3 entries for Minister Patrick Hillery

However, the public and sometimes even officials did not appreciate that the Industrial and Reformatory Schools were not primarily for delinquent children and consequently, it was often assumed that the Minister for Justice was responsible for them. The Minister for Justice, in the 1960s and afterwards, on a number of occasions, indicated disquiet at the Department of Education’s performance or made an attempt to urge that Department into reforms. A letter dated October 1963, addressed to the Minister for Education, Patrick Hillery, was drafted for the Minister for Justice, Charles J Haughey. It stated: ...I hope that the Inter-Departmental Committee’s recommendations in relation to Marlborough House and the Industrial School system will find ready acceptance, the more so as the recommendations are subscribed to by the expert from Education on the Committee. In particular I should like to see some action taken to establish Visiting Committees and After-care Committees for the Industrial Schools. Contrary to views held earlier in your Department it has now become apparent that the Managers of schools, such as Artane, are not opposed to such a development.

Rivalry, often amounting to hostility, marked the relations between the two Departments. The Minister for Justice, in the 1960s and afterwards, on a number of occasions, indicated disquiet at the Department of Education’s performance or made an attempt to urge that Department into reforms. For example, a letter dated October 1963, addressed to the Minister for Education, Patrick Hillery, was drafted for the Minister for Justice, Charles J Haughey. It stated: ...I hope that the Inter-Departmental Committee’s recommendations in relation to Marlborough House and the Industrial School system will find ready acceptance, the more so as the recommendations are subscribed to by the expert from Education on the Committee. In particular I should like to see some action taken to establish Visiting Committees and After-care Committees for the Industrial Schools. Contrary to views held earlier in your Department it has now become apparent that the Managers of schools, such as Artane, are not opposed to such a development.

In fact, relatively late – in 1962 – the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders did recommend the establishment of visiting committees for certified schools. Mr Haughey, Minister for Justice, wrote to Dr Patrick Hillery, Minister for Education, commending this proposal and received the following lukewarm and third-person response: In view, of the rejection by the school managers some years ago of this Departments proposal that they be visited by an ad hoc committee of representatives of the Departments of Finance, Social Welfare and Education in connection with the managers appeal, at the time, for improved grants, the Minister is not over-sanguine as to the managers’ attitude to the idea of Visiting Committees. Neither is he clear as to how best such committees, if agreed to, should be brought into existence. He proposes, nevertheless, once more to approach the Managers’ association with the present suggestions.67