§ DR. AMBROSE (Mayo, W.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the emigration from the province of Munster in the year 1900, namely, 17,933, or 15.3 per 1,000 of the population of the whole province, and, seeing that Munster is, agriculturally, the richest province in Ireland, whether he has any official information showing why the emigration from it is as large as that from the poorest province, Connaught, where the majority of the holdings are not large enough to support a family, and where the fertile portions are in the hands of the minority; and whether he will this session introduce legislation which may induce these emigrants from Ireland to remain at home.
§ MR. ATKINSONThe, statistics in the first part of the question are correct. There is no official information showing to what causes this emigration is due, though I conceive it is attributable to the state of the labour market abroad. I fail to see how legislation could be designed to interfere with the demand for labour.