Tá mé thar a bheith buíoch díot as ucht an seans a bheith agam an cheist seo a phlé.
I am raising a matter which gives me little pleasure. It is perhaps inaccurately described as a dispute; rather it is something which I hope will not become a dispute. I think the Minister will agree with me in that respect.
A very considerable amount of distress and confusion has been engendered in the Shannon community because of what appears to be a contradiction between a stated policy of the Minister, both in the formal sense of the rationalisation of schools and school facilities and her suggestions in a letter to one of the trade unions concerned in which she specified levels of recruitment. On the other hand there has been what has been presented as a de facto alternative to the principles outlined by the Minister both in her stated policy and in her letter. I am not pleased at having to draw the attention of the House to this issue. The schools concerned are in the parish in which I spent all of my early life and some of my relatives are attending these schools. I am very familiar with the case on both sides. The problem should now be resolved without qualification and without the threat which now exists of job losses before the summer term.
It is interesting and distressing that both the schools involved are State schools in a sense. One is Saint Partick's Comprehensive School and the other is Saint Caman's School. The issue has arisen in terms of there being an acceptance at one point that there was a limitation of resources and that there would be a joint recruitment policy to both schools. I understand that the Minister in a letter at the end of March to the representative of one of the unions involved in Saint Patrick's Comprehensive School specified a number of points unequivocally. She stated that there were altogether in the area 1,400 secondary school places, 900 of which would be accommodated in terms of a provision that had already been made in the comprehensive school and 500 in the community school. The union representative of the teachers in the comprehensive school was assured by the Minister of her view. The figure of 1,400 and the ratio of 900 to 500 was not expressed as a desirable level; it was expressed unequivocally as the number of places for which provision had been made. On that basis, she drew attention to the usual shortage of funds available for financing all sorts of services, including health and education, and referred to her anxiety to avoid costly duplication. The Minister stated that it was her policy to encourage joint enrolment and suggested that the issues should ideally be resolved by local management. It seemed the Minister in her letter of 31 March was clearly resolving what she felt was the future enrolment policy, the relationship between two schools who share a community, and that she was specifying what would be the correct use of the available facilities.
Of course there is a background to this. In the case of the comprehensive school they are in a position to take pupils up to the figure specified. In the case of the other school involved there would be on the Minister's desk, as I think there was on the previous Minister's desk, an application for an extension if they were to go beyond the ratio suggested. The reality is that far from this ratio holding, there has been a recruitment policy and one of the schools involved has sent out letters of acceptance to 140 additional students for the coming year. This clearly departs from the Minister's policy.
Let us summarise the issues. What is the status of the Minister's letter? Her letter does not state that she or her Department suggest that this or that would be a desirable ratio; it states "the ratio is". It states that facilities are provided for this and for this; yet 140 students have been accepted by one of the potential partners beyond their facilities. How does the Minister reconcile this with any concept of rationalisation? On the one hand by changing the ratio she is undermining the recruitment policy of the school which has the capacity and on the other hand she is creating a demand for additional space and facilities on the other side. It does not make sense. The Minister has often stated and debated her policy in relation to staffing. If this additional complement of students is recruited they will be taught by, I presume, hired part time teachers or some additional recruitment of staff, while on the other side the staff of the school who would have lived within their ratio now face into the summer without any prospect of job security in the autumn. People will be made redundant by what was a policy suddenly not being a policy and movement from one side of the equation.
Crucial to what I have said so far is the status of the assurance given by the Minister for Education to the representatives of the Teachers Union of Ireland. I have no doubt whatsoever as to what the Minister stated and there is no need for me to repeat it. I am sure she has on her file her own letter. It begins "My Department is satisfied ... It has been made clear". She went further and stated that she had made her views, as I have outlined them, very clearly known to both boards of management.
The extraordinary thing is that, for a start, we all underestimate situations of potential harmony that turn into ones of tension and conflict; but here is the problem — there have not been, to my knowledge, joint meetings of the boards of management. There has not been, as the Minister suggested in her letter of March, a local resolution. What there is, is a danger to posts in one school, and there is a potential demand looming up for the Minister in flat and total contradiction to her policy of rationalisation in the other. Into this sorry situation go the officials of the Department of Education who, I understand, visited Shannon last Monday. It is a reflection of the relationship between two second level institutions which no spokesperson on education, the Minister included, would wish to be taking place. For a start, no joint meeting took place.
The Minister's officials in the first instance interviewed the board of St. Caman's and that school has refused a joint meeting, as I understand it, between the comprehensive, the community and the Minister's officials. They then went on to meet the representatives of the other party to this unfortunate situation, and I understand that the offer that was made was that, if one likes, the result of recruitment entrepreneurship for the forthcoming season of schooling should stand, that St. Caman's would keep their 140 but that addition to that they would, in subsequent years, recruit up to 120 pupils per annum. This seems to me to be quite extraordinary, because here we are being lectured, week after week, about the rationalisation of resources. We disagree sometimes about many things, but the Minister and I agree that we must have co-operation, joint use of facilities and so forth. However, I find it extraordinary that a kind of recruitment and fishing for students on the one hand seems to go with a blessing while on the other side of the equation posts are put into some jeopardy.
After the meeting with the board of St. Caman's — and I am sure it was very interesting — I understand the offer that was made to the comprehensive school and their staff was more or less as I have outlined it, that is, that it was rather like what one might call one of those Palestinian/Israeli clashes where it is said, "the territories we have held we will hold for the moment but we will contain our aspirations to a modest level for forthcoming years". This attitude is in total contradiction to what the Minister has been suggesting.
I return again to the point at which I opened. What of those teachers who accepted the letter at the end of March in good faith, where the Minister, without putting a qualification or a quiver in any single condition of it, said this is what is in Shannon; this is what the population which is declining slightly will yield; these are the resources and this is the disposal of staff?
I want to end what I have to say because I am anxious that there be an adequate resolution to this. I want to say that what upset me when my attention was drawn to this, as education spokesperson for the Labour Party, was the fact that both of these schools are as near as one can get to directly State funded schools and what struck me was the absolute incoherence of the policy involved. What also distressed me about it was that one should be really establishing co-operation. Putting myself, in a mythic moment, into the Minister's position, I would say that one could, in the first instance, make a recommendation for co-operation and suggest goodwill and everything, but at the end of the day the Minister is the Minister and when she writes a letter such as the letter that was written, and it is accepted by the partners involved, it is only reasonable to expect that that is what they will live with, unless of course they feel they can in fact get away with what has been a breach of this or that which, on the other hand, the people who had accepted that statement of fact, that reasonable projection for the future, will become the victims, are the ones who will suffer.
It is my dearest wish that what one would have is a reasonable policy, for example, a joint enrolment policy but can the Minister tell this House if there is the slightest prospect of that? Is it not a fact that here officials came back from the meeting last Monday with no assurance, that there would be a joint enrolment policy, or that there would ever be joint board meetings and that what one really had was a king of quasi rap on the knuckles and an offer to try to control an open ended recruitment policy but with absolutely nothing whatsoever on offer for the other side, the other school that is involved.
My reason for raising this question is that I would like the Minister to return to the spirit of her letter of the end of March to the Teachers' Union of Ireland. I would like her to assure the House that there will be an adherence to what is in the letter. I would like her to tell me that there will be no threat to any of the jobs in the comprehensive school because if these practices result in the comprehensive school going over quota what then does one do in relation to those posts? Is one to tell these teachers that they go off into the summer at the end of this term with no assurance that they will be within quota but will in fact be in danger of losing their jobs, while over on the other side one will be in fact asked to sanction part time teaching posts? Is it not time to have reason in this case? The last thing I want to do is to set one school against another but I have seen it happen in the past, and where one party to what should be a joint operation takes off in an uninhibited fashion it requires the Minister to say that she is not going to allow an established second level facility, in this case the comprehensive school, to be run down in terms of facilities and staff because of the individual action of another school that should ideally be cooperating with it. I would ask the Minister to tell us that her letter of the end of March does hold and that the reported result of the talks does not hold. I would also ask her to give an assurance to the staff. The representatives of County Clare whom I see here, Deputies Carey and Taylor-Quinn and also Deputy Kemmy, who are very interested in this matter would like to see it more happily resolved. What we would not like to see is irresponsible actions being used to subvert what we have had to suffer as policy in education.
I understand I have two minutes left. I would like to give that to Deputy Kemmy, with the permission of the House.
