I do not intend to detain the House very long because I am anxious to allow my colleague. Deputy Dr. O'Connell, who is interested in this matter and put down a question on it, an opportunity of having his say as well.
I was concerned that the Minister said to me across the floor of the House that I seemed to think it was a simple problem. Nothing could be further from the case, and the Minister should be well aware of this. We discussed this in the House on 5th March last. I took the opportunity on a Supplementary Estimate to raise the matter which was discussed here in an entirely constructive spirit. I said on that occasion :
The whole position has become very tangled.
I went on to say:
There has been fumbling and lack of generosity in the Department in their approach to this complex problem. I am not saying it is easily solved. I almost despair of a solution at this stage.
I then went on to suggest there was one way in which a solution might be found. Therefore for anyone to say I think it is a simple problem, having heard me on the subject, is to misconceive my position without any justification. I said then and I believe now that you will not solve a problem which has been complicated by the mistakes made by the Department, the changes of mind, the self-contradictory positions taken up by the Department unless you go back to first base.
This was the point I made in speaking in this House in March. The responsibility for solving the problem is that of the Department in a most peculiar and particular way. It is not simply that this is an educational problem for which the Department are responsible. The problem arises, first of all, because the Department appointed the Ryan Tribunal; secondly, because they accepted its recommendations, even where these recommendations were inept, if I may use the word in respect of anything coming from my distinguished academic colleague, Dr. Louden Ryan. Having done that, which was bad enough, they then undermined the Ryan Tribunal by making a settlement with the secondary teachers which went contrary to the principles of the Ryan Tribunal. Then they went back on that settlement and tried to take the money back again in a particularly mean-minded way. I do not know of any comparable case in the last five years of similar departmental ineptitude in handling a problem. It is therefore up to the Department and the Minister to find a solution to it. I cannot blame the Minister personally because he was not responsible for this matter throughout the whole period of the dispute, but it is his baby now and it cannot be solved by tinkering with it, and tinkering is what I am afraid the Minister has been doing, with the best will in the world.
The Minister apparently got £500,000 from the Minister for Finance and was told: "See what you can do with that". However, the problem created by the Department is one that cannot be solved with £500,000 at this stage. It is going to cost the country—and I said this in my speech of 5th March —quite a lot of money to settle this problem, because you have created a situation where, in order to live up to the principles laid down in the Ryan Tribunal Report without actually cutting back on people's salaries and reducing their status you must bring others up to the level. It is precisely the reluctance of the Department to do that which has caused the very problem we are facing now.
Where can he find the bones of a solution? I put it to the Minister then and I put it to him now: it is to be found in bringing together the two sides, the ASTI and the INTO, and putting to them a solution based on two principles which they have accepted. The ASTI have accepted the principle of the common basic scale. They must be held to that. It must be put to them that a solution has to be found within the context of what they themselves have agreed to. The INTO have always accepted and have never challenged a points system in the remuneration for teachers, which does recognise that teaching at a higher level should be remunerated at a higher rate. Therefore, though at times they have seemed to object to this principle, they have in fact accepted it and have not challenged it in the operation of the salary scales.
Given that the INTO accept the principle of higher remuneration for a higher level of teaching and the ASTI accept the principle of a basic common scale, it cannot be beyond human wit to devise a solution for this problem. The only reason a solution has not been found is the exceptional ineptitude with which the case has been handled.
The solution is to be found in taking those two principles accepted in each case and to use their agreement to those two principles to build on that a solution which will involve a scheme, which is not just tinkering with the present scheme but which is fundamentally different, but founded on these two main principles. I do not think this can be done easily by the Minister and the Department on their own. I do not think, despite the Minister's interjection at Question Time today, it will be done by telling them to sit down together and work something out. I think now and I thought then that here more than in almost any case we have had in recent years is a case for a mediator. I admit there is a problem about mediation because the mediator would have to find a solution which by definition must cost more than the Minister is at present willing to provide.
We have therefore a particularly complex position in which the Minister, the Department and the Government are reluctant to appoint a mediator because he can only do a good job if he is able to recommend a solution which will cost more, and the Government and the Minister are not prepared to provide the kind of money needed to pull this country out of the mess they have got us into in this matter through the way they have handled it. It is up to the Government to appoint a mediator and to state their willingness to accept a solution which does not involve an unreasonable burden on public funds, which will involve some but which will satisfy the very proper concern of all the parties in this dispute to maintain the positions they have legitimately secured over the years and which will correspond to these basic principles which each of them have accepted, even though with some reluctance, I have mentioned.
I also said in that speech on 5th March:
I know it cannot be solved unless people are prepared to change entrenched positions.
This is probably true of everybody in the dispute. It is true above all of the Department because more than anybody else they are responsible for the solution. I went on to say why and how they were responsible and I shall not repeat that now.
What have we got? The Minister has moved from one entrenched position to another. He produced a document in July last and apparently on this document he stands or falls. He knows as well as I do that when this dispute is eventually settled it will not be on the particular terms in that document. He knows that concessions will have to be made, that the solution will involve something different. He knows that is the case. Must we go to the brink? Must we have this situation where parents are faced with this appalling worry of having their children deprived of education at a time when they are approaching in many cases within months of the examinations that matter so much to them and with no knowledge of how long it will last? It is not as if they will be told it will be a strike for a week or a fortnight and they can plan for that. If there is a strike it could last for weeks or months, right up to the time of the examinations.
Why should they be faced with that worry because the Department and the Minister's predecessor have created this situation? It is not a situation created by the teachers. The teachers were going along reasonably happily as they were until the Department decided—I think it was a legitimate decision—to move towards a common basic scale. It was because they decided to move in that direction and took particular steps towards it—backwards and then towards it again—that we are in the trouble in which we now find ourselves. It is not the fault of the teachers; they did not start trouble. Certainly, it is not the fault of the parents or the children. Because the Minister has decided he made an offer last July and that is that, all are to suffer on that account. He knows as well as I do that before this is settled there will have to be further talks, remediation of some kind and eventually a solution. Let us have it now. Let us not stand on dignity. There is too much at stake.
There is a rooted belief on the part of some Ministers—and I am disappointed that this Minister appears to have fallen into the trap—that Ministers must always be unyielding and never seem to change their minds. I think all politicians are inclined to feel that, if we admit we have changed our minds in some way, it reveals a weakness of some kind. Every party seems to feel it must stand over everything it has done over the last 50 years. This is a uniquely Irish characteristic. In other countries there is an agreed statute of limitation and parties do not have to justify what they did 50 years before, as we do here. We all have this reluctance to change our minds. It is something in Government that we have to get over. We have to be willing to admit at times that we have either made a mistake or that in an evolving situation it is necessary to change one's position; it is necessary to discuss and negotiate and not stand firm on a position that will eventually have to be modified.
I am afraid the Minister when he is replying may reject it, carry on up to the brink, and over the brink until, eventually, disruption is caused and then some one will intervene, proposals will be made and a settlement will be arrived at which could have been arrived at long before on an equitable basis without that disruption. I would ask the Minister to reconsider his position.
I am not asking him to get up and say, "Yes, you are right. We shall do what you are saying." It would be asking too much of any politician. I am sure that, if Fine Gael were in Government, we would not be inclined to react just like that. I do think the Minister could, in the light of what he has heard from me and from Deputy O'Connell, say he is prepared to consider the matter and discuss it further, that he does not believe in being intransigent and that he is prepared to go away and consider what might be done.
There is a meeting of the Parent School Movement in Dublin this evening about this very matter. The parents, who are not on one side or the other, are simply concerned about their children. I should like to be able to go to that meeting and say to these people that in the Dáil this evening the Minister for Education did, after a brief debate, offer some hope of discussing the matter further. If he can offer any hope of that kind I shall be more than willing to go to that meeting and say on his behalf that he is prepared to do his bit and help resolve the dispute.
