§ MR. MORRISI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is yet in a position to state the terms of reference to the Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland, and the names of the gentlemen who are to serve on the same.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURWithin the last hour or two I have been placed in a position to answer my hon. friend's question, and I am very sorry, for reasons which will suggest themselves to all interested in this matter, that I have not been able at an earlier date to give any information to the House on this subject. The reference to the Commission is in the following terms—
To inquire into the present condition of the higher general and technical education available in Ireland outside Trinity College, Dublin, and to report as to what reforms, if any, are desirable in order to render that education adequate to the needs of the Irish people.The members of the Commission are twelve. The Chairman is Lord Robertson, formerly a well-known Member of this House as Lord Advocate, late Lord Justice General, and now one of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. I will read the other names in alphabetical order—Professor Butcher, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellow of University College, Oxford, and Professor of Greek in Edinburgh University; the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clonfert, Senator of the Royal University of Ireland; Professor Ewing, Professor of Mechanism and applied Mechanics, Cambridge University; Sir Richard Jebb, a Member of this House, Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge University; Mr. Justice Madden, well-known to Members of this House; Lord Ridley, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Professor Rhys, Professor of Celtic in Oxford University, and Principal of Jesus College Oxford; Professor Rucker, Fellow and late secretary of the Royal Society, Professor of Physics at the Royal College of Science, London, and one of our most distinguished physicists; Professor J. Lorrain Smith, Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology in Queen's College, Belfast; Mr. Starkie, Resident Commissioner of National Education in Ireland, and formerly President of Queen's 926 College, Galway; and Mr. Wilfrid Ward, ate Examiner in Mental and Moral Science at the Royal University of Ireland. Of these twelve, four are Irishmen and resident in Ireland, the rest are resident in Great Britain. Three are Roman Catholics, and the other nine are Protestants.