122 entries for Finance

In her report of March 1958, however, a more critical tone emerged. She remarked that the School was well run but not as efficient as it could be. Again, she made reference to the lack of initiative on the part of management in making changes in the School. She referred to the children using the field from the national school for play and not having facilities on their own premises. The Department Inspector, Mr Sugrue, visited the School in September 1958, and wrote a report. The main purpose of his visit appeared to have been the lack of recreational facilities in the School. He stated that he was ‘quite satisfied with the general catering for the children’s welfare apart from recreational facilities’, adding that, ‘There is a great need for a Recreational Hall and for better facilities for outdoor games and pastimes’. He went on to say that he had discussed this need with the Reverend Mother and the other nuns in charge of running the Industrial School, including the Resident Manager and the Sister in charge, pointing out to her that such improvements in recreational facilities had not been pressed upon the School greatly, due to the low level of the grant, but now that the grants had been increased substantially, he was insisting on efforts being made to remedy these defects. He suggested converting part of the old vacant national school buildings into a recreational hall, and the playground attached to the national school could be made available as a playground. He also pointed out that the children could use two tennis courts adjacent to the School. Having discussed these ideas with the nuns in question, he found them to be enthusiastic about carrying out his suggested improvements.

In September 1940, the Bishop of Ossory, Bishop Patrick Collier, wrote to the Kilkenny Journal in support of an appeal by the Sisters for charitable funding from the people of the diocese. In that letter, he spelled out very clearly the high regard he had for the work of the Sisters: Without looking for a penny for themselves, these devoted Religious give their time and talents to their little Charges with a loving care surpassing that of natural parents. It is only just and right that their lives should be kept free from the nightmare of want, and the constant fight to pay their way.

The Bishop directed that his letter, together with a letter from the Reverend Mother, should be read at all masses. The Reverend Mother’s letter was also printed by the newspaper. She explained that St Patrick’s had 186 children aged between one and 10. Out of this, only 135 were in receipt of the full State grant of 12 shillings per week. Another 27 were aged between four and six, and were paid for at a rate of 10 shillings per week. In addition, the School had about 24 children under four years of age, for whom the Government did not pay any grant: These we admit when our room allows, to save them from destitution and the dangers of Proselytism.

The large number of additional children put a strain on the finances. Industrial schools were not intended for babies but this was a time of great poverty in Ireland and clearly the Sisters were faced with hard choices. The choices made impacted on the level of care available to the children who had been committed by the courts and in respect of whom funding was made available by the State. It was the children as well as the Sisters who made the sacrifices for the babies taken in by St Patrick’s.

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.

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.

In a report on a visit to St Joseph’s, Kilkenny dated 25th April 1979, the author met with Sr Astrid and was made aware of a number of her concerns with regard to the difficulties still being experienced by short-term children fitting into the outside schools, where they underwent the double trauma of change from their own homes to residential care and out of the residential home into a strange school. She also drew his attention to the fact that, after prolonged negotiation, the social worker who had been released from the South Eastern Health Board (SEHB) to work in St Joseph’s for a two-year period had now been recalled to normal duty, due to staff shortages in the SEHB. Finally, she requested grant assistance for the aftercare residence under construction.

Originally, the School was funded by the Catholic Institute for the Deaf. They received a grant from the local authorities where the children came from. The school made an application to the Catholic Institute for funding based on the number of days each child was resident in the school. The remainder of the funding came from charitable bequests or fundraising. It was not until 1952 when the School was officially recognised by the Department of Education as a special school that it received funding from the Department. The Department of Health later assumed responsibility for the residential aspects of the School.

In 1960 the grant paid by the local authorities for the maintenance of the children amounted to £80.00 per pupil per year. In a letter from the Department of Education to the Department of Finance seeking an increase in the staffing levels dated 1st March 1960, the Department officials pointed out that this figure of £80 was insufficient to maintain a child in the School. They also asserted that ‘no other maintenance grant’ was provided to the nuns. Reference was also made to the high cost of hearing equipment necessary for deaf children. For example, in 1960 a group hearing aid consisting of a large table with plastic top, microphones and wiring for 12 individual hearing aids cost £250.

A report for the Department of Education in 1952 noted that there were 177 pupils in the school aged between four and 18 years. The staff consisted of six nuns and six lay teachers who were assisted by five deaf adults. Two of the nuns were fully trained as teachers of the deaf and the remaining staff members had experience in teaching the deaf but their qualifications were ‘approximate to the qualification of untrained teachers’. The report commented that the premises and equipment were excellent and ‘that the whole direction shows an enthusiasm, vision and progressiveness which should make the institution a model not alone for this but for other countries’. The Department felt that a staff of 12 teachers would be needed for the recognition of the school together with a new set of minimum qualification requirements for teachers, assistants and Principals. The teacher pupil ratio was to be 14:1. The Department sought the approval of the Department of Finance for these proposals on 1st August 1952.

In 1955, the Department of Finance sanctioned the pupil teacher ratio for the school at 10 pupils to one teacher which was to be calculated on the basis of the number of children ‘in average attendance’ in a year. On 27th January 1960 the Department of Education wrote to the Department of Finance seeking to change the requirement of staffing levels based on the number of children in attendance in a year to the number of children enrolled in the school in any given year. The reason was that the numbers of children in attendance often fluctuated due to illness and hospitalisation. The Department also pointed out in this letter that: ...The authorities of the Department of Education of the Deaf at Manchester University have been reported as being of opinion that St. Mary’s is one of the leading schools for deaf in the world and that there are only two others – one in Holland and the other in America – to compare with it.