Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 7 The beginnings of change

At the same time, there were various practical improvements in the schools, mostly because of rising economic prosperity in the 1960s. The following contemporary account, from Michael Viney’s 1966 Irish Times series, provides some examples: A hundred boys is probably the most any one centre should contain, if the staff are to have any chance of treating them as individuals. So consideration of closing Upton and Letterfrack has not been without its ironies. For a hundred boys, more or less, is just what each of them has now. They were built, of course, to hold far more, and the present capitation system makes it uneconomic to run them at less than three-quarters full – about double their present population. Both Upton and Letterfrack have undergone major reconstructions and improvements in the last few years. The Department of Education has granted large sums to build or convert new classroom wings and the orders themselves have borrowed heavily from the banks to pay for other, very welcome improvements. So just as these schools have been brightened out of all recognition, their future has never seemed more uncertain. Reports and other indicators

In 1961 one of a set of national surveys, a wide-ranging study of Irish education and training by economic experts, was prepared by officials from the Department of Education in cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), under the chairmanship of the economist and ex-civil servant, Professor Patrick Lynch. It included a section dealing with the treatment of children in detention. This section criticised the operation of the schools attributing many of their defects to the inadequacy of the capitation grant and also the substantial surplus capacity within the schools, especially the girls schools, where there was only 37 percent utilisation of space.

In 1965 the Commission on Mental Handicap raised doubts about institutionalisation in a wider context. Its report observed at para 138: Orphans and unwanted and illegitimate children are a very vulnerable group. Many fail to realise their potential through loss of firm ties of affection, lack of stimulation and absence of suitable adults to provide a feeling of security and to meet their emotional and psychological needs. Legal adoption, where it is possible, is undoubtedly the most satisfactory method of dealing with the problem....family care is preferable to care in an institution.... We are well aware of the wonderful work carried out in these institutions and our regret is that because of a lack of appreciation of the psychological and emotional needs of children or because of inadequate staffing, the best results are not always achieved.

In September 1962 an Interdepartmental Committee was established to inquire into possible approaches to the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders. The Committee was composed of senior officials of the Departments of Justice, Health, Education and Industry and Commerce. Its proceedings concerning Fr Moore’s views on Artane are discussed in the chapter on that institution (Volume I, Chapter 7).

The Committee’s more general recommendations as to Industrial and Reformatory Schools anticipated those of Kennedy in some respects and echoed Cussen in others. One of its central recommendations was the introduction of proper aftercare supervision, the lack of which they viewed as ‘a most grievous fault in the system’.

The Tuairim Report of 1966 was another harbinger of change and bookmarked a change in thinking within the Department. Tuairim was a private group interested in publishing ideas for practical, social or governmental reform. One of its best-known reports entitled ‘Some of our children’ evaluated the certified schools system in Ireland. In some ways its content also anticipated that of the Kennedy Report. The Tuairim Report drew attention to the ‘failure to implement, other than a few’, the recommendations of the Cussen Commission. The Department of Education concurred with a number of Tuairim’s findings and stated in an internal memo ‘it is true that the whole system is in need of complete overhaul’.

On 30th January 1961 a play by Richard Johnson, The Evidence I Shall Give, was premiered at the Abbey Theatre. It ran for 42 performances, and then was restaged in July of that year when it ran for a further nine. It returned in August for 21 more, in September for nine, and finally in October for six. Such a run, with a total of 87 performances, was most unusual.

The author was a District Court judge. The play depicted a day in the life of a District Justice and the principal case was an application to have a 13-year-old female inmate of an orphanage transferred to an Industrial School because her alleged disobedience made discipline impossible. The protagonists were the defending solicitor, who was a kind and humane character, and who argued that ‘small children need kissing and caressing’ and the Mother Superior of the home, who was unloving and was driven by the need to enforce severe discipline and through it to bring the children ‘to humility’.

The children had been committed because their father could not afford to engage a woman to look after his six children. The solicitor then calculated that with the capitation fee of £2.10 s per week per child, the Order was being paid £390 for the three sisters, and the other institution was being paid £370 for the other three. ‘Will you agree’, he asked the mother-general, ‘that for £150 a year he could have got somebody to look after all six?’

The play ended with the young girl removing the scarf covering her head to reveal it to be shaven, her punishment for absconding. The solicitor then addressed the court, saying ‘...what a dreadful commentary on our so-called Christian State that the soul of a little child should be thus crucified in order to instil humility’.

Far from being controversial, the message of the play was well received by the audience and its success reflected the readiness of the public to hear the criticisms made by the play.

In retrospect, the establishment of the Kennedy Committee to review Reformatory and Industrial Schools seems more like an obituary than a death warrant for the existing system. In a memorandum prepared by Tarlach O’Raifeartaigh, the Secretary, for the Minister for Education in March 1967, he suggested that it would be ‘well worth considering whether the whole problem of reformatory and industrial schools should not be our next major target’. The Minister, Mr O’Malley, said he had always ‘felt deeply’ that children in care there had ‘a very special claim on society’.

Formally, both the Department and the Minister emphasised that a revision of the existing schools system should not be construed as an adverse reflection upon the management of schools by the religious Orders, which deserved praise for the ‘excellent manner’ in which the schools were conducted. However, there is no doubt that Minister O’Malley privately suspected that harsh conditions were pervasive in the schools as is evident from an informal remark to his Department’s representative on the Kennedy Committee: ‘I’m depending on you to see that this whole area is properly cleaned up. I’m behind you.’

The Committee made a crucial finding in relation to the existing system. Paragraph 4.2 of the Report said that: ...there is, in general, a lack of awareness of the needs of the child in care. By this we do not mean physical needs which are, in the main, adequately if unimaginatively catered for. We are referring to the need for love and security. All children experience these needs from their earliest days; the child who has suffered deprivation has an even greater need for them.

Noting that most of those working in Industrial Schools and Reformatories had little if any qualifications, the Report recommended: proper training, the transfer of administrative responsibility for childcare to the Department of Health, and the system of payment on a capitation basis to be replaced by a system based on agreed budgets so as to encourage improvement in the children’s circumstances. However the Committee’s major recommendation was that: The whole aim of the Child Care system should be geared towards the prevention of family breakdown and the problems consequent on it. The committal or admission of children to Residential Care should be considered only when there is no satisfactory alternative.