§ MR. BLANE (Armagh, S.)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been called to the fact that the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, Cork, and Galway, which receive amongst them a Parliamentary grant of over £5,000 a-year for medical teaching and the repairs and maintenance of buildings, were, at the last examinations of the Royal University of Ireland, beaten in award of first-class honours by the Catholic University School of Medicine, and that those Queen's Colleges were again defeated in the higher test of first-class exhibitions by the Catholic University School of 697 Medicine, which carried off as many exhibitions as the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, Cork, and Galway combined; and whether, under these circumstances, he will consider the advisability of recommending a Parliamentary grant to the School of Medicine of the Catholic University?
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.The Report which I have received, in replying to this Question, suggests that the result of one examination cannot be taken as a fair test, and it would further appear from them that each of the institutions between which a comparison is made could establish a fair claim to pre-eminence if allowed to choose its own test.