884 entries for Government Department

The Department of Education wrote to the relevant authorities, including the Departments of Health and Justice, District Justice McCarthy and the NSPCC, informing them of the decision in the following terms: As you are aware it has been decided by the Provincial of the Irish Christian Brothers that the Industrial School at Letterfrack is to be reserved in future for the boys brought before the Court and found guilty of an offence which in the case of an adult, would be punishable by penal servitude and also for boys against whom there is a police record of such an offence even though they have not been charged with it, but with some other offence such as irregular school attendance, begging, etc.

On 30th September 1954 the Department of Education records showed there were 87 boys resident in Letterfrack. The vast majority of these boys who remained in Letterfrack were there through no fault of their own, but they found themselves in what was effectively a junior reformatory from 1954 onwards. This situation continued until the Kennedy Committee (1970) stated at Section 6.12 of its Report: No junior reformatory exists for the detention of youthful offenders under twelve these, on conviction, being normally sent to Industrial Schools. As the bulk of boys in this age group are however, sent to the Industrial School at Letterfrack, Co. Galway, it was decided to treat this institution as a junior reformatory.

The fate of these boys in Letterfrack was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of industrial schools. Their individual needs were completely disregarded by the Congregation and the Department of Education. The perceived problem of having offenders and non-offenders in the same institution was never remedied and was actually programmed to continue for the foreseeable future.

He described the reasoning behind the decision by the new Provincial to segregate different categories of boys. He confirmed that the Department of Education and the Justices were not in favour, but the Provincial eventually prevailed upon them that this was to be the future of the industrial schools: So the Provincial sent me word that in due course I should send off any boys in the school who were not guilty of indictable offences and I should receive only into the school those boys who were indicted. So, on the 4th September, 1954 (‘twas I think) I sent off 99 boys from Letterfrack out of the 184. We were left with 85. Now, that immediately left us in a crippling position because the finances in ordinary circumstances were miserably small and we had at least 12 employees. We had a carpenter, a shoemaker, a tailor, a baker, a knitter. We had a laundress. We had three at least, if not four men working on the farm and all of these had to be paid a weekly wage. Now, where it was to come from was your guess as well as mine, but I had to face it. I was promised that the end of the year, Christmas, that I’d get a subvention from the other schools to help out of the difficulty. When I applied for a subvention at Christmas, I was told it was impossible, there was nothing doing. So you can see the position was worrying. It was either close all the shops, dismiss all the employees, but what were we going to do. The boys had no occupation, boys that had no trade, nothing to recommend them when they left the schools. Nothing to help them for a future life when they left school, nothing. So we had to make some attempt to struggle on.

By 1956 the effect of the change in finances in the Institution began to become more clear in the reports from Dr McCabe, the Department of Education Inspector, when she noted that ‘my suggestions have been brought into operation but still the “old system” is used for cooking – no other facilities’. She made the following general observation: Well conducted school on the whole – Of course, there are many improvements I would like to see – better clothes, better living conditions – better cooking facilities – but as usual when I mention these things I am always told – “we have no money” “it can’t be done” “get into debt” – so while I realise that expense comes into the argument so long as the boys are reasonably well clothed and fed there is very little else I can do.

The Congregation did not avail themselves of the public interest in the matter to confirm their own view that industrial schools were inadequately funded but rather went to some trouble to support the Department of Education’s contention that funding was adequate.

The Department received another complaint in August 1959. (Details of this complaint are dealt with above in connection with food as the main complaint related to food.) The mother concerned also complained, inter alia, about the clothing supplied to the boys. The Resident Manager responded to that portion of the complaint in the following terms: The boys’ clothes are kept clean as far as is humanly possible. The boys’ day shirts, singlets and trunks are washed weekly and inspected in the dormitory each morning. Clothing for the year 1958 totalled £1,235 – 17 – 4, which gives an average of over £12 per boy for the year.

Following the Committee’s visit the Resident Manager wrote to Mr McDevitt in the Department of Education on 31st December 1962, saying that a new oven had been purchased and that ‘I have already purchased about 50 tweed and gabardine overcoats for the boys and I hope to have one for each boy in the very near future’.

A Department of Education official followed up on the Interdepartmental Committee, with a more thorough investigation into the education provided in Letterfrack, and reported in 1963.

A Department of Education report later in the year made a number of recommendations to remedy the problems facing the staff in Letterfrack, including having the children professionally assessed. Importantly, this report recognised the need to compensate children in industrial schools for the fact that they were there. Among its many recommendations it stated: It would be necessary to provide children in care with more than the normal educational facilities. It would, in other words, be necessary to overcompensate for deprivation.

An examination of the records of the Department of Education reveals that, invariably, applications for early release were initiated by the parents, very often through the offices of a local public representative. There does not appear to have been a system whereby a child’s case or sentence was automatically reviewed to establish if any of the criteria for an early release were present.65

There are no records concerning application for early release prior to the late 1950s in the Letterfrack discovery from the Department of Education.

The father wrote to the President of Ireland in September 1963, pleading with him to have his son released. He stated that the boy had developed psoriasis from worry and anxiety that had required hospitalisation. He stated that the boy was medically fit going to Letterfrack and ‘as God forgave us all our transgressions why should there not be forgiveness for a child’. The letter was passed to the Department of Education by the Office of the President. The boy remained in Letterfrack.

In the late 1960s a boy, William,11 absconded from Tralee, and was apprehended and severely punished by Br Millard. He informed his parents who complained to their local TD, who in turn wrote to the school and the Department of Education.

The TD sent the same letter of complaint to the Department of Education, and it was replied to with an undertaking to look into the matter.