§ MR. MACVEAGH (Down, S.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Commissioners of Education have received a memorial from members of public boards in Newry, asking that those teachers who were in the training colleges when the new rules were issued in 1900, and who were bound by agreement to enter the service of the Commissioners after training, should be remunerated in accordance with the scale which was in operation at the time the agreements were entered into; whether these teachers have received special consideration, as promised in the footnote to the new rules; and, if so, what is the result of the special consideration.
§ MR. WALTER LONGThe memorial referred to has been received by the Commissioners. The agreement signed by teachers on entering a training college binds them to follow the calling of teacher in a public elementary school, and imposes on them the liability to forfeit the cost of their training in the event of their failing to fulfil a probationary service of two years as teacher. There is nothing in the agreement which binds the Commissioners to employ such teachers under any particular set of rules. The interests of teachers who were actually in the Commissioners' service prior to 1900 were, as a matter of fact, preserved by the new rules. Any such teachers who were in training colleges 475 in 1899–1900 received special consideration when their incomes were fixed under the new rules; and this special consideration consisted in the promotion in grade to which they would have been entitled by reason of their having entered training colleges. Other students in training in 1900, who had never been employed as principal or assistant teachers under the Commissioners, had no claim to special consideration.