Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 26 Jun 1930

Vol. 13 No. 29

Private Business. - School Meals (Gaeltacht) Bill, 1930—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Lands and Fisheries (Mr. Lynch)

This Bill seeks to give effect to one of the recommendations of the Gaeltacht Commission which called attention to the fact that in many parts of the Gaeltacht children have to travel long distances over bleak country in order to attend school and, therefore, were unfit to profit fully by the teaching that was given them. The Schedule in the Bill does not include the whole Gaeltacht, that is the Gaeltacht as it is generally understood, but only those portions in which the conditions of the people are very bad, and the distances the children have to travel are the greatest. It has been compiled with the assistance of officers from the Departments of Education, Local Government, Agriculture and ourselves. There is a map hanging in the ante-room which will enable Senators to see the areas that are embraced in the Schedule. It is always a difficult matter to draw boundaries in fixing areas of this kind. Any boundary that would be drawn could give rise to honest criticism. Objection is taken because of certain excluded areas which people think should be included, but I think that in this case it cannot be said that there are areas included that ought to be excluded. I consider the Schedule has been compiled with very great care and judgment.

There are two reasons why the scope of the Bill must be reasonably limited. The Bill is in effect an extension of the existing Acts that apply to urban areas only, and extends the application of these Acts to those rural areas in the Gaeltacht mentioned in the Schedule. The provision in the earlier Acts is that half the cost of the food shall be provided by the local authorities. The Bill is permissive, and it requires the good-will of the local authorities to put it into force. The more confined the area is, and the more obviously poor it is, the more easy it will be to get the local authorities to co-operate.

In the second place, the provision of meals for children in rural areas has not yet been conceded in other parts of the country, and those who are most friendly to the Gaeltacht will understand that over-stating the case for the Gaeltacht might do more harm than good. Everyone admits that there are certain exceptional circumstances in the Gaeltacht that require exceptional treatment, but anyone who knows the country will know that many areas in the Gaeltacht are as comfortably off as certain areas in the non-Gaeltacht. The conditions in many portions of what is generally understood as the Gaeltacht are quite as good, and in many cases better, than certain pockets in non-Gaeltacht areas.

The provision in the earlier Acts, that part of the money spent on food for the children should be got back from the parents, is excluded in this Bill. That is following up the recommendations of the Gaeltacht Commission, with which I entirely agree. Of course, it is quite likely in practice that many of the parents will contribute in kind. Some of the children will bring from home with them bread, butter, milk, and so on, but I am against asking for any money payment for any food that the children may receive. Meals will be provided by the county council acting through the boards of health, and the boards of health may be assisted by committees, including persons who are not members of the board.

Clause 7 provides that it will be no part of the duty of teachers to assist in the provision of the meals, but I am quite aware that the teachers themselves are extremely anxious that a Bill of this kind should become law, and, in fact, I believe the teachers will bear the greater part of the burden of the administration of the Bill when it becomes law. They will, however, do it voluntarily, and I believe they will do it more efficiently for that reason.

Clause 9 of the Bill limits the contribution from State funds to £10,000. Assuming that the county boards of health and the county councils and local authorities only pay an equivalent amount—they must pay an equivalent amount to have it effective at all—it will provide a cup of hot cocoa or milk with a substantial slice of bread with butter or jam for each child in the school area. That is not an extravagant meal, but I believe it will very materially improve the physical and mental condition of the children who, having left home three and a half or four hours before, have just begun to cease to pay attention to what the teacher is saying, and will help to sustain them for the remainder of the day.

Mr. Guinness

The map outside in the ante-room is of different colours. A little portion of it is yellow and a large area blue. Which is the area to which this Bill applies?

Mr. Lynch

The smallest portion west of the blue line. That is the area. It is explained on the map.

Colonel Moore

I am very glad to support this Bill. I think it will prove of the greatest importance in the country, and, especially, to the people of the Gaeltacht. I know myself places where children have to walk three miles to school and three miles back again. That is rather hard upon them. It is too far, especially as they have to go all that time without food. There are districts excluded from the operations of this Bill. I do not know to what extent we can vary this limit of £10,000 which prevents the scheme being extended to those districts. I know a district very well myself and its exact position with regard to Irish. It is registered on the Gaeltacht map as being 80.7 Irish-speaking. I would be sorry to guarantee that fact myself, still it is registered by people who made it their business to find out. There is a large population of Irish-speaking people there. I wonder could the Minister extend this a little further? The particular place I am speaking of is very much more Irish-speaking than Arran and many other places. Arran is only partly Irish-speaking. When the proper time comes I may move an amendment that one or two of these areas be included. I congratulate the Minister on not making it obligatory on teachers to do the work, because I feel sure they take an interest in this matter and will do what they can to help it. In fact, I do not see how it could be done without the aid of the teachers. You would have to have a special cook and all sorts of difficult things would have to be done. It would be better for them to do the work, and I feel confident they will do that work in an excellent way. I support the Bill as strongly as I can.

Miss Browne

No Bill that could come before us should have a fuller measure of support than this. Is it to be a condition of this Bill that only children of Irish-speaking parents are to benefit under it? Whether children can speak Irish or not, if they are hungry they should be fed. I think the sooner this Bill is made general all over the country the better. I have been associated with a society known as the United Irishwomen, which, in my view, never got proper recognition in this country. It is part of its business to supply meals of cocoa to children. In many places outside the Gaeltacht it will be found very necessary to extend this Bill. There are very many such places where the children require meals, and I hope at some time or other the Bill will be extended all over the country.

Mr. Comyn

In the administration of this Bill when it becomes an Act I think great care should be taken to let the children know that the bread is not the bread of charity. I looked carefully at the Schedule, and I see that the County Clare is not included at all. I do not think I shall propose an amendment for its inclusion. I have a faint recollection of the time when bread was distributed in some of the schools in the west of County Clare—rather I should say an attempt was made to distribute it—and I know that the children absolutely refused to take that bread and ate turnips on their way home. I am only saying this for the assistance of the Minister in his administration of the Gaeltacht. It is not in any sense a hostile suggestion on my part. It is for his assistance that I give him that information. The great thing is to let these children understand that their fathers are paying for the bread they get.

Mr. Johnson

I welcome the Bill as far as it goes, but I think it does not go very far. In the Gaeltacht Housing Bill, which is now an Act, the Gaeltacht was defined with the assurance that the Gaeltacht housing provisions were not to apply except to a very small portion of the Gaeltacht. Now we have another definition of the Gaeltacht which is a very much smaller portion still, and I suppose that with every new Act which is intended to apply to the Gaeltacht we will have a new definition of the Gaeltacht. I suppose the Minister has certain reasons for confining the provisions of this Bill to a very small portion of the country. I would like to have from him a statement as to whether he feels confident that, even in respect to those small portions of the country, the local authorities and other persons who are likely to have influence in the administration of this Act will co-operate. If the Minister has any confidence in that I think it will be very helpful. I would like to know, too, if he can tell us approximately the number of children that will be covered by the areas scheduled in the Bill. It is not clear to me whether in working the Act the boards of health will be able to select separate schools.

I can imagine, for instance, one area in which one, two or three schools will be quite willing to administer the Act, while other schools in the same area may not find it practicable to administer the Act. In such an eventuality, will it be possible to appoint special committees in respect of special schools or must the Act be administered in all the schools in a particular area? If that is not clear, I hope it will be made clear before the Bill becomes law, because I think it would be very undesirable if, owing to unwillingness on the part of certain authorities, teachers and so on, in one school in a district, the neighbouring schools in that district should be deprived of the benefits of the Act. I agree with Senator Miss Browne in expressing the hope that at some time, not in the distant future, the principle underlying this Bill will be extended to a very much wider area than is covered in the Bill, if not to the whole country.

Mr. Wilson

It is agreed that the service of providing school meals for children in the poorest areas in the Gaeltacht is one that should be undertaken. The rendering of that service, however, will mean a tax on the poor in those areas to the extent of half the cost of administering a scheme. I fear that the Minister will not be able to get the ratepayers in these very poor areas to agree to the raising of the rates necessary for the provision of these school meals. Therefore I feel that while the Bill is permissive it will not be put into operation. It has to be remembered that in parts of the Gaeltacht the rates are very high. That is the case in Kerry, and in Galway I understand they are 11s. or 12s. in the £. These poor areas need a measure of this kind most, but I fear that as long as the Bill is permissive the local authorities, with the rates at their present high figure and in view of the poverty of most of the districts concerned, will not put the Act into force at all. Take the ratepayers as I know them all over the country. They are not willing to pay the rates if they can get out of doing so. That is the mentality that will have to be met when dealing with a permissive measure of this kind. If the local bodies can see any way of reducing the rates they will do so, but they are certainly not going to place any extra burden on the ratepayers for the provision of these school meals, especially in what are some of the poorest areas in the country. It is a blot on the measure to have it permissive.

Mrs. Wyse Power

The carrying out of this measure will depend largely on the county boards of health. The Act, as Senator Wilson has pointed out, will be of a permissive character. Supposing what the Senator forecasts happens, that a county council refuses to strike a rate to carry out the provisions of the Act, will it then become a dead letter in the areas over which that particular county council has control?

Mr. Lynch

As far as these particular areas are concerned, yes.

Sir Thomas Esmonde

I congratulate the Minister on having introduced this Bill. I am glad, too, to see that the Bill has received the support of all Parties in the House. I am not going to offer any criticism on the Bill, because I am convinced that the Minister has cut his coat according to his cloth. I welcome the admission of the principle in this measure of feeding school children. Whenever a Government, the present or any other, brings forward a measure proposing to contribute to the feeding of school children all over the country, it will have my support. The duty of providing for the feeding of school children is one of the most important that could fall upon the taxpayers, inasmuch as action of that kind will fit the children physically to benefit by the instruction given to them in school. As regards getting the co-operation of the school masters and school mistresses, I am glad that the voluntary principle has been adopted in this measure. It is well to see them associated with it, because on their co-operation will depend largely the success of the experiment that is to be tried under this Bill. In addition to the intellectual benefits that the country will derive from the operation of a scheme such as that contemplated under this Bill, it will, I think, in other ways benefit in the matter of domestic economy.

Dr. Gogarty

I cannot regard myself as an unconditional supporter of the Gaeltacht. I think that this Bill is an attempt to provide an open-air workhouse on the western seaboard. One of the reasons why, I think, the children in these areas are in need of food is due, not so much to poverty as to the fact that their parents are of the feckless type. After the month of November milk is not to be had in most parts of the Gaeltacht. That is not due to the fact that the ground is so poor that it will not grow turnips, but rather to this: that there is not sufficient done in the matter of the stall-feeding of milch cows. The fact, at any rate, remains that the children are fed on stewed tea, and the result on their nerves can be seen in the statistics of the different asylums throughout the country, particularly in Ballinasloe Asylum, which provides a mental home for the Gaels. I think that the Department of Agriculture should make the granting of housing facilities in the Gaeltacht dependent on a certain amount of husbandry being carried out, particularly as regards the stall-feeding of milch cattle. If that were insisted on suitable means could be available to provide for the support of the people, instead of waiting, as happens at present, for the yearly remittances from their daughters who have sought service in America. It would remove the sense of dependency which is in the Gaeltacht at present, and which will continue to be a scandal if we are going to raise what is supposed to be the typical original, but peculiarly privileged, class of Irishman, and not turn him into a sort of inmate of an open-air workhouse by encouraging grants for relief. That sort of thing is not very complimentary to those who want to foster Gaelic culture by constant endowment, if it is constantly to be needy.

A certain amount of the want that is to be found in these areas is due to a lack of husbandry. It is true, of course, that though in these areas there is plenty of space, there is not sufficient nutriment in the soil to support large families. What happens is: when the people cannot support themselves on barren patches of land they are obliged to emigrate. That is no disgrace to any country such as this, which is not highly industrialised. The superfluous citizens have to emigrate, and the only alternative course to that would be to arrest increase in the population.

Senator Wilson pointed out that many of the areas dealt with in this Bill are some of the poorest in the country, and that to expect the local bodies to increase the rates so as to provide meals for the school-children was a blot on the measure. I think that the cause of a lot of the poverty in these areas is largely due to a lack of proper husbandry, particularly in the matter of the stall-feeding of cattle. It has been found possible in the ease of Denmark, which has worse land but better farmers than Ireland. There the cows are stall-fed, and there is milk all the year round. As an example of what might be done by the introduction of a proper method of husbandry, I might refer to an old model farm that at one time was managed by the Department in the West of Ireland. It was taken over by a private individual who is now carrying on there a thoroughly thriving industry in the raising of fruit, jams and honey. I think that the housing benefits which the Government are about to give the people in the Gaeltacht should be made conditional on their practising a provident system of farming, particularly in the matter of providing milk. I think that should be done before you impose a demoralising tax for free food on the same already highly rated poor districts. It is asking the people there to live by sucking their thumbs.

Mr. O'Farrell

I am afraid it would be rather bad policy to wait to pass a Bill of this kind until such time as the farmers of the Gaeltacht became efficient. There are thousands of children wanting food, and it is our duty to try and provide them with that food by some means. Senator Wilson struck the key-note as regards the weakness of this measure when he pointed out that it is permissive. I take it that the area of charge under the Bill will be a county-at-large one. That, of course, is fair and equitable. I am afraid, however, there will be a disposition on the part of some county councils, especially well-to-do ones, not to strike the rate necessary to give effect to the Bill. It is a pity in that respect that the measure was not made a compulsory one. Measuring the amount that will be required from local authorities by the maximum grant that the Exchequer is going to give, the charge that will have to be imposed locally will not be a very big one. I think that the measure ought to be made a compulsory one. This Bill is for the Gaeltacht. I take it, however, that the children of parents who are not Irish-speaking themselves will get the benefit of the Bill. Otherwise the arrangement proposed would be unreasonable and inequitable. As well as I remember, it was pointed out when the Gaeltacht Housing Bill was going through that people who did not speak Irish would not be eligible for grants under it. If that were the case with regard to this Bill there might be a disposition not to provide for children who were needy simply because their parents did not speak Irish. I hope that is not the intention of the Bill. If a regulation to that effect were made when the Bill became law it would spoil the whole effect of the Act. No child who is in need should be neglected on the grounds that its parents were not Irish speakers.

Mr. Lynch

I can give no guarantee that the local authorities will adopt this measure. When confining the measure to a small area, I had in mind the hope of getting local authorities to adopt it. The fact that areas that are obviously in need of a measure of this kind are included in the Schedule offers, I think, a greater chance of getting local authorities to adopt the Bill than would otherwise be the case. While I cannot give any guarantee that the local authorities will co-operate in putting the Act into force, I am almost certain that they will do so. One of the counties referred to by Senator Wilson is Galway. I have before me a resolution that was passed by the Galway County Council last December that a measure of this kind should be introduced and made law. The resolution protests against the action of the Government in adjourning consideration of a Bill to provide meals for school children in the poorer areas of the country.

Mr. Wilson

What that resolution means is that the Government should provide the money—not that the county council would raise it themselves.

Mr. Lynch

That may be. I think that they knew at the time what the terms of the proposed Bill were going to be. At any rate, I am satisfied that the county boards of health, acting through the county councils, will co-operate in this matter. If they do not, then, of course, the Government contribution will return to the Exchequer. The position thus created would have to be a subject for consideration as to what should be done, whether we should make this compulsory or not. There is no question of charity in this thing at all, and I do not like the tone of Senator Gogarty's speech. There is no question at all of trying to create a position in the Gaeltacht of having the people living on doles or home assistance. The idea is to put the people of the Gaeltacht into a position in which they can help themselves. The policy of my Department in dealing with the Gaeltacht is so to arrange matters that the people will be enabled to eke out a better existence than they have at present. There is no intention of merely supplying them with doles and charity and, as far as the meals in the schools are concerned, I am satisfied things can be so administered that there will be no tinge of charity. Children in every school in the scheduled area can have a meal, but they need not if there is any objection. The teachers can make it perfectly clear that there is no charity about the matter, that in fact it is a right. As Senator Miss Browne and other Senators suggested, I would like to see the same right extended to other parts of the country. However, that is another day's work and the duty of another Minister.

Senator Johnson asked what would be the numbers affected by the Bill. The number of schools in the scheduled areas last year was 337 and the average daily attendance 19,032. Of course the rate will be levied on the county as a whole. It is the county councils that will put the Act into force. If they find that their obligations will not mean more than £1,000 or £2,000, they will all the more likely adopt it, so that the increase in the rates will be infinitesimal. With regard to the question Senator O'Farrell raised as to whether there would be any differentiation, all the children in any school in the areas will be entitled to meals. There will be no question whatever as to whether the child's parents are Irish speakers or not. Whether the children are Irish-speaking or not will not enter into the matter.

Senator Moore stated that he knew one large Irish-speaking population which had been excluded. I know other areas that have been excluded. There are areas in Kerry that I would like to see included, if it was only from the point of view that they are in my constituency, but they are not so poor as the areas that are included. I did not interfere in the inclusion or exclusion of any particular area. I left that to officials whose duties bring them into close contact with different parts of the country, such as the inspectors of national schools, local government inspectors and inspectors of my own Department. I left it to them to draft the schedule. If an Irish-speaking district is excluded it is because the conditions there are not so bad as in the areas included. Certain schools in the areas may not choose to avail of the Act at all, but that will not preclude other schools from doing so.

As far as the Bill is concerned, boards of health will have power to form committees. What I imagine they will do is this: They will add, in addition to the members of the board of health in the area, persons in particular school districts, so that local persons will be associated with the boards.

Mr. Guinness

I would like to ask the Minister for information in relation to the levying of a rate. The rate will be struck for the whole county. Suppose that only half of the area comes under the Bill and that the remaining half wishes to come in later, would another rate have to be struck?

Mr. Lynch

If the schools are not in the scheduled areas they have no option in the matter and cannot come in.

Mr. Guinness

If they are in the scheduled area, what will happen?

Mr. Lynch

What will happen is that the State will allocate money to each board of health area in accordance with the schedule to provide sufficient money to supply meals for every school child. If a county council adopts the scheme, it will have to strike a rate equal to the amount of the Government grant so that every school child within the area of the board of health can be provided with a meal.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, July 2nd.