When I moved the adjournment, I was speaking on the general Estimate for education, that is, for education in its four main branches—primary, secondary, technical and the university education. I pointed out that the total cost of these types of education to the Republic was approximately £11,750,000, that is, about one-ninth of the total expenditure from Government sources. I argued that this one-ninth was not sufficient. In my opinion it is not nearly sufficient. I tried, however, not simply to give an opinion; I tried to give three arguments to support the opinion. First, I suggested that the average decent parent—if he had, say, four children—would spend a good deal more of his income than one-ninth on education if he could. I am convinced of that. He would spend a good deal more than one-ninth on a family of four children. The second reason I offered was that our great neighbour and competitor, Great Britain, spends a good deal more, proportionately, on education. Great Britain spends between one-eighth and one-seventh of her Government spendings on education. As a third argument—and on this I laid great emphasis—I believe that if we want to win the war of ideas, which is constantly being waged in this country and outside this country, we must keep up our defences in the sphere of the intellect and of the spirit. We have cut down over £1,000,000 on material defence. I argued that it would be fatal for this country to cut down also on intellectual defence, on defence in the war of ideas.
I propose now, for a few moments, to turn to the details of the Estimate for education in its four branches. On page 200 of the Book of Estimates we find that there has been a decrease of £113,000, approximately, in respect of primary education. I hasten to add that this is only an apparent decrease so far as annual expenditure is concerned. There has been a saving on ex-gratia payments to certain retired teachers of £144,000. Therefore, the Government is rightly spending more on primary education this year than last year—leaving aside special grants. It is spending more on primary education and I heartily approve of that.
We come to secondary education on page 211. We find that secondary education has received approximately £59,000 more—spent, chiefly, on capital grants to teachers and on incremental salary grants. This was very badly needed. The increase will be very widely welcomed and I want to add my welcome to it as well because secondary education must not be stinted if we want to keep up our standards.
Technical education has done best of all. I refer Senators to page 214 of the Book of Estimates. It has received an increase of approximately £90,000. No one will grudge that.
Now we come to the fourth branch of education, university education, page 82. Here we find that there has been a general decrease, small in some cases, fairly large in others. All four university colleges of the Republic have received less money. In some cases that is accounted for by the lapsing of an annual grant but, according to these Estimates, all four university colleges in the country will receive less money in one way or another.
Let us consider that figure for the universities for a moment or two. Of the £11,750,000 spent on education, £9,500,000 will be spent on primary and technical education—these are approximate figures—£1,750,000 on secondary education and £540,000 on the universities. Those figures deserve careful consideration. Before I venture to consider some aspects of them, I would like to make one thing very clear. My aim to-night is not to speak for any particular university in the Republic. I would like to speak as well as I can for the universities in general, or for university education in general, and not for the university which I happen to represent in particular. Though the National University and Dublin University are rivals, they have very much in common; they have similar aims, similar needs and similar aspirations. Let me remind the House of a symbolism in Leinster House. Members of the Seanad will remember that in Dáil Éireann two statues stand facing the Ceann Comhairle. They are the statues of two university graduates. One is a graduate of the University of Dublin, Thomas Davis; the other is a graduate from University College, Dublin, Patrick Pearse. They stand side by side in bronze tranquility, no matter how turbulent the debates of that House. I think the symbolism is an admirable one. I hope it means that now and in the future the graduates of both universities will stand together in the politics of this country as brothers, like Thomas Davis and Patrick Pearse in that House.
To return to the Universities Estimate, an Estimate of £540,000 £29,000 less than last year, here I will make a plain and, I believe, incontrovertible statement. If the people of Ireland and the Governments of Ireland want to keep their universities at their present high level, more money must be found for them. I imagine many objections will come into the minds of my hearers at this point. I hope to meet some of them later. Let me first offer a comparison and, to me, a very gravely menacing comparison. How much does the House think that the other Irish University, the Queen's University of Belfast, got last year from Government sources? The answer is over £1,000,000. Some is called capital grant, some is called income but, in simple figures, over £1,000,000. Now, that £1,000,000 is not, as we may think, from the British taxpayer mainly. It is not a British Government Estimate; it is a North of Ireland Government Estimate. They give their university £1,000,000 per annum. We give our two universities a little over £500,000 per annum. In the Queen's University there are slightly over 2,000 students. In the universities of the Republic there are three times as many students, approximately 6,600. Consider the implications of that. Three times as many students in the Republic are getting one-half of what is paid to one-third of that number in Northern Ireland. To put it simply, we are giving to our universities one-sixth of the amount that the Six Counties are giving. It is true that there are certain endowments of a small amount which may alter those figures slightly. The total endowments of the universities of the Republic, from the latest figures I can find, are approximately £125,000. It makes very little difference to what I am arguing. It may mean that we are giving to our universities one-fifth of what Northern Ireland is giving to its university. The difference is hardly significant.
Is this good for the welfare of our Republic? Is it a good argument for us university people, those of us who are university people, of the Twenty-Six Counties, to put forward when we are talking about Partition, that the Republic gives its universities one-fifth or one-sixth of what the Six Counties gives its university? I do not think it is a good argument against Partition.
However, that is a side question. Let us keep to home politics and economics. I say this: if this state of affairs continues, what effects will it have, what effects is it sure to have, on our nation as a whole? I put out of account questions of educational standards, though they are of the gravest importance, but they are subjective matters. Perhaps I would not be able to convince anyone about them. I will put out of account the question of the risk of deterioration in our professional standards, in the standards of our doctors and lawyers. They are intangibles. I will put them out of account but we must not neglect them in this House. Let us consider it in terms of pure politics—"pure politics"—I use the phrase with some irony, but I think in this case it is a safe one to use.
Universities need three things if they are to keep up their standards. They need good teachers, good buildings and equipment and good living conditions, all of which cost a great deal of money at present. Consider the teachers, good teachers. We are in a competitive market. We speak English on the whole and any of our teachers can go easily to Northern Ireland or Great Britain for a job if he wants to find a better job. Let me be frank with the House. Take professors. The professors in the Queen's University of Belfast and in the British Universities until recently, had been receiving something like £500 a year more than similar professors in our universities. I speak for both universities, I think, here, in the Republic. The latest British recommendation, if it is implemented, which is very likely, will mean that they will receive up to £1,000 a year more than the professors in the Republic.
The other day you may have read a decision of the Labour Court that the workers of the G.N.R. should be given parity in wages with those of C.I.E. Admirable. But does it ever occur to anyone that perhaps the professors in our universities might be given approximate parity with professors in Northern Ireland? Apparently, not yet has it occurred to anyone. Again, plasterers, stone masons, builders, I understand, on the whole here—I am open to contradiction in this—get as good wages and in some cases slightly better wages that in Northern Ireland or in Great Britain. There is a very good reason —we cannot keep good men in skilled trades unless we pay them as well as our competing neighbours.
I ask does that not apply to professors? I think it does. I think it is a skilled trade, in a sense, too, and I think the same results will be found. I think that many—or, at least, some— of our professors will go to where they will get better salaries if they do not get approximately equal salaries here. Some will be kept back perhaps by local patriotism or by the fact that their roots are sunk deep in this country. But it is a damnable thing to trade on local patriotism or on where a man's roots are sunk. We must not trade on that. I suggest, then, that if we do not give university teachers in general—I took professors as an example, but it applies to lecturers as well—we will lose some of our best intellects from this country.
The same holds in university buildings. The same holds in university living conditions: if we do not keep them up there will be general deterioration. If there is general deterioration there will be two possibilities as a result. Either our young people will continue to go to our deteriorated universities in this country and our intellectual and professional standards will decline; or else students will go out of the country for their education. The political and economic effects of our young people going out of the country for their education can only be bad. It is bad for our national morale if most of our best brains go abroad.
What is more, we are losing in terms of hard cash. Let me give you one simple example of that. Within the last ten years an average of about 1,000 students per annum have come from overseas and from Northern Ireland to the University of Dublin. Each of these spends fully £250 per year in this country. That means that we receive £250,000 per annum which comes into the country from outside as a result of these overseas students coming here. In ten years that particular form of invisible import—in a sense—has brought us £2,500,000. In the ten years the total grants paid to Dublin University—during the same period—were less than a quarter of this. That seems to be a matter of hard cash—nothing else. The State has benefited to the extent of something like £2,000,000 as a result of those students coming into the country because they happen to believe that Dublin University still offers them a good education. The same holds for the National University and for other educational establishments in the country which attract people from overseas. If our universities decline in standards those people will not come here. Instead our people will go out of this country: so instead of getting something like £250,000 a year in that way, we will be losing some hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum, probably, on our students going out of the country. That seems to me, in terms of economics, an absolutely hard-cash consideration.
What will be the political effect of this? That is what we are primarily interested in in this Assembly. In the last ten years—the same period—some 300 or 400 young students from Northern Ireland have come to Dublin University and between 500 and 600 per annum have come from Great Britain. Now what is the effect of that, leaving out hard cash? The effect, I submit, has been to increase the prestige of our country in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It has been to increase the liking of our country in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain. That can do us nothing but good. Its effect on our partition problem can be nothing but good. In Trinity College these students are given absolute equality and fair play, as in other establishments—and I am quite sure in Senator Hayes' college they receive the same treatment—and they go back more friendly to the Twenty-Six Counties. If that is reversed, if our students go to Northern Ireland or Great Britain for their education, the political effects will be reversed too.
There is another economic consideration. Last winter, we were considering a Bill on alginate industries in this House. The Minister reluctantly—it was not the Minister at present here— pointed out that the control of our industry by English shareholders was due to the fact that we did not know the ultimate technical secrets involved, because our research at high level was inferior to British research. He admitted that reluctantly. It, I think, was a great shame to many of us in this House. The reason is that our universities cannot at present afford the high level of chemical and physical research that the British universities can afford. I notice, by the way, that the secondary schools have had an increase in laboratory grants— but what about university laboratories where the highest-level research will be done? It will cost money, but it is certain, economically, that if high-level research is fostered in this country we will save a great deal more money than the cost. That is something we must seriously consider.
Someone may ask: why cannot the universities pay their own way? That is a reasonable question. The answers, I think, are these. The first is that those which had endowments have found the value of the endowments reduced to one-half or one-third on account of the fall in the value of money. This happened owing to circumstances completely out of the control of the universities, circumstances under the control of certain Governments, if not our Government. Secondly, there is the increased costs of staff and equipment; such costs as these have obviously grown.
We could pay our own way in one sense—at least Dublin University could pay its own way. How? By increasing the fees of students very greatly so that we would have a few students paying very high fees. Oddly enough, the Fellows of Trinity College would be a great deal richer if the college had no students—an extraordinary paradox but it happens to be true. If we sought merely wealth our policy would be to reduce the number of students as far as possible. We are trying to play our part as a national university, as the University of Dublin. We are educating almost twice as many students as before the war, and we are losing money by it.
A second way in which we would be able to pay our way would be by cutting down standards, employing no professors and just having lecturers and assistant-lecturers and letting standards fall. The same applies to other universities in the country. What would be the result? First of all high fees would prevent poorer students from getting education; secondly, richer students would go abroad and the loss to the State would be clear in both cases.
So, why do we subsidise our universities? For exactly the same reason as for subsidising our essential foodstuffs. We believe that all the people of the country should be able to buy butter, bread, and tea: so the Government gives a subsidy. If we believe that universities should be within the reach of all deserving people in the Republic we must subsidise the universities in the same way. If we believe that this is as essential to the mind as butter and tea to the body, we must be prepared to subsidise them. There is no other solution.
A second objection may come into the mind of members of the House. Why are there two universities? Why not have one university? Would it not be cheaper, more efficient? The reason is very simple: there are two universities for the same reason as that there are two main political Parties in this country, that there are two main trades unions in this country, that there is duplication in many big firms and organisations in this country. The reason is that people with the same aims and ideas often differ about methods of achieving them. That is why we have Fine Gael here on the right and Fianna Fáil on the left. If they, to-morrow, inspired by what I say, come together and form one Party more efficient and cheaper to run, they will be giving an example to the universities, and the universities will have difficulty in not following them.
Besides, it is not true that one university would necessarily be advantageous. As we know, in business and elsewhere, competition and friendly rivalry often produce higher standards than a monopoly. I think this holds for the universities as well. In any case, there are two universities in other great cities of the world besides Dublin. There are two universities in Rome, several in New York, not simply for numerical reasons but for ideological reasons. I do not think there is a strong argument against having two universities if you get below the surface.
I have detained the House quite a while. It is because the subject of education is vocationally very dear to me and it means a great deal to me personally. I will conclude and sum up. Our universities are bound to decline for reasons outside their control unless they are given greater support either by the State, or by the local authorities, or by private benefactors. Let the Minister find some private benefactors for us to-morrow, or let any member of this House find some munificent benefactors for us to-morrow and all our problems are solved. But the money must come from outside if the universities are to continue to play their part in the nation. If the universities decline it will not only harm our intellectual and cultural standards; it will harm our political and economic welfare. The Republic will lose prestige. It will lose goodwill. And it will lose hard cash.
I want to emphasise that I have tried to speak about the universities in general. I have tried to keep in mind the symbolism of the statues of Thomas Davis and Patrick Pearse standing side by side in the turbulence of the Dáil Chamber. I have been trying not to do any special pleading for any single university. I am in favour of the fullest co-operation between the universities of the Republic. I think there will be increasing co-operation in every way. But I will ask this House finally: are the people of Ireland and the Government of Ireland, now after 30 years of independence, willing to let their universities fall behind those of Northern Ireland and Great Britain? Such a policy in education can only result in loss of national influence and in loss of positive revenues. Worst of all, there is the risk that, as a result of inadequate higher education in the future, Ireland may lose the war of ideas, the ideological war which is the ultimate struggle for the spiritual and intellectual principles that we all—I believe I truly say all—value most highly. I would urge the Minister, when he has leisure and the inclination, to consider the university grants in particular and the grants for education in general proposed in relation to what I have ventured to say.
