Vol. 51 No. 11
I move amendment No. 1:—
In page 3, Section 4 (1), to delete all from the word "such" where it secondly occurs in line 54 to the end of the sub-section, and substitute the words "a deduction calculated in accordance with this Act."
I am moving this amendment in accordance with the promise I made on the Committee Stage.
I move amendment No. 2:—
In page 4 at the end of Section 4 to add a new sub-section as follows:—
This section shall not take effect in respect of any officer of a vocational education committee unless and until the Minister for Education shall have prescribed a scale of salary applicable to such officer under Section 3 of the Vocational Education Act, 1930.
I wonder whether the Minister is yet in a position to answer a question I put to him on the Committee Stage, in which I asked him in how many cases has more than the minimum rate been struck. He stated on the Committee Stage, I think, that in many cases such a rate had been struck, but he did not indicate in how many cases, in connection with vocational committees, a rate of more than the minimum rate had been struck, and he refused to do so. I can understand that, at the time, he might not have had the information at his disposal; but he has had plenty of time since to get the necessary information—and it is germane to the subject of the amendment—and I hope he will indicate to the House how many cases there are where more than the minimum rate has been struck. Further in connection with his reply to this amendment, he might say exactly what is to happen this money that is saved. Will it be kept from the committee? Can it legally be kept from the committee? I should like the Minister also to face that particular problem, and if it cannot be kept from the committee, what better use can it be put to than paying the salaries of a body of teachers who, I think everybody acknowledged, were not as highly-paid as we should like them to be?
There may have been reasons why various Governments could not put them on as high a scale as we should like them to be, but, at all events, a step was taken which would have made that possible. At a time when money is being scattered broadcast by the Government, they might show some kind of respect for their professions about establishing industries in this country and getting Irish help, if possible, to deal with the matter. They might show, as I say, some respect for their own professions by not cutting down this class of teacher particularly. There was power, as is indicated in or implied by the amendment, in the Act to prescribe scales of salary. For one reason or another, that has not been done. I do not think that the Opposition were under the impression, when they were on these benches, that these teachers were highly paid. I doubt if the Minister for Education will level against them the charge of incompetence that he has a habit of levelling against other teachers.
I should like the Deputy to say where I made a charge of incompetence against the teachers.
I am not going to say where.
Then you should not make the statement.
Why not? If I interpret the Minister's statement as conveying that meaning, it is the natural interpretation of it. I know that members of the Government can be adept in conveying one thing and actually, when parsed out, their words show them to mean the opposite. I hope the compliment—shall I put it that way?—will not be paid to those teachers of cutting their salaries. Everybody admitted that their salaries were too low. They stand in a somewhat different position from anybody else, apart altogether from the merits, because the Minister has not shown how this money that is to be docked off the salaries will return to the county council. Can it return to the county council or must it go to the committee? If it goes to the committee, I suggest that the best way it can be used by the committee is by paying proper salaries to these particular people. The Government made no case for the cut. I do not pretend to be a legal authority, but it seems to me that the money cannot go back to the county council. If so, I think it is much better that you should have a satisfied and properly paid body of teachers than that this paltry economy should be made.
I do not propose to accept the amendment. I often am greatly amused at the Deputy's performances in this House. At any rate, he gives us something to smile about.
In these days it is good for you.
It is something to be thankful for. He is proposing to-day that we should prescribe the salaries of the teachers under the vocational education committees.
I am not proposing anything of the kind.
The amendment states, "until the Minister for Education shall have prescribed a scale of salary."
I am proposing that the cut shall not take effect until that is done.
The Deputy on the last day argued in favour of having a scale of salaries prescribed. A couple of days ago, when we were discussing another amendment to this Bill proposed by a colleague of his, the Deputy got into a state of excitement about the freedom of local authorities. He said that they should be left absolutely free from restriction by the Minister to decide certain things under this Bill. He waxed very eloquent. He can be very eloquent sometimes, especially when he is not quite serious, I must add. When he is serious, he is more solemn and does not go into the high flights that he goes into when he does not quite mean all he says. Now he wants to restrict the powers and, in particular, he is anxious that we should not cut the salaries. He talks about the smallness of the teachers' salaries. The Deputy held the position of Minister for Education for quite a while and I think I am not wronging him in saying that he did nothing to increase the salaries of those teachers while he was Minister for Education. I doubt if there was one of the lowly-paid teachers that he mentioned who got an increase of salary as the result of work that he did to improve the teachers' salaries. I doubt if he could produce a solitary case.
The present Minister for Education has not prescribed salaries, as he was entitled to do under the Act, but he has used the influence of his office to secure that the vocational education teachers all over the country would get the salaries thought proper by the Education Department, and in practically all cases the higher salaries suggested by the Minister for Education have been accepted by the local authorities. They have not been prescribed, admittedly, but the same thing has been accomplished by other methods. I agree with the Deputy that the salaries are not exorbitant; they are moderate salaries. At any rate they have this advantage now as far as this Bill is concerned, that in the vast majority of cases they will not be touched. They have that consolation. I cannot say that the Deputy is glad to hear it, seeing that he did not raise the salaries when he had the chance. The Deputy asked me how many local authorities exceeded the minimum rate for vocational education. I am told by the Education Department that in practically every case they exceeded the minimum rate. Whatever savings are made can go to the vocational education committee and be spent on educational purposes. They can increase the salaries if they so desire.
Can the money go back to the county council from the committee?
Not directly. But if the education committee saves the money the county council can save it.
In what way? Do I understand from the Minister that after the rate is struck the county council can get back from the education committee a certain amount of money?
In striking the rate the year afterwards. They can reduce the rate.
I thought this was a temporary Bill.
On this stage, I want to take this opportunity of dealing with and replying to a rather unworthy personal attack which was made on myself by the Minister in closing the debate on the Second Reading of this Bill. He made use of his position as Minister, in closing the debate, when nobody could speak after him, to indulge in an attack on me which was characterised by a display of inaccuracy and falsehood, excusable perhaps, in a member of his Party who was not a member of the Government, and was not in a position to ascertain the accuracy of the statements made, but inexcusable in a member of the Executive Council, who, by walking into any office in his own Department, was in a position to ascertain the accuracy of the facts and the accuracy or inaccuracy of the figures. The baseless charge was levelled against me that I had indulged in a personal attack. I submit, a Chinn Comhairle, that I have never been guilty of making a personal attack on anybody in this House. I pointed out the fact that we were engaged in discussing a Bill to reduce the salaries and the wages of salary earners and wage earners throughout this country, because of the financial distress which the country was suffering as a result of the policy of the Executive Council. I pointed out that even assuming that the policy was right, if it was necessary to call on every salary earner and wage earner to contribute not only by way of cut, but also by way of increased income tax, an example should have been set on top by the Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries applying the Bill to their own salaries, and by Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries paying not only income tax, but increased income tax.
I submit, a Chinn Comhairle, that that was a perfectly reasonable argument. It was aimed at the whole Government. It was not a personal attack. It was aimed at no individual. It was a perfectly legitimate Parliamentary argument to use. It was a perfectly legitimate picture to hold up in opposing a Bill such as this. The Minister pleased to interpret that as a personal attack, and he comes back by levelling at me the charge that there was no man had his hands more deeply in the public purse than myself. I am not going to follow that kind of argument. If I had an inch rule, and I measured the depth of my hand as against the Minister's, the Minister would beat me by many yards and by many years. The portion of his attack that I resent is: No. 1, the injustice; No. 2, the falseness. The picture portrayed by the Minister was that I was a Deputy of this House; that I was a medical officer of health, working for a living; and that, in addition, I was a pensioner drawing a pension in this State. Even the amount mentioned by the Minister was false, and the facts are very well known to the Minister. By virtue of the fact that I work for a living, I do not draw as much as a farthing a year pension. I have a certificate recording my service, and that certificate does not give me as much as a farthing a year. A charge was made about the gratuity I obtained when I resigned from the Army, as if that was something personal and something corrupt. I got a gratuity not from the Government, but from this Dáil, the same as 400 other officers. A decision was taken in the interests of economy, that every officer who resigned before a certain date would get two years' pay on the understanding that he surrendered all rights to pension. I was one of those 400 officers. I got no more and no less than the other 399. There was nothing corrupt, nothing political and nothing personal about that particular act of Dáil Eireann. The Minister went further. Not only by way of his speech but by way of interruption he pointed to my appointment as a medical officer of health as a political appointment, which is unworthy of the Minister.
I believe it was.
I do not doubt the Minister. It is low enough to be just about on the Minister's level of belief. What does it amount to? It amounts not to a charge against me, but to a charge of corruption against distinguished professors of the National University. If I received my appointment for political reasons and for corrupt reasons, the charge is against those who made the appointment. If I received that particular post in competition with better men, there was something vile and something despicable about the members who formed the selection committee. The Minister has some slight association with the National University of Ireland, and he should hesitate to utilise his position as a Minister to level that contemptible charge.
What has the National University got to do with this?
The selection board was constituted of distinguished professors, two of them professors in the National University. The third was a distinguished medical officer of health from the South of Ireland, whose politics are not in line with mine. All except one were unknown to me on the day before I faced that tribunal. On the same occasion as I received my appointment two other medical officers of health were also appointed. They were supporters of the Minister and adherents of the Fianna Fáil Party. Were their appointments also corrupt? We have a system of local appointments in this country. It obtained before the Minister became Minister. It still obtains in this country. I consider it is nationally degrading and very unworthy that an obscure Deputy of this House should level a charge of corruption against the people who constitute the selection boards or tribunals, but I consider it is damnable for a man who holds the position of Minister to level such a charge against distinguished public men in this country.
I do not think I have anything to withdraw.
I did not expect you to withdraw it!
Then you are not disappointed.
No.
That is all right. We are quite agreed then. I have nothing in the world to withdraw. If I misled anybody into believing that the Deputy drew a salary and a pension at the same time I apologise for that. The Deputy did not mention one other charge which I levelled. Surely he will not suggest that this was not a political appointment. While he was a whole-time official and Deputy of this House he was appointed also to a board in London from which he drew a salary of £500 a year.
That is not correct.
He was appointed to represent the Free State on a board subsidiary to the Marconi Company.
That is not correct. I am getting rather weary of correcting Ministers on matters which should be within their knowledge if they were not too lazy to look them up. I was appointed, not as director of the Marconi Company, not on any board that was subsidiary to the Marconi Company; I was appointed as representative of the Irish Free State on the Inter-Commonwealth Tribunal. There was no salary attached to the office. There was an allowance for expenses attached to it.
What did the allowance amount to?
That does not arise. I paid income-tax on it.
I see, the Inter-Commonwealth Tribunal is to be associated with the Marconi Company and there was a salary attached to it. The Deputy will tell us was the allowance or emolument £500 a year? I do not want to wrong the Deputy but he will tell us that. I know it happened in another case where a person who was appointed to another position with £500 a year returned that £500 a year to the Treasury. Perhaps the Deputy knows whether he did that or whether he paid income-tax on it. If he returned the money I will be glad to hear him.
The Exchequer did not pay it, and it is not in the Bill.
No. That £500 is not in this Bill but there were points raised by a Deputy.
I did not raise them.
No, it is not in this Bill, nor is the refusal to appoint Doctor Clarke in this Bill, nor is the matter of the appointment of Doctor O'Doherty in the County Dublin in the Bill. We would not have them.
With regard to the Local Appointments Commission and the professors of the National University I am sure there are many honourable men attached to the National University. I do not know who was on the board. Everybody was asked to sit on a board sometime. They are looked upon as honourable men but does the Deputy suggest to me that there is no such thing in the National University as men with a political outlook?
Might I say that the particular individual who represented the National University on that board was the Senior Professor of Bacteriology and Public Health in the National University?
I do not know anything about his politics at all. But he might be as political as the political professor who sits beside the Deputy.
On a point of order, Sir, is it permissible for a Minister to charge professors of the National University with corruption? Is there any precedent in this House or outside the House for making such a charge?
On a point of order, may I make a suggestion? Is the Minister making the case that because he does not know the politics of certain members of the National University that that is a sufficient ground for making positive charges of corruption against people who give their services gratis—that these people made a political appointment?
That is not a point of order.
My point of order, Sir, is this: should this House be the medium through which such an attack or implied attack is to be made on people who give their services gratis? I suggest that the Minister is only abusing his position, and he is making it extremely difficult to fill these boards afterwards.
It is not in order to make charges of political corruption against members of selection boards nor against any person who is defenceless against accusations made under privilege in this House.
I should like to have a ruling on this particular point. Is it within the rules of order of this House for a Minister of State to make charges of corruption against members of tribunals or committees set up under legislation passed by this House? I submit that outside Bedlam or Grangegorman no such attempt has been made anywhere.
Deputy Dillon has more knowledge of Grangegorman than I have.
It is not in order to make charges against any individual who has no remedy or redress.
I hope the Minister is listening.
With regard to what Deputy O'Higgins said, I want to say this, that I do believe that the professors of the National University cannot and do not divest themselves of their politics at all times.
That is repeating a charge. That means that a charge can be made against any person in this country who serves on a board—the charge that he is making a political appointment, because, may I suggest, there are very few people in this country who have not political convictions.
Hear, hear.
And may I suggest that there is absolutely no ground for the unfounded and cowardly charge made by the Minister against professors of the National University——
And the charge is disorderly.
I know the Deputy all right.
There will be no more charges now as the Chair is not prepared to hear another word on this matter. I am putting the question.
