Chapter 2 — Finance

Adequacy of funding

By 1941, the Visitor could state that although the school had operated at a deficit for that year: As the school has now a full enrolment, its income for the year will be at least £1000 higher than it was for last year. Hence the establishment is financially sound.

Throughout the 1940s, the school operated at a deficit although it did engage in considerable improvements during that time including the construction of a new chapel.

In 1953, the school acquired extra farm land for £3,000, which would appear to have been paid for out of the school funds. For most of the 1950s, the school account showed a debit balance whilst the house accounts showed a credit balance. In the latter part of the 1960s, the school began showing a surplus and by 1969 the Visitor described the finances as ‘very sound’.

Tralee was a small industrial school by Christian Brothers’ standards with a population of just over 100 during the 1950s. It had a small farm of no more than 60 acres and the school struggled to break even. The house, which received its income from stipends paid to the Brothers, had a steady surplus throughout the period and by 1966, there was £8,000 invested in the building fund.

Tralee illustrated the impact of low numbers and a small farm on the ability of a school to remain solvent.

These extracts from Visitation Reports are selective and out of context and are not intended to establish the particular facts about finance in the schools but rather to demonstrate the complexity of the issue and the background to the brief to Mazars.

Details of the building fund were furnished by the Christian Brothers between July 2007 and February 2008.

The Congregation stated The Building Fund consisted of monies which were forwarded to the Provincial Councils by communities for use in refurbishing existing schools and building new schools. A Community submitted excess funds to the Building Fund, which funds could be called on for refurbishments and/or erections of new buildings.

The Congregation was not in a position to say how much money in total was paid in to the building fund by their Industrial Schools but the accounts furnished show that Artane was consistently one of the largest contributors. Visitation Reports show payments into this fund by all the Industrial Schools at some point. There was also some evidence of payments out of this fund by way of loans to the schools but these were relatively small sums and were generally concentrated in the period immediately prior to the closure of the institution as an Industrial School. For example in 1963, when numbers in Artane had fallen substantially, a large sum of money was spent building a swimming pool. In Carriglea, after the decision was made to close down the Industrial School and use it as a Juniorate for the Order, large-scale refurbishments of dormitories occurred.

All of these issues outlined above, although not specifically adverted to in the Mazars’ report, formed part of the documentation used by Mazars to analyse the question of capitation funding. They gave rise to a degree of unease on the part of the Committee regarding the true state of the finances of some of the Industrial Schools.

In addition, the opening statements of the Congregations raised a number of queries: Were Northern Ireland or UK costs valid comparators? Could the comments of Justice Eileen Kennedy, written in 1970 when the numbers had fallen dramatically, apply to the 1936–66 period of high occupancy? Was the capitation grant adequate to meet the basic needs of the children in care?

The submission of the Congregations that Irish schools received considerably less funding than their UK or Northern Irish counterparts was obviously correct. However, this did not necessarily mean that Irish schools received so little funding that they were unable to provide a basic standard of care. The system in neighbouring jurisdictions was fundamentally different in that they had phased out large institutional homes in favour of group homes from the 1920s and this inevitably led to a move towards a budgetary system. A capitation system depended on large numbers of children being committed, a budgetary system did not. It was because the capitation system had encouraged Managers to keep large numbers of children that it was phased out in England and abolished there in 1933 and in Northern Ireland in 1950.

The Managers of schools in Ireland had to be aware of these developments in the UK and yet, as was pointed out in the historical introduction to this chapter, in all of the submissions for increased payments made to the Department, there was no suggestion that the system itself should be changed.

The capitation system had advantages for both the State and the religious Congregations. The religious communities gained by undertaking the work of caring for poor and disadvantaged children as part of their charism. They could ensure a Catholic upbringing for children in need of care while educating them.

The State, by supporting them in the charitable work by paying maintenance for the children, gained an inexpensive pool of care workers without the expense of paying salaries and providing buildings.