I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £65,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1968, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Education (including Institutions of Science and Art), for certain Miscellaneous Educational and Cultural Services, and for payment of sundry Grants-in-Aid.
With this Vote are Supplementary Estimates for Primary Education, Secondary Education and Vocational Education. The total provision in these Supplementary Estimates is £2,575,510.
The additional sums required in respect of Vote 27—Office of the Minister for Education, are for Subheads A.1.—Salaries, Wages and Allowances; D.1.—Publications in Irish; F.1.— Purchase of Specimens (National Museum); F.2. Fittings, Materials, etc., (National Museum); H.3.—Royal Irish Academy.
In regard to Subhead A the excess of £22,000 is due mainly to expansion in the staff of my Department in consequence of the recent considerable increase in the provision of educational facilities in general.
The excess in Subhead D.1 is due to certain publication costs accruing and falling due for payment earlier than anticipated, including the very successful Buntús Cainte which is proving to be a best-seller. There is also provision for a special payment of £9,000 to a firm engaged full-time in the publication of books in Irish.
In Subhead F.1, a supplementary sum of £14,000 is required for the purchase of specimens for the National Museum. This includes provision for the purchase of the Killymoon gold collection recently acquired and for the possible purchase of an important collection of Irish antiquities which may be offered for sale shortly in England.
In F.2, Fittings, Materials etc., an excess of £5,700 is occasioned by expenses in connection with the exhibition of archaeological objects in the National Museum which formed part of the recent Rosc Exhibition.
The other subhead in this Vote for which a supplementary sum is required is H.3.—Royal Irish Academy. An additional £4,500 is needed to meet the increased operating costs of this Institution.
Savings of £9,000 are available under other subheads of this Vote which reduce the total additional requirements to £65,500.
In the case of Vote 30, Primary Education, £301,000 is required in Subhead A for the payment of capital grants towards the cost of the erection of a new training college for Protestant student teachers at Rathmines, in place of the existing building at Kildare Place which is no longer suitable for use as a training college and will be vacated this year when the new building is completed.
The training college authorities are utilising the proceeds of the sale of the Kildare Place premises to meet portion of the cost of the new building. The balance will be met by the payment of capital grants from this subhead and by a loan raised by the college authorities which will, as in the case of St. Patrick's Training College, be repayable as to principal and interest out of State Grants over a period of years.
The sum of £105,000 in Subhead C.1 is required to meet increases in grants to managers of capitation national schools and increased rates of social welfare contributions for national teachers. The increased rates of capitation grants are in line with the salary increases—tenth round— awarded as from 1st June, 1966 to teachers in classification national schools in accordance with the general agreement made at the National Teachers Conciliation Council. At the time these increased capitation rates were awarded the Estimates for 1967-68 had already been prepared and it is necessary to provide £80,000 to meet the additional cost in the current financial year. A further provision of £25,000 is required to meet the cost of increased rates of social welfare contributions for national teachers which were introduced subsequent to the preparation of the Estimate.
In regard to the Supplementary Estimate required in Vote 31, Secondary Education, I am glad to be able to report that participation in the free education scheme has exceeded the expectations on which the original estimate was based. Because of this and of the extension of the scheme, as announced in December last, to include the tuition element of the fee for boarders in diocesan colleges, juniorates and Protestant schools, it is necessary to provide an additional sum of £129,000 in Subhead A.2.
The greatly increased numbers of pupils in attendance at secondary schools since the introduction of the new scheme brings as a necessary corollary an increase in the number of teachers employed and an estimated additional provision of £85,000 is required in Subhead B for payment of Incremental Salary to these teachers.
In Subhead J, an additional provision is required for secondary school building grants. The provision made under this subhead in the original estimate was based on the scheme of grants as it existed at the beginning of the year, which took the form of 70 per cent of the annual repayment of principal and interest on loans obtained by secondary school authorities to meet the approved cost of new school buildings or major extensions to existing buildings. In view of the difficulty being experienced by school authorities in obtaining loans for building, the scheme was amended in the present financial year to provide that the full amount of the approved cost of building be met in the first instance from State grants of which 70 per cent will be by way of an outright grant and 30 per cent of a loan repayable as to principal and interest by the school authorities over a period of 15 years. The estimated additional provision required in the subhead for the purpose of this amended scheme is £1,425,000, based on an estimate of the building work which will fall due for payment within the current financial year.
The original provision made in the estimate for 1967-8 for grants for free school books under Subhead L was based on the estimated number of children who would receive free education and the proportion of these who would require assistance under the free book scheme which was introduced at the beginning of the school year. As I have already mentioned, the number of pupils participating in the free education scheme has exceeded all expectations. Because of this and the fact that a higher proportion of pupils will require assistance in the matter of free books, grants under the scheme will exceed the original provision by an estimated £50,000.
The other subhead of this Vote for which a supplementary sum is required is M, Transport Services. The scheme for the provision of free transport for pupils residing over three miles from the nearest post-primary school was introduced with effect from the beginning of the current financial year. At the time the original estimate was being prepared it was anticipated that the implementation of the scheme would be spread over three years and a provision of £225,000 in the Subhead was based on anticipated expenditure in the first year. With the co-operation of CIE it is now possible to implement the scheme in full in the current financial year and a supplementary provision of £615,000 is therefore necessary.
Savings on other subheads totalling £200,000 are available to reduce the total requirement. These savings are due in part to the fact that building operations on the two comprehensive schools at Carraroe and Shannon have not yet been fully completed and that the erection of the new school at Glenties did not proceed as quickly as anticipated. Part of the savings is also due to the fact that a revised scheme for the provision of science and equipment grants for secondary schools has not been in operation throughout the full year.
With regard to Vote 30, Vocational Education, the purpose of the Supplementary Estimate is to enable savings in the Vote to be used to meet preliminary planning expenses in connection with the provision of the regional technical colleges for which a new Subhead D.3 has been opened. When the Estimates for the current year were being prepared, the method of financing the provision of the colleges had not been decided and consequently provision had not been made to meet these expenses.
As sufficient savings are available in Subhead A of the Vote, only a token Supplementary Estimate is being sought.
