In discussing fund raising for the Central Remedial Clinic, I am discussing the fact that there should not be any need for fund raising for the education of handicapped children. The Department of Education should supply sufficient funds to enable handicapped children to be educated without having to have so many flag days and charity walks and without different fund-raising committees having to be set up.
Last year we had the announcement that the Irish Epileptics Association were to get a grant of half the annual pay of one social worker per year towards their educational policy. That type of thing is not relevant. It does not carry any weight with me. This problem should be tackled radically and with courage by the Government. It has been there for long enough. It has been swept under the carpet for long enough. It should be approached in a realistic way.
Any handicapped child who is going on to take the leaving certificate should not have to do compulsory Irish. He should be exempted from it. God only knows the trials and tribulations of having to study under adverse circumstances, without having to study compulsory Irish, the curriculum of which changes from year to year, the spelling of which is subject to change, and the pronunciation of which varies from school to school.
To my mind, compulsory Irish is holding back many children, particularly those children resident in Dublin city and county. Compulsory Irish has been murderous from the point of view of the revival of the Irish language. The Fianna Fáil Government have undertaken a kamikaze operation in regard to compulsory Irish and the Irish language revival movement. Compulsory Irish has killed the love of the language in many children at a very early age. It is a difficult language to learn. If it is a learned properly there are many financial benefits to be gained from it. If it is not learned properly the child cannot receive a full certificate at the end of his secondary school education. In your second year in medical school if you do not pass Irish you are not allowed to go on to take your degree.
The policy of compulsory Irish in the city of Dublin needs to be revised. On the one hand, the Government are attempting to go into Europe. They are attempting to make students familiar with European languages. On the other hand, many hours of primary and secondary school education are taken up with compulsory Irish which has shown itself over the years to be non-productive from the point of view that it has not aided or abetted the revival of the Irish language. In fact, the opposite is true. It has helped to kill the Irish language, particularly in the city. I have seen children who were frustrated in their education because they could not come to grips with the Irish language. I have seen parents who were frustrated with regard to their children's education. They knew it was being adversely affected by the way Irish was being, and I quote, "shoved down their necks by the Department of Education."
I cannot stress too strongly that the party of which I am a member are 100 per cent behind the revival of the Irish language, but we are not 100 per cent behind the compulsory revival policy which has been pursued by Fianna Fáil governments. One has only to look at the figures. One has only to look at the number of children who can speak it fluently to see that compulsory Irish has not resulted in the revival of the Irish language. Compulsory Irish should be dropped from the curricula of all Irish primary and secondary schools next year, and the language should be given a chance to be revived because of the love the Irish people have for it. The language should not be killed by the forced learning of poems and essays and proverbs to get a child through an examination.
In secondary schools in this city we have experienced the drilling and the learning by heart of different sections of the Irish curriculum, and of playing the odds to get sufficient marks to get the leaving certificate or the matriculation certificate. How could we possibly hope to revive the language when 77 per cent of the pupils are in classes of 40 and more? How could we hope to teach any subject successfully, let alone a difficult subject like Irish, and to get the optimum results, with such over-crowding? The statistics show that 77 per cent of the children are in classes with more than 40 pupils. This is not education. This is the herding of children into classrooms, the progress through a curriculum, the marking of the roll, with a certain amount of recreational time, and then back home. Teachers in national schools in the city of Dublin will tell you that they have too many pupils in their classes to be able to cope adequately with them, to be able to cope as they would like to cope with them, and to be able to teach them on the basis on which they would like to be able to teach them.
The policy of education pursued in the city of Dublin is not at all satisfactory to my mind. There was a time in this city when a child could go to a national school at the age of four years. Now the age limit has been increased to five years in my constituency because the classes are so crowded. It is not unrealistic to suggest that in time it might be raised to six years of age. I have a 4½ year old daughter who is very intelligent and I cannot find any place in a school for her. I could afford to send her to a private school. Why should I because I have money, or if I had money, be able to have extra educational facilities for my daughter when those around me are dependent on the national school and are unable to get their children into a school until they reach five years of age? It is not a good thing to have a child of four to 4½ years pottering around the house all day with little or no extra stimulation for the imagination. That is a very important year in the formation of a child's mind.
I would think that the overcrowding which exists, to the degree that it exists, is of a criminal nature from the point of view that it is merely seen that education is taking place in the national schools in this city when, in fact, we know, the parents know, the teachers know, that education is not taking place as it should take place in the national schools.
I want to move to a particular aspect of education which has created quite an amount of controversy since the Minister first made his announcement. I refer to community schools. What the Minister might do or might feel he wants to do in the case of new school buildings is largely a matter for the Minister, the local authority, the parents, the teaching orders and the lay teachers who are involved. With regard to areas which have been statistically worked out by his Department to come under an official board of management and to be taken over by the Department of Education, that is not the best solution. Instead of community schools being forced into existence where individual schools exist there should be a policy of a community of schools whereby facilities available in one school would be made available to the pupils of the other, where recreational facilities, such as a swimming pool, available in one school would be made available to the other, where scientific laboratories in a boys' school would be made available at certain hours to the pupils of a girls' school, where facilities in technological schools would be made available to other schools, and that this would be left to the managers of the various schools to work out in practice.
The question of handing over property to religious orders or of religious orders handing over property to the Government is a matter that has been exaggerated to an unfair degree. Certain people have attempted to imply that the religious orders were reluctant to hand over positions as school manager or as educationalists to lay teachers. This is not at all the case. There are many religious orders, the Holy Ghost Fathers, Jesuits, Carmelites, Christian Brothers, Spanish nuns, as in Finglas, who would gladly and willingly hand over the management of the school curriculum and teaching programme to lay teachers. But there are many aspects of school administration which take up a good deal of time. Providing that the lay teacher was willing to spend the extra hours, sometimes on Saturday and Sunday, sometimes involving the burning of midnight oil, in management work, I do not think the religious orders would have much objection. That is my view from consultations I have had with them in regard to handing over the management of secondary schools to lay teachers.
I want again to point to the dedication and achievements of religious orders in the field of education, not only in this country but on the missions. The first order that comes to mind is the Holy Ghost Fathers. Every Deputy knows the wonderful work they do at Rockwell College, St. Michael's, Blackrock College, Templeogue, St. Mary's Rathmines, and also on the missions. For many years this has been the best contact this country has had with other countries. We have the reputation of being the island of saints and scholars. Religious missionaries have shown their enthusiasm for education. I wonder does the Minister acknowledge the full extent to which parents and students have depended upon religious orders for their education.
It would be most unwise to advocate any change in the present system because secondary school education has not as yet been proved to be intolerable, the religious orders have not been shown to be lacking in ability to educate. I would leave well enough alone. Otherwise, the Minister may have the education of many students thrown back to his responsibility.
I should like to say a word or two about a matter that the Minister did not mention in his introductory statement, namely, the National Council for Sport. In July, 1969, the Taoiseach set up a fund of £100,000 to be distributed in such fashion as would stimulate the development of sport. At that time, while welcoming the £100,000 and the recognition of the need for a more organised approach towards the provision of recreational facilities, I condemned the smallness of the provision.
Last night I was browsing through some statistics and I find that, for instance, the amount of money which has been spent by successive Fianna Fáil senior and junior Ministers in sending Christmas cards to their constituents approximates to the amount allocated for sport in 1969. It works out at something less than 2p per child per year. Therefore, I would appeal for an increase in the provision for the stimulation of sporting activities. They should increase this figure to a realistic level which I think, at the very least, would be £500,000 this year. What, in fact, is being given for the stimulation of sport all through the country is little more than the cost of the new swimming pool on the Mellowes Road, Finglas West, £136,000.
The swimming pool which will be provided, as announced earlier at Ballymun, will also cost £136,000. I am in the fortunate position in regard to sport that I am able to announce to my constituents through the Dáil that before the year is out they will have two full-size Olympic swimming pools.
