Chapter 3 — Society and the schools

Part 3 Facts and figures

It is impossible to come to any definite conclusion on the question of whether the system was in some way biased in favour of sending girls to Industrial Schools. The difficulty is that almost the only information available is the net result, in other words the numbers of each gender sent to the Schools.

Recognition of an imbalance and speculation as to the reasons for it are to be found in a Department Memo, dated 16th April 1943. There are about 500 more girls than boys detained [the total School population in 1943 was 6,000]. The difference between the numbers of girls and boys in some counties is very great, e.g. Co Sligo 139 girls and 35 boys; Co Wexford 175 girls and 85 boys; Co Monaghan 78 girls and 26 boys; Co Cavan 70 girls and 14 boys. A comparison of the numbers of girls in these schools from wealthy counties like Wexford and Sligo with the numbers from much larger and poorer counties like Donegal (19) and Mayo (112) suggests that undue advantage is being taken of Industrial Schools in some districts. This may be due to some extent to the better distribution of the girls’ schools (there are two in each of the counties Wexford and Sligo), and the objection of parents to allowing their children to be sent to schools at a distance from their homes. This does not, however, explain the fact that from Co Cork which is well supplied with Boys’ Industrial Schools, there are 298 girls in these schools as compared with 187 boys. The present unduly large number of girls in industrial schools must be due largely to the fact that the Managers have an organised system of ‘touting’ for children; they have social workers who act as a sort of agent and get children committed to the schools. We have no means of preventing this practice, but I suggest that we consult the Department of Local Government with a view to getting the assistance of the Local Country Managers to ensure that children are not committed without sufficient reason, and to obtain periodical reports on the parents means when children are committed on the grounds of poverty.

It may be relevant here that there were more vacancies for girls. Another explanation that has been offered is that the imbalance is a reflection of the Catholic Church’s traditional concern with sex and sexual temptation. In one particular situation – a widower left with female children and no female family member to act as a mother substitute – anecdotal evidence is that such figures as the parish priest were quick to pronounce that the father could not cope and scandal might follow if the father should attempt to do so. Accordingly, his daughters had to be sent away and a School was often the recourse.

Another difference between boys and girls lies in the difference in size of the Schools for each gender. The following tables give the numbers of residents actually in the Schools, for the years indicated, not the accommodation limits.

Classification	Average No of Pupils	Range
Girls, and girls and junior boys	57	7 to 123
Junior boys	64	27 to 104
Senior boys	141	64 to 310

The following table presents figures which show the places available in Schools in each county and the number of residents who came from homes in that county.

	Boys	Girls
County	Accommodation in Schools	Residents from homes in county	Ratio	Accommodation in Schools	Residents from homes in county	Ratio
Carlow	0	19	X	0	30	X
Cavan	0	14	X	100	30	30%
Clare	0	88	X	110	139	126%
Cork	785	243	31%	700	369	53%
Donegal	0	13	X	0	22	X
Dublin Corporation	0	1061	X	360	811	225%
Co. Dublin	1150	188	16%	96	117	122%
Galway	398	131	33%	408	236	58%
Kerry	40	100	25%	183	140	77%
Kildare	0	44	X	0	55	X
Kilkenny	186	64	34%	126	61	48%
Leitrim	0	14	X	0	24	X
Laois	0	37	X	0	35	X
Limerick	214	159	74%	350	190	54%
Longford	0	16	X	240	18	8%
Louth	150	41	27%	100	38	38%
Mayo	0	44	X	117	94	80%
Meath	0	33	X	0	28	X
Monaghan	0	20	X	140	52	37%
Offaly	0	42	X	100	46	46%
Roscommon	0	29	X	90	86	96%
Sligo	0	25	X	305	86	28%
Tipperary	200	235	118%	275	305	110%
Waterford	75	128	171%	200	108	54%
Westmeath	0	53	X	274	52	19%
Wexford	0	76	X	246	175	71%
Wicklow	100	51	51%	0	31	X

On the assumption that when it was possible to do so, a resident from the county was sent to a School in the same county, the third column shows the ratio of places in Schools to residents with homes in that county. Where the ratio is less than 100 percent, it would have been possible for the Schools in the county to have accommodated all the residents for that county. On the other hand, in some other counties, the ratio exceeds 100 percent. This means that the number of residents with homes in the county exceeded the number of places in Schools in the county. Thus, even assuming that none of the places in the Schools in a county was allocated to a resident from outside, it would not have been possible for the Schools to have accommodated all the residents from that county. In a number of counties, there were no Schools, which is indicated by an ‘X’ in the third column.

Figures are taken from the annual departmental reports for the year 1946-47, when the Schools population was at its highest. The problem of children having to be sent to a School outside the county of their homes would have lessened after 1946-47, although some allowance should be made for the fact that two senior Schools, Baltimore and Killybegs, closed in 1950. Cork, Limerick and Waterford cities’ figures are added to those of their counties.

Most schools took only boys or only girls. The Table reflects this by giving separate figures for boys’ and girls’ Schools. As regards boy’s Schools, the Table shows that in 17 of the counties there were no Schools, so that residents from those counties had to be sent outside the County.45 In addition, the ratio exceeded 100 percent in Tipperary and Waterford.

In the case of girls, there were seven counties with no Schools. And in Dublin Corporation, County Dublin, Clare and Tipperary the ratio exceeded 100 percent so that some residents from those counties had to be sent to a School outside the County. The most significant conclusion is that for both boys and girls, the gravest effect on the family life of residents impacted on those from Dublin. This effect was heightened both by the numbers going to the Schools from Dublin and also by the distance from Dublin to most of the Schools outside Dublin.

Part 4 Independent monitoring

During the relevant period, discussions of the Schools in the Dail were infrequent and brief, and even more so in the Seanad.

With a single exception, there were no general motions on Industrial Schools. Even the reaction to Cussen and Kennedy came not in the form of a formal ministerial statement followed by a debate, but as incrementally expanding replies to Dail questions. The exception was in the Seanad and was a general discussion, lasting five hours, on a motion to take note of the Kennedy Report (though taking place on 10th December 1973, some three years after publication of the Report) proposed by Senators Robinson and West, representing Trinity College, Dublin. This elicited an unusually detailed, unguarded and heartfelt response from John Bruton, the Parliamentary Secretary at the Department of Education.

Likewise, there was little debate on the estimates for the Schools. With most estimates, Opposition deputies seize the latitude allowed to roam around the subject matter, unrestricted by the procedural limitations that apply in other forms of proceedings. But in this field, the estimate was usually passed off with an unchallenged statement from the Minister of the amount to be spent.

The daily adjournment debate (a maximum of 30 minutes in all, consisting of a speech from the member who initiated the debate, followed by a reply from the responsible Minister) enables a member to agitate some matter in a fairly narrow, often local, field. This might have seemed to be just the procedural vehicle for some allegations of individual injustice in a School to be ventilated. In fact it was seldom so used. One exceptional case in which it was invoked arose out of an incident in which a 14-year-old boy had his arm broken by a Brother at Artane using a sweeping brush when he refused to submit to additional beating. Both the Minister (Sean Moylan) and the Deputy, Captain Cowan, who raised the matter were concerned to emphasise that this was an ‘isolated incident’. In response to the debate, the Minister remarked rather broadly, that ‘this is an isolated incident...[and] any guarantee I give parents of full protection of their children is no licence to any of the children to do what they like’. He stated that he had visited practically all the schools and, rather unexpectedly, that ‘they are deficient in many things [and] in future a wider provision for expenditure must be made if these schools are to serve the purpose they ought to serve in the nation’. In one other rare adjournment debate, Deputy James Dillon set out the increasing figures for the committals by the Dublin Children’s Court and asked unavailingly that the Minister should review each individual committal.46

Although Dáil questions were occasionally the source of some exact information not available otherwise, they are of their nature episodic with their content depending on Deputies’ interests. They concerned such issues as: funding of children’s travel home for holidays; the failure on the part of the schools (or Department) to inform or warn parents when their children were transferred; and the suggested replacement of a police car as the vehicle for conveying children from the Dublin Children’s Court to the Industrial School because of the embarrassment it caused.47 Many of the questions asked simply for the numbers of committals on the various legislative grounds, in the previous year, figures that were published anyway in the departmental annual reports. Others urged medium-level changes of policy, for instance, repeatedly in the late 1930s, the adoption of the Cussen Committee recommendation that the salaries of literary teachers should be paid by the Department. The Deputy who asked the initial question seldom put a supplementary in response to the Minister’s reply.

In short, despite the panoply of weapons available to members, the ‘big issues’ in regard to the Schools were raised only seldom and then usually without preparation, passion or persistence. For instance: ‘It costs about 15 shillings per week to keep [a child at Industrial School]. It has often been said to me that if some of that money were used to help the parents, there would be a very big change in their conduct.’48 (There was no reply to this from the Minister, perhaps because he concentrated on another query advanced in the same interjection.) Another comment was: Six months would be quite sufficient [for a child committed under the School Attendance Act]. There is a great inclination, when children are sent to Industrial Schools, to send them there for long periods. To which the Minister replied: Absence from school leading to committal would never be of such a character that six months would be sufficient ...This proposal would mean setting up a new institution. Resident Managers would not accept a child for a short period. 49 Next, as regards early discharge, Minister O’Deirg stated: If responsible people– the local clergy or prominent Deputies who show that they realise both sides of the case could testify to [the Minister] ... an application for early release will be considered.50 A request for the setting up of a system for hearing individual complaints against the Schools received surprisingly little discussion with the Minister for Education emphasising the inherent difficulty confronting anyone evaluating a complaint from a child or parent: You have the situation that the child probably had been proved before a police court to be a notorious liar... Nevertheless some great abuse may have crept in and you are in this dilemma, that it is impossible to satisfy your mind that the allegations made by the children have absolutely no foundation. Improved after care was suggested, including compiling figures on those former school children who were subsequently in trouble with the law.51 And it was put to the Minister, with no thorough examination of the difficulties and possible solutions: if he will get his colleagues [in Finance and Local Government] to provide for suitable foster parents remuneration on the same scale as the state is paying to industrial school... half the number of children in Industrial Schools... will go into decent families.52 The following exchange was over in an instant: Mrs O’Carroll asked the Minister whether he is aware that the whole system of detention of boys and of Industrial Schools is out of date and needs to be reviewed and overhauled General Mulcahy: I am not so aware. 53