Even before knowing your ruling I had intended to confine myself to the matters raised in this Supplementary Estimate. In view of the imminence of the general education debate it would be a pity if we duplicated everything.
There is one aspect of the matters covered by these Supplementary Estimates to which I should like to refer in some detail because it is a matter of current controversy and of great difficulty and one which I think ought to be discussed in view of the dangerous situation which has arisen. I refer to the problem of teachers' salaries. However, before coming to that I wish to deal briefly with one or two of the other matters referred to in the Minister's speech and covered by these Supplementary Estimates.
I welcome as a step in the right direction the £100,000 provided for voluntary youth organisations. I am glad that something is at last being done in this area. However, I would ask the Minister to what extent has this money been spent in the current year. Are we talking only of a token or has the Minister, in pursuance of the policy previously announced, been able to get something done? Will we find ourselves at the end of the financial year with some or a large part of this money unspent? Is it merely a gesture? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us in reply that, in fact, the money will have been spent and that our youth organisations will have benefited from this provision during the current year.
The need for something of the kind has been evident for a long time past. Indeed, those of us who recently had occasion to spend more time than we normally would in areas like Ballyfermot, Inchicore, Walkinstown and Drimnagh are, perhaps, more than ordinarily conscious of this need. This is an area where remarkable work is being done by the youth clubs that exist, but as the candidate of our party in the campaign had occasion to remark more than once, as a youth leader in that area he found that most of his time was taken up trying to raise funds, instead of carrying out the functions of a youth leader, trying to help the young people in the area to develop themselves and benefit from the opportunities such councils provide.
I hope the Minister in replying will tell us that this money has been spent. I hope that, given the intention to provide this money and the fact that today the Dáil will pass this Supplementary Estimate, plans have been made to ensure that these youth organisations benefit immediately. This sum, even spread over the large number of youth organisations existing, could make quite an impact because many of them operate on a shoestring. I know some clubs operate on such very small sums of money because of the immense amount of voluntary help given but a cash sum even of some hundreds of pounds, and certainly of several thousand pounds, would make an extraordinary difference to them and would enable them to raise their sights and take their minds off fund-raising problems and get down to the job they are supposed to do.
The need for this cannot be emphasised sufficiently. The problems of juvenile delinquency in the areas I have mentioned and other areas are not the sole reason for doing something of this kind: that is a negative reason. Nor is the absence of youth clubs the sole reason for juvenile delinquency but none of us can doubt the immense value rapid expansion of youth organisations could have in such areas.
When in France several years ago in the summer I was impressed to find how well organised youth clubs were there. When we arrived at a seaside resort there was there a Maison des Jeunes, part of a network of such clubs throughout the country. For the payment of about 10/- any young person could become a member of this and all other such clubs. The club in this village, because it was a small place recently developed, was not particularly well-equipped. The building was old and the facilities meagre and it was unrepresentative, I gathered, of the majority of these clubs, many of which are very well equipped in very modern buildings. There was a building there and when young people arrived they were not left to hang around cafés on their own and get into trouble. There was somewhere they could go to meet other young people in an atmosphere that had some kind of leadership and some opportunities to do something constructive. There was the possibility of playing various indoor games if it rained as it does, even on the Continent in the month of August. One could develop one's artistic abilities in painting classes. There was a photographic studio where you could develop your own photographs. There were a number of features like this and also dances and so on that provided a centre for young people. Most of those coming there were members of Maison des Jeunes in their own local areas. They had a network of clubs.
It seems we should be thinking in these terms and looking forward to the time in this country when, as people move from place to place and young people move from country to city or, hopefully, from one city to another as we achieve better mobility of labour, and as people go on holiday to the seaside, they will automatically go to the local club to which they will be affiliated through membership of the club in their own area and in this way we will help to ensure more constructive development of youth than has been possible hitherto.
I also hope that in these clubs the present segregation of the sexes will be limited. Segregation is not always imposed from above. In a case I know the problem of eliminating segregation arose from the fact that it was a boys' club and the boys showed marked reluctance to allow in girls. Eventually, they agreed to do so on certain week nights only, when boys would not be there and ultimately they agreed to have debates occasionally between the two groups. There was no question of any clerical hand imposing segregation: it was a self-operating process. Youth clubs could provide a healthy environment for contact between the opposite sexes which at present is minimal, thereby leading to the development of attitudes which are dangerous for the ultimate stability of married life by creating a kind of male-dominated environment, male orientation which is anti-pathetic to family life later or, alternatively, perhaps young people come together in circumstances which are unsatisfactory and likely to lead to difficulties. Unsegregated youth clubs seem to be the right answer.
The main thing is that money is being provided. I hope it will be spent. I have always a fear when a sum like this is provided that the administrative process of clearing the sums to be allocated is such that the amount of money actually reaching people is very small. The concern for accountability, which is part of our administrative system and which has played a great part in ensuring continued respect for the integrity of the public service, has the disadvantage when a new scheme comes in that it is very difficult to get the money out.
We all recall the export grant scheme arising out of the British import levies when, for many months, no money was paid out under that scheme because of extremely stringent control leading to utter frustration on the part of the industrialists and, I feel, of the Minister who introduced the scheme. In this instance I hope there will not be too many formalities and that if a genuine club comes along with responsible people in charge who say, "We need some money for this purpose or that" the money will be given without having to fill up too many forms or explain what they are doing in great detail and without having to go up to every level in the public service and down again.
Not totally unconnected with this in a way is the provision for the Union of Students in Ireland. I welcome the provision of a grant for the reconstruction of the premises in Harcourt Street. This is a concrete recognition by the Government of the role of students and their organisations. It will not come amiss to say that I also welcome the decision of the Government to appoint the current president of the Students Representative Council in UCD to the governing body. Within the present rigid framework of the charter of NUI and its colleges that was all the Government could do to ensure a measure of student representation. While the immediate reaction of some of the students was not very encouraging this is in part due to misunderstandings. The Government did what they could in the circumstances and acted properly and wisely. This further recognition of student organisations in this Supplementary Estimate is welcome.
I also welcome the extra provision for training colleges and the reference to the fact that extern students may be taken into these colleges for the first time. It always struck me as extraordinary that our system of education for primary teachers required us to lock them up in institutions. They were for many years virtually locked up on very stringent terms as if they were children of 14 in a boarding school. It seemed we could not train primary teachers without locking them up in this way whereas other kinds of teachers attended university courses in the ordinary way as young adults. This distinction seemed totally inappropriate. It has come out of another era and how it survived into the twentieth century, never mind into the final third of that century, I cannot understand. Residential education is desirable; I am not suggesting otherwise. On the contrary I should like to see a great extension of it and see the Government helping, perhaps by Government guarantees of money raised from outside sources, the universities to establish residences for their students on the campus.
The fact that they do not have any residential element on the campus of colleges of the NUI is a great weakness of the NUI colleges and an aspect of our system where Trinity College has a clear advantage in that they have residences for some of the students on the campus some of the time. There have been efforts to fill this gap by providing residences near the existing site of the old college in Dublin and also I think in other university centres. This is not the same thing. University residences should be on the campus, part of the university, run by it and managed by the staff and students themselves as a genuine integral part of university life. I am all for this. I am not suggesting that it is undesirable as an element of primary teacher training. On the contrary it is very desirable that it should be extended but what I think is undesirable is the system under which you must go into residence in the case of primary teaching and you cannot go into residence in the case of the universities. This is irrational. To say they may not attend the course unless they attend in a residential way under the sorts of conditions that did prevail when they were literally locked up and were not allowed out is undesirable and could hardly contribute to the maturity of the teachers emerging from it.
I am glad this is being changed and that the system is now more open. I hope that most primary teachers will continue to benefit from the residential arrangements. In fact it is enormously costly to provide these facilities. The system of entry and the various provisions governing entry and the residential requirement were all factors which combined to create a situation in which the great bulk of the students came from rural areas and indeed from particular counties in the west of Ireland.
This had very undesirable consequences and you had this extraordinary skewed sample of people in primary teaching. It meant that in a city like Dublin the proportion of teachers from Dublin in primary schools was small. The very marked differences in cultural environment between Dublin and Cork and other major cities in the country has meant there has been a real difficulty because, as a result of this extraordinary selection of primary teachers, pupils in Dublin schools have not had the benefit of being taught by people having a similar background. The system of primary education in Dublin has been almost colonial in character, with people from a different cultural environment teaching and the pupils having no opportunity even of aspiring to enter the primary teaching profession because of cultural and financial barriers and because of the Irish language requirement, which is a big factor for those coming from a background where the language does not play a very big part. Therefore, because of all these things they felt they had not an opportunity of getting into the primary teaching profession.
There was, therefore, a cultural barrier created and this has contributed, among other things, to the maintenance of a class barrier in Dublin. The fact that extern students are being taken in helps to open up primary teaching to Dublin people, and I think this is a good thing. At the same time, I hope the residential facility will continue and that the Minister will see his way to assist the universities to develop residential accommodation. This may not necessarily require a Government grant. It may be possible to raise money for this facility from abroad, to use these residences in the summer period for tourist purposes and recover part of the cost so that the university subsidy might not have to be very great. The possibility of a Government guarantee for any money raised might reduce the cost and help the universities to get ahead with this task. The Minister and the Higher Education Authority should direct their attention to this aspect as university life is impoverished because this facility is not available. This is a matter on which one would not require Dublin students to become involved as most of them live in their own homes.
On the question of the provision for regional technical colleges, I shall come back to this in the main debate. I merely want to say there is concern as to whether these regional technical colleges are developing in the way it was intended. There have been reports that they are not attracting the kind and level of students which was expected and that they are moving out of their intended operational sphere to compete with secondary schools in the area. This is something about which one should be concerned. We want to open up for students the different streams of education and to get rid of any barrier between the vocational and secondary sides, which is something we are all keen on, although in regard to woodwork and metalwork teachers the Minister's Department has not been helping much by its lack of arrangements for this kind of teaching in secondary schools. We are all in favour of this integration but it does not mean that if you establish higher colleges of technology to provide technician courses you help the situation by then turning them into secondary schools. The Minister should tell us something about development in this area, the number of pupils in the technical colleges and the courses they are following and he could relate this back to public statements of the intention in regard to these technical colleges. It would be interesting to see if what is happening corresponds to the intention.
The doubling of the maintenance grant for the reformatory and industrial schools is overdue. The very fact that the grant has been increased by such an amount reflects the extraordinary inadequacy of this grant. The fact is that the State has been appallingly neglectful in this area: the circumstances in which these schools have to be run on the kind of money provided have made it impossible for those running them to create the proper environment that might help the young people to benefit. In many cases, they have suffered by being in those schools. It is hopeless to expect people to run an institution of this kind on the kind of money being provided and create the proper conditions required to rehabilitate and develop the young people who have got into difficulties, where there is parental inadequacy or where there is a problem of home environment. The doubling of the grant is not adequate, but it is a recognition and a confession of past inadequacy and I am glad that we have at least reached that point. I do not think anyone in this House would demur at a further increase in this grant in the near future, bearing in mind how inadequate it has been up to now.
On universities and colleges, again I do not wish to widen the debate, but the provisions made in the Supplementary Estimates enable us to say a few words on this subject. In his concluding sentence about the university colleges in general the Minister said:
I consider that the additional grants being made available through this Supplementary Estimate should put the colleges in a position to make suitable arrangements to balance annual expenditure and income as from the beginning of the financial year 1970-71.
I hope that is the case, but I very much doubt it. The history of the financial relationship between the university colleges and the Department of Education, if published, would not reflect credit on the Department of Education. The university colleges have been conned by the Department more than once, the juggling of finances that goes on is designed to cover up the inadequacy of the provision, and at times one finds that what is given with one hand is taken away with the other. However, it is done with such skill and sleight-of-hand even the academics find it difficult to discover precisely what has happened and how the money they thought they get has disappeared so quickly.
The whole question of university finances needs to be put on a proper footing. The Government have to decide as a matter of policy, advised by the HEA, what scale of university education they want, and they must make the provision required to enable that scale of university education to be provided in conditions that will enable our colleges to maintain their standards vis-á-vis those of other countries. Hitherto, there has been a policy lacuna between the colleges in the the Government. The colleges in the past tended to think, on the one hand, that it was their duty to take in all those who applied, at a very low standard of entry—the pass leaving certificate—and, on the other hand, if they performed what they regarded as their national duty they thought the Government would be forced to provide for the students they had taken in. The colleges believed that there was an accepted national policy providing university education for those who qualified for it. I think they were wrong in having such a low entry standard and were right to raise it, although I do not agree with their method. However, the colleges were under the impression that the Government approved this policy. They believed that, if they took in people at this low standard, the Government had a duty to and would make provision for these students. I am afraid the faith of the universities in the Government lasted too long. They went on year after year hoping that if they took in students and if there was temporary overcrowding, the Government would see there was money available to provide adequate buildings and staff. They took a long time to wake up to the fact that the Government had no such intention and that the Government's only policy was to minimise the provision of university education and let the universities bear the brunt of any overcrowding that followed. Invariably tensions were created in many cases and universities now have to face this.
In the years ahead the Minister will not find universities willing to continue with an open-ended policy of this kind unless the Government are prepared to make the necessary financial provision. It is not the intention of any of our colleges, when they get all the new buildings so long overdue, to continue in the overcrowded conditions in which they are in the buildings they will be leaving. The Minister will have to face it: if he does not make provision for accommodation, to start with, to cater for the additional students, the universities will have to control the growth of their entry, either by raising standards on the one hand—there is, I think, still room for that, although the type of entry qualification required might be modified; the idea of two honours is something which is bad because it encourages specialisation—or they will have to control entry into particular faculties numerically or through the medium of competition. None of these things is desirable, but the Government have to bear the responsibility of deciding whether they want such a restricted policy or whether they want an open-ended policy.
The Government are entitled to a big voice in this and the universities are not attempting to deny the Government's voice in this. If, at some point, the Government are prepared to provide for X thousand students in a year then the university will take steps—the best steps they can take—to give effect to that Government policy. The universities may feel that some particular Government policy is too restrictive and they will argue against it, but they will work within it. In the past they have accepted the Government policy to be that they should take in everybody who was qualified and cater for them and the Government will then make provision. The universities now know that their faith was ill-founded and that there existed no such Government policy except a policy of drift and, as a result, through the 1950s and 1960s the position deteriorated and overcrowding became unbearable as students packed into the college buildings.
Year by year the staff/student ratio has been disimproving. In many cases it is between half and one-third only of the staff/student ratios of the universities in Britain and Northern Ireland with whose graduates our graduates have to compete. This situation will not be allowed to continue. The Government, any Government, have a duty to make their policy clear and we would hope that the Government, in consultation with the Higher Education Authority, would decide how many students they want to cater for or, alternatively, what policy should be applied in relation to entry. If the Government say they are prepared to cater for as many students as come forward with an entry standard of two honours in leaving certificate, or something of that kind, the university will go ahead and cater for that number and the Government will supply the money. If the Government will do that and make a statement saying they will cater for 24,000 students in the year 1975 and will provide money for staff and buildings to cater for these numbers the universities will plan accordingly and make whatever arrangements they can make, in consultation with the Department of Education, for entry arrangements and standards to control numbers to that level. We simply cannot have a continuation of the situation in which the universities adopt one policy and the Government another, the Government policy being not to provide any more money, or so little that it does not cater for half the students coming in. The time has come for an end to that.
The extent of the deterioration of conditions in universities is not something fully appreciated outside. For this the universities must take some of the blame. If any section finds itself, through neglect on the part of the Government, or through bad Government policy, in a situation in which its position deteriorates rapidly it is up to that section to make its voice heard. I am not saying the university personnel have not made many speeches on the subject, but they did not seem to convince or get the message across. There may have been poor public relations and various other reasons, but the universities clearly did not succeed in conveying to the Government or to the public just how bad the position was. More imagination might, perhaps, have been used in putting the case across.
I remember looking at the position over a period of eight years in the 1950s and 1960s and, in that short period, the position as regards financing per student has deteriorated vis-àvis Queen's to such an extent that it was twice as bad at the end of the eight years as it was at the beginning, or half as good, whichever you prefer. The different treatment here led to a deterioration of the order of 2:1 within that short period, and that continued for some years. It has been less rapid recently because the Government have made some additional provision, but the universities are still in the position in which they cannot get money for extra staff. Money is provided for buildings, which will be just about adequate for the numbers coming forward when the buildings are opened. There may be some leeway for a year or two thereafter, but no more.
The Government should not feel they are putting an end to the problem. It is merely bringing the building programme up to date and, from then on, expansion will be needed if the Government continue to favour the growth in numbers in universities. What the Government have not done is to make any provision for additional staff and, from my limited knowledge, their treatment of this matter has been frivolous. That is the only word I can use to describe it. I am sure the other colleges have put forward their needs for additional funds in the years ahead. They state the position that X is required in relation to salary increases, all of which are approved by the Minister and his Department, and that they need then additional sums for certain other purposes, including money for so many extra staff. The additional number of staff they have stated in terms of moving towards the target proposed by the Commission on Higher Education, which target is to be achieved by 1975. The Department have paid no attention whatsoever to this. The grants they have given have, in fact, shown an increase representing only a fraction of the total required and they do not even indicate whether the money they are not giving is, in fact, money required for increased salaries, money for additional staff or money to meet normal increases in cost. They stated that money has been provided for these things. But it is like the three card trick. They are all approved, but the total sum represents only half the total sum required and one cannot find out which it is the Government feel one should not be doing because the Government do not want to say that they are keeping down the staff/student ratio and, though improving the salaries, one must not pay them, and they do not say that you must not cater for additional students. They like to tell the public they are in favour of more students and in favour of increased salaries and in favour of improving the staff/student ratio, but the money provided represents only a fraction of the total sum needed.
This three card trick approach has gone one year after year. It is time to put the whole matter on a proper footing. The universities must submit a statement showing why they need more money and the Government must decide to give it, or not give it, and, if they do not give it, they must state what they are not giving it for and come out into the open. Because additional salaries have to be paid and because extra students have to be catered for, the Government do not want to close off and what happens is the staff proposals are cut and, far from any improvement in the staff/ student ratios, which are so much worse than in Britain and Northern Ireland, the situation becomes worse. The staff/student ratio has, in fact, deteriorated. It has not improved. It could not do otherwise than deteriorate because one has to increase the salaries of the staff in line with the general increase in salaries—this is approved by the Department—and one has to cater for the extra students, and the only thing one can do, when one's money requirement is cut in half, is not to employ the extra staff, the extra staff of which in theory the Government are in favour. But the Government will not provide the money and so the staff/student ratio, far from improving, as it should have done, has, in fact, deteriorated. It is Government policy that it should deteriorate. The time has come for this to be put on a clear, clean footing and for submissions on current requirements channelled through the Higher Education Authority to be decided upon by the Government with a clear statement as to what they are approving and what they are not approving. The Government must make up their mind as to what expansion in staffs they are prepared to cater for, what staff/student ratio they favour and, if they favour the Higher Education Commission's, then they must state that they are prepared to and have decided to provide money for these things.
One of the problems of principle is that there is no link at Government level between the medium-term planning in the Second and Third Programmes and the Government's broad educational policy and the current short-term planning in the Budget. The Government would favour moving towards an improvement in the student/staff ratio but in practice they do not provide the money. It is this total inconsistency which provides one of the greatest defects of the whole educational system in this country, and it particularly applies to the universities.
The situation is made much worse by the fact that the Government, arbitrarily, put a ceiling on university fees. On this side of the House, we feel university fees should be abolished, but so long as they exist, paid by students, universities should be put in a position, if they cannot get additional money from the Government and they feel it necessary and desirable to improve their student/staff ratio, to increase their fees. They should not be put in the straitjacket they now are in by the Government.
The position we favour is that the universities would charge the full cost in a fee which would be re-imbursed to the student directly so that the student, if he wanted to study science in UCD at the full cost to the undergraduate per annum of £300, would have that £300 re-imbursed to him, and having decided to do science, and £300 being the cost of the science course, he would be able to choose to which college he would apply the £300. This would prevent any danger of interference with the autonomy of the colleges and, at the same time, the fees paid would reflect the full cost of education; and the universities, if they found they needed more money, could raise their fees and the Government grant would have to be increased accordingly.
At present we have a situation, as I mentioned at the outset, where you have conflicting policies pursued by the universities and by the Government, leading to this appalling inadequacy of finances and of staff in the universities. I will return more fully to this question later when we come to the full debate on the main Education Estimate.
At the moment, however, I wish to comment briefly on the statement made by the Minister today that he considered that the additional grants being made available in this Supplementary Estimate should put the colleges in a position to make suitable arrangements to balance annual expenditure and income as from the beginning of the financial year 1970-71. I should like the Minister to tell us in reply if he meant by that that the sums he has provided here and intends to provide in the year ahead will be such as to enable the universities to cover their current costs taking into consideration the normal increase in student numbers, taking into consideration the required increase in staff to cope with this increased student intake and, at the same time, taking into consideration an improvement in the student/staff ratio to bring it to the recommended 12 to 1.
Is it the Minister's intention that this provision will do that or does the Minister mean to suggest that it will enable the universities to balance their accounts if they do not take in more students, if they do not take in more staff and if they do not improve the student/staff ratio? What does he mean by this most inexplicit statement? Does he mean to move towards the required improvements in student/staff ratio and to pay the additional salaries necessary? If that is what he means, we welcome the move. It will be the first of its sort in 20 years and it will be a complete departure from the confidence trick practised by the Government on the universities to provide only half the sum required but pretend it covered all the items. I would welcome clarification of what the Minister means.
I wish to come back to one important issue. It is a delicate one, on which all of us would wish to tread carefully. I do not wish to exacerbate the situation when I speak of teachers' salaries and I think there are things which usefully can be said and I hope what I say will be accepted in good faith not only by the Minister but by the teachers' organisations concerned.
First of all, most people agree on the desirability of a common basic scale for teachers in our schools. This was accepted in principle by the ASTI. Critics of the ASTI claimed that was only paying lip-service to the principle but I think that is unfair. If one discusses it with the ASTI representatives it becomes clear that the principle was accepted subject to certain conditions which, I think, in principle are reasonable although naturally other teachers may not agree with the particular application of these principles proposed by the ASTI.
However, the whole position has become very tangled because of the unfortunate way it has been handled. When it was decided to try to proceed towards a common basic scale, the Minister's predecessor appointed a tribunal out of which we had the Ryan recommendation. I will criticise that recommendation but I wish to point out that I have no intention of reflecting on Dr. Ryan, a man for whom I have enormous respect. My criticism is of the way the matter has been handled.
