4,228 entries for Historical Context

No special case of under-funding was made for Letterfrack although the much smaller numbers, particularly after 1954, were a cause of considerable hardship to the boys there.

The submission for Tralee adopted a more instructive approach. Although it did make comparisons with UK residential schools, it also set out wages paid to workers in the school for 1945, 1952 and 1962 and compared the stipend paid to all Brothers in the school with those wages. This is explored in more detail below.

Carriglea Park made the same submission in relation to adequacy of capitation as the other Christian Brothers’ schools and, like them, cited the Kennedy Report as support for their position. This school closed in 1954 and, according to the opening statement: A surplus of £25,225 was generated between 1940 and 1954. A number of factors contributed to this surplus, a major one being the age of the building. It was built in 1893 and was not in need of major renovation while the school remained open.......The number of boys in the school was a viable one once it reached its promised certified number of 250 but it was the rises in maintenance grants in 1947 and 1948 that finally brought the accounts out of an annual deficit situation.

This did not appear to be an adequate explanation for the surplus money in this institution at its closure and indicated a significant level of funding until 1954.

Other Congregations made submissions on the question of funding.

In their opening statement, the Oblates compared the cost of caring for a child in a residential institution today with the money paid to the Oblates for doing this job. They adjusted these figures for inflation and concluded that, by current standards, it would have cost the State £10,060 to keep one boy in Daingean in 1950. The Oblates received £52 for keeping each boy there. Much of their submission was based on valuing the work done by the Order for the benefit of the school and this is dealt with fully below.

The Sisters of Mercy made a submission on the issue of funding in its opening statement for Goldenbridge. They stated: From the interview with the former Resident Manager and from the limited records available it is clear that there was a constant struggle to provide even a basic standard of living for the children within the limits of the funding provided to Goldenbridge right through until the 1970s....

The Sisters set out what they understood the capitation grant was intended to cover: The capitation fees......were expected to cover wages and salaries for an average of eight or nine staff, and other overheads such as food and clothing, fuel and light, insurance, repairs to the buildings, purchase and replacement of furniture, recreation expenses, hardware and all the usual household appliances.

Although they did not specifically refer to capital expenses, it would appear from this opening submission that the Sisters did not expect the capitation grant to cover capital costs.

The Sisters related the expenses of Goldenbridge to ordinary household expenses at the time, which they submitted as being a valid comparator: Where annual accounts are available they show that overheads alone accounted for around 60% of the total funding received, leaving just around 40% ...for food, clothes, Medical care and recreational activities. The 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s were difficult times for every household in Ireland struggling to make ends meet on limited incomes and it was no different for the Resident Manager of Goldenbridge. Difficult decisions had to be made on competing needs.

In relation to Newtownforbes, which was a relatively small school with a maximum of 145 children and often with numbers that fell well below that, the Sisters simply asserted: The financial records of Newtownforbes have been made available to the Commission and they indicate that the finances of the industrial school operated within a range of plus or minus 5% of the capitation budget.

In a very real sense, poverty was the reason for the Industrial schools. The result of the adverse economic conditions of the times was that the late 1920s, 30s and 40s were scarred by deep poverty. All the classic signs were there: tuberculosis (‘consumption’); rickets; anaemia; emigration; apathy; money-lending and high unemployment, especially in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Limerick.

An economic depression lasted virtually throughout the 1920s and 30s. The war years, 1939-45, were a period of further economic decline, with urban unemployment and a drop in real wages of 30 percent between 1939 and 1943 and a recovery to the 1939 figure only in 1949. Even then stagnation set in until 1958. Thereafter, the economy grew at an unprecedented rate through the 1960s (about 4 percent pa) and through the 70s in a more patchy way.

Another contributory factor to child poverty was the fact that during the period 1930-80, Irish levels of fertility were consistently the highest in Western Europe. Infant mortality, often invoked as a guide to living standards, was 90 per 1,000 in 1914. Then there was a reduction but it rose significantly during World War II (indeed during the period 1936-48 it remained between 60-80 per 1,000).1 In sum, it was inevitable that one of the major (if seldom noticed) problems of public policy would remain a significant number of poor families. At the root of this poverty was unemployment, coupled with the lack of welfare benefits. Usually the reason for low income was unemployment, which was heavily concentrated in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and especially Dublin. The following Table shows the unemployment rates.

Year	Dublin County Borough	National
Unemployed Figures	Rate as % of those available for work	Unemployed Figures	Rate as % of those available for work
1926	13,580	14.7	66,393	6.9
1936	17,500	13.2	83,235	8.5
1946	13,141	9.7	51,809	5.4
1951	9,293	6.2	36,115	3.8
1956	9,861	6.6	55,157	6.6
1961	8,559	6.1	46,989	5.7
1966	7,514	5.1	43,864	5.3

This general view is confirmed by a number of empirical pioneering surveys in or about the 1940s by doctors or other public-spirited citizens. Writing in 1938 about the general population, Dr Fearon2 estimated that a weekly income of 30 shillings per week would be needed to keep a person, and of this amount the expenditure on food would be 10 shillings for a diet which ‘is almost’ nutritionally adequate. Yet 50 percent of the population had a weekly income of 20 shillings or less and spent 8 shillings or less on food.3 In the same year, the Rotunda Hospital, in inner North Dublin, almoners carried out a dietary survey on a small sample of 50 families living in one-roomed tenements where the breadwinner was unemployed – in other words the families whose children were most likely to be committed. The almoners found that when rent, insurance, fuel and light were paid, the average weekly sum available for food and clothes, for each family member, was 3 shillings.4