Chapter 2 — Finance

The request for accounts in 1954

The Department, in short, was asking for proof that the extra money had been used in the way intended. The letter ended with a reassurance that the Department had no hidden motive for asking for such accounts: I desire to say that the information now asked for is not in the nature of an audit, or strict investigation, of the accounts of any school. It is required solely to enable the Minister to form a correct opinion of the actual financial circumstances of the various schools so that he may be in a position to consider the application made for an increase in the rates of capitation grants for maintenance.

Accounts were received from just nine schools. They were Drogheda, Loughrea, Upton, St Anne’s Kilmacud, Pembroke Alms Industrial School, New Ross, Waterford, Westport and Clonakilty.

On 18th May 1955 the Resident Managers’ Association submitted accounts for ‘an unknown number of schools’. There was no record on file requesting these accounts. They were returned to the Association because ‘the Department was unwilling to accept these accounts in the format presented’. The Association then submitted accounts for 22 Industrial Schools. The Department no longer holds copies of these accounts and has no record of the 22 schools involved.

Further attempts to get accounts were made in 1962, when the Resident Managers’ Association submitted accounts in respect of nine schools. The Department had chosen six representative schools for the exercise. The schools that submitted accounts were Artane, Upton, Letterfrack, Lakelands, Moate, St George’s Limerick, St Patrick’s Kilkenny, Drogheda and St Kyran’s Rathdrum. All nine schools showed excess expenditure over income. A major cause for this was the drop in numbers. For example, St Kyran’s wrote,‘ The fall in numbers is a big concern with us. There was some hope of keeping things going when we had between 120 and 110 on roll, but now we are nearly on the 70 line and still falling I see no hope of keeping the place going except financial aid is increased.

Artane, which was certified to take in 830 boys, had just 430, only 367 of whom were committed by the State. An analysis of the nine accounts showed that the congregations were finding it hard to manage as numbers fell.

Finally, in 1964 the Resident Managers’ Association presented the Department with a two-page document relating to the financial position of 21 schools. Most schools were shown to have excess expenditure over income.

Unlike in the 1950s, when accounts requested by the Department were not forthcoming, as numbers fell and income dropped, the accounts became a valuable part of the case for an increase in the capitation grant.

The figures can be represented in graph form as follows:

The Department’s protracted struggle to get detailed accounts about each school reveals: (1)The power of the Congregations to resist pressure from the Department. Within their institutions the Resident Managers had near absolute power and they defended their ‘established rights’ vigorously. Without their consent, the Department could not obtain what it wanted. (2)The Department may have been sympathetic to the argument that the schools were under-funded but was aware that the situation differed across institutions. A fair decision on how much was needed to keep a child in a school depended not just on the cost of living but on the resources of the school. These resources remained a largely unknown quantity. (3)The accounts that were submitted were not as detailed as the Department wanted. Details of other income, such as from the farms or trades, were not included until the 1960s. (4)The capitation grant remained the only system of funding given consideration. Despite repeated efforts by the Department of Education to find out the different needs of each institution, it failed. Without knowing the different needs of children in different schools, it continued the system of paying the same amount for every child. The capitation grant remained the basic system until 1984.

The process for increases in the capitation grant

The Department of Education determined the capitation grant rate for committed children, but any increases were subject to the consent of the Minister of Finance. The process would begin with submissions from the Resident Managers to the Education Department making a case for an increase in the grant. The Department would consider the submission and would then put a proposal to the Department of Finance. The two Departments would then consult and the Department of Finance would then come to a decision. It could refuse to sanction an increase, or sanction one, usually at a lower rate than the one sought by Education.

The Department of Finance was often sceptical as to whether the Resident Managers’ Association or the Congregations had put the full picture before the Department of Education. The issue may not have been a refusal by the Department of Finance to provide sufficient funds: it may well have been the case that their calculations and deliberations led to its settling on a lesser sum as being sufficient.

Changes to the capitation grant system over the years - Changes to method of payment

There was no increase between 1939 and 1944 in the amount of the grant, although the cost of living had risen significantly, which brought dissatisfaction with the grant scheme to a head and led to three financial reforms.3

(i) The most important of these concerned the termination of the ‘certified number’ requirement which had applied to the Department, but not the local authority, contribution. How the system operated is explained in the following Departmental minute: (see also Cussen, para 157) The practice of paying State Grant on an arbitrary number the ‘Certified Number’ in each School, and not on the number actually under detention or for which there was accommodation, in a school, began in the 1870s. State expenditure on Industrial schools became limited to a figure fixed by the Treasury from time to time. This system seems to have been originally intended to keep control over the number of committals generally and to regulate their distribution throughout the country and amongst the various competing communities and bodies.

At Independence, the system appears to have been taken over and continued without question. The aggregate of the certificates then on issue to the Schools in the 26 counties (6,644) was fixed as the maximum. In the course of a redistribution of certificates in 1939, it transpired that only 6,563 were actually on issue at that date, and the maximum was reduced to that figure. This number was an issue in 1944.

As a result of the certified number limitation system,4 the actual number of children under detention often exceeded the number chargeable to the State. However, in some cases schools refused to accept committals above the certified number. Instead, they accepted cases under the Public Assistance Acts which were not counted against them under the certified number. In any case, the certified number restriction was abolished by a Finance minute of 19th April 1944, which announced that capitation grant should be paid on all children committed to industrial schools up to the full number for which the schools had accommodation.