I notice the House is emptying when we discuss the question of teachers' pensions.
When I was speaking last week on the Teachers' Superannuation Bill, we had gone through the need to respond to the particular pressures that teachers nowadays are undergoing, the stress and strain of teaching, the level of burn-out experienced by teachers and the great need to have an early retirement option for them.
The first measure that I can find on this subject is the 1879 Act, an Act for improving the position of teachers in national schools in Ireland. In 1879 women teachers were allowed to retire at 50 years of age. It seems extraordinary that, with that kind of enlightened legislation available over 100 years ago, all we have done in the meantime is to go backwards.
Teaching is very much a young person's occupation in terms of the drain, with the strain, the energy and commitment required. We have now worsened the situation and teachers have to work longer before they are entitled to early retirement. I think the Bill is flawed. I have looked through the changes. Last week I gave my thoughts on the need for confirmation of any changes in the scheme, but I now want to make one specific reference to the Bill. In my responsibility as a legislator, I want to establish that there is a problem. Section 10 of the 1879 Act reads:
At any time after the passing of this Act, the Treasury, with the consent of the Lord Lieutenant, may from time to time make rules for the administration of this Act. Copies of all such rules shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament within fourteen days from the date thereof, if Parliament is then sitting, and if not, then within fourteen days of the next re-assembling of Parliament.
Obviously the Lord Lieutenant is changed to the appropriate officer since the establishment of the State. The next reference to that particular point of laying changes in the pension scheme before the Houses comes in the 1928 Act. The 1928 Act simply says:
No superannuation scheme shall come into force unless it has been laid before each House of the Oireachtas and has been confirmed by Resolution from each House.
I want to stress this point. There is no conflict in those two pieces of legislation. The 1879 legislation requires that it be laid within 14 days before the House; the 1928 legislation requires that it be confirmed by Resolution of each House. We now come to 1990 and the position today is that we are asking that this legislation allow changes to go through simply by, and I read:
Every superannuation scheme made under this Act... shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made and, if a resolution annulling the scheme is passed by either such House within the next twenty-one days on which that House has sat after the scheme is laid before it, the scheme shall be annulled...
I put it to the Minister that in order to make that legislation work the section of the 1879 Act has to be deleted, and that is within the range of the Bill. I think we are bringing a conflict into it. We have a conflict between 14 days and 21 days. There is no doubt, that you cannot have both. That legislation has never been revoked, replaced or changed. We have now reached a stage where teachers are worse of than they were in 1879. It is extraordinary that here we are, more than a century later, and despite unprecedented levels of stress and pressure in education, the voluntary retirement age for teachers has, in fact, increased. I would now call on the Minister to introduce regulations which will reduce the voluntary retirement age for teachers to 50.
Many of our best teachers who have given 30 or 35 of the best years of their lives in the classroom are tired, worn out and burned out. Some of them feel they can no longer contribute as effectively as they could when younger. I believe that we owe those people and we should give them the option to exit from their profession with dignity and with financial security if that is their choice. Let us give them a comprehensive range of options for voluntary early retirement. Teaching is different from other occupations and professions. The Acting Chairman, in a personal capacity, raised and discused this matter with me at other times — I am not referring to private conversations but her views are well known.
Forty healthy mischievous four-year olds demand 100 per cent of a teacher's energy and skill 100 per cent of the time. The same applies to second level and third level teachers. There is a constant drain and demand on the teacher all the time. If the community would look askance at a couple who decided at age 50 or more to take on the responsibility of rearing a young family, why do we take it for granted that teachers in their mid-to-late fifties can each day take on the daunting and exhausting task of controlling, teaching and disciplining some of the largest classes in Europe? I think it is disgraceful that we should allow this to continue.
Teachers are energetic, they are enthusiastic and they are an innovative group of professionals. They are held in high esteem by all sectors of society, and well they should be. They give their all to what is an under resourced, and under-funded educational system. The system is successful but only at the cost of teachers' health and welfare. The price is too high. Every week I meet experienced teachers who have given more than 30 years' service and they ask me the same question: when will they have a voluntary retirement option, when will the voluntary age for retirement be reduced?
An early retirement scheme would also carry with it many other pluses for the system and many other benefits for the education service. It would create employment for our young unemployed teachers and it would also allow the introduction of new blood to the teaching service. It would also allow people coming fresh with new ideas into the service. It would energise many aspects of the profession. New people bring new ideas, not necessarily better ideas, but new ideas. It is this interaction between experience and freshness which has made teaching what it is, great. It has allowed this kind of progress to take place and such development would be in everybody's interest and to the great benefit of our pupils and students.
I believe that the teachers pension regulations, schemes etc., require that any changes in the regulations or in the scheme be approved by the Houses of the Oireachtas through the presentation of an order or statutory instrument by the Minister. I want to say quite clearly that this legislation is before us today not because there was any great need for it, or because there was a crying need to change the system. Until now, the Minister had to come in and say: "I propose to make these changes in the teachers' pension scheme". When the Minister gets this Bill through all she will have to do is simply write a note to us and tell us what she has done. The Minister of State will know that what we are doing here is covering up for inefficiency and ineffectiveness. I cannot find an order or statutory instrument that has covered the changes that have taken place in the teachers' pension scheme over the last number of years. It does not exist, and this is a retrospective effort to cover up for inefficiency and illegality. The reality is the Minister brought in a proposal of voluntary redundancies for teachers in 1988 and I put it to the Minister and to the Department that I can find no evidence of a statutory instrument being presented to the Houses of the Oireachtas at that time. All the indications are that the introduction of that redundancy scheme in 1988 may well have been ultra vires the regulations and the legislation of the State. I want a precise answer to that. I want to know where the Minister got the authority under legislation to make changes which took hundreds of teachers out of the system in 1988, which worsened class sizes, which worsened pupil/teacher ratio and which was of no benefit to the system. Where did the authority come from? Who is going to be accountable when we find out that somebody acted illegally at that time?
We are now about to do the same thing because I understand that the proposal which I had made to allow the Bill to operate by making a change in the 1879 legislation has, in effect, been ruled out of order. If it is ruled out of order it is a poor reflection on the House that we are going to legislate today for conflict in the legislation, for an incompatibility between the requirements of two specific Acts. That 1879 legislation is still the basis of all the schemes that have been set up in the meantime. The Act of 1879, the Teachers' Increase in Pension Scheme of 1920, the Teachers' Superannuation Act, 1928, and the scheme that was brought into operation in 1934 — and I have some comments to make on that — was by statutory instrument and by regulation, not by an Act. We are governed by those schemes right along the line but from 1934 onwards, the scheme makes constant reference to the 1879 Act. For instance, there are references there to "classes of teachers". I do not know what that means. I have read through the legislation and it says "classes as decided by the Commissioners of Education". I do not know what a class of teachers is at this stage. In the old legislation there are references to class 1 and class 2, etc. I do not know what they are. First class — first division; first class — second division. It is like football, second class and third class; I do not know what these mean. These are the references in 1879 and they have never been tidied up. What we need is a consolidated Bill on teachers' pensions allowing a lot of changes to take place.
Also under the 1879 legislation is the first place that we find the requirement which is followed through in all subsequent legislation which says: "If the Commissioners of Education"— nowadays the Minister —"certify to the Lord Lieutenant"— the Minister for Finance at this stage — that they are satisfied that a male teacher under the age of fifty-five or a female teacher under the age of fifty, who, in the case that he or she continued in the service until the age of compulsory retirement" would be entitled to a pension. In other words, any teacher entitled to a pension "has become incapable from permanent infirmity of mind or body to discharge the duties of his or her situation, the Lord Lieutenant, with the consent of the Treasury" may grant a pension and gratuity to that teacher. That is where the words "of permanent infirmity of mind and body" come in. What that has left is the mess we are in at this time, because that is continued right through in section 11 (ii) of the 1934 scheme, where it says again:
...the Minister and Minister for Finance are satisfied that such teacher has, while in the service, become incapable from infirmity of mind or body of discharging the duties of teacher efficiently and that such infirmity is likely to be permanent...
That has created another mess at the cost of families, socially, emotionally and other ways. That does not deal with modern medicine. I think of outlying cases of people who were retired from the profession because, for instance, they had no mobility and were granted pensions and have now found, gratefully, full mobility through replacement hip operations. That is a very clear understanding that people might have, but it means that doctors can no longer say that the infirmity is likely to be permanent. What doctor nowadays, with the advances of modern medicine, will write down about anybody that it is highly unlikely that that person will ever be cured?
We have a situation in the last two years — I referred to this last week — of a teacher who resigned on disability because she was suffering from terminal cancer. That is what was written on the form. That teacher, who was not expected to live for six months, has, thankfully, made a marvellous and full recovery and is now back in the system. She has now lost the pension and I am sure that she is happy enough to be back to full health, but the point I am making is that that doctor wrote in good faith two years ago that the teacher was unlikely ever to be cured. That is perfectly understandable. Here was an opportunity to clear up that mess.
There is a further one. The disease of ME is quite real. It exists. Everybody knows it is there and everybody knows somebody who is suffering from it. The reality about ME is that it can stop at any time. I know teachers in the system under stress who can no longer teach. You know how ME affects the energy levels, and such teachers are now clearly disabled. They cannot do a day's work and there is no doubt about that. The Department accepts this, as do the Department's inspectors. Their doctors know it, but the one thing that the doctor cannot write on the form is that this disability is likely to be permanent because the nature of the disease of ME is that people eventually come out of it. It might be two, five or ten years, but simply because the doctor cannot say that it is permanent as is required under the scheme, the teacher loses out. I know two teachers at this moment who cannot work, who can barely move around, and yet the Minister's Department have callously said they are not entitled to a pension, even though they are clearly disabled and even though the Minister's Department know that. It is extraordinarily insensitive and uncompassionate that we could not address this at that time.
I also feel that the way we have approached this tiny aspect of pensions to date is utterly unacceptable. I represent teachers every day of the week. I understand what teaching is about. I spent 20 years in a classroom myself. I know exactly the strains and pressures that are there. I also know that there are people who come to a stage where they know that they can no longer give to that job what they wanted to give and what they have always given before. They do not have the energy to cope with the job of teaching after 30 or 35 years and I believe we should allow them an exit with dignity and with financial security. There is a responsibility on the Minister and on management to do that, and indeed there is a responsibility on teachers' unions to push this particular point.
Looking through the legislation that exists, I believe that the lack of Statutory Instruments over the last number of years is creating a huge problem. I would ask that a number of changes be made to the scheme. I have bent over backwards to try to amend this Bill in a way that would be acceptable to the Government. None of my amendments is acceptable to the Government. I have proposed that we reduce the voluntary retirement age to 50. I have proposed that we make changes in the arrangements which would allow for a disability pension to be given under different circumstances reflecting the changes in modern medicine and reflecting likely changes and technology advances in medicine also. I have also proposed that there should be an opportunity for people who cannot do the job, apart from those who want to voluntarily resign, to opt out if they want to do so.
I have made these proposals with a number of objects in mind. I have made them as a response to the needs of those particular teachers at that time. I have also made them in response to the needs of the education service. We need people who can deliver that service and deliver it effectively and efficiently. I have also done it bearing in mind the need to have professionals in education coming through at different ages all the time. We need an annual infusion of new energy and new blood to the educational service. That is our responsibility and there is a consensus view out there that education is a priority.
In the last two months alone, Margaret Thatcher's last act as Prime Minister in a reshuffle was to promote her Secretary of State for Education to the Treasury Department. He was replaced by the Secretary for Health, which gives an indication of the importance they attach to it. John Major's first speech yesterday identified education as a priority issue for him and identified the need to pay teachers a substantial salary in order to attract the best people into the job. We have seen the UK Labour Party establish education as a priority issue. The OECD this year has established education and the need for in-service education and training as a priority. We need to respond to change and we need to have fresh people and new people coming in to cope with change.
The last time I spoke on education in this House I gave an example. I was discussing the need for in-service education and retraining with a member of one of Europe's largest corporations. He pointed out to me that he was working in the computer industry, he was 40 years there, and that any of his staff who were 40 years there with him have had to be retrained to five different generations of computers. As I pointed out to him, in the same period of time the teachers in their classrooms would have been lucky to have had one opportunity for in-service education during that period of time. We have neglected the needs of society on that issue.
In the 1934 scheme, section 8, it is made quite clear that: "There shall be established for the purpose of this scheme a fund, and such fund shall be maintained and managed by the Minister". Where is the pension fund? How much is in it? What goes in every year? What is going in next year? Can we see the fund? Has anyone ever given us figures for it? Is it ever audited? I also believe that we are in breach of that legislation. There is no pension fund in the Department of Education. Pensions are paid out of current account. I do not know if there is a fund set up there that we can consider on that basis.
In dealing with the legislation that is before us today I wanted to propose amendments but they have been ruled out of order. I will certainly come back to them at the end of Second Stage with a view to allowing me to explain the point at issue. We are legislating a conflict and it is impossible to work through what is there at the moment.
In the meantime we have an Act of 1879, an Act of 1920, an Act of 1924. We have schemes based on that legislation from 1934 until now. There has been no statutory instrument brought forward in the past number of years. All the changes made in recent times have been made without authority, in flagrant breach of statutory requirements, and I certainly want to hear how in effect the Minister complied with her own legislation when she introduced the redundancy scheme in 1988. I will leave my contribution to the debate until the Committee Stage when we can discuss various sections of the Bill. I ask the Minister to respond in detail to some of the points raised.
