§ MR. EDWARD BARRYI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will cause inquiries to be made into the case of the dismissal of Cornelius O'Callaghan, Cloonkeen, Leap, county Cork; whether he is aware that O'Callaghan taught for twenty-nine years without any record against him, and that though his manager wrote for an investigation into the sickness that prevailed amongst the children before the annual examination of 1904 this was refused; and, seeing that for the unsatisfactory answering of the pupils in this one year O'Callaghan was got rid of after twenty-nine years' faithful service without either pension or gratuity of any kind, whether he will order a full inquiry into the whole facts of this case without further delay.
MR. BRYCEI beg to refer to my reply to the hon. Member's previous Question of the 27th March.† I then stated, on the authority of the Commissioners of National Education, that in 1904, and for a series of years previously, the reports on Mr. O'Callaghan's work were of an extremely unfavourable character, and that he had been repeatedly censured and once fined. The Commissioners now inform me that there were, between 1879 and 1904, eleven unfavourable records against this teacher, all on account of inefficiency and the unsatisfactory progress made by his school. I have no power to interfere with the decision of the Commissioners who inform me that they do not intend to re-open the case.