§ MR. TIMOTHY HEALYI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he is aware that after the passing of the Irish Judicature Act, between 1879 and 1895 the sum of £91,525, being the amount of the unclaimed dividends of Irish bankrupts, was transferred to London from Dublin; what has become of this money, and is it available for expenditure on purely British purposes; is there a further sum of £5,000, now awaiting transfer to England, in the Irish Bankruptcy Court; what will be done with this money; and would he devise a scheme to allow purely Irish funds to remain in or be spent on an Irish account, considering that the stamps payable in bankruptcy in Ireland in 1898 amount to £2,856, all of which went to the Imperial Revenue?
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURYSubject to the correction of the figure £91,525 for £19,000, the first part of the Question is correct. By Statute all the unclaimed dividends on stock accrue, not for British purposes, but for the reduction of the National Debt, which concerns the United Kingdom. As regards the last part, the Bankruptcy Court is a branch of the High Court, and the fees of the High Court fall far short of the administrative expenses.