Chapter 8 — Letterfrack

Neglect

A second meeting was convened by the Department on 14th May 1954 with senior Department officials, Br O’Hanlon and District Justice McCarthy. The meeting was convened because Judge McCarthy had intimated that he would not be prepared to send to Letterfrack the type of boy for whom the School was to be reserved until the non-offenders had been transferred. Again, the Judge pointed out that he was unhappy about the isolated location of Letterfrack, and felt it was unsuitable for the rehabilitation of boys from Dublin city. Br O’Hanlon informed him that this had been fully considered but the Congregation had decided on Letterfrack.

District Justice Gleeson, based in Limerick, also communicated his concerns to the Minister for Justice in a letter from his court clerk dated 30th July 1954. It stated: ... this arrangement will cause very serious difficulties in administering the Children’s Court in Limerick. Hitherto all cases in which committals were made in offence cases were dealt with by committing the boys concerned to Glin, which is near Limerick or Tralee, which is also convenient. It was possible also for the parents of the children to visit them conveniently in these schools, and for the Gardai to take them there quickly and inexpensively. Moreover, the boys in most cases were allowed home to their parents for summer holidays. With Letterfrack over 100 miles away from Limerick all these advantages will cease and serious difficulties will be encountered.

The Minister for Justice requested the Minister for Education to make representations to the Christian Brothers in line with the Judge’s concerns. The Secretary of the Department of Education responded, stating that strong representations had been made to the Provincial Council, but to no avail. The matter was clearly out of the Government’s hands.

The Department of Education wrote to the relevant authorities, including the Departments of Health and Justice, District Justice McCarthy and the NSPCC, informing them of the decision in the following terms: As you are aware it has been decided by the Provincial of the Irish Christian Brothers that the Industrial School at Letterfrack is to be reserved in future for the boys brought before the Court and found guilty of an offence which in the case of an adult, would be punishable by penal servitude and also for boys against whom there is a police record of such an offence even though they have not been charged with it, but with some other offence such as irregular school attendance, begging, etc.

They were informed that boys who fell into these categories would no longer be accepted in Artane, Salthill, Tralee or Glin.

District Justice McCarthy, in a memorandum dated 8th October 1954, recommended a number of changes to the Children Acts, 1908–1949. Amongst his recommendations was that, in cases where a child had not been granted leave of absence during a 12-month period from an industrial or reformatory school, financial provision should be made to the child’s parent or guardian to enable them to visit the child at least once a year.

He referred to the decision of the Christian Brothers to limit committals to Letterfrack to a particular category and noted that: this means that the Dublin School [Artane] is now closed to the large number of city boys who come before the Courts for these offences, or in certain circumstances for bad school attendances, begging, etc and they will have to be sent to Letterfrack, to Clonmel Upton, or Greenmount. Week after week parents are calling to the Children’s Court at Dublin Castle seeking financial assistance to enable them to visit their children in country districts, children whom they have not seen for very considerable periods because they are unable to pay the necessary fares.

At the meeting in the Department on 14th May 1954, the number of boy ‘offenders’ to be left in Letterfrack was also discussed, and Br O’Hanlon said that 85 was the lowest number stated by the School Resident Manager to be required to run the School on anything like an economic basis. It was agreed at the meeting to transfer to Salthill and to Artane and other schools all the Public Assistance cases in the School, together with as many of the other boys as would leave the number of non-transferred boys at 85 and this was to be done by the end of June.

On 30th June 1954, 179 boys were resident in Letterfrack. Between June and September 1954, 94 boys were transferred to other industrial schools or were released on supervision certificate.

On 30th September 1954 the Department of Education records showed there were 87 boys resident in Letterfrack. The vast majority of these boys who remained in Letterfrack were there through no fault of their own, but they found themselves in what was effectively a junior reformatory from 1954 onwards. This situation continued until the Kennedy Committee (1970) stated at Section 6.12 of its Report: No junior reformatory exists for the detention of youthful offenders under twelve these, on conviction, being normally sent to Industrial Schools. As the bulk of boys in this age group are however, sent to the Industrial School at Letterfrack, Co. Galway, it was decided to treat this institution as a junior reformatory.

At Section 6.15 the Report went on to state that the young offenders who were sent to Letterfrack were not segregated from the non-offenders.

Some 15 years after the policy had been enunciated by the Provincial, the position in Letterfrack was still unresolved. The Kennedy Report noted that in 1969/1970, 64 of the boys in Letterfrack had been convicted of indictable offences, 15 for non-attendance at school, and 13 were non-offenders. Of those 64, most were incarcerated for offences that would not in fact have incurred imprisonment if committed by an adult, for example trespassing or theft of very small items.

The policy adopted by the Congregation was to seriously prejudice the boys who were in Letterfrack through neglect or poverty. They were now in a minority in the Institution, but were retained there to provide economic ballast to a system that was incapable of delivering even a basic level of care.

The fate of these boys in Letterfrack was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of industrial schools. Their individual needs were completely disregarded by the Congregation and the Department of Education. The perceived problem of having offenders and non-offenders in the same institution was never remedied and was actually programmed to continue for the foreseeable future.

The one positive outcome of the 1954 decision was the removal from Letterfrack of the very young boys who were there. The fate of these children had been a matter of concern to Visitors over the years. Infants under six years of age were taken into Letterfrack: there were 20 in 1941, 18 in 1943, and 12 in 1949. The infirmary nurse did not look after these boys, who were under the care of a Brother. The Visitor remarked in 1949 that, unless the nurse undertook the care of such small children, the Institution should not accept them in the future.