884 entries for Government Department

The Department then spelled out the kind of information wanted: The statement of the financial position of your school for the period mentioned (1/4/1946 to 31/3/1947) should show in detail the items of expenditure appropriate to your industrial school only under the various heads viz. food, clothing, footwear, fuel, medical expenses, dental treatment, salaries and wages, etc.

The Resident Managers were reassured that the Board of Inspectors was only going to establish the right level of funding for the schools. The terms of reference were to inquire into the conditions and circumstances of the Industrial and Reformatory Schools under the control of the Department of Education and to make recommendations as to how they might be most efficiently and most economically conducted.

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.

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 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.

(ii) Until 1939, in respect of a child under six only the local authority’s contribution (not that of the Department) was paid and the local authority paid only about two-thirds of the contribution of that for a child over six. The thinking was that children under six should be dealt with under the Poor Law. However, the social outlook changed at the beginning of the Twentieth century and children under six were committed to industrial schools in increasing numbers. These children were accepted, effectively at less than half cost, by the Schools partly out of charity and partly so as to have a reserve of children who could be put on the grant immediately they turned six. However, in 1939, the Department started to pay a contribution of two thirds of the amount paid for an over-six. And, as from the date of Department of Finance minute of 1944 mentioned in para (i), the full amounts were paid by both the Department and local authority, irrespective of age.

(iii) The Department of Education submission state that, before-1944, the process for claiming the grants involved the Schools in furnishing a detailed account in respect of each child. After 1944, the State capitation grant for a full quarter was paid by the Department at the end of each quarter. This was based on the number of committed children under detention on the last day of the preceding quarter, after the Manager had submitted a list of the names and registered numbers of the children together with the name of the local authorities to which each child was chargeable.

The Department then wrote to the Department of Finance supporting the claim and requesting a minimum increase of £1 in the weekly capitation grant by the Department and in that of local authorities. This was estimated to involve extra State expenditure of £121,000 (on top of the existing figure of about £400,000) in a full year. Education admitted that there had been an approximate increase of only 1/6th in the cost of living during the period since the previous increase. However, the size of the suggested increase was supported by: the steady decline in the number of committals to the schools with no corresponding fall in overhead expenses; the increases in wages of employees in the preceding four years; the need for greater effort to brighten the lives of children; and the modernising of certain facilities in the schools. In January 1958, the Department of Finance sanctioned an increase of 15/- in the State capitation rate for Industrial and Reformatory Schools with a corresponding increase in the local authority contribution.

By 1967, when another increase was sought, circumstances had changed. The religious Orders were described as ‘gravely dissatisfied’ with the last increase and it appears that threats had been made about closing all the schools. The Department believed that this was not such a remote possibility as might be thought and that it would, if it happened, constitute a ‘national disaster’ because the cost of maintaining children would at least be doubled; for in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the cost was some three or four times the cost in Ireland. In those circumstances, the Department recommended that a substantial interim increase was warranted, even pending the outcome of the Kennedy Report, of 21/- per week. The Department of Finance’s response, in February 1968, was that the proposed increase was disproportionate and also untimely, while the system was being examined by Kennedy. Nevertheless, as an exceptional measure, Finance was agreeable to a 15/- increase.

The Department of Education submitted: Records of the Department of Finance which were discovered to the Commission indicate that in June 1969, the then Minister for Finance, Mr Charles Haughey, had met with a group known as the Friends of Industrial Schools and indicated that he would authorise a doubling of the capitation grant in respect of children in industrial schools. The Department of Finance subsequently notified the Department of Education of the Minister’s decision.. The Department of Education records also indicate that the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, inquired from the Department about the capitation grant prior to its doubling and was informed of its increase in letters from the Department respectively dated 19 September 1969 and 24 October 1969.

Many of the same themes recurred in each of the negotiations between the 1940s and the 1970s. The Resident Managers emphasised the increasing cost of living and made comparisons with British and Northern Irish fees, and with prisons or private schools. As discussed above, the Department responded by asking for detailed accounts from the schools, justifying the request by the need to persuade the Department of Finance of the case for the increase.

At least as early as September 1955, the Department of Finance raised the reasonable suggestion of closing one-third of the schools in order to allow the remaining schools to operate at full capacity and become financially viable.

The Department of Education, in its detailed submissions to the Committee, accepted that the schools were badly funded by the State. The Department’s position down through the years was generally sympathetic to the pleas of the institutions through the Resident Managers’ Association for increases in the capitation grant. The situation in the 1960s brought matters to a head. Numbers were falling dramatically and with that income was dropping.

The dwindling funds caused by falling numbers worsened because of the failure to rationalise the system and close most of the schools as was suggested as early as 1955 by the Department of Finance. A letter dated December 1964 to the Department of Finance backed the Resident Managers and asked for more funds rather than school closures: We are satisfied that the present grants are insufficient to meet the current expenditure of the schools and very many of them, if not the vast majority, can subsist only by meeting the continuing deficits from income from other activities of the communities or by charitable donations or by accumulating debt, the last mentioned occurring even in schools conducted by nuns who are noted for prudent management. Further expenditure in the schools is confined to bare necessities as their incomes will not allow of any of the many improvements deemed necessary by this Department... It should also be borne in mind that the school premises have all been provided free of cost to the State and in the matter of structural improvements or repairs they qualify for State aid on the day-school portion of the premises only. It had been claimed in the past that the capitation grants contained some unspecified element in respect of buildings maintenance but such, in fact, was not the case. These institutions have been treated so parsimoniously by the State that there is now grave danger that the goodwill of the religious orders concerned will be lost and it is unnecessary to indicate the enormous extra cost which will be involved were they to give up the work and be replaced by lay staff.