§ MR. FIELD (Dublin, St. Patrick)To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether he can state what the annual average cost has been to the public for the last ten years of maintaining the garden for the private use of the officer in charge of the Ordnance Survey, Dublin; whether the labourers of the Ordnance Survey perform this as well as the work of making hay; and whether he can give the names of the officers successively in charge of the Irish survey during the same period.
(Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) The Ordnance Survey offices occupy a group of Government buildings in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, and an officer and a detachment of Royal Engineers are also quartered in these buildings. The garden and grounds adjoining, which comprise some five acres, are kept up by labourers of the Ordnance Survey, and the average annual cost of this work for the last ten years has been £231. The following officers have successively occupied this Government quarter during the last ten years:—Lieutenant-Colonel Hellard, August, 1896, to March, 1899. Lieutenant-Colonel Sim, April, 1899, to September, 1904. Lieutenant - Colonel Meres, October, 1904, to June, 1905. Major Buckland, June, 1905 to present date. The garden and grounds in question are in full view of the Phoenix Park, and they cannot be regarded as being maintained solely for the personal pleasure of the officer in charge of the Ordnance Survey, whose emoluments are quite inadequate to enable him to do so at his own expense.