884 entries for Government Department

The Sisters went ahead with their plans. They altered the existing buildings and acquired two houses in a nearby housing estate, half a mile away, to set up two ‘family-type’ houses. This was done without sanction from the Department of Education, which was presented with the problem of whether to finance the venture, when it had not sanctioned it in advance. The Department of Finance refused the request for extra funding.

The case was made by the Secretary of the Department of Education to the Department of Finance on behalf of the Sisters of Charity in a memorandum dated 7th October 1969. It stated that St Joseph’s, Kilkenny was a well-run school and, in the view of the Minister, would always have a place in the field of childcare: not alone for its success as an industrial school, but, because of the considerable increase in costs if it were to be replaced by an institution under lay management.

The Department of Finance refused to make the payment, as provision in the Vote for the Office of Public Works for school building was already over-expended.

The Department of Education wrote again to Finance on 2nd March 1970, advising them that they had a surplus of £15,000 from the Reformatory and Industrial School budget, and wondered if they could pay this out to the Sisters. The Department of Finance gave their sanction and the money was paid.

Much of the correspondence in 1973 between the Department of Education and the Resident Manager related to finance. It is clear from this correspondence that the Department officials were very much on the side of the Sisters of Charity. As far as they were concerned, St Joseph’s was one of the most progressive schools in the country and had carried out extensive works of adaptation and purchase of property to form self-contained group homes. Since 1968, the Sisters had expended a total of £80,000, and the State had contributed £24,000 towards it by 1973. The Department was critical of how the Sisters had embarked on such a substantial programme of development, but was in no doubt that the augmented capitation grants were being put to proper use. The properties acquired were vested in the Sisters and not in the State, and the Department of Finance was reluctant to give grants towards the acquisition of property on which it would have no claim.

After the decision to take in young boys in 1966, the Department of Education Inspectors recommended that St Joseph’s should employ male staff to help care for them. The first of these carers was Thomas Pleece.

In 1979, less than three years after Mr Pleece had been dispatched from St Joseph’s, a letter was sent to Sr Astrid by the Department of Education looking for a reference. It said: I wish to refer to Mr. Thomas Pleece, who has been offered a post as Housemaster in Scoil Ard Mhuire, Lusk, Co Dublin. Mr. Pleece has claimed service in your residential home from 1972 to 1976. Perhaps you would be good enough to state; 1. the nature of the post occupied by Mr. Pleece; 2. whether service was full-time and satisfactory; 3. the first and last date of service.

Despite running the childcare course in residential care in Kilkenny, she was living with a residential institution on her doorstep, and she knew nothing about what was going on inside it. Sr Wilma attended a number of meetings with Bishop Birch and the Department of Education. She also signed a report on proposed changes about to take place in St Joseph’s. She acknowledged that a newspaper article written by her in 1999, which asserted that she had nothing whatsoever to do with St Joseph’s, was not entirely accurate.

Sr Wilma said the idea came from Bishop Birch, and she drew up an outline for the course which was presented to the Department of Education. They agreed to fund it, and it was eventually recognised as an official qualification in residential childcare, and was also recognised by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work in London. Both she and Mr Pat Brennan31 had considerable experience in social work and working with children, but neither of them had actually worked in residential childcare.

Mr Brennan, who was the Director of the Kilkenny Diploma Course in Residential Childcare, described the course and the training it offered. The course, which ran for 10 years from 1971 to 1981, came about as a result of the recommendations in the Kennedy Report. Bishop Birch offered the Department of Education a house in Kilkenny, and the Bishop sponsored and designed the course. Mr Brennan was acquainted with Bishop Birch and was offered the job of running the course. Sr Wilma was one of the lecturers on the course on a part-time basis. Students who attended the course were sent on placements for in-house training, and St Joseph’s was one of the placement centres. He believed that Sr Wilma was the supervisor of the placements in St Joseph’s; it was considered to be her domain and, as a result, he had very little to do with St Joseph’s.

Sr Astrid continued as Resident Manager of St Joseph’s until 1986, when she was replaced by Sr Livia.32 This was a turbulent period for the Institution, when established methods were questioned, particularly by qualified lay staff who were employed there. The documentation revealed a degree of tension between the Department of Education and the Resident Manager about keeping numbers down. The School was perceived as having too many children to care for any of them properly, although this was not a view shared by the Sisters.

This was a period of transition between the Department of Education and the Department of Health. Responsibility for St Joseph’s was transferred to the Department of Health in January 1984.

The reason for the Department of Education’s dissatisfaction with the large numbers in Kilkenny is evidenced by a four-page letter dated 8th May 1978. In this letter, Thomas O’Gilin of the Department of Education invited Mr T O’Dwyer, Principal Officer in the Department of Health, to meet and discuss the question of the future development of residential homes. He set out the changes that had taken place over the years since the Kennedy Report in the area of building programmes and in the declining number of children committed through the courts and the ISPCC. This had led to a situation where, in most cases, the homes’ finance for current costs came from the Health Boards who had the largest number of placements, yet responsibility for capital financing still remained entirely with the Department of Education. This created the anomaly because provision of capital money entailed a planning function, but the information needed for planning for future needs had to come from the Health Boards who were placing the majority of the children. The Task Force currently studying the situation were most likely to recommend the transfer of responsibility for residential homes to the Department of Health but, in the meantime, many urgent problems existed that required the co-operation of the two Departments.

St Joseph’s asked the Department in late 1983 to sanction a remedial teacher to be attached to the School. The difficulty for the School centred around the fact that local schools were unwilling to cater for children on ‘short term’ stay in St Joseph’s. On 16th February, officials from the Department of Education, Department of Health and South Eastern Health Board met to discuss the special educational needs of short-term referrals, where it was agreed that the Department of Education would consider approving the services of an extra teacher, on a trial basis, to cater for the needs of these children.