4,228 entries for Finance

In February 1955, the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers wrote to the Department recommending that qualified teachers should be provided to train the children in trades. Over a decade later, the situation appears to have remained unaltered. In 1966 a delegation from the Junior Chamber of Commerce was sent to Artane Industrial School to ascertain what could be done to help. Their report identified difficulties with the industrial training provided, specifically that the workshops and equipment were out of date. The authors of the report considered the training the boys received was not adequate and would not allow them to achieve employment in their craft. It also commented that, even if a boy became proficient in a trade, his training would not be recognised by a trade union.

About the same time, a letter of 10th February 1966 by Department of Education, replying to a letter from Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers, stated: In the matter, however, of entry of industrial school pupils to Coláiste Mhuire, Cathal Brugha Street, an Agricultural School or College, Commercial School or the Civil Service, it would be extremely unusual for any person to enter any of these before at the very least seventeen years of age. The normal entry to them would be at about eighteen years of age. On the other hand, it is unusual for children to remain in industrial schools after sixteen, which is the statutory term of their committal. There is, however, another reason why it would be unlikely that children from industrial schools should enter such institutions as you mention. It is that entry is by competition, usually on the basis of a written examination and that the great majority of children in industrial schools are there on the grounds of ‘lack of proper guardianship’. This means that they come from unsettled homes; from which most of them have not been regular attendees at school and so are educationally retarded. Their chances at a competitive examination are therefore small indeed and so, as far as I know, there are none of them at the institution mentioned.

The legislation that established the Industrial Schools system expressly provided State funding for maintenance of the children, but not for the establishment of schools themselves. The Children Act 1908 continued this capitation grant system.

The Industrial Schools were owned by the religious Orders who provided the buildings and farms, and they were responsible for improvements, alterations, extensions, renewals and repairs. The expenses for renovations and repairs were to be paid for out of the private resources of the congregations and by charitable donations.

By paying for the children rather than the institution the British administration avoided the delicate issue of whether to give money directly to religious denominations. Protestant and Roman Catholic communities were fearful of either side being given too much power by the authorities.

Local authorities were obliged under the 1908 Children Act to provide for the maintenance and reception of offenders in Reformatory and Industrial Schools. They did not have to pay for children who were admitted on the application of their parents or guardians or for children whose parents were unable to look after them. Also they were exempt if the parents had committed an offence punishable by imprisonment that resulted in their children detained.

Unlike the State however, the local Authorities did have to pay for children in excess of the certification limit and for children under the age of six.

These provisions were altered in changes made in 1944 (see below).

Most of the children who were placed in Industrial Schools came from backgrounds of poverty and deprivation. If the State saw fit to remove a child from its parents because the child was at risk of malnutrition and neglect, it had an obligation to ensure that the institution into which the child was placed did not also put it at risk of malnutrition and neglect. In other words, the capitation grant had to be large enough to keep a child adequately, so that a proper standard of care was provided.

The Department of Education’s Rules and Regulations were clear as to what the minimum standards were. Rule 5 stipulated that the children shall be supplied with neat, comfortable clothing in good repair, suitable to the season of the year, not necessarily uniform either in material or colour.

Rule 6 provided minimum standards for an adequate diet: The Children shall be supplied with plain wholesome food, according to a Scale of Dietary to be drawn up by the Medical Officer of the School and approved by the Inspector. Such food shall be suitable in every aspect for growing children actively employed and supplemented in the case of delicate or physically under-developed children with special food as individual needs require. No substantial alterations in the Dietary shall be made without previous notice to the Inspector. A copy of the Dietary shall be given to the Cook and a further copy kept in the Manager’s Office.

It was the responsibility of the Department to ensure adequate Finance for these minimum standards of care, and it was the responsibility of the Resident Manager to ensure they were maintained. From time to time tensions arose because one or other failed in its obligations: the Department could let funding become inadequate or the Resident Manager could allow basic living conditions to fall below the standards set by the rules.

During the period under investigation, this argument about funding was constant, and for the most part the Department sided with the Resident Managers. An internal Education Department memorandum to the Minister in 1967 wrote that it was ‘in no position to defend its achievement as far as the size of grant goes’.1

A central figure in this argument was the Department’s medical inspector, whose role included ensuring that basic conditions such as food and clothing and living conditions were appropriate to promote general health. In many instances she accused the school of negligent mismanagement of the funds, but she could also take the side of the Resident Manager and argue that funding was inadequate to meet basic needs.

The fundamental question, whether the State fulfilled its obligations under law to provide the basic needs of children in care, is not an easy one, and perhaps no definitive answer is possible.