884 entries for Government Department

The Department of Finance refused the request and stated that the staffing levels in the school were ‘already liberal comparing favourably even with the special quotas for other categories of handicapped children...’. The Department of Education replied by letter dated 1st March 1960 and argued that the only correct basis of comparison of staffing levels could be made with deaf schools in other countries and not with other special schools. They pointed out that in deaf schools in England there was one teacher to every eight students on the rolls and such a similar basis operated in the United States. In English deaf schools, children were not removed from the school rolls even when they were in hospital, unlike their Irish counterparts who had to remove their names from the rolls when in hospital. On 22nd March 1960, the Department of Finance capitulated.

In the late 1950s the School began providing secondary education. At that time the number of students was quite small and the School was able to meet the needs of these students either within the primary staff quota or with minimal extra teachers. It operated along the lines of the secondary top model where primary teachers taught primary classes in the mornings and taught various subjects to students for the Intermediate and Leaving Certificates in the afternoons. From the mid-1960s the demand for post-primary education grew. The School responded to the demand by employing more teachers. The Department of Education was not directly involved with the provision of post-primary education and it was only with the publication of the 1965 Report on Mental Handicap that the State gradually became more involved not only in the provision of special schools and services for the learning disabled but also in the areas of education of the deaf and the blind.

The Department were anxious that serious consideration be given to the amalgamation of both schools at least at post-primary level. In their view, the post-primary sections of both schools were overstaffed and not understaffed as contended by both school principals.

In correspondence between the Department of Education Special Schools section and the Manager of St Mary’s commencing in February 1965, the Sisters pressed the Department to sanction an extra teacher and a financial contribution towards the cost of a prefabricated building in which they proposed to establish a special class for emotionally disturbed deaf girls. The Department had no objection in principle to this proposal provided the staff pupil ratio was maintained at agreed levels.

The Department of Education decided in 1990 that their policy should be pragmatic and flexible and open to all aspects of education of the deaf including the communication issue. They decided they would have a caring and flexible system of education of every deaf child from an early age and certain modes of communication should not be seen as mutually exclusive or as having inherent or distinct qualities which made them better than others. Special schools should be encouraged to base their methods on real needs of the children not on any particular approach to the education of the deaf. Regular reviews of programmes of work and individual progress would be undertaken. With regard to post-primary education the Department saw the way forward to amalgamate St Mary’s and St Joseph’s in Cabra into a single community-type post-primary school.

In July 1955, at the request of the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid, the Provincial Superior of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liege, met officials from the Department of Education with a proposal to establish a school for deaf boys aged between three and 10 years in Beechpark, Stillorgan, County Dublin.

These proposals were subsequently formalised in a letter from the Provincial Superior to the Department of Education seeking recognition of Beechpark, Stillorgan as a residential school for deaf boys between the ages of three and 10 years.

The Department having obtained the necessary sanction from the Department of Finance gave recognition to the School on the basis of the Congregation’s proposals on 10th April 1956. The School was named ‘Mary Immaculate School for Deaf Boys’. The School patron was the Archbishop of Dublin and it was owned and managed by the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liege. The School closed in 1998 due to lack of pupils.

The result is that the investigation into the School was confined to a review of the discovered material produced by the Department of Education and Science, the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liege, the Garda Síochana, the Archbishop of Dublin and the statements furnished. The discovered material was limited in nature. A review of the discovery documents furnished did not provide any contemporary evidence to substantiate complaints. The school log, which was carefully maintained, recorded activities and outings. Progress reports on the children were maintained. The reports of the Department of Education Inspectors on the teachers were satisfactory. There are no records of complaints by parents to either the School or the Department of Education.

The issue of sexual activity amongst boys in Upton came to the attention of the Department of Education in 1936, when it was notified by the Attorney General’s office about criminal cases that had come before Cork Circuit Court, involving former residents of both Greenmount and Upton Industrial Schools. The facts were that two former pupils of Upton, aged 19 and 16 years respectively, were convicted of crimes including attempted buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault. The boys were sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.

The Department informed the Attorney General’s office on 30th December 1936 of the outcome of the special investigation, and that the Minister for Education was ‘satisfied that everything possible is now being done to stamp out and to prevent a re-currence of the practices referred to in the cases in question’. The letter added that the Minister ‘also approved of a suggestion that the Inspector of Industrial Schools should impress upon managers of Boys’ Schools the danger of such practices existing and the importance of continual and close supervision of the senior boys’.

An unwelcome consequence of this Garda investigation for the School management was the renewed attention of the Department of Education. The Superintendent of Bandon Gardaí informed the Inspector of the Department of Education in 1944 of the charges being brought against the three boys. An internal enquiry was mooted by the Department of Education, but it was decided that there was no point in writing to the Resident Manager of Upton to ask him ‘to explain how these acts went undetected until it had been proved that they took place’, i.e. until after the court cases. Such an enquiry never went ahead, presumably because there were no prosecutions.

The Department was unsure as to how it should deal with the situation, but eventually decided almost two months later to write to the Resident Manager to express the ‘Minister’s grave concern at the continued prevalence of this serious vice in the School’. This the Inspector of Industrial Schools duly did, by letter dated early the following year. He expressed in very strong terms his concern on behalf of the Minister of the ‘continued prevalence of sodomy amongst the boys’ in Upton, and he specifically drew attention to the 1936 Special Inspection, whereby the need for tighter supervision of senior boys was stressed to the Resident Manager at the time. The letter also expressed, even more forcefully, the burden on the Minister who, as the regulator of all industrial schools, was placed in a grave predicament when these allegations of sodomy arose. In order to impress upon the Resident Manager the urgency and problem posed by sexual abuse amongst the boys, he threatened that the school certificate would be withdrawn if radical action was not taken to eradicate the problem: The danger that this is so places a burden of the gravest responsibility on the Minister, since it is by virtue of his continued recognition of the School as an industrial school that a steady stream of young boys are sent there under the Children Acts. If it should become clear that this ruinous vice has taken firm root in your school and cannot be eradicated so that boys are exposed to an abnormal degree to the danger of indulging in it, the Minister may feel bound to withdraw his recognition from the School.

The Department of Education and Science furnished, as part of the discovery process, General and Medical Inspection Reports for Upton spanning the period 1939 to 1966. Although a number of them are missing for various years, they are a valuable source of information on the conditions that prevailed in the School at the time. These documents allowed the Committee to view complainants’ evidence in the light of contemporary records.

The Department’s Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, considered the School ‘well run’ and the premises ‘well kept’ for the most part. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, her reports reflect anticipation of improvements in general living conditions, but any such improvements occurred very slowly. A difficulty with Dr McCabe’s reports is the fact that no specific information is provided as to the actual condition of the School or the nature of the improvements needed. The food and clothing of the boys were the two main areas with which she was least satisfied, and these are discussed in detail in the paragraphs below.