HC Deb 29 March 1906 vol 154 cc1545-6
* MR. BOLAND

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland by whom was the decision given which was communicated by the Lord-Lieutenant to the Intermediate Commissioner in the year 1904, to the effect that permanent inspectors of the schools were not to be appointed until the parts which inspection and examination should respectively play in the dis- tribution of State aid to intermediate schools had been determined; whether he is aware that the chairman and vice-chairman of the Board of Intermediate Education are the Lord Chief Baron and Mr. Justice Madden, and that, in the face of the decision above referred to, these Judges signed a Report which states that the absence of inspection of the intermediate schools is a violation of the statutory obligations imposed by the Act of 1900, and that the Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury and the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland are responsible for that violation of the law; and whether, seeing that the Intermediate Commissioners have been appealing year after year to the Government, in the interest of education, to permit the appointment of permanent inspectors, he will take some immediate steps to end this state of things in the interests of schools and education in Ireland.

MR. BRYCE

The decision referred to in the first part of the Question was the act of the Irish Government. I am aware that the Board of Intermediate Education in their annual Report for 1905 expressed the opinion that the Irish Government and the Treasury had failed to fulfil the obligations imposed on them by the Act of 1900 in regard to the inspection of intermediate schools. It must, however, be remembered that what the Irish Government in the time of my predecessors did was to refuse their approval to the appointment of permanent as distinct from temporary inspectors, and the Government still considers it undesirable to create fresh vested interests in a department which may be the subject of some change. The matter will continue to receive my attention, but I am unable to make any definite statement on the subject at present.