Appropriation Bill, 1943 (Certified Money Bill) —Second and Subsequent Stages.

An tAire Airgeadais (Seán T. O Ceallaigh)

Mar is eol don tSeanad, is dócha, sí aidhm an Bhille Leithreasa so ná údarás do thabhairt chun go mbainfí as an bPrímh-Chiste fuíleach an airgid a deonadh chun crícheanna na Seirbhísí Soláthair a bhí fé nbhur mbráid cheana. De bhun an Achta Phrímh-Chiste, 1943, tugadh amach as an bPrímh-Chiste an riar san (£13,820,000) de mhéid iomlán measta chán na bliana airgeadais seo do dheon an Dáil mar réimh-íoc, agus údaróidh Alt 1 den Bhille an chuid eile den airgead a bhéidh ag teastáil do thabhairt amach.

Socruíonn an Bille seo, leis, go gcuirfear i leath-taoibh chun na Seirbhísí Soláthar agus na crícheanna cuibhe na suimeanna deonadh mar réimh-íoc nó, i gcás na meastachán san go bhfuil an Dáil tar éis glacadh leo, an tsuim iomlán do cuireadh ar fáil. Cuirtear i leataoibh go fuirmiúil, freisin, na deontais bhreise do 1942-43 a thug an Dáil tar éis an Acht Leithreasa, 1942, do rith.

Dála an Achta Phrímh-Chiste, bheireann an tAcht Leithreasa comhacht don Aire Airgeadais chun iasachta d'iarraidh. Sé an méid is mó is ceaduithe dhó a iarraidh ná méid iomlán na suimeanna is féidir a thabhairt amach as an bPrímh-Chiste fé údarás an dá Acht.

As Senators are, no doubt, aware, the purpose of this Appropriation Bill is to authorise the issue from the Central Fund of the balance of the amount granted in respect of those Supply Services which have already been considered in detail by the Dáil. The Bill is, therefore, complementary to the Central Fund Act, 1943, which authorised the issue from the Central Fund of the proportion (£13,820,000) of the total of the Estimates for the current financial year which had been granted on account by the Dáil; the further release from the Central Fund provided for in Section 1 of the Bill will make available the balance of the total amount already granted for the public services for the current financial year.

The Bill also provides for the appropriation to the proper Supply Services and purposes the sums granted on account, or in the case of those Estimates which have been considered in detail and approved by the Dáil, the full amount voted for the current financial year. Provision is also made for the formal appropriation of such of the supplementary and additional grants for 1942-43 as were voted after the Appropriation Act, 1942, had been passed.

The Appropriation Act, like the Central Fund Act, makes provision for borrowing by the Minister for Finance. The combined total up to the limit of which he is authorised to borrow is the total of the sums authorised to be issued from the Central Fund by both Acts.

Perhaps it may not be out of place to say a few words on the sections.

Section 1. This section provides for the issue from the Central Fund of the sum of £9,551,899 which, together with the sum of £13,820,000 authorised to be issued from the Central Fund under the Central Fund Act, 1943, represents the total amount estimated to be required from the Central Fund to make good the grants voted for the services for the current financial year. So far Estimates (including two Supplementary Estimates) for only 29 Supply Services have been considered in detail and the sum of £9,551,899 mentioned in the section represents the total of the amounts granted to complete the sums necessary to defray the cost of these 29 services during the current financial year.

Section 2. Sub-section 1 of this section empowers the Minister for Finance to borrow up to £9,551,899 (i.e., the amount mentioned in Section 1) and to issue any such securities as he thinks fit for the purpose of such borrowing. It also provides that the Bank of Ireland may advance to the Minister any sum or sums not exceeding in the whole £9,551,899.

Section 3. The purpose of this section is specifically to appropriate to the various services set out in Schedule (B) annexed to the Bill the total amounts granted for the Supply Services since the passage of the Appropriation Act, 1942. The grants making up the total, as set forth in Schedule (A), are: (1) Supplementary and additional grants for 1942-43, £1,295,608; (2) Vote on Account for 1943-44, £13,820,000; (3) balance of Estimates approved for 1943-44 (including Supplementary Estimates already passed), £9,551,899; this gives a total of £24,677,507. Sub-section (2) of this section provides the necessary authority for the utilisation of certain Departmental receipts as Appropriations-in-Aid of the grants for the specific services mentioned in the Schedule.

Schedule (A) gives particulars of the issues out of the Central Fund provided for by the Central Fund Act, 1943, and the present Bill. Schedule (B) sets out in detail the specific services to which the sums so granted are to be appropriated. Part 1 of this Schedule is, in effect, an extension of Part III of Schedule (B) of the Appropriation Act, 1942, since it shows the additional grants for 1942-43 provided to meet Supplementary and Additional Estimates approved by Dáil Eireann subsequent to the passing of the Appropriation Act, 1942. Part II of Schedule (B) forms the basis of the audit of the Appropriation Accounts for the current financial year which will be carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor-General.

Cathaoirleach

I presume the Seanad is agreeable to follow the procedure adopted last year in the debate on the Appropriation Bill. The items appertaining to the various Departments will be taken in the order in which they appear in the memorandum which has been circulated to members of the House.

Mr. Douglas

Does that mean that a Senator can make two or three different speeches on the same stage for each Department?

Cathaoirleach

The Minister for Education is here now.

Mr. Douglas

If some Senator wishes to raise a question dealing with Education and, later on, wishes to deal with Supplies, he must have the opportunity, and I presume that he may speak two or three times.

Cathaoirleach

It is proposed to take Education first, as it is the first set forth in the memorandum. Any matters appertaining to Education may be raised now. The Minister for Finance, probably, will deal with the matters arising afterwards.

Mr. O'Connell

I desire to draw attention to a certain circular issued early this year by the Minister for Education to the managers and teachers of national schools, in which he set forth his intention to do something which, in my opinion—and I hope to prove later that it is correct—he has no authority or right to do. In view of the several incidents which have occurred in recent times, when the courts had to be appealed to to prevent the Minister from doing something which he persisted in doing, despite strong representations and strongly expressed opinions to the contrary, one would imagine that he would walk circumspectly before purporting to frame or issue regulations which would lay obligations on parents, pupils, managers or even teachers. Evidently, he has not seen fit to benefit by his experience in that direction.

Some 14 or 15 years ago, a scheme was introduced which provided that pupils in the higher standards in national schools might be presented each year for an examination. The papers for this examination were to be set by the Department, and successful students were to be awarded a certificate called the primary certificate. It was optional for schools to present pupils. For reasons to which I will refer later, the scheme never was popular, and, on the Minister's own statement, not more than 20 per cent. of the schools at any time took part in this scheme of examination, and at times it was less than 20 per cent. It does not seem to have occurred to the Minister that there was a good reason for this, that the teachers and managers may have considered that it was not in the best interests of their pupils to submit them to this test at such an early age. It appears that the Minister must have thought there was another reason—possibly, that it was due to the indifference or even neglect of managers and teachers in not submitting the children for this examination—and so the Minister decided to apply the principle of compulsion.

In January of this year, he notified managers and teachers that the old regulation providing for the optional examination had been withdrawn, and that a new rule had been promulgated making the examination compulsory. Here it is that I say he has exceeded his powers, and has done something for which he has no authority in law. The material portion of the new regulation reads as follows:—

"The examination will be compulsory for all pupils on the rolls of the sixth or higher standards who are not absent owing to reasonable cause."

Let us see exactly what this means. There is no Act of Parliament, there is no Statutory Order, or other authority that I know of which gives the right to the Minister to compel pupils to sit for a particular examination; nor is there any authority to empower the Minister to penalise a parent who refuses to allow his child to submit to an examination. I think that must be taken for granted. What then is the force of the regulation? On whom is the compulsion to be imposed? The teacher, of course, is under the authority of the Minister and the teacher is required, according to the regulation, to make certain returns. He has to furnish certain particulars stating the number of children who happen to be enrolled in his school in the Sixth and higher standards, their attendances and other particulars with regard to them. He is bound to do that; he must do it; the regulation compels him to do it. Then this form has to be given to the manager. The manager is requested—he is not required or ordered; I presume the Minister felt he was not in a position to order the manager to do anything—to sign this document and to send it to the Education Office.

Then, according to the regulation, and according to the circular, the whole responsibility for making the arrangements in connection with the holding of the examination—the arrangement of centres, the appointment and nomination of superintendents, what I might call the responsibility for the local work—is placed on the shoulders of the manager. His co-operation is asked for and it is hoped it will be got. But suppose the manager should refuse to accept that responsibility—as I know some managers have refused and will refuse, because they do not consider the examination is in the best interests of the children—what then is the Minister's position? How is the Minister to compel the manager to accept responsibility and what is the force of the word "compulsory" so far as this particular regulation is concerned? It all boils down to this: that the only compulsion he can impose in connection with the examination is on the teacher, and then only to this limited extent, that the teacher is compelled to fill up a form and give particulars of the number of children enrolled in his school in a particular class. Therefore, as I said, to talk of a compulsory examination, to suggest it is obligatory on the pupils to sit for this examination, is, in my opinion, so much nonsense. It is a clumsy attempt to interfere with the discretion of the schools by attempting to compel them to do something that 80 per cent. of them have hitherto refused to do for their own good reasons. I suggest that that is bureaucracy in excelsis.

In the Dáil a week or two ago, on the occasion of the debate on the Education Estimates, the Minister occupied a considerable time in giving a history of this examination. He spent much more time in dealing with that aspect of the case than in pointing out any advantages, if there are any advantages, which are to be derived from this examination. I do not think he referred at all to that aspect of the case. He detailed the representations made to him by the teachers over a long period of years, eventuating in their refusal to co-operate in carrying out the examination. Apparently it was this refusal on the part of the teachers to have anything to do with the examination which finally decided the Minister to make this new departure and to introduce what he calls a compulsory examination. Here are his words. I quote from column 230 of Volume 90 of the Official Reports:—

"In 1941, in view of the failure to achieve co-operation on a voluntary basis, it was decided to proceed with the consideration of a compulsory scheme."

There we have in the Minister's own words the reason which impelled him to make this attempt to impose his will on the schools. We know that whenever the Minister is asked to set up a council of education or some body which would advise him in matters of educational administration, or when new departures are being entered upon, he makes the point that there is no necessity for any such advisory body, that he is always ready to consult the teachers and ascertain their views. That is quite true. It is only right to say that the present Minister has never refused to meet the teachers, to listen to their representations and discuss educational problems with them. But it is equally true to say that, in the case of many of the major changes which have been made in recent years, the representations made by the teachers have been completely disregarded. He is quite willing to meet the teachers and listen to their views; but there does not seem to be much use in that if, having listened to them, he disregards them, as he has done in a number of cases. I am not referring to cases which concern the personal interests of the teachers. I am thinking rather of such questions as the supply of teachers, school attendance legislation, school programmes, and so on. Senators will remember the Minister's attitude to the carefully prepared and documented report of the teachers in regard to the teaching of Irish; how their views, founded on evidence and temperately stated, were treated by the Minister, and their motives even misrepresented. The misrepresentations were repeated a week or two ago on the occasion of the debate on the Education Estimates.

Here again we have the case of the primary certificate in connection with which strong representations were made on the part of the teachers that that certificate achieved no useful purpose, in fact that it was injurious to the interests of the children under their care. These representations have been disregarded. When the voluntary scheme was introduced 14 or 15 years ago the teachers agreed to give it a trial. They did not feel justified in objecting to it, as they had no experience of it, apart from purely theoretical views. After it was in operation on a voluntary basis for six or seven years, opinions began to crystallise amongst the teachers and from time to time objections were raised to it. In 1938 the teachers' executive took a referendum of the branches and invited the teachers to give their views. The general view of the teachers, as expressed through their branches, was that not only was it impracticable in operation and difficult to operate, but that it was actually injurious to the interests of the children.

Having got the views of the teachers in that way, the executive of the teachers' organisation decided that they would make inquiries and investigations as to the position in other countries with regard to this question of examinations. They learned that investigations into the question of examinations had been going on in other countries over a long period of years and that just about that time two important international investigations had taken place and reports had been issued. I wish to quote from an address by Dr. William Boyd, head of the Department of Education of Glasgow University and one of the founders of the Scottish Council of Educational Research. Speaking on the subject of examinations at the New Zealand Conference of the New Education Fellowship in 1937 he said:—

"Examinations have had their critics, but never so many or so well-informed critics as to-day. Within the last ten years there have been two important inquiries regarding the working of the examination system in different countries, one by the New Education Fellowship and the other by the Carnegie Corporation of America. Approaching the subject from different angles, they have reached a similar conclusion, and the joint effect is most damaging. Under examination, the examination system in all its phases has come out a rank failure. It proves to have two very serious weaknesses, (a) the measurement of human capacities and their products, which it professes to make, is most unsatisfactory, and (b) the effects on the educational and personal sides of school life are demoralising."

Some time before this, the joint advisory body in England, which is made up of representatives of the local education authorities, the teaching organisations and the Ministry of Education, or, as it is called there, the Board of Education, had conducted an inquiry into this question of examinations. The inquiry extended over two years and a huge mass of evidence was obtained and examined—evidence from the local educational authorities, from teaching organisations, from inspectors and from educational experts of various kinds. They produced a very valuable report, running to something like 300 pages, and here is a significant extract, which seems to be specially applicable to the issue I am now raising:

"We deprecate the preparation and entering of pupils in elementary schools for external examinations for the purpose of obtaining certificates at as early an age as 14."

What I am saying here is no news to the Minister. The views of the teachers and the result of their investigations were embodied in a long memorandum and submitted to the Minister in September, 1938. I should say that the teachers, in giving their views, were not in any way influenced by these expert views which I have quoted, because they were not known to the teachers. The investigation made by the executive was not made until after the teachers had given their own views, so that the teachers gave their views entirely on the basis of their own experience. It is interesting to note that the conclusions arrived at by the teachers spontaneously, and, as it were, haphazardly, as a result of their practical experience, their common sense and their knowledge of the children under their care, were almost identical with those arrived at by experts after long years of investigation and examination of evidence. The executive sent a considered memorandum on the subject to the Minister in September, 1938, and I venture to quote one or two extracts from it which summed up the views of the teachers on the position. They wrote:

"All the evidence produced in the course of these investigations tended to show that a formal external examination was especially harmful in the case of young children of elementary school age, that despite any safeguards which could be devised it gave rise to, and encouraged, the evil practice of cramming; that it fostered in the minds of the children a false idea of the aim and purpose of education, leading them to believe that the be-all and end-all of their school life was the acquisition of sufficient knowledge to enable them to pass the examination; that it is not always the most capable pupil who will come out best at such an examination; and that failure on the part of a pupil begets a feeling of inferiority and a loss of confidence in himself which may have very deleterious results on his future career.

"In the opinion of the executive, the examination confers no advantages commensurate with the expense involved in its administration or the trouble and inconvenience it causes to teachers and managers and the disorganisation of school work, not to mention the psychological effects on the minds of the children as found in the course of the expert investigations already referred to. Even if the examination were not a bad thing in itself the Department must by this time have realised the great practical difficulty of devising a scheme which could be regarded as suitable for operation on a national basis. The conditions here are definitely unfavourable to such a scheme. The disparity which exists between the circumstances of individual schools is greater here than in most countries, and the attempt to set up a common standard is not only impossible but highly inadvisable."

I should say that one of the advantages which this examination is supposed to have is that it will indicate to the teachers and the schools a standard for which they are expected to strive. In other words, it would put all the schools in the country on the same level. The well-equipped and highly-staffed school in Whitehall, or the Central Model School in the city, is to get exactly the same examination papers as the little one-teacher school on the mountain side in Kerry, Donegal or Connemara, in which one teacher tries to teach every pupil from the infant class to the sixth standard. There is to be the same standard and the same examination paper for all. It the standard set out in the paper is fixed to suit the average small school— the one-teacher or two-teacher school— surely it will depress the standard now being reached in the better equipped schools, and if the standard is fixed to suit the better equipped schools, it will discourage the smaller schools which can never hope to reach that standard. I think it entirely wrong to attempt to create something in the way of a national standard for which the pupils in all national schools, irrespective of their circumstances, are expected to strive.

Then, again, the examination is to be a written examination in only three subjects—Irish, English and arithmetic. Forty per cent. will secure a pass for the primary certificate and 30 per cent. in English will be sufficient in the Irish-speaking districts. We are repeatedly told that the most important subject in the national school curriculum at present is oral Irish and the most important object to be achieved at the end of the child's school life is that he or she should be able to speak Irish fairly fluently. There is no examination in oral Irish, the most important subject in the school programme and there is no examination in oral English which is supposed to be the second most important subject in the school programme. A pupil with an attendance of 50 per cent. may sit for the examination and may be awarded the certificate. There is an encouragement to the bad attender at school.

We have no arrangement in this country, as they have in most modern countries, for the segregation of the sub-normal child, or even the weak-minded child. They are all bunched together in the same classrooms and it is the policy—and I do not disagree with it—to promote these children from class to class with their age groups, even though very often they have not been able to make the same progress in educational matters as the others. It is, however, considered better from the psychological point of view—and I thoroughly agree—that the lad or girl who is not able to pass along year by year from the purely educational point of view ought not to be left as a big boy or girl in the infant or first classes, but ought to be moved on to his age group. In most schools there will be two, three or four of these lads who, of course, are supposed to be presented for the examination also.

It is further suggested that parents are anxious for this examination. I do not know on what evidence that suggestion is founded. I have not seen any evidence of that anxiety and I do not know what steps the Minister has taken to consult parents or the representatives of parents. It is said that the results of the examination will let parents know what is being done in the schools. In other words, the success of our educational effort in the national schools is to be measured by the number of children who will get 40 per cent. in a written examination in three school subjects, two of which were regarded hitherto as minor subjects.

It has been hinted, though not formally suggested, that the examination will keep the teachers up to the mark and be a check on their work. There is no body of public servants, no body of teachers, inside or outside this country, whose work is more rigidly and carefully inspected than is the work of the national teachers. There is a very efficient inspection system and the reports of the inspectors show that less than 4 per cent. of the teachers fail at any one time to reach the comparatively high standard set down for them by the Department of Education. About 96 per cent. of the teachers are rated by the Department as efficient or highly efficient, and surely that is a more suitable test of the work done in the national schools than can be furnished by this kind of haphazard written examination in three subjects at the end of the child's school term? Let it not be thought for a moment that examinations have disappeared from the schools. As a matter of fact, the teachers are continually examining and testing their children. That is part of the ordinary machinery of teaching. The children are tested and examined by the inspectors and the rating of the teacher, his position generally, are determined largely by the answering of the pupils when they are under examination.

I could go along for quite a time recounting objections to this attempt to set up a common standard, but I think I have said enough to convince most reasonable people that this proposed examination is going to have unfortunate results if it is persisted in, in the way the Minister has indicated. The teachers as a body have refused to have anything to do with it. They refuse to make themselves responsible for something which, after long consideration, they are convinced is not in the interests of the children committed to their care. They have no other motive in adopting their present attitude—I should like to make that quite clear.

It is argued that a boy or girl leaving the national school at 14 years ought to have some certificate to show that he or she has successfully completed the primary school course. I agree with that argument, but I suggest that that can be done quite simply, and much more effectively, in another way, in a way that will avoid all the objections which I have mentioned as applying to this attempt to create a national standard. The persons best suited to testify to the ability and acquirements and character of a child are his teacher and the manager of the school. These are the people who can best testify to what the child is capable of, to his ability and his acquirements. It is quite easy to supply each school with printed certificates and, when a boy or girl reaches the school-leaving age, and prepares to leave school, that boy or girl can be tested by the teacher in all the subjects, not in two or three minor subjects, of the curriculum. The teacher can testify, not only to the standard of acquirement in these subjects, but to something which no examination will discover, and that is the character of the child, his application to work, and any particular bias he may have for this or that subject, for this or that line. This is most important in the case of a child moving to a vocational or a secondary school, because it will be a guide to the new teacher.

The inspector visits a school two or three times every year, and what objection can there be to asking that inspector to check up on the estimate the teacher has formed of the child's ability? If the inspector and the teacher agree that the child has reached a certain standard, the certificate can be signed by the teacher, the inspector and the manager, and that certificate will have considerable value. The certificate that would be issued under this so-called compulsory system would, in my opinion, not be worth the paper it is written on.

The point may be made that the inspector has not time to do this. I do not agree. The inspector visits the school two or three times in the year, and sometimes oftener, and I do not see why he could not, on these occasions, check up on the teacher, who has an estimate made of the child's abilities. No teacher will give a certificate unless it is deserved; he is not going to put into any certificate something that the child does not possess or does not deserve.

There is a sum of £4,500 to be expended under this scheme for compulsory certificate examinations—for presenting children with a certificate which, in my opinion, is worthless. I think the money could be spent more usefully. I do not know whether it is worth while appealing to the Minister, in view of previous experiences here and elsewhere, to alter his view with regard to this particular proposal. I hope that the Seanad will express disapproval of the scheme in view of the objections which I have outlined.

Mr. Baxter

I must confess that I always have a good deal of sympathy with any suggestions Senator O'Connell puts forward in the matter of education. I know the Senator quite a long time and I have listened to him on many occasions and I always look upon him as being a reasonable man. It is true that he may be officially recognised and accepted as the mouthpiece of the national teachers, but that is not a black mark against him. When any aspect of our educational problems is being discussed, I always feel that his approach is reasonable and just and practical. His approach on this occasion ought to command the earnest consideration of the Minister for Education.

I have heard this matter approached from two angles. I might say that I feel we have gone examination mad here. I feel that very definitely. I have examples in my own house with my own children and that is my reaction to this suggestion of more examinations. I have heard from one angle the argument advanced that this is quite a good thing to do. I have heard secondary teachers say it is quite a good thing and that the Minister is right; that the secondary schools would know better where they stood and that it would make some of the teachers do things that they have not been doing. On that matter I cannot speak with experience. It may be that, as in every other section of our community, there are some national teachers who do not deliver the goods, but I think, generally speaking, the great majority of national teachers do very good work and are very conscientious people.

My feeling about it is that the careless people—and I know some very careless people—always seem to be able to get off. It amazes me that the careless people always seem to be able to get off, whereas the hard-working and conscientious teachers, who take their work seriously, seem to be always the people who are worried in this way, and it would appear to me that these are the people who will be most affected by this fresh effort on the part of the Minister. It makes one almost feel that this new step is a further demonstration of a lack of confidence in the kind of operational plan that has been going on up to the present, and that, as a result, the Minister is trying this fresh effort because of his lack of confidence in the plan that has been operating up to the present.

At any rate, it appears to me that the hard-working and conscientious teachers are going to be harassed by this. I think I have indicated the point of view of the people connected with secondary schools. I have discussed this matter with very competent and able teachers, and they are worried about one particular aspect of it. One of them pointed out that, in a particular year, when children were going forward for examination, a number of these children could hardly be regarded as being up to the normal standard. The children were in the particular class concerned, but they could hardly be classed as fit for examination. The teacher concerned was not particularly worried about that, but he put it to me that if the kind of work he did in the school were to be based on the results of that examination, it was going to be very bad for him, and I feel that if that were to be the result, then this kind of primary certificate examination might lead to very bad results indeed. I am sure that a great many teachers would be worried about that, and again I should like to point out that it is the hard-working and conscientious teachers, who want to do the best they can for their pupils, who will suffer as a result of this.

I admit, of course, that I have not the knowledge that Senator O'Connell has of this subject, and that I cannot hold the attention of the House in the way in which he held it, but I do wish that we could do something by way of satisfying ourselves as to the standard or level of education, and the kind of training and the amount of information we are imparting to our pupils. I think it might be possible for us to find something better than this kind of steam-rolling by the method of examinations. I wish that the Minister for Education would give more consideration or more contemplation to a study of child psychology, generally, with a view to seeing whether we could produce something better than these examination tests, which, on paper, appear to show that we are preparing our children to be good citizens, but about which a great many parents have very grave doubts. I wish we could produce something more original than the old plan, because I do not think that the old plan has proved to be satisfactory, and I think that this new step on the part of the Minister is a demonstration that he is so dissatisfied with the fruits accruing from our present method of education that he is trying this step as one last effort.

It all comes back to the point that we ought to face the problem of education, so far as it concerns ourselves, with a fresh mind, and that we ought to make a fresh approach to it. It is really something about which we ought not to have differences. If we have a common aim, then there ought to be the closest understanding with the people who have made the most intimate study of the children whose minds are to be trained and who are to be brought up to be good citizens of this country and of the world. There ought to be such a close study of that question by people who are competent to deal with it as would ensure that there would no longer be these differences, such as having some people rebelling against the policy of the Minister for Education and others wanting to associate themselves with that policy. I think it is unhappy that such a situation should develop, and I believe that there ought to be some other means of dealing with the situation. I am afraid that our technique is not the correct or proper one, and I feel that so long as the Minister has that sort of situation to deal with, he cannot be satisfied that he himself, in the matter of education, is really making progress. In my opinion it should be the Minister's aim to achieve the co-operation of all people who are interested in the education of our children, with a view to fitting the children to be the citizens of the future. If you have the teachers taking the line that they have decided to take in this matter—and, from what Senator O'Connell has said, it would appear that they can make quite a reasonable case against the step that the Minister is proposing to take—I think there ought to be some moderate way of approaching this problem, and I think that there should be a deeper or more searching examination into the whole matter than we have had up to the present. I believe that the Minister should face that fact, and, if he does not do so, then some other Minister will have to do it.

Mrs. Concannon

I regret that I am not sufficiently familiar with the work of the schools to be a good judge of the conflict between the Department and the teachers in the matter of these examinations, but the Seanad has a particular responsibility in this matter. We are helping to appropriate some £3,500,000 of the people's money for the purpose of primary education, and I think it is our duty to satisfy ourselves that a proper return is being got for this money. I also think that, since we have passed the Compulsory School Attendance Acts, putting the obligation on parents to send their children to school, we ought to see that the years spent by these children in school are not wasted. Therefore, I believe that there ought to be some kind of a test. I do not know what form that test should take or what it should aim at, but commonsense demands that if a child has been compelled to go to school for all these years, and if so much public money has been expended on the education of that child by way of primary education, we should know that we are getting a proper return for the expenditure of that money and that the bulk of our children are being trained to do the things that would fit them for the ordinary work of life; that they would be able to write a simple letter, for instance, to fill up forms, or do simple sums, and do the things which illiterate people are not able to do. At any rate, these children should not be allowed to leave school without some proof being given that they can write a simple letter, make simple calculations, and so on, so that they would be enabled to deal with ordinary business. I think that what is intended here is that proof should be given that these children are able to read, write and do simple calculations. Undoubtedly, considering the amount of money that is being expended, and considering the fact that we are compelling these children to go to school, there should be an effort to see that we are getting some return for this; not necessarily by way of written examinations, but if it is a question of literacy, how are you going to test that without written examinations?

In the course of this discussion, something emerged which I think the Minister should bear in mind, and that is the question of sub-normal children. That is an important matter, and I think it is really cruel to keep such sub-normal children in the same class with normal children. I know that in many cases special treatment is afforded to such children. I have seen something of that kind myself but, so far, I do not think we have done very much about that. That is a matter in which we should be particularly interested, because I know of such children who have gone to school, and they are listless, and almost incapable of learning. Naturally, it is absurd to expect such children to sit for examinations such as are proposed here. I think we ought to remember the case of these children as well as that of the normal children.

Mr. Fitzgerald

I presume that one is not bound, in speaking on the Vote for this Department, to confine oneself entirely to the complaints regarding this leaving certificate examination in elementary schools.

Cathaoirleach

A short reference to other matters pertaining to education would be in accord with the spirit of the arrangement.

Mr. Fitzgerald

I shall not be long. I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the general educational position. I think that we are responsible, as Senator Concannon said, for the state of stagnation in which the Minister's Department is, and for the manner in which it is functioning throughout the country at the moment. In the Dáil, it was always the custom for members to get up and, with a sort of flunkeyism, announce that they would not query the spending of any amount of money on education. It does seem to me that most of this money is thrown away. Senator Concannon has before her a dream of an ideal country in which everybody will be able to fill in Government forms intelligently. I should not spend 3d. on trying to produce that effect. We have never made up our minds as to the purpose for which we are spending this money. Is it that people may be able to read? What is the good of teaching them how to read unless we have some guarantee that what they will read will be worth reading?

One of the educational troubles of this country is due to absolute uniformity. In other countries, there are different types. In this country, people tell you that they were "up to the fifth book". I do not know what that means, but it means something to everybody else. The Government Department imposes a certain uniformity in the first instance, and that is called "primary education". Technically, our schools are independent or free by reason of the managerial system, but, because we so lightheartedly hand them over £5,000,000, the Government uses that money so as to have absolute control. The result is that, in their little elementary schools, national teachers can talk a sort of private language. This arises from the absolute uniformity of programme, objective and method. When you come to the secondary schools, they are directed on certain lines, enforced by the Government in the intermediate and leaving certificate examinations. When it comes to the university, the Taoiseach himself said on two occasions—once in Trinity College—that we must not look for culture there; that whatever culture—if any—is to be absorbed by our people must be absorbed in our secondary schools, and that what we should look for from the universities is the production of technical experts for the development of our wonderful tariff industries.

The impoverishment of education has, as one of its causes, that absolute uniformity. That is due to bureaucracy. I am not blaming the bureaucracy; it is inherent in the system that every little child is born a "primary" and goes through a certain course which is, more or less, a preparation for what other courses offer. Then there is what is called the secondary system. You see boys running along the streets and you know that they are preparing for the intermediate examinations. If you watch closely, you will know exactly what they can tell you. You know that they can recite something about The Wreck of the Hesperus—I myself could not do it—and The Prisoner of Chillon. They know just these things because the Department has said that, if they know The Wreck of the Hesperus and a few other things, they will get a certificate. What is wanted is difficult to get from the Department of Education because everybody has been formed in one mould. Everybody thinks in terms of primary education and exactly what they themselves were taught in primary schools. In respect of secondary education, they think in terms of what they themselves learned in a secondary school. The arguments used against the Department reveal the same weakness. Senator Keane will get up and say that, since the introduction of compulsory Irish, the educational standard has gone down. I do not know whether or not it has gone down. All I can say is that if it goes down from what it is now, it will perform almost the impossible.

I heard of people who sat on the ground because they would not have far to fall. Personally, I do not see what is the difference between the ordinary product of our £5,000,000 expenditure whom one meets on the streets and throughout the country and the illiterate. What great harm would it be if our compulsorily literate people were not so literate? Since the movies came in, it is not so necessary to be literate, because you can follow the reels without having to read the captions. That is the standard set up by the Department of Education.

On one occasion I was travelling on the Continent and a bundle of papers, which had accumulated, reached me. I opened one of these and it had a big heading, "Policy of Education." I looked down the column to see what the policy was. It said that the policy of the Education Department was to see that children would have a spoken knowledge of Irish. That is not an educational policy. Presumably, the most illiterate people in the most uncultured part of Albania know Albanian. The Bantu tribes, I presume, are able to speak Bantu. The language of the Swahilian people is a trifle more complicated. As a matter of fact, an Irish language policy conceived in these terms has nothing whatever to do with education. The Government possesses a certain power over the younger people through their control of the public purse and through legislation imposing on parents the obligation of sending their children to school. They use these powers for a purpose in no way connected with education, but rather to make the vehicle through which people communicate their thoughts one language instead of another.

What I should like to have is a totally new consideration of what we propose to aim at. We shall never get that if we have this rigidity and if we have people worrying because a certain number of children in the parish of Schull have not been attending regularly at school. We shall have to be a little more adventurous and not worry so much about the question whether the minimum standard of education demanded by the Department will be achieved by every little toddler up and down the country. The only way I can see of reaching a normal, reasonable education—what I would call "reasonable" is not what the modern world would call reasonable—is to have independent educational establishments. The whole building up of European culture was done, not through the Dáil and Seanad voting sums of money to a Department and that Department having national teachers and having the young people of the country by the scruff of the neck. It has been done in independent places. I do not know how it is going to be done here, but you had it in England growing out of a long period during which educational systems had accruing to them considerable endowments. What the Department should do is to bring in people, preferably from outside this country, people who have not been fixed in that solid mould of primary, secondary and university education as it is known in this country. You must run certain risks. Instead of, as I say, trying to see that the school in Marrowbone Lane is maintaining exactly the same standard as the school in Carrick-bullog, you might leave schools a certain amount of independence.

On the question of examinations, Senator O'Connell suggested that the teachers might examine the children. Personally I would not trust a system of that kind. If a man presents me with a certificate signed by a teacher or the Minister for Education telling me that he has attained the maximum educational peak attainable in the schools, it does not impress me in the least and it does not affect my judgment. You can tell by meeting certain people whether or not their minds have received a certain discipline, a certain formation or a certain character by something which we roughly call education. A written document, the fetish of this country, means practically nothing. It does mean a certain amount. It does mean that there was a certain application, a certain industry, a certain quickness or cuteness of mind, manifested at an early age which enabled a student to roll off passages from the Second Book of Horace's Odes, the Prisoner of Chillon or the piece about the pirates coming into Baltimore. All that has nothing to do with education or trying to get the people of this country to think clearly. It does not really matter whether they speak English or Irish if they have got anything to say.

How are we going to judge our national schools? By what they have produced? I have said here before that our standard of education is the low European standard. Is there any reason why it should be the low European standard? Is there any reason why we should not sit down and say: "Here we are with £5,000,000 to spend on education. We have a certain natural intelligence—at least we think we have—amongst the people. We have a certain basis, more than other people, on which to build a moral edifice in the minds of our children; let us, therefore, try to think of some way in which we can utilise these advantages to the utmost." We are definitely moving in the wrong direction if we seek to establish absolute equality all round. To my mind, one of the greatest experiments in modern methods of education has been initiated by the President of the University of Chicago—and America has much more of the evils of modern education than any other country—but with enormous courage he is absolutely reversing and standing out for everything that America considered most obscurantist and most out-of-date. Education in England has been enormously assisted by the fact that you have those institutions that are so much derided by journalists nowadays —public schools—which have achieved so much not because the boys wear a certain tie but because they had a certain tradition. They were independent and they were not concerned with turning out students who merely possessed certain certificates. It would be much better for this country if there were a smaller number of people who were barely literate if you had an educated class in the country. One of the greatest weaknesses of this country is that the educated class is an extraordinarily small class.

The Minister, in his passion for gripping everybody in this machine, has really cost the State more than we need have to pay. He brought in a Bill some time ago dealing with school attendance, and without flattering myself I will state this, that any person with a fair mind and a fair intelligence who listened to what I said on that occasion could have no doubt whatever that what the Minister was legislating here was an attempt by the Government to arrogate to itself certain rights that the Constitution allowed to parents. The Fianna Fáil Party on that occasion answered the Whip. It was definitely a whipped vote. Members of the Party told me that they agreed with me, but they could not vote with our side because they were compelled by the Party Whip to vote with the Minister and to take away rights, not agreed to but merely recognised as belonging to parents in the Constitution. As a result, the matter had to go before the Supreme Court and part of the sum which we are now called upon to vote, I imagine, has been incurred in throwing that money away to make apparent the failure of the Department's attempt to take over to themselves further powers in addition to the crushing power which they have now, to turn these compulsory literates out of the same mould.

We come now to vote this money and the point has been raised whether at the age of 14 there should be this examination for children to entitle them to this little certificate. I do not think it matters twopence whether we have such an examination but for heaven's sake, let us see in this country that when we are expending all this money, we do create here not a system, but a multitude of educational institutions unrelated to one another, and not controlled by any central authority, which will produce people able to think clearly, to recognise facts and to deduce facts according to an enlightened conscience.

Minister for Education (Mr. Derrig)

Senator O'Connell questioned my authority in making rules regarding this examination. I am the rule-making authority so far as the Department of Education is concerned. Perhaps Senator O'Connell would prefer some other authority, but, as matters stand in this country at present, the member of the Government entrusted with the Department of Education is the legal authority to make rules.

Mr. O'Connell

To make legal rules.

Minister for Education (Mr. Derrig)

If the rules he makes are not legal, there are organisations in the country, and we know from experience that if they are not able to get the State to yield, they will at any rate be able out of their own coffers and the contributions of their own members, if they think it worth while in the interests of the organisation they speak for, to test the Minister's decision. It seems a rather peculiar way of advancing educational standards in this country, and of making progress that, in a matter of this kind, which is of such general educational interest, the Minister for Education should be threatened that if he is not very careful he will find that legal obstacles will be placed in his way. I am sure that investigations have already taken place as to whether more legal obstacles should not be placed in the Minister's way in this particular matter. Whether they have been successful or not in providing means of stopping the Minister from carrying his decision into effect is another question.

Senator O'Connell suggests that it is most unfortunate that we should have a Minister for Education who, while prepared to listen to what the teachers have to say, is not always prepared to do as the teachers would wish. Perhaps that kind of a Minister for Education would be better. Perhaps the Irish people will provide such a Minister at the coming election—a Minister who will regard the teachers' organisation as judge and jury in this and other matters. Up to the present, at any rate, the Irish people have not considered such a Minister to be the one they would wish to have in control. I have no wish to go back over past history, but I think those who are listening to Senator O'Connell will themselves think that there must be something rather inconsistent in his statement, or that he is not giving a complete picture of the relations between the teachers' organisation and myself when he suggests that I have always met them and listened to them but that apparently I have never paid any attention to what they had to say.

Mr. O'Connell

I beg the Minister's pardon; I did not say any such thing.

Mr. Derrig

But the Senator may have given that impression. May I recall to his attention that one of the first things I did in 1934 was to call in the teachers in conference and to reduce the scope of the programme in the non-Irish subjects in order that more attention might be given to Irish. In that matter I was not guided by the advice of the officials of the Department of Education; I was guided by the advice of the conference, and perhaps more by the teachers' representatives than by the inspectors of the Department.

As regards the supply of teachers, of course that is a matter which has been affecting us for a great number of years. It was only when the 1936 Census figures were published— although some evidence had been coming in for a year or two before-hand—that we realised that there was a serious decline in the number of children. When I went into the matter, I found that, according to the information I was able to get, the decline was likely to continue. Although there has been a small improvement, I cannot say at the moment whether that improvement is likely to be permanent, or whether it is going to amount to very much. That, of course, had a bearing on the supply of teachers. At the wish of the teachers' organisation, in order to provide security of tenure for those teachers who were threatened with loss of their positions owing to the falling averages in the schools, we introduced a panel system by which all teachers who would otherwise lose their positions are now guaranteed further employment when vacancies arise the condition being that they must take the vacancies which are offered to them. That, obviously, has had a serious effect on the employment of young teachers, and so far as I know the older teachers have been treated very fairly by the inspectors. The teachers often are non-efficient for years and years before the drastic action of dismissing them is taken.

There is also, as the Seanad knows, a board of appeal, and if the teacher considers that he has been unfairly treated by the inspector he makes application to have his case heard by the appeal board. The appeal board may send one of the higher inspectors from the office, who has not had previous contact with the case, to make an independent examination, and the appeal board may turn down the adverse report of the local inspector. Therefore, as far as the rating of the teacher is concerned, I think it is safeguarded fairly well in that respect, and in any case the instructions to inspectors make it clear that the inspector's definition of the teacher's rating must be affected by the general circumstances under which the teacher is working in his school, and also by the standard of the schools round about him. The fact that we have only a very small percentage of teachers who are not able to satisfy the inspectors goes to show that the inspectors have not been unduly severe.

I should like to say now that there is no question of taking advantage of the result of the primary certificate examination to depress the teachers' ratings or adversely to affect their positions. The sole purpose of the examination has been to show parents what is being done in the schools; to give a certificate to assure them that their children have completed satisfactorily the ordinary primary course. However, before I go into that, might I say that under the old results system, which many Senators will remember, every pupil in every class in the national schools was examined by the inspector, and the grants to the schools depended upon the results of those examinations. That system was abandoned, and we had a new system under which the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, and no examination was substituted for the old results system. That may not have been a proper system—I am not saying that it was—but no examination of any kind was substituted, so that there is no written test to enable parents to know what standard of education has been reached by their children, who, as has been pointed out, are compelled by law to attend school from the age of six to the age of 14.

Senator O'Connell has told us about investigations in other countries, but he has omitted to mention to the House that the origin of this primary certificate examination was in a recommendation made by a committee which examined the inspection system and reported in 1927, and on which his organisation was well represented.

Mr. O'Connell

I was a member of that commission myself, as the Minister is aware.

Mr. Derrig

The report says:—

"We recognise the advantages of a State primary school certificate, which would testify, with the full authority of the Department, to the creditable completion of a primary course, and which would have a standard value all over the country. Though the institution of such a certificate at the present time involves many difficulties, we believe that the following plan could be put into operation with the minimum of expense.... By the adoption of this scheme, the teachers would get a clear knowledge of the standards after which they are expected to strive; the formal character of the examination would be a powerful stimulus to the pupil; the certificate would come to be recognised as qualification for entrance to the post-primary, continuation, technical or secondary schools, and have considerable value for the purpose of obtaining employment."

Everybody who is acquainted with schools and examinations knows that the examination at the end of a course is a powerful stimulus to the work of the schools. It gives the teachers something concrete and definite to work upon. While the National Teachers' Organisation seems to have been opposed to the idea of a compulsory examination, I think I am not giving away any secret when I say that other interests and associations dealing with education in this country—some of them held in very high repute, and rightly so, by the Irish people—would like to have more examinations. Parents generally have not that objection to examinations that one would imagine if one were to judge from the speeches we have heard here. It may be that parents like Senator Baxter feel that undue pressure is being put upon their children to prepare for examinations. If that is so in the secondary schools, I suggest that parents like Senator Baxter should take the matter up either with me or with the schools. It may be the case that too severe a burden is being placed upon the pupils, particularly in regard to home work, in preparing for these examinations and it is possibly the case that work that should be done in the school under the supervision of the teacher, and with the teacher's assistance, is being done at home with the aid of the parents, who find the weight of home work nearly as heavy as the pupils find it.

That in itself is not an argument against examinations. We have no other system of assessing merit or determining competence to fill public positions, to regulate entrance to the Civil Service, the professions, the teaching profession and other employment. While there have been critics of the system and while everyone knows it has its defects, there does not seem to be any alternative. As Senator Mrs. Concannon said, if this examination is regarded as what in fact many would consider it to be, an examination to test the literacy of the pupils on completing the Sixth Standard in the national school, one would find it difficult to suggest how an alternative could be provided. If an oral examination of each child were to be held it would mean that we would have to have hundreds and hundreds of inspectors.

The inspectors at the present time have more than sufficient on hands. In addition to inspecting schools, they have to do a considerable amount of examination work. The general inspection of a school or of a teacher's work at the present time takes a good deal of time. It is a very careful and methodical process and may take days. It may take a whole week in the larger schools. So that inspectors have no time to spare. The House will see that if we were to have an oral examination covering the 40,000 or 50,000 children who are eligible to sit for this examination, we would require several hundred inspectors. In any case, it is very difficult to maintain equal standards in oral examinations. One advantage of the written test, taken on the same day throughout the country, is that, at any rate, it is a standard test for everybody.

I think the reasons given for the introduction of this certificate by the committee of 1927 still hold. I believe that those who are acquainted with educational problems and with the discussions that have been going on with regard to our educational system know that there is a very wide demand for greater co-ordination as between primary education and continuation education and as between secondary education and the university. We have tried to co-ordinate the latter two branches and have succeeded fairly well, but many consider that continuation education and primary education are not sufficiently co-ordinated.

Senator O'Connell suggests that this examination will not be worth the paper it is written on. May I recall to his mind that since its inception a proportion of the schools, at any rate, have sent up pupils regularly for it? Some of the largest and most important primary schools in the country have been sending up pupils for this examination constantly. It is true that the total number of schools has not been more than 20 per cent. in any year, and that not more than 25 per cent. of the eligible pupils have been presented, but I think we may judge from the Senator's speech that the failure of the teachers to co-operate with us in this matter—he has practically admitted it—is responsible for the abstention. How the Senator can reconcile the position that 20 per cent. of the schools, including some of the best and most important from the educational point of view, find this examination valuable, prepare pupils year after year for it, are as seriously interested in it as any other part of their work in secondary, continuation or primary education, with the attitude of the teachers who say that the examination is of no value or with his own statement that the certificate will not be worth the paper it is written on, is beyond me. It is hard to know whether the Senator, in this matter, is speaking for himself as one interested in education, having long experience of the work, giving the benefit of his views as to what is best in the interest of the children, or is speaking purely as the spokesman of an organisation.

Mr. O'Connell

Why should there be any difference?

Mr. Derrig

I do not know whether the Senator himself would say that the correspondence with the teachers over a period of years since 1934 has not shown that the Department has not made great efforts to try to secure co-operation with the teachers. Perhaps the Senator will claim that it is the fault of the Department that that co-operation has not been achieved. In 1934, as I explained in the other House, the teachers submitted a scheme. This scheme did not entirely commend itself to the Department, because it seemed to take all responsibility in connection with the examination from the Department. While at all times I should have been very glad that the teachers should be associated with the examination and have some share of responsibility in it—as I told the Senator and his colleagues, I thought it was in the best interests of the teachers' organisation as well as in the best interests of education, that they should have a part to play in connection with the examination—to hand over the control of the examination completely to their organisation was another matter. Before we had come to determine the question as to whether we should accept the teachers' original proposals, their congress, in 1935, called for the abolition of the primary certificate examination altogether.

We took up the matter subsequently. I am inclined to the view that the executive may have felt that such an examination was desirable, or that, at any rate, if the Minister was keen on it, it should be possible to co-operate with him. This correspondence was on the basis, of course, of a voluntary examination, and the sole purpose was to endeavour to see that a larger number of the schools throughout the country would participate in it. Later on we put up further proposals, in 1937, and while the executive seemed to be prepared to consider the matter, they felt that, having regard to the attitude of their congress, they would have to report back to them. The congress refused to co-operate, although the managers expressed their willingness to do so. Finally, we went back to the teachers' original proposal, with certain modifications. I discussed them in conference with the teachers' representatives, and it looked as if it might have been possible to secure their co-operation, still on the basis of a voluntary examination, but which would be greatly extended in numbers and importance.

However, the teachers' congress again turned down the idea of co-operation and it remained for me to decide whether to drop the idea of trying to extend this examination which it was clearly intended should gradually be extended after it had been established in 1928 and might eventually be made obligatory. The fact that such a comparatively large number of schools—certainly large from the point of view of importance in the educational sphere— have considered this examination to be a useful and important educational reform, seems to me to be in itself a proof that a large number of parents recognise the value of this examination. The Senator questions whether the desires of the parents are represented by my decision in this matter. I hope that the examination, which has been fixed for the 1st June, will be a success, and that it will show that the desires of the parents have been correctly anticipated by me. The managers, generally, have shown their interest in the examination, and I am hopeful that I shall have their co-operation. I hope that we shall have the co-operation of the teachers also. If we are going to get the results from this examination that we would wish we must have the teachers' co-operation also. When we see the results of this year's examination, we can discuss the details more fully.

I think that Senator O'Connell, and those for whom he speaks, will recognise that it would be impossible to have an alternative of the kind that he has suggested. In fact, the teachers' original scheme would cost £4,500, which is the cost of the scheme that we are now introducing. Therefore, on the ground of cost, there is no point in it at all. The real point is that we are spending nearly £4,000,000 on primary education, and if we were to spend five or six times £4,500, I think that even the Minister for Finance would agree that it would be useful expenditure if we could thereby improve the work in the schools and assess more readily the standard of the work that is being done in them. I believe that it is necessary and desirable that children, towards the end of their primary school course, should be given a test of this character. They should have the opportunity of setting down in simple form their ideas in correct English or Irish, and of making simple calculations within a limited time. That is the nature of the test. It is only a test for primary school children, and therefore a great deal of Senator Fitzgerald's remarks were, I suggest, not appropriate.

Mr. Derrig

There is a system of after-care for boys and girls who leave industrial schools. Of course, it is very difficult to keep track of these young people because they frequently change their occupation and place of residence. The managers of the schools keep in touch with the past pupils, and they are invited, when out of employment, or in the district where the school is situate, to call. It is a regular feature in some of these schools for past pupils to call and to stay for some weeks during a period of unemployment until they are assisted by the manager to find fresh employment. The social service bodies here in Dublin have also taken an active interest in this matter for some years, and I should like to thank them for the work that they have done in looking after these past pupils throughout the country. Everything that could be reasonably expected is being done, and if the Senator or anybody else has any practical suggestion as to how more could be done I shall be very glad to hear it.

With regard to the suggestion that nothing has been done for defective children, I omitted to mention that there has been an examination into this problem going on for a considerable time by a special investigator, and the result is now with the Department of Local Government and Public Health. The number of such children seems to very in the different areas examined. In the City of Dublin, so far as my recollection goes, the number of children of all classes who might be regarded as "M.D." would not be more than 2 per cent., so that that scarcely affects the question of examination to any considerable degree.

I should also like to correct any misapprehension that there might be about inefficient teachers. If a teacher has given good service, and if his or her efficiency declines, the Department does not at once proceed to dismiss such teacher. I do not know if that is what Senator Foran would wish. It is the duty of the inspector to advise and to encourage a teacher to improve methods where he thinks they could be improved, and to make suggestions, and, if a teacher is not willing to carry out these suggestions, to insist on his doing so. If these efforts on the part of the inspector fail, and if he feels that a teacher's work is not reasonably satisfactory, he gives a six months' notice, which means that at the end of six months he is going to have a formal examination of the teacher's work and if he then finds the teacher non-efficient, he reports the matter. The teacher may then appeal, if he or she so wishes, and if service has been good up to that period a communication may go out from the office, or the divisional inspector may visit the school to see if improvement could be effected. In my remark, I merely wished by way of illustration to explain to the House that the fact that a very small number of such teachers are kept on for a period, even when there is no doubt as to their non-efficiency, would serve to prove that the inspectors are not driving the teachers and not making life miserable for them, as was suggested.

Mr. O'Connell

I never suggested that.

Mr. Derrig

I do not say that the Senator suggested it. If anybody suggests that undue pressure is being put on teachers—I think that suggestion was made—I would like to say that if inspectors should do that, and if there are such inspectors, they are not carrying out, as I intend, the policy of the Department. They are supposed to advise and to give guidance to teachers, and it is only when they are satisfied that there is no reasonable chance that a teacher is going to recover efficiency, and again give satisfactory service, that inspectors are justified in definitely reporting the case to headquarters as one for serious action.

Mrs. Concannon

I desire to call attention to the problem of children who have not reached the school-going age.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

I understood that this debate on the particular subject matter was to conclude with the Minister's speech. If we are going to follow up that debate in this way, it does not seem to me desirable that Senators should try to raise further points, especially without giving the Minister notice of them. The understanding was that notice should be given of any points to be raised. That notice was given for the convenience of Senators following consultation with the Committee on Procedure and Privileges.

Mrs. Concannon

I am referring to the problem of younger children, aged from three to six, and the danger that they run in playing in the streets. Some families live in one room and there is no place but the streets for these children to play. When they are in the streets like Harcourt Street and Cuffe Street, where there is a good deal of traffic, they are in grave danger from bicycles and other vehicles. Perhaps this matter would be more the concern of the Department of Local Government.

Mr. M. Hayes

Has not the unfortunate Minister enough to do to look after children going to school without being made responsible for children who are not going to school?

Mr. Derrig

Children can go to school from four years.

Sir John Keane

Can we have agreement now about our procedure?

Leas-Chathaoirleach

My own opinion is that it would be preferable to have a general debate on the policy of the Government instead of this attempt to raise different points. We have, however, after consultation with the Committee, adopted a certain precedure and Senators were notified that if they wished to raise any point notice should be given and the Minister would then be asked to attend. I think the proper thing is to follow that procedure until there is an opportunity of review by the Committee on Procedure and Privileges.

My object in putting down my question was to ask the appropriate Minister to consider decentralising the administration of food supplies. At present, if any poor person in a distant part of the country is not satisfied on any question of rationing, chiefly in regard to food, the matter has to come to Dublin. It is quite impossible for that poor person to conduct a satisfactory correspondence or to understand the ways of Government Departments. It is eminently desirable that an attempt be made to have personal contact between the citizen concerned and some Government official.

I have had experience of one attempt, not by a poor citizen but by an intelligent person who came to this country and was searching for a temporary ration book, and it took from May to September to procure it. Arrangements should be possible whereby the citizen could go to, say, the capital city of his county and see some responsible official there. That would prove much more satisfactory. I do not like to quote the experience of other countries, but that is the way it is done in countries with much greater experience of rationing and emergency control than we have.

It is no answer to say that our population is not as great as that served by a single county in England, but the fact remains that it is not primarily a question of population but one of propinquity—access to some Government office where there can be personal contact and personal explanations.

Arising out of this, I have also seen the forms of acknowledgment that correspondents receive—postcards in Irish with no reference number whatever on them. I fail to understand how any business department can deal satisfactorily with such questions when the correspondence has no reference number and one cannot indicate by a reference number the question to which the correspondence applies.

Mr. Kelly

May I draw the attention of the Chair to the fact that there is not a quorum in the House?

Leas-Chathaoirleach

There is a quorum.

Sir John Keane

I wish to enter a protest regarding the absence of the appropriate Minister to deal with these various matters. It is quite impossible for the Minister for Finance to do anything more than make a note and convey the remarks to the appropriate Minister.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

Senator Sir John Keane has estimated the position properly, so far as I am concerned. I cannot answer his points. I do not know any more than he does himself about them and, perhaps, he knows much more than I do, as he has taken a particular interest in these matters and has, probably, much more experience of them than I have. All I can do is, as I have done on similar occasions here, convey the remarks made by the Senator to the special attention of the Minister.

Professor Johnston

The matter which I meant to bring to the attention of the House in connection with this Bill is, perhaps, more specifically related to the functions of the Minister for Industry and Commerce than to those of the Minister for Finance, so I regret the absence of the former. Nevertheless, I recognise that the Minister for Finance is something of a "maid-of-all-work" in Government circles and that he cannot escape the entire responsibility for matters which are primarily for the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I wish to bring to the notice of the House the restriction of imports, both as a matter of peace-time policy and with special reference to the way in which this policy has added to the difficulties of the emergency situation, by making it more difficult to secure supplies of scarce materials from abroad.

Of course, before the war we knew it was the deliberate policy of the Government Party to restrict imports in very many different directions. That was a matter of domestic controversy on which opinions differed. I might express the difference of outlook by saying that it appeared to be the Government policy to promote the production in Eire of nearly anything that it was physically possible to produce in this country, whereas people who did not wish to go quite so far or so fast in the direction of industrial development were prepared to use the Government agency in promoting industries which were considered to be economically desirable but they were not prepared to go so far as to promote industries which were definitely uneconomic, however physically possible they might be.

To put it in another way, the conflict of opinion might be expressed in the form that Government policy was to create at home an industrial market for agricultural production, with a view to making agriculture less dependent on the export market, whereas the rival policy would have been to promote agricultural development to the maximum of our capacity, so as to develop an agricultural market for native industry and thus carry native industrial development along by the natural attraction of expanding agricultural demand for its products. That, however, is only by way of introduction.

When the war began, I and many other people believed that the Government, which had hitherto been a Party Government, would act in the spirit of a National Government and that, for the purposes of the war emergency, it would take a more practical and common-sense view of the position in regard to the supplies we needed from abroad. It did not do so. Foolishly, I tried to hope that the experiences of the war period and of co-operation between Parties, which was willingly forthcoming at that time, would lead to a situation in the post-war period when it would be possible to have some measure of agreement about national policy. However, judging by the speech the Minister for Industry and Commerce made in the other House yesterday, I am afraid I must regard that hope as vain.

When the emergency began, it was obvious that there would be a scarcity of all kinds of imported goods, both of such finished goods as were able to come in over our tariff walls and of other semi-finished goods and raw materials which were a very necessary part of our industrial activity. I assumed that the Government policy would be that, so far as we at any rate were concerned, there would be no restrictions on the import of such needed supplies from abroad; that, in fact, the whole machinery of control of imports, elaborately set up in the inter-war period, would be either scrapped entirely or operated in such a way as to create the widest possible scope for the freest possible import of every kind of thing we could possibly import during the currency of the present war. But, very much to my surprise, I found that the anti-import complex persisted and continued to dominate Government mentality and Government policy for the first year or two of the war, in fact right down until the time arrived at which it became practically impossible to import any commodities at all, and only then were the tariffs and other restrictions affecting the import of such commodities removed. That, I think, was particularly foolish.

The particular instance I wished to mention in connection with the Finance Bill, which I was told I should postpone until the Appropriation Bill, was this episode of the rubber boots that a certain merchant in Dundalk was offered at the end of 1941. He had already obtained from abroad the whole of his quota of rubber boots for that year; but towards the end of 1941 he was offered 1,000 pairs of rubber boots by some British supplier. According to my information, he applied to the Department of Industry and Commerce for an enlargement of his quota to enable him to import this windfall of rubber boots offered to him, and the Department of Industry and Commerce took the line that they could not depart from the normal functioning of this machinery of quotas and that he would have to wait until the following year when he could get the boots in under a new annual quota. He waited until the following year. In the meantime, the Japanese attack on Singapore took place and rubber immediately became one of the scarcest of scarce products and, of course, the offer of rubber boots by the British merchant was withdrawn. The net effect of this was that our people are short 1,000 pairs of rubber boots which we would otherwise have had if the Government had had an ounce of wit in the interpretation and administration of this control of imports.

I know the Minister for Supplies has done his best within the limits of his lights, which sometimes are little better than darkness, but, nevertheless, within the limits of his lights to get supplies for us, especially when these things were nearly impossible to obtain. But, if he had perhaps controlled things a little less and had been somewhat less busy about organising commerce under emergency conditions, and if he had left a good deal more to the private enterprise of individual merchants here, I, for one, think that we might have come off better in this supply business, because, so far as I can make out, the personal relations between our merchants, drapers and others, and their suppliers in Great Britain have always been most friendly. While I am sure that the relations between our Government and the British Government are also personally most friendly, there is, nevertheless, a certain lack of frankness which is perhaps quite intelligible in present circumstances and a certain embarrassment in these relations owing to causes into which I do not wish to go. So that it may be that the Government would have been better advised to have controlled less rigidly the activities of private importing firms and to have told them in fact to go ahead and import everything that they could and that no bureaucratic restrictions would be placed in the way of such imports. If they had done that and maintained such a policy during the three years of the emergency which have now elapsed, I feel pretty certain that our shops would be better stocked with goods than they are now.

There is another and more remote way in which Government policy over a number of years has operated to restrict imports of one of the most necessary things in our whole economy, and that is fuel. It is not too much to say that for the last ten years or so one would almost think that Government policy had been deliberately devised with a view to bankrupting the railway system and the confiscating of the interests of railway shareholders. That is perhaps saying rather more than I wish to convey. I do not wish to accuse the Government of deliberately developing or carrying out a policy with that intention in view; but I do say that, judged by results, their policy has tended to have that effect, and that they cannot entirely escape criticism for the consequences of their policy, however noble and upright may have been their intentions at the time when the policy was inaugurated. It was obvious to everybody that in the years approaching the outbreak of the emergency in 1938 and 1939, the Great Southern Railways Company was virtually bankrupt, and it was doubly obvious to the Government who must have known privately what became public when the report of the Transport Tribunal was published. So financially stringent was the situation of that company in July, 1938, that, according to page 49 of the report of the Transport Tribunal:

"In July, 1938, for the first time the company had to realise capital assets in order to meet the half-yearly payment in respect of debenture interest. To obtain sufficient cash to carry on business it had to resort to such steps as the reduction of stocks for temporary periods—an example being coal, in regard to which in July, 1938, only one week's supply was carried instead of the normal five weeks' supply. At the same time the issue of certain cheques was held up despite requests made for more prompt payment."

In 1938 everybody knew that the international situation was about as black as it could be, and they must have known that coal was one of the things which we ought to lay up in considerable quantity. For the Government to know that our principal railway system was carrying on with only one week's supply of coal and not to take active steps to make it possible for the company to lay in six or twelve months' supply of coal between 1938 and 1939 was, to my mind, criminal negligence. It is certain that the difficulty the Great Southern Railways Company had in importing coal in 1938 was a purely financial one. At that time there would be no difficulty in importing a considerable quantity of coal if only the Government had faced up to the difficult position of the company and told them if necessary that with a Government guarantee they should go ahead and buy a terrific store of coal.

Mr. Quirke

Did the Senator himself put in sufficient coal to last until now?

Professor Johnston

Nothing was done. My argument is that the failure of the Government policy intensified the present difficulty and the scarcity of necessary imports such as coal; in fact that the failure of Government policy with regard to the transport system has been the principal cause of the paralysis of our transport system which threatens the whole economic life of the country. I should like to ask the Minister what is the Government policy with regard to transport services now and in the future, if the present Government is responsible for public policy after the election.

In that connection, I should like to refer to a rumour that the shareholders' interest in the Great Southern Railways Company is due to be confiscated to a still further degree. That is, perhaps, not entirely rumour. But, if there must be some reorganisation of the capital of the company, and if it is to be turned into the position of a public utility company, which I think is probably inevitable under the present conditions, there should be some equitable definition of what, as required by the equities of the case, should be the capital interest retained by the shareholders in that concern.

My definition of that is that we should consider how much of the Great Southern line we would construct under present conditions if we were framing a transport system from the start, taking into account the fact that road transport as well as railway transport is one of the characteristics of modern internal transport. If we decided that we would still have to have the main trunk lines from Dublin to Galway, Limerick, Cork, Waterford and so on, we should then consider what would be the capital cost, on the basis of present costs of labour and materials, of building a railway of these dimensions and we should estimate the equity of the shareholders to be whatever that would be. I do not know what that figure would be, but I do know that it would probably be a great deal more than the £12,000,000 to which the shareholders' interest was written down by the Act of 1933, although it would probably be less than the £30,000,000 which these shareholders, or their predecessors in title, originally contributed to the capital of the railway.

Business suspended at 6.5 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Professor Johnston

I am afraid I find myself making something of an electioneering speech, but I am sure the Minister will appreciate that this is the time of the year for electioneering speeches and, if we are going to have an election, a contested election, it is right that we should express ourselves quite openly about what we think, right or wrong, with reference to Government policy.

The sum of my contentions with regard to the Great Southern Railways is that the semi-bankruptey of that institution was the principal reason why it was unable to lay in a large store of supplies before the war, especially coal, and Government policy must be held largely responsible for the serious financial condition of that institution. If we compare the present conditions on the Great Northern Railway with those on the Great Southern Railways, we find that the Great Northern Railway has almost normal services every day. I understand they had the prevision to lay in considerable stores of coal in advance and, anyhow, they never were reduced to the low financial condition of the Great Southern system. The difference, perhaps, is that the Great Northern Railway, owing to reasons which, in certain connections, we deplore, escaped the jurisdiction of the present Government here. But from the point of view of the present transport situation, that fact is a matter for congratulation rather than regret, and the Great Northern Railway certainly provides one life line, and a very desirable life line, in our national transport system.

If there is going to be any question of a drastic re-organisation of the Great Southern Railways in the near future, I hope nothing irrevocable will be done with the constitution of that company, or affecting the rights of the shareholders, until the electors have spoken, until the matter has been duly submitted to the Oireachtas and has been agreed to by them after full consideration and debate. It would be quite improper to use emergency legislation in order to take any step affecting the rights and interests of the shareholders of that institution, and I hope nothing of the kind is contemplated.

I would like to make one or two remarks about the general policy with regard to the restriction of imports before the war emergency and up to the present. I find, on looking up the customs and excise tariff list of 1936, that there were 288 articles subject to tariff and, on looking up the customs and excise tariff list of 1931, I find that there were 61 articles subject to tariff. That does not exhaust the matter. There is a rather sinister phrase in the introductory matter of the official import list of 1937, which says: "It is to be noted also that articles classified in this list on one basis, e.g., function or use, though free as such, may be liable in whole or in part to a duty chargeable on a different basis of classification, e.g., material." You never can know from looking at the customs and excise tariff list whether an article is really free of tax or not.

The extent to which we have gone in attempting to restrict imports on all sorts of things is simply ridiculous. I had the curiosity to look up, in that connection, rather a gruesome subject, the subject of coffins. I apologise for speaking of it, but I do speak of it in this connection by way of illustrating the extent to which the Government have gone in trying to promote industries, both small and large, in the country, whether they were of any particular importance or not. I would like to assure the Minister that he is not going to create an Irish Utopia by having all coffins made of Irish materials by Irish workmanship and with suitable brass mountings made in Eire. I see, in reference No. 61 of the customs and excise tariffs, that metal coffin mountings are subject to a preferential rate of duty of 66? per cent.

If you look up reference No. 267 you will find that, under the heading of "Wood and Manufactures thereof" there are included coffins, which bear a preferential duty of 50 per cent. I am aware, of course, that the extreme preferential duty is modified, in certain cases, by reason of the fact that certain commodities or goods can be imported free of tax under present circumstances. There are three kinds of licences in this connection. There is general licensing, ordinary licensing, and special licensing. Doubtless, in practice, that works out more easily than an inexpert person like myself could believe, but, in the matter of the importation of coffins or metal coffin mountings, I notice that the import of coffins is subject to the ordinary licensing conditions, which means that a person importing such articles could apply to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and get a licence to import them duty-free. I could imagine, however, that in a matter of that kind a delay of even a day or two might be a matter of very considerable inconvenience, and accordingly, I looked up the matter with a view to seeing how to get around it, so as to make use of the existing provisions to ensure that under no circumstances would there be any unnecessary delay in bringing in a coffin. I find here, under the heading: "Divers Exemptions from all Duties of Customs", that it says:—

The Revenue Commissioners may, subject to compliance with such conditions as they may think fit to impose, allow any of the following articles, imported into Saorstát Éireann and chargeable on such importation with a duty of customs (whenever and however imposed), to be imported without payment of such duty or repay any such duty paid on the importation of such article, that is to say:—

(a) an article which, in the opinion of the Revenue Commissioners, is an article of personal, domestic, or household use or ornament or of a portable character and in respect of which the Revenue Commissioners are satisfied that it was given by a person ordinarily resident outside Saorstát Eireann as a wedding present to a person who is about to be married or was married within six months before the importation of such article and who is, or was before such marriage, ordinarily resident outside Saorstát Éireann and intends to reside permanently in Saorstát Eireann after such marriage.

Now, a coffin is an article of a portable character and also might be regarded as an object of ornament, and therefore I think that, quite conceivably, it could come under that definition. It might even, conceivably, be right to make a present of a coffin to a person who, after marriage, proposed to reside inside Saorstát Eireann. Of course, I only mention that in order to call attention to the absurdity of this whole thing, and when I mention the case of coffins or metal coffin mountings, I merely wish to give that as one gruesome example.

In making a condemnatory speech of this kind, I should have preferred to be in a position to refer mainly to the difficult times that are ahead of us during the course of the present emergency and after it, and which, undoubtedly, will affect the great majority of Irish citizens. I think there would be common agreement about the desirability of giving a discriminatory promotion to industries, which might be decided by some objective expert body to be economically desirable — industries which, if given a fair chance, would be likely to be a permanent and useful element in our national economy. Already, the Government has created a number of such industries, which have shown themselves to be useful in our national economy, and I think it is quite possible—although it may be improbable—that there will be a number of such industries which it might be useful to promote in the future. But I think the ground should be cleared by protection being withdrawn from all the other small-scale and unimportant industries with which the whole tariff system is cluttered up, because the advantage of a tariff diminishes in proportion to the number of articles which are tariffed. If you want your tariff to be beneficial, the fewer the things tariffed the better, because every additional tariff diminishes the advantage to those things which are already tariffed. I do not want to be regarded as hostile to wise industrial development. I am quite prepared to admit that I have modified my opinion to some extent.

I think that the Government has shown that the possibilities of industrial development are greater than I had, at one time, supposed. But I should like to see some attempt to reach common ground with regard to the discriminating promotion of really desirable industries and the elimination of those minor industries which are not likely to become a permanent and valuable part of our national economy. Above all, I think that we should agree that the next step in national progress should be a wholehearted attempt to develop our agricultural capacity as quickly and as extensively as it is possible to do. As I said before, if we can get the agricultural horse between the shafts of the industrial cart, that agricultural horse will be capable of drawing the industrial cart forward to a more prosperous condition of things. If the policy of the Government in industrial matters, and with regard to imports generally, is as it has been during the past eight or ten years and as it was said to be yesterday by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, I must regard myself as an opponent of such policy. I do not know whether my opposition means much or little but I wish to put on record that I am opposed to wholesale restriction of imports and undiscriminating promotion of every kind of industrial activity it is physically possible to undertake in the country.

I began my remarks on a former occasion by reminding the House that, in my experience, individuals and Governments are more frequently punished for their virtues than for their sins. I suggested that, perhaps, the Minister might take the line that, not having any virtues, there was no fear of any electoral punishment. I disagreed with him there and expressed the opinion that the Government—despite its many faults and shortcomings and its regrettable record in many respects —nevertheless, had, possibly, certain virtues. If one wanted to be cynical, one might say that these virtues were of a somewhat microscopic character and one might, perhaps, add, if one wanted to be a gloomy prophet of the Government's electoral prospects, that the voters were provided with such a degree of microscopic vision as would enable them to see the Government's virtues and take action accordingly by punishing them for these virtues in accordance with my theory. That was all very well as a debating point in relation to the Government but I failed to realise the effect of the application of that principle to my own particular case. I, myself, am conscious of many virtues, both in this House and outside it, and, possibly, if I recognise the application of that principle to my own case, I must admit that my own electoral prospects are most gloomy and that I must now sing my swan-song to this House.

Professor Magennis

I have a certain amount of embarrassment in raising this question of post-war air transport in this House this afternoon. I had hoped that the Minister for Industry and Commerce would be present and, if he was present, it was my intention to pay him certain compliments, to make certain suggestions to him, and to make certain derogatory remarks about the Minister for Finance. I now find that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is not here but that the Minister for Finance is here. He is in the happy position that he is going to be the subject of the encouraging remarks that I will make to him. In other words, he is going to get not only the kicks, but the ha'pence.

As regards air transport in this country, I would like to say quite frankly that, in my opinion, neither the last Government nor this Government have, at any period of their existence, shouldered their responsibility as regards air transport. I would like to pay a tribute to the work that has been done in this country as regards air transport by amateurs and to the work that has been done by such amateurs as the late Sir Osmonde Esmonde, by my friend and colleague, Mr. Seán O hUadhaigh, and many other amateur enthusiasts in air transport.

I would like the Minister to tell this House if he has any plan or any policy regarding air transport in this country after the emergency. I do not want him to commit himself. I merely want to get from him, if he is in a position to give it, a broad statement on the position. I have been for many years interested in this matter from an amateur point of view and, as I say, we have got no satisfaction either from the last Government or from this Government. At long last, a very minor air transport company was set up, travelling between Dublin and Manchester. It was set up mainly owing to the inexhaustible activities of Mr. Seán O hUadhaigh. In 1936 that company's planes were flying practically empty. In that year I travelled from Dublin via Bristol to London in a 16-seater plane. I was one of two passengers. Nowadays you cannot get room on their planes. So that the war has given a boost to air transport that it never knew before.

The position here is that there is in the capital city a very fine aerodrome; at Rhynana there is a transatlantic aerodrome. They are the only two commercial aerodromes in the country and, while representations have been made from time to time to have aerodromes at various centres such as Cork, Waterford, and so on, as far as I can understand these have been ignored. I greatly regret that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is not here as he was really the man that I wanted to argue this point with. However, the Minister for Finance is here, and I will have to do my best in arguing with him. The Minister will say to me that it is not possible at the moment to start expanding the transport company that we have. In that I will agree with him. He will also say, as regards the proposal to make new aerodromes in Cork, Waterford, Killarney or elsewhere, that the times are very difficult, and that we cannot get materials such as concrete and asphalt, and again I will agree with him. What I want to suggest to the Minister is that now is the time to prepare your policy for the future. From the point of view of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, now is the time for him to plan his future policy.

I want to suggest to the Minister for Finance that the construction of aerodromes has a very high labour content, and that the money that he is now expending on the widening of corners on main roads, on which there are no longer motor cars to run, would be far better spent on the acquisition and levelling of sites for aerodromes. I, therefore, suggest to him that here are two lines of action that he ought to take immediately in anticipation of the cessation of hostilities. The first is, to acquire sites for aerodromes at possible centres such as Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Killarney, and so on.

Mr. McEllin

There is no such place as the West of Ireland at all.

Mr. Crosbie

Mr. Colbert

I have been asked by a number of people to draw the attention of the Minister concerned to the position of butter supplies. I do not know what exactly is the intention as far as these supplies are concerned, but these people are of opinion that a more equitable basis would be to allow ordinary suppliers to draw the same quantity of butter this year as last year. Consumption would be somewhat similar, and in that way normal family supplies would be provided. New suppliers could be dealt with on the basis of milk supply. The danger is that if suppliers are rationed severely they will be tempted to withhold portion of their milk supply and convert it into butter, which would mean that the supply of butter available for cold storage would be affected, as well as general supplies in non-creamery areas and urban districts. I might also refer to the price of milk. Everybody knows that the cost of production has increased since last year, while the price of milk has remained stationary. There is a case for increasing the price this year, and I asked the Minister for Agriculture to consider the matter. Butter at 2/- per lb. is one of the cheapest forms of food. In my opinion 2/4 would not be too high a price to charge for it. Unless something is done there is great danger that the dairying industry will decline rapidly owing to the cost of production and the difficulty that farmers find in getting their work done. I pointed out here in a recent debate that farmers find it impossible to get help to milk cows. Not alone are workers showing reluctance to milk cows, but they also refuse to work on Sundays. Everybody knows that cows have to be milked on Sundays as well as on Mondays. Unless it is made profitable for farmers to stay in the dairying business they will, possibly, try to get out of it and go in for some other type of farming. We can all understand what would happen then. If the dairying industry, which is the foundation of our whole agricultural economy, declines, the cattle trade would decline, and that would mean general impoverishment. I ask the Minister to convey my suggestions to the Minister for Agriculture, from whom I hope they will receive serious consideration.

Mr. McGee

I would like to speak just at this moment, as I think I should bear out in detail everything that Senator Colbert has said. A very serious position has been raised all over the country by the price of butter being fixed. It means that the wages being paid to the people who attend our cows are practically a hopeless proposition. Considerable uneasiness has been caused all over the country and has found eloquent expression in a statement at a meeting of the Port and Docks Board about two weeks ago, from Mr. James Larkin. He said that everything connected with the cattle trade seemed to be considered as a "step-child". Certainly, it is not getting the thorough-going consideration that it merits. There have been suggestions made during the year and mentioned, I think, by Senator Johnston, that certain restrictions on the export of heifers and cows should take place. When you start to limit the export, you start to cut down the numbers, and the Minister for Finance should take special cognisance of the fact that, if you stop export of store heifers, a certain loss is caused to the farmer who breeds them.

Professor Johnston

May I interrupt to say that I withdraw that suggestion, so far as it concerns the direct restriction of exports? I want people here to be able to buy breeding heifers in competition with the exports.

Mr. McGee

I take it that the Agricultural Committee, of which the Senator is a member, does not intend to pursue that policy. If I had not Senator Johnston's word about it, I would be in doubt, as we would be starting a fresh smuggling trade, which would be nothing but an injustice to the legitimate trade in this export.

There is another matter which occurred to me when we were talking on higher levels than that of the output of land. It is the question of the output of the potato crop. In some of this week's English papers I see that the Minister of Agriculture in England has already prepared for next season's crops. The Government is going out of office, but I would suggest to the civil servants in charge to walk very warily this year in reference to the price being paid for this year's crops. Just a little over a year ago I had to go with a farmer living three or four miles from me, in order to bring influence to bear on the Minister for Agriculture; and he did what he could to have 60 tons of potatoes conveyed to the local factory for alcohol. The price that farmer received, when he had paid freight to the factory, was something in the neighbourhood of 30/- a ton. That put him out of production, once and for all. The difficulty at the present day in regard to the scarcity of potatoes is that it has been brought about by the fact that there was a downright scarcity of manures. The Government are doing what they can, I am sure, to bring in manures.

The time to lay all your plans for next season's crop, and not the current season's crop, is now. The plans should be made between now and November, and the earlier the better. The producers of all these crops should be taken more into confidence than they are being taken by the inspectors and others concerned at present. Through the local committees of agriculture, the producers should be contacted and the proper estimate should be arrived at easily as to what potatoes are in the country, what are to be produced, when they are to be sold and probably the price that is to be paid. No good business has been offered to the producers in relation to these commodities such as potatoes, and butter, which form such an essential part of the nation's food and the provision of which would give so much employment to everybody in the country.

I suggest that these committees of agriculture should be in constant communication, and that there should be something more brought home to them of the facts, as to what they are required to do and what they are in a position to do. This should be brought home to them more frequently and more thoroughly than at present. The farmers do not like the idea of compulsion: if they were consulted and not kept in the background there would be no scarcity of potatoes or butter, and probably no scarcity of bacon, either. I cannot understand why the idea should be that the officials must do everything and that the local men and their committees can do nothing.

It brings me to the question of the Local Government Managerial Act, of which I gave notice that I would say something to-day. The greatest success of that Act has been to cover up the sins of the Department of Local Government and Public Health. There is nothing that is important and that is wrong which could not be corrected by an efficient Department of Local Government and Public Health. The elections were not held for six or seven years, and public men were disgusted and would not take office any more. We heard of their sins of commission, but everything is under a cloud. If this were examined in another five years, there would be more sins found than when the local men were in office— when some man may have given a cottage to his brother, or done something of that nature. It is more important to get down to the question of potatoes and butter. Before the Government goes out of office, they would do a very great national service by insisting that the resources of the nation in regard to manures should be made known to the farmers. They should make use of the local committees to spread that knowledge and obtain the information which local committees can give.

Sir John Keane

I have one very brief remark to make regarding what the last two speakers said. I realise that, possibly, you could make a case for higher prices for milk, butter, bacon or potatoes; but I implore the Minister to realise that if these prices are to be put up, the extra cost should not be passed to the consumer. On the Budget, and on the Finance Bill, I pointed out that our cost of living is skying up and that, if it is necessary to increase prices further, in the interests of national policy or in the interests of agriculture, the Government must give some aid or subsidy, so that the price will not be passed on in the cost of living to the consumer. If that is not done, there will be a vicious spiral of inflation.

Mr. McEllin

I have been listening for some time to the debates here to-day and, particularly, I was struck by a so-called practical farmer like Senator McGee talking about the potato crop and what the Government should do in regard to it. If there is anyone in this House who claims to be a practical farmer, he is that one and, that being so, he ought to have known that last year was the worst year in history, I suppose, since 1847. There never was such a bad year, from the agricultural point of view. Every single crop was affected by the atrocious weather we had. I am sure the Senator also knows that the acreage under potatoes last year was as high as at any time in the history of the country, yet the net weight result of the average crop was not any more than half the crop returned. Even in regard to that half, a big part of it was not fit for human consumption. What is the use in saying that the Government should do this and that? Why should we have all this hypocrisy when the common-sense man down the country knows perfectly well that it is all "tosh"?

This House is gradually developing into a House of pious platitudes, which are without any foundation in fact. Beautiful phrases are being coined, to make all sorts of charges against the Government. It is a serious matter, in times like the present, to be throwing all sorts of responsibility on the Government; and it is a serious matter when responsible leaders of public thought in the country are hoodwinking themselves and the public, by making charges that the responsibility for the shortage of potatoes in Dublin at present lies with the Government.

It is our misfortune that we have had atrocious weather recently. We are now in a position this year that, under God's Will, we have a better prospect than we have had for a considerable time past. For the first time in four years, we have had a normal May, with heat and rain. The returns for the month of April show a 10 per cent. increase in milk production from cows in the dairying areas. The month of May has already shown a 15 per cent. increase in milk production. Is the Government going to be praised for that?

All the evidence is there that that percentage increase of milk will continue and that as a natural result there will be more butter production and a better all-round return during the next harvest. But, at least, those of us who are in responsible positions and leaders of thought, should not, in the interests of the ordinary public and the life of the nation, use the present abnormal position, due to weather conditions which are beyond the power of human beings to rectify, for cheap political kudos. Let us get away from pious platitudes and hypocritical sham. It will take this country all its time to jog along, with all of us pulling together to maintain the public morale and to maintain an even distribution of the limited supply of plain foodstuffs that we have. It is not in the national interest, it is unpatriotic, and certainly hypocritical to try to stampede unfortunate poor people in this city in connection with the shortage of food or the choice of plain foods.

Cathaoirleach

The next subject to be raised is that in the name of Senator Sir John Keane with regard to the relaxation of the Press censorship during the election campaign.

Sir John Keane

What I propose to deal with can be stated very briefly. We all know that there has been a certain policy adopted with regard to Press censorship during the war. Whether we agree or disagree with that, we see the reason for it. It was for establishing or making effective the considered and, I think, generally agreed policy of the country with regard to our attitude on neutrality. But, if we are to be a self-governing country, there should be an opportunity at the time of an election for a complete statement by any candidate of his views with regard to the government of the country during the following Parliament. If I were a candidate, I hold that I should be free, without any censorship on behalf of the Government, to advocate either alliance with the Axis or participation in the war on the side of any belligerent. That is the only way in which we can possibly justify the true interpretation of democracy and Parliamentary government. I, therefore, ask the Minister if he will kindly state what the views of the Government are in the matter.

Minister for the Co-Ordination of Defensive Measures (Mr. Aiken)

I agree with Senator Sir John Keane that, when there is a general election coming, or when a general election has been called, candidates should be allowed to state their policy. I also agree with him that, if any candidate wants to come forward on a policy of participation in the war with or against any of the various belligerents, he should be free to do so. We have no intention of trying to prevent any candidate asking the electors, either by word of mouth or through the medium of the Press, to support him in such a policy. The Seanad may be quite sure that during the election we will relax somewhat the rules that have been operated by the censorship to date. Even though some of the speeches may do harm abroad, if used by countries that are against our attitude in this war and against our stand, I think that much more harm would be done if it could be said that candidates were not allowed to advocate participation in the war, or to advocate nonparticipation in the war. The Senator can rest assured that the policy that he outlined with regard to censorship will be followed; that is, if candidates want to advocate participation in the war, or to advocate standing by neutrality, they will be free to do so. But, while allowing freedom of speech and freedom of the Press in that way, we have got to recognise that this country is in a very dangerous situation, and that statements bordering on the treasonable or that would have an adverse effect on our internal security will have to be censored. If the censorship were to go completely out of operation, there might be a danger that certain elements here might take advantage of the situation to forward activities of a treasonable character. But, while doing our utmost to prevent any such tactics or developments, Senators may be assured that any candidate who wants to put forward to the people any internal policy of progress or retrogression, or any external policy of participation or non-participation in the war, will be free to do so.

Cathaoirleach

The next subject to be raised is that in the name of Senator O'Connell: "Official policy in regard to the admission of women and young persons as associate members of the L.S.F. and the conditions governing such admission."

Mr. O'Connell

I raise this question, of which I have given notice, because of certain statements which have come to my notice to the effect that there has been a considerable amount of overlapping leading to confusion, and sometimes friction, between organisations called into being at the time of the emergency, that is, between the Red Cross organisation and the L.S.F.; but in view of the time and the fact that the Minister who, I think, would be in a better position to deal with this matter, the Minister for Justice, is not here, I will curtail very much what I intended to say. I should like to know, if it is possible for either of the Ministers present to tell me, what is the policy of the Government in regard to the admission of women members into the L.S.F. As I understand it, the L.S.F. is an auxiliary police force and I cannot understand why women should be recruited into that organisation, trained and uniformed, in competition with an organisation which is much more suitable for organising women and training them in first-aid work. I do not want to elaborate that point now. I hope there may be an opportunity of doing so at some future date, but undoubtedly it is a matter which is causing confusion, misunderstanding and, in some cases friction, which is not a good thing.

There has been another development, to my mind, more objectionable, in that the L.S.F. has lately been recruiting young boys of 14 years of age, and, in some cases, of less than 14 years of age. My attention has been called to it by teachers, in some cases, and by other people who object from many points of view to the practice of young boys getting into uniform and parading with the adult members of the L.S.F. units, and sometimes listening to, and taking part in, conversations which are not entirely suitable for young people. I know that there has been a good deal of negotiation and discussion between the Red Cross authorities and the Government on the matter, and a certain working agreement was come to with the Taoiseach and some Ministers which we thought would solve all these difficulties, but apparently they have not been solved. The trouble still exists, so far as I understand.

What I want to know particularly is, whether this decision to recruit women into the L.S.F. and train them in first-aid work, side by side with another organisation, the Red Cross organisation, whose main duty it is to give this training, is a Government decision or the decision of any particular Minister. I do not know that it is. I also want to know whether the decision to take in lads of 13 and 14 years of age was a Government decision or the decision of any particular Minister. I should mention that the Red Cross organisation, like Red Cross organisations in every country in the world, is organising a juvenile section which will provide for the training of young people in first-aid and other matters. It will be organised in the schools and through the schools, and young people will be under the control of their teachers and in that way under proper discipline. I have no prejudice whatever in this matter. I happen to be a member of both organisations. I was among the first in my area to join the L.S.F. in 1940, and I have been a member of the Central Council of the Red Cross Society from the very beginning, but I do hope that something will be done to straighten out and to remove these difficulties which are causing friction where there should be no friction but co-operation and good fellowship.

Mr. Aiken

I will convey to the Minister for Justice the remarks which Senator O'Connell has made. Regarding first-aid work throughout the country, I agree with the Senator that it would be much preferable if we had one first-aid organisation, but we have to take things more or less as we find them, and, as the Senator knows, apart altogether from the L.S.F. auxiliaries, there are a number of first-aid societies throughout the country. It would be much tidier and nicer, and would make for better organisation in every way, if we had only the one. The Red Cross, the one authoritative first-aid society in the country, was set up by the Government in conformity with the international agreement on Red Cross work. Just as we could not compel older societies to abolish themselves and join the Red Cross, so also it is difficult to prevent other first-aid groups coming together and organising.

In connection with the L.S.F., it became a much more widely developed organisation than the Red Cross, because around every Gárda barracks in the country there was a group of L.S.F., and, when a Red Cross unit was not organised, the L.S.F. started to organise their own first-aid groups, and in that way first-aid sections were being developed. An agreement was entered into which has been kept by the L.S.F., that where a Red Cross organisation existed or came into being, the L.S.F. would rely on that branch of the Red Cross to do first-aid work. That is with regard to the members of the L.S.F. proper.

The women's auxiliary is an organisation which grew up spontaneously, without any Government or central direction. It grew out of groups of ladies who came together to raise funds to take care of those wants of the L.S.F. which were not provided for out of State funds, and, by degrees, in some places, these ladies, after they had done this work of collecting funds for comforts, etc., started first-aid classes, but they are a purely voluntary and, I may say, unofficial body. When they grew up, they created somewhat the same difficulty as the older first-aid organisation. As I have said, I will convey Senator O'Connell's remarks to the Minister for Justice.

Mr. O'Connell

I should like to say that it was stated by a district command officer with regard to the young people that a recent circular requesting the enrolment of boys was issued by the Minister. I should like to know the position in that regard.

Sir John Keane

I do not feel that I can deal with this matter, of which I gave notice, very satisfactorily in the absence of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, because my comments largely deal with his personal attitude towards this matter. As the House probably knows, the Hospitals Commission reports were published continuously year by year from 1933 to 1938. They are exceedingly valuable documents. The earlier reports outlined hospital policy but they contained statisties dealing with the cost of administration of hospitals, with diseases, etc., and so developed did they become and, as I venture to conclude, so important were they considered as sources of information, that the later reports contained headings to classifications of diseases in three languages, English, French and German.

The hospitals have used these reports and obtained considerable value from them, a value that increased as the information grew year by year. Naturally, these reports cost the State a good deal—at least, a certain amount of money.

When I first raised this matter in the Seanad, I do not know whether it was deliberately or accidentally, but the Parliamentary Secretary was rather evasive. At the end of the debate, I had to ask him again what was the position with regard to the publication of these reports. For the second time on that occasion I asked him why these reports were not published in the same way as the reports of the Electricity Supply Board and other similar bodies. He replied: "I would require notice of the question put by Senator Sir John Keane, but at any rate I will have the matter looked into and, if it is possible to expedite the publication of these reports, it will be done." At that time it would seem that the Parliamentary Secretary did not have, in his own mind at least, any objection to the publication of these reports. His answer indicates that he had in mind their publication in the near future.

I shall deal with the last item first. I have a note here, which was given to me, regarding the point raised by Senator Sir John Keane in relation to the reports of the Hospitals Commission. I should like to say that I was glad to hear the tribute paid by Senator Sir John Keane to the earlier reports of the Hospitals Commission. I also think that they were most valuable documents, very helpful documents, and I should like to see a continuance of the publication of these reports; but there may be some good reason for their non-publication. I do not know what the real reason is. One reason given to me was that since the emergency commenced the Hospitals Commission has to turn its attention to work of an urgent emergency kind, and that put the staff off the routine track, preparing the statistical material for these reports. The note given to me states: "No report from the Hospitals Commission has been published since 1938 for the reason that none has been received from the commission since the report for that year." So it is not the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister who is responsible for holding up the publication of the reports.

Sir John Keane

I do not want to interrupt the Minister, but I think that the Parliamentary Secretary should at least have told us what the Minister has now indicated—that there had been no report.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

The note goes on to say:—

I have not had an opportunity of reading the Minister's speech yet and I do not know whether he dealt with that question or not. I am sure the Senator would not expect me to give an answer on an important point like that which affects the reconstruction of our transport system. I am sure that all aspects of the matter are receiving the careful attention of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It may be necessary seriously to interfere with the interests of the shareholders. That was necessary before and it may be necessary again but, how far, I am not in a position to say, nor can I say what the results will be. The Government has been charged frequently by Senator Johnston and others with not interfering half enough or not interfering effectively in regard to the railways in the past few years. When it was a question of getting supplies of coal, we were blamed for not interfering but, on other occasions, we are supposed not to touch the shareholders' interests.

I agree with Senator Johnston that the development of agriculture will have to be carefully watched. That is the one great industry we have. The greater number of our people live out of it and are likely so to live in the years to come. It is an industry that should be carefully tended, nursed and coaxed, so as to keep it in prosperity. I am sure that any attention it is possible to give that industry in particular—other industries will also have to be attended to—will be given by the Minister for Agriculture and the Government as a whole. A point was raised by Senator Johnston with regard to the exercise of discrimination in industrial development. There has been discrimination. Does the Senator suggest that every scheme for industrial development put up, at one time or another, by prudent, semi-prudent or hare-brained people was put into operation by the Department of Industry and Commerce? The Senator knows that hundreds of schemes of industrial development have been submitted not alone to the Ministry but to industrialists. These industrialists nearly always consulted the Department of Industry and Commerce before entering into any commitment. I am as certain as I am that I am standing here that hundreds of these schemes were turned down.

Professor Johnston

Why did you abolish the Tariff Commission, which was an expert body established for that kind of thing?

Mr. O Ceallaigh

Because that Tariff Commission was the child of the political favourites of Senator Johnston, it was, therefore, a child to be fostered. If that Tariff Commission had been allowed to continue its operations at the rate at which it was going, it would have damned industrial development. There would have been no industrial development worth speaking of during the past ten years. We were out to get things done and it was not by maintaining in operation a committee of that kind, which was there to stop industrial development, we were going to see in our lifetime any change in the development of the industrial resources of the country. We got rid of that Tariff Commission and put in a body that did the work effectively and selected carefully the types of industries which would be useful and helpful. It had the power behind it to establish them. The money alone was got not from the Government but from those who were anxious to develop industry. Millions were got from the citizens of this country and, as a result, hundreds of new industries were established. When this Government comes back, hundreds more will be established in the next ten years.

Senator The McGillycuddy is interested in the division of land. Unfortunately for his view, in any discussion on the division of land which I have heard in the Dáil for the past couple of years, members of all Parties were denouncing the Government for not going ahead at a far more rapid rate in dividing the land which remains to be divided. There was a slowing up in the division of land during the past three years. That arose because a large part of the staff of the Land Commission, formerly engaged in the work of preparing estates for division, had to be lent to the Department of Agriculture in connection with the compulsory tillage scheme. There is great pressure by all Parties in the Dáil for proceeding with the division of land. Great pressure is being put upon the Minister for Lands to get back his staff and proceed with the division of land at, at least, the old pre-war rate.

There is the difficulty that the staff which was taken from the Land Commission to help the Department of Agriculture is still necessary to that Department, and I do not see any immediate prospect of our being able to restore that staff to the Land Commission. I think it is true to say that all responsible public men in the country are in favour of more rapid division of the remaining large estates. Senator The McGillycuddy was also interested in the question of drainage. I referred to that matter yesterday in the Dáil, and I need not go over that ground again. In regard to main drainage and field drainage to which he referred, I should like to remind him that considerable sums of money were provided by me, as Minister for Finance, for farm improvement schemes in the last few years. That amount of money has been largely increased this year. Many thousands of farmers have availed of it to improve their farms, and among other things to drain their fields, so the Senator may rest assured that that matter is being attended to.

I cannot say very much to Senator Crosbie about air transport. I can only tell him and the House that we have already spent a considerable amount of money on the aerodromes which we have built. On the north side of the City of Dublin, we have one of the finest aerodromes in the world. I have been in a number of different countries of Europe, as well as in the United States—that was immediately before the war—and I know of no country that has a more modern, more perfectly constructed, or more efficient aerodrome than our aerodrome at Collinstown. The Seanad will be glad to know that the young architect who was responsible for its design and its building is the son of Senator Desmond Fitzgerald, who is employed in the Board of Works. Aerodromes are very costly affairs, and no Minister for Finance accords a warm welcome to recommendations to build more of them. I have to tell Senator Crosbie that any of the bodies concerned, or any enthusiasts, like himself, for the development of air transport, will have their schemes very closely and carefully examined by me. I am not unfriendly in that regard, nor is it true to say that I would not like to help, but, as Minister for Finance, I know from experience that aerodromes are frightfully costly, and any development scheme put up to me will have to be carefully examined as to its cost in proportion to our resources.

I must always bear in mind that, for many long years to come, no aerodrome will go anywhere near paying a dividend of even the smallest kind on the amount of capital put into it, that is if you reckon in £ s. d.—it may pay a dividend of another kind. "Now is the time to spend more money," Senator Crosbie says. That is a pretty common slogan; it was not Senator Crosbie who coined it. I think everybody in the House has said it either to me or some other Minister for Finance. Now is the time to spend more money? It all depends upon what you spend it on.

In regard to veterinary research, I am quite sympathetic towards the idea put forward by Senator Counihan. I think we could, with advantage, spend more money on research into the diseases to which cattle are subject—contagious abortion, tuberculosis of cattle and swine, and contagious mastitis. I understand from the Department of Agriculture that a departmental committee has been set up to consider steps to overcome mastitis in dairy cows. If the committee recommends experiments and research at Thorndale, additional laboratory space, staffs and equipment will be required on a very large scale, as numerous herds will have to be put on test. If recommendations in that direction are put up to me as Minister for Finance, I will consider them sympathetically in accordance with what I have said about the desirability of careful attention being given in the future to the development of our resources.

Senator McGee was dealt with, I might say, in pretty rough fashion by Senator McEllin. I do not know that I need say anything to him; if he were here I would have a word or two to add to what was said by Senator McEllin. As he is not here, I will reserve them until he is. When I have anything nice to say I do not mind saying it behind people's backs, but when it is not so nice I prefer to say it to their faces. Senator McGee and others in this House and in the Dáil have been impressing the Government about the necessity for procuring additional artificial manures. The House will be interested to know that the two ships which we have lost were engaged in transporting artificial manures, so we are that much short of the supplies which our sailors were endeavouring to get for us. In one case, our sailors—God be merciful to them in their cold and lonely beds at the bottom of the sea—lost their lives in trying to get those fertilisers. In the other case, thanks be to God, the crew was saved but we lost a valuable ship.

Senator Sir John Keane talked about the rise in the cost of living. I have been looking at some tables showing how the cost of living has risen since the emergency. It certainly has gone up very considerably, but it is remarkable that the general cost of living figure has gone up pari passu with the rise in agricultural prices. So, if we are to bear in mind the recommendations of certain Senators with regard to increasing the prices paid for certain agricultural produce, we must remember that the cost of living will go up simultaneously, and that is a very serious proposition for the country as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining stages now.

Bill put through Committee without amendment and received for final consideration.

Question—"That the Bill be returned to the Dáil"—put and agreed to.

Cathaoirleach

Item No. 4, motion, in the name of Senator Conlon, is not being moved.

The Seanad adjourned at 9.22 p.m. sine die.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 27 May 1943