Yes. If the Minister for any reason feels—if it is evident to him, I would say—that the children are not receiving the minimum of education, then he may take steps to have this test, to which Senator Magennis has devoted some attention, that is laid down in Section 4, applied to them. Perhaps, if I explain to the Seanad the origin of this provision, matters might be somewhat clearer. Under the original School Attendance Act, the question of private schools arose and, ultimately, provision was made in that Act for the certification of these schools where they were considered by the Minister to be suitable. The provision was contained in Section 5 (1):
The Minister may if and when he so thinks fit by a certificate in the prescribed form certify any particular school to be a suitable school within the meaning of this Act for the attendance of children to whom this Act applies for the purpose of receiving elementary education, and the Minister may at any time as and when he thinks fit revoke any such certificate.
There was a definite provision for dealing with these private schools. I think the feeling at the time—and I think it would not be confined to, let us say, the teachers' organisation—was that you had a type of private school in the country—I do not think there was a very great number of them—in which children were receiving private tuition where the teachers had very little, if any, qualifications. There arose; naturally, the question whether in fact parents were not being deceived by such teachers into a belief that they were capable and qualified to give instruction to children and to prepare them for their further education when, in fact, they were not able, and could not be in a position, to give such instruction. It might have been said, for example, and still is contended by the teachers' organisation, that any person may open a private school in this country. Certain other professions have been regulated by the State— medicine, dentistry, and so on.
In the case of education, there is nothing to stop an individual from opening a school and, if he complies with certain regulations, for example, under the secondary code, if he shows that the school is necessary, fills a certain need in the locality and has a reasonable prospect of success, I take it that the organiser or conductor of such school is entitled to State aid.
That would not seem to be in accord with the view that in some way or other I am prejudiced against private schools. I have no prejudice whatever against them. I believe that excellent work is done in a number of private schools but, as I said, I think possibly the origin of this particular provision was the feeling that there existed the other type of private school where parents were—let us put it plainly—being badly treated, being deceived into believing that their children were getting an education which the conductors of these schools could not provide. Therefore, it was, I think, in an effort to establish some supervision over such schools that this provision was inserted in the Principal Act. In any case, it was there and under it the inspectors from time to time visited these schools.
It was then found that the Minister, apparently, was not the authority to determine whether the children were receiving suitable education or not and, in that connection, I think I should perhaps refer to another clause —Clause (2) (b) of Section 4—where reasonable excuses for failure to comply with the section, that is to say, failure to send children to school, were set out. One of the reasons which parents might give as a reasonable excuse was "that the child is receiving suitable elementary education in some manner other than by attending a national or other suitable school." There was a question as to what was "suitable elementary education." The fact that a court decision was given in a particular case and that the matter of Irish arose in it did not affect my judgment.
When this measure was being prepared, the matter was examined closely from the legal and from the constitutional point of view. Different interpretations may be taken as to how far one may go in providing, through legislation, for the implementation of principles laid down in the Constitution but I think it is not reasonable that it should be sought to be argued that a Minister, and particularly a Minister for Education, would go out of his way deliberately to take an extreme interpretation from a particular sanction that the Oireachtas has given him, that he would go out of his way—let us put it plainly—to create trouble for himself, cast all kinds of trouble into the educational machine and, above all, attempt to walk through the Constitutional principles which have been laid down so clearly by the Government of which he is a member, adumbrating in the clearest and most unmistakable way that the right of parents to send their children to the schools of their choice may not be interfered with.
I approached the question from the position that under the Constitution there is cast upon the State the duty of seeing that each child is provided with that minimum education which will enable him to have the foundation of what we may call a good citizen. Under the existing legislation and; of course, under the Constitution, there is no provision—as Senator Magennis has pointed out—as to the manner in which that shall be dealt with. Obviously, there must be some way of determining whether in fact children are receiving such education or not. The Minister for Education is the appropriate authority. He represents the State, and the State, in coming in this fashion into the educational arena and taking upon itself certain responsibilities can only do so, I think, through the Minister for Education and the machinery at his disposal.
I do not know why it should be assumed that there was an intention of interfering with the religious beliefs of any section of our people when the Constitution, which safeguards these rights, has placed the chief religious denominations of the country under a special protection and has mentioned them specifically. That is an entirely different position from the position that arose before that Constitution was enacted. There were certain general principles, but I suggest that they were not specifically laid down and that they had not the same virtue or the same intrinsic value as the principles which are here stated for safeguarding parents in these rights which I and the Government recognise to be of the greatest importance. It may be that when legislation of this kind— amending legislation; the principle was admitted years ago—is being brought in, Senators who feel uneasy about certain matters may raise them either to get repudiation of them or information on them from the Minister, or to strengthen themselves against a position which they fear may arise—some arbitrary action of the Minister.
There are ample safeguards in the deliberations of the House and in public opinion outside the House to protect the citizens. We are not to assume, as some Senators would have us believe, that when legislation is passed here, that is the last word. The Minister himself no more than any Senator, is not entitled to assume that his particular interpretation will be the one that will be upheld if the matter should reach the courts. The very fact that there would be likely to be any trouble, particularly in connection with education, would, I suggest, mean that the Minister would, if he were a wise man and attentive to his responsibilities, take every precaution to ensure that no action would be taken that would create trouble or make people feel that their rights were being interfered with, religious rights or personal rights. The Senator will notice that there is no reference whatever to the family; we simply maintain the existing position and try to clarify the situation so far as private schools are concerned. The situation in that respect was not satisfactory. There was no final determining standard in the hands of the educational authority to enable it to decide whether a school was suitable or not. I think the situation demands that the Minister for Education should undertake that responsibility. Hence the proposals here.
I must confess that what I am really afraid of is that perhaps some schools and people outside, without having read these proposals carefully and without realising the full meaning of them until they heard Senator Magennis, would jump to the conclusion because they read it in some newspaper or heard it from some outside source that I had quite arbitrarily introduced some legislation to deprive people of their rights to send their children outside the State for their education if they wished to do so. That is not so. The position is that every type of legislation that is introduced here, unfortunately so long as the Partition issue remains, must have reference to that question. Senators could quote any particular type of legislation and suggest that it reacted in one way or another on the Partition issue. But when Senators suggest that we had some ulterior motive at the back of our minds in introducing these provisions, I want to assure them that a Minister feels he has some responsibility. According to some Senators one would imagine that Ministers have no feeling as to their responsibilities, and that there is the intention to change the position that has existed for a period of years. During my period of, roughly, ten years as Minister for Education, we have had no trouble whatever about the Northern situation. There has been no interference at any time, legal or official, with the right of parents to send their children from this State to schools across the Border or to send them across the Border in here. There are about 500 children going both ways. That particular situation had no reference whatever to this legislation.
This Section 4 is a clarification, I want to say again, of Sections 4 and 5 in the Principal Act dealing with the position—the reasonable cause that a parent may give for failure to send his child to a school here, to the national school or other suitable school, namely, that he is receiving suitable elementary education in some other manner. Secondly there is the question of the determination of whether that education reaches the minimum standard required by the Constitution. No provision had been made for that Actually, if it may interest those Senators who are so distrustful of Ministers—although it seems they have ample safeguards against them, particularly when there is talk of an election, if Ministers choose to do something which they should not do—we sought to get a definition of "elementary education" so that the Minister would not come into the question at all, so that there would be an objective test laid down in black and white by which it could be said: "It does not matter what the school is, whether it is in his own home or with relatives that the child is being educated; he has reached that objective standard which we consider we could recommend to the Oireachtas as the minimum standard contemplated in the Constitution." We, however, found it impossible to arrive at that definition, there were so many different circumstances to be considered. A child who is obviously highly educated in certain subjects, a youthful Mozart or a youthful mathematician, the Minister is scarcely likely to condemn, even though he may not come up to standard in other respects. I want to say here that it was found impossible to get a formula which would be suitable and which could be fairly applied in all cases.
The only alternative then, and no other reasonable suggestion has been put up by way of alternative, is to leave it to the Minister to determine whether the education received by the child is suitable or not. The Minister, I repeat, will only interfere in cases where he has reason to believe that children are not receiving that education, and that the community is losing thereby. To those who have stressed the points about the rights and liberties of parents, I would say what Senator Magennis has already said, that we have community rights to consider. We have the question of the needs of organised society; we have the law. We have already done far more under other Acts dealing with children, such as the Children Act, under which we take the child away completely from the custody of the parents in certain cases and send him for a period of years to an approved school, than we are attempting to do here. What we are doing here is implementing the principle in the Constitution that the State shall satisfy itself that children are receiving a certain minimum education. The Minister will not interfere where children are receiving such minimum education. If he feels that they are not receiving that minimum education, that they are being neglected, then he will take such steps as are necessary. It is not a matter of whether the children are outside his jurisdiction or within his jurisdiction; certainly there never was any intention of differentiating between one class and another in the arbitrary way suggested.