Samlaítear dom nach ceart dom suí anseo agus an díospóireacht ar an rún seo a ligint thart, gan rud éigin a rá mar gheall air. Is é mo thuairim, pé deireadh a cuirfear leis an rún, go mba cheart dom, do gach éinne go bhfuil eolas cruinn aige ar an scéal seo, bunús an rúin a mholadh don Aire, don Teach agus don Rialtas.
Go deimhin, tá fhios ag gach Teachta Dála an sár-obair a dhein na sean-mhúinteoirí ar son na tíre, na teangan agus an chultúra. Is oth liom a rá go bhfuil siad ag maireachtaint anois fé phinsiúiní bheaga agus go mba cheart dúinn an tslí bheatha atá acu fé láthair a árdú go hoiriúnach.
I speak on this question not from any Pilatical complex but from absolute conviction. It is sometimes, no doubt, rather embarrassing in a situation like this, when the Minister has already declared his intentions, for a Deputy on these benches to decide whether he should express his views or maintain a discreet and uneasy silence. In this instance I have decided to express my convictions on the motion before the House. This is a very important question. The mover of the motion has stated that there is a special case for the teachers. There can be no doubt whatever but that that can be established. As a Deputy on these benches, I am not prepared to accept the suggestion that if the pensioned teachers' claims are conceded, the bottom is going to fall out of the Exchequer purse. Let us go back to the work these teachers did at a time when they had four pay days in the year, that is when they had quarterly salaries, the work that they did for this nation when there was, as has been said here, very little secondary education and very little transport to bring the rural community to the centres where such education was available. Let us come from that time of their miserable salaries and their four payments in the year to the time of national resurgence, at the start of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League, when they established branches here and there throughout the country and when they worked, not only after school hours by day, but again by night to revive our ancient language and to inspire the rising generation with a sense of their duties to their native land. It was said once that the famine and the national schools were partly the cause of losing the Irish language. All I can say, with reference to the teachers with whom we are dealing now, is that to their efforts in the early days of the Gaelic revival more than to those of any other section of the community, is due the fact that the Irish language holds the position that it does to-day. They laid the foundations for whatever work has been done in that regard. We all know that at their own expense and often at great personal inconvenience, even though they were only a couple of chapters ahead of their pupils, they came after a hard day's work to teach the national language at various centres. In every other national movement they took a creditable part.
Apart from that, if we consider the position that they had built up from the penurious salaries they were getting, we must agree that they are entitled to special consideration. In 1934, the Government took over £2,400,000 odd from a fund that was there to provide pensions for the teachers. Of that fund, £1,535,000 was money they had themselves subscribed. They had subscribed a surplus of £250,000 to their portion of the fund. From that fund, as the Minister has admitted, there is an investment income of £83,000 a year. That does not apply to any other branch of service, Government or otherwise. With that £83,000 we could give 20 per cent. of an increase to the pensioned teachers. Why not do it? Can any case be made why it should not be done? I do not see any.
Deputy Ua Donnchadha raised the point that some money was saved to the Government during the strike. A sum of £165,000 approximately was saved and even though mention has been made of a small portion of that that has been paid out, I say now deliberately, while I take a very poor view of that payment—I do not want to drag any other controversy into the case I am making for the pensioned teachers—that that saving of £165,000 would provide these increases for two years in full without any charge to the Exchequer.
I have a document here to which the name of my old teacher is appended. Since that document was written, he has passed to his eternal reward. When I was only 16 years of age he asked me to become secretary of the Gaelic League and of the Feis in the parish—a branch of the Gaelic League he himself had established. He was only one of many like him who did their utmost to propagate the language. They are passing from us rapidly; soon they will be gone. Let us at least pay some tribute to the service of those of them who are left other than mere flamboyant words.
We have some very plausible arguments put up to us from all sides of the House, but in 1922, shortly after our own Government was established, the first thing that happened in the case of the teachers was a withdrawal of fees for teaching Irish as an extra subject. That was the first gesture towards the teachers and their work.
In 1923 there was a 10 per cent. cut in salaries, bonuses, capitation grants, fees for mathematics and for teaching monitors and pupil teachers. That was a good start. Let it be understood that every cut in salary meant a cut in pension. In 1926 there was another withdrawal of grants to teachers for teaching monitors and pupil teachers, and in 1929 there was a total withdrawal of fees for the teaching of rural science. Now we hear that rural science is not being taught in these schools. Why should it, when the grants were withdrawn in 1929 by the Government then in power? In 1933 there was a cut from 1 to 8 per cent. in salaries and in 1934 there was a further deduction from 6 to 9 per cent. in salaries. In 1938 there was a restoration of 10 per cent.
That is the treatment which the teachers have got under a native Government. I do not wish to draw comparisons with what has occurred elsewhere, and the treatment which teachers have received there. The burden on the public purse is always an excuse for not doing things. When, however, there is a war of destruction on, plenty of money can be got and there is no question about getting it, but when it comes to economic construction, then we have no money for anything. We have no money to build up, but we have plenty of it to destroy. That is the cry of the world. While it may be considered financial heresy from the official point of view to say this, I hold that, as long as we are attached to the £ sterling, the man doing work here, whether it be picking potatoes, working on the roads, or teaching in a school, is entitled to the same monetary recompense as the man teaching in another country where the same monetary system obtains. I thought that I might have got some enlightenment or some ideas on that from Deputy Flanagan, but since he has not enlightened me, I shall have to persist in my heresy.
It is certain that a special case can be made for the teachers because of the fact that the fund, which was built up by the teachers themselves and which had a surplus of £250,000, was taken over by the Government. The Minister, instead of turning down the motion, should go into that aspect of the case and reconsider it—the special case that is made for the teachers by reason of that fund. I agree that the whole case for exceptional treatment rests on that particular fact. Therefore, I think the Minister ought to go into that and see whether a special case can be established to his satisfaction as it has, I am sure, been established to the satisfaction of the House.
I know, of course, that if a division is challenged on the motion that, under the Party system of government, I will have to go into the lobby against my own convictions. As a Deputy I often feel like one pulling against the current. It is so overwhelming that one has to go back and take another approach to his objective. That is the Party system. I suppose that any other system would not work here. Irrespective of what I may have to do on the matter subsequently, I think that in tribute to the men who taught me and taught the members of this House, in tribute to their work for the nation and in appreciation of the high duties they performed on the miserable salaries, this occasion ought not to be allowed to pass without making a special appeal to the Minister for Education. I know that he would be sympathetic but that, like me, he is being overwhelmed by the Party system, and by all the other things that might happen if we were to do this. Despite all that, I think a special case can be established for these men on the documents which are in the possession of the Government and of the Minister's Department.
I make a last appeal to the Minister to consider the case of those men and the circumstances under which they live. It has been said that they should have their families reared, but with four payments in the year how could they have got married early in life and settled down? They could not have done so until circumstances altered for them. Their work was carried out in many cases in damp, cold, insanitary hovels. They did their best to educate the rising generation, and one wondered "how one small head could carry all they knew". Now, in their declining years, in the evening of their lives, let it be said that this Irish Parliament is prepared to show appreciation of the work of men who, at a juncture in our history, when new life and hope were coming to the nation, took a leading part in laying the foundations for its future greatness.
