§ CAPTAIN CRAIG (Down, E.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he has yet taken any steps towards releasing the two Protestant boys, William and Samuel Welsh, from the Nazareth Roman Catholic Industrial School, Belfast, who are detained there against the expressed wish of their father, who is willing and able to maintain them.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BIRRELL, Bristol, N.)The children referred to were committed to the Nazareth Lodge Industrial School on 4th August, 1906. It was proved in evidence that the children's mother had died shortly before, and that the father had left the children with his own mother saying that she could do what she liked with them as he was going to work his passage to Canada. The grandmother was unable to support the children, and they had been subsisting on charity. Certificates of baptism of the children as Roman Catholics were produced and attached to the records of the Court, and it was stated that the father himself was of that religion. I have received from a solicitor an application for the release of the children, but up to the present no evidence has been adduced that the father is now a Protestant or that, in fact, he desires the release of the children. If such evidence should be forthcoming, I will give the case full consideration.
§ MR. T. L. CORBETT (Down, N.)Will the right hon. Gentleman further inquire into the facts?
§ MR. BIRRELLI have learned that the father wanders about without a shirt. From that I draw no inference.