scheme the teacher with a salary of £300 a year will pay a contribution of £9 per cent. per annum in order that he may be entitled to the doubtful privileges of this pension scheme. A teacher with a salary of £300 a year will make an annual contribution of £27 to the scheme, or towards whatever benefits are provided for under the scheme. If the teacher has served 12 years in the teaching profession at a salary of £300 per annum he will have paid under this scheme a sum of £324, apart from any interest which he would be entitled to calculate on reckoning the real value of the contribution which he makes. But under this scale, if such a teacher dies, his next-of-kin will be paid a gratuity of £300, which will be £24 less than he has paid into the fund; and that is apart altogether from interest. The scheme will take no cognisance of the premiums which he paid before the introduction of the scheme. If the teacher did not die until he had 24 years' service his next-of-kin would be at a loss under this scheme which is now being introduced. Speaking in support of this superannuation scheme on the last day, the Minister said:—
"Taking the new scheme as a whole, I think we can definitely claim that the benefits provided are definitely more advantageous to the teachers than those which they at present enjoy. In addition to that, the House must bear in mind that in future, instead of being dependent for their pensions upon a fund which was insolvent—hopelessly insolvent,"
they would be quite all right under the new scheme. And the Minister further said:—
"We claim, and I think with justification, that we have taken the greatest trouble to give the best terms we could, in all the circumstances, to the teacher."
I will be interested to hear Deputy Cormac Breathnach, speaking as the chairman of the Teachers' Organisation, telling us in what way he can discover that this new scheme as a whole is definitely more advantageous to the teachers than the conditions which they at present enjoy.
The teachers are an intelligent body of citizens, they know what is a good and what is a bad bargain. If this scheme which it is now proposed to introduce is definitely more advantageous to the teachers than the scheme which they at present enjoy, how is it that it is not possible to get the teachers to see that and accept it? If this scheme is more advantageous one would imagine the teachers would be only too glad to accept it; that they would, in fact, be falling over themselves and, instead of resolutions appearing in the papers protesting against the scheme, one would expect to see votes passed to the Minister for Education and his colleague, the Minister for Finance, congratulating them on being the new saviours of the teachers in the matter of superannuation. The very fact that the teachers are protesting is the clearest possible evidence that the teachers are satisfied that this is an extremely bad bargain, that it is imposing a burden on them which is unfair and is asking them to pay in future a contribution in respect of superannuation which they were never held liable for in the past.
That portion of the Minister's speech which sought to tell the teachers that in future they will not have to depend on an insolvent fund but on the security of an annual vote of the Oireachtas for superannuation is hardly a fair method of argument. As I pointed out the last day, there is no insolvency so far as the teachers' side of the pension fund is concerned. The actuarial investigation in 1926 showed the teachers' portion of the fund had a surplus of a quarter of a million. That side of the pension fund was responsible for only 25 per cent. of the pensions and, accepting full liability for 25 per cent., that fund was not merely able to discharge its liability but had a surplus of a quarter of a million on the actuary's calculation. So there is no insolvency so far as the teachers' side is concerned. Any insolvency that has arisen has been caused by the failure of the State to keep its side of the fund in a good financial standing. In 1923 the assets of the teachers' pension fund amounted to £532,000. Those assets had increased to £1,387,000 in 1932. The endowment account, the State side of the pension fund, had decreased by £628,000 during the period when the teachers' side had increased by £855,000. It is not, therefore, a fair method of argument to suggest that because the State side of the fund is insolvent it is desirable for the teachers to rest on some other reed. The obvious responsibility of the State is to make its side right. Instead of that it is proposed to ask the teachers to pay in future 75 per cent. of their pensions instead of the 25 per cent. they paid in the past.
The Minister might have told us whether it is proposed to renew the Public Services (Temporary Economies) Act during 1934. Speaking before the Civil Service Compensation Board some time ago. Deputy Geoghegan, who appeared on behalf of the Minister for Finance, indicated that in all probability the Temporary Economies Act would not be prolonged beyond the 31st of this month and he said there was no authority or intention to prolong the Act at the time he spoke. That has an interesting bearing on this whole situation. We might have been told whether it is proposed to continue the Act; whether it is proposed to ask teachers, in addition to the contributions which they are making under this, to contribute also under the Temporary Economies Act if it is prolonged, or whether that Act is going to be dropped generally and continued in this form only in respect of the teachers. It seems to me that it is unfair the teachers should be asked to make this contribution as a special contribution in addition to the contribution which might be expected from them if the Temporary Economies Act is prolonged.
We are told the purpose of this motion is to form a superannuation scheme for national school teachers; but really when one examines the scheme it is hardly a superannuation scheme. This motion hardly describes what it is proposed to do. It could be more correctly described as a motion to make teachers in future pay 75 per cent. of their pensions instead of the 25 per cent. for which they were liable in the past. I think it imposes an undue burden on teachers, an unfair burden in all the circumstances of the case, and in future it is going to exact from teachers a contribution of a month's salary per year towards their pensions. That is a heavy burden, an unprecedented burden and I think the Government have been unnecessarily harsh in imposing a settlement of this kind upon the teachers.