IRISH NATIONAL SCHOOL HEATING. (Hansard, 25 June 1907)

§ CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.),

in asking leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the heating of National Schoolhouses in Ireland, said that he always deprecated legislation for one part of the United Kingdom if it was possible to avoid it. His excuse for asking leave to introduce this Bill was the very peculiar and characteristic circumstances which prevailed in Ireland at present in regard to the heating of schoolhouses. The measure was entirely non-Party and undenominational, and he trusted it would be considered as uncontroversial. The conditions which prevailed in Ireland were very different from those which existed in England. In Ireland no funds were provided by the State for providing lighting, heating, and ventilation of the national school buildings, and the Bill dealt entirely with the poorer classes of national schools throughout Ireland. One special claim he had to make was that owing to the decreased rents which landlords were receiving from their land, 1155 and the fact that large numbers of them had left the country and others were in process of selling their estates, it had become impossible for them to contribute for this object in the same generous measure as they had done in the past, and unfortunately in the remote parts of Ireland there was no other way in which they could approach the subject of heating school premises except by asking the National Board of Education to take the matter up, and with the assistance of the County Councils to provide proper heating for the various class-rooms. In answer to a question last year the late Chief Secretary informed him that the total cost of carrying out the scheme would be something like £24,000, which, divided between the county councils and the National Board, would mean their finding £12,000 each in one year. That was independent of the voluntary agencies which had lent a certain amount of assistance. One of his objects in introducing the Bill under the ten minutes rule was to try and enlist the generous sympathies of all Members of the House, for if the Bill was slipped in in the ordinary way and blocked there would be no chance of its becoming law, and he was anxious, that something should be done for the poor children of Ireland before the bad weather came. The fact that the children were compelled to travel miles in wet weather over mountains and bogs, and on arrival at the school find nothing but white-washed walls, and in many instances not even a piece of burning turf, could not fail to appeal to them. In confirmation of what he had said, he would quote the Report of the North Dublin Inspector, who declared that it was not an extravagant supposition that a large part of the sickness amongst the children in the country was brought on by badly ventilated school-houses, combined with want of due warmth in the cold and wet weather. The Inspector for the Galway District declared that it was painful to see little groups of poorly fed boys and girls, miserably clad, trying to make their way on a winter's morning to the neighbouring schools. In such cases one hoped that the schoolroom when reached would make these poor children warm and comfortable, but unfortunately that was not the case. His experience was that the school in most cases was a cold and cheerless apartment; 1156 some clods of turf had been placed in the hearth and lighted, but they gave out no heat, only smoke. He was examining, this same Inspector continued, in such a cheerless room in January when the children came in and sat down, cold and miserable, while he had to keep his overcoat on, though he had the advantage of walking about. All these reports tended in the same direction. Seeing that the Boards which looked after the welfare of the working classes insisted upon a certain temperature being maintained in rooms where work was carried on, it seemed to him that the State should also insist upon a certain temperature in the school buildings throughout the country. In the large towns where there might be wealthy people prepared to put their hands in their pockets and pay a certain amount per annum towards this laudable object the cases were not so severe as those he had mentioned, but it was neither fair nor humane that the children in the poor districts in the south and west as well as the north of Ireland should be asked to sit in cheerless rooms and receive instruction. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had already stated that he intended to spend his autumn holidays in Ireland studying the great University question, about which many of them held there was no urgent necessity, if any necessity at all. He would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should begin at the bottom of the ladder instead of at the top, and remedy some of the glaring evils at present existing among the poorer classes, one of the foremost of which was the evil he had been discussing. When the teachers found it was impossible to obtain any heating material, they had often, rather than see the poor children suffer, to put their hands in their pockets and pay for material themselves. He had been asking several questions lately of the heads of the various Education Departments in the United Kingdom in order to ascertain whether Irish teachers were really able to bear this burden, and he contended, from a comparison of the salaries of school teachers in Ireland with those in Scotland and England, that both in the higher and lower grades it was impossible to expect so poorly a remunerated class to carry out the heating of the schools. The Bill, therefore, which he asked leave to introduce, would have the double effect of 1157 saving a little out of the miserable salaries of school teachers and of spreading the cost of this small but important improvement over the whole of Ireland, which was quite able to bear it. He hoped that the Government would give the Bill their support, and so do something for the real welfare of Ireland.