SECOND READING. (Hansard, 4 July 1884)

§ LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL)
, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, the subject with which it dealt was one of very considerable interest and importance in Ireland, and one which had had a very strange and melancholy history. For more than a century past the Irish Endowed Schools had been a subject of perpetual complaints and inquiries—the inquiries always to a large extent justifying the complaints—and yet of perpetual inaction. The Journals of the Irish Parliament were filled with complaints of these Schools. Early in the century there was a Royal Commission on the Irish Endowed Schools, and it was reported by the Commission that the schools had not been conducted according to the intentions of their founders. In the year 1813 Sir Robert Peel did something, which certainly was not effectual. He created a body, which was called the Commissioners of Education 15 in Ireland, for the purpose of superintending and controlling the Endowed Schools; but he unfortunately failed to confer upon that body powers which would enable it to perform its duties with success, and the consequence was that that body of Commissioners, for the last 80 years, had—not through any fault of its members, but owing to deficiency of power—carried on a comparatively useless existence. In 1835 a remarkable Committee of the House of Commons sat, under the Presidency of that able educationist, Sir Thomas Wyse, to consider and report upon the subject. In 1854 a Royal Commission was appointed, commonly called Lord Kildare's Commission, which recommended the appointment of a new Board with large controlling powers. Again, in 1870, a Commission, presided over by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Powis), recommended that these Endowed Schools should be revised upon the English plan. That was the plan upon which the Bill now before their Lordships was framed. All these inquiries, as he had said, had met with the same fate. All the recommendations made had been so many dead letters. The late Government had carried a very important Education Act, of which the friends of education in Ireland thought a great deal—namely, the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act; but that measure did not touch Endowed Schools. However, in 1878, the Lord Lieutenant—the late Duke of Marlborough—taking, as their Lordships knew he did, a very deep interest in this subject, and feeling the urgent necessity for legislation upon it, adopted the course of instituting one further inquiry. His Grace appointed a Royal Commission, presided over by Lord Rosse, commonly called "Lord Rosse's Commission." At the end of 1880 that Commission reported, and furnished a large and most valuable collection of facts and information; but it made no direct recommendations as to legislation, or as to the means to be taken to remedy the evils which were found to exist, because it was not authorized to make recommendations. The present Bill, he might say, had been drawn up by the Irish Government upon the lines clearly indicated by the Report of Lord Rosse's Commission. The endowments which would come within the scope of the Bill were attached to 278 Primary Schools 16 under the National Board, and to 415 other schools, making a total of 693. Many of the endowments were extremely small; but others were important. The whole amount of landed property possessed by the various endowments was 76,000 acres; and the income derived from that property was something like £56,000 a-year. There were also trust funds upon the whole amounting to £27,000 a-year, making altogether, in round numbers, a sum of rather more than £80,000 per annum. The Endowed Schools which would be dealt with by the Bill were first the Royal Schools—schools which, he hoped, would hereafter be much more important than they were at present. Then there were the Erasmus Smith's Schools, and the schools of the so-called Incorporated Society, which were originally intended for the conversion of Roman Catholics, but which entirely devoted their attention to youthful Protestants. In addition to these there was a large variety of schools managed in various ways. The Royal Schools, which he had mentioned, were, with a good many others, under the supervision of the Commissioners of Education—a body which had been severely criticized both by the last and by former Commissions; but that body itself had been as desirous as anyone outside of it could be to have its powers increased and rendered efficient; and its failings had mainly arisen, as he had said, from want of proper powers. They had, for example, no power to appoint or dismiss a teacher, or even to pay inspectors to go and inquire into the condition of the schools, and none to alter the management and disposition of the endowments. As to the Royal Schools, in order to give some idea of what amount of work they were performing — an amount of work which appeared to all the Commissions and to the Government quite inadequate to what might fairly be expected from them — he might mention that six Royal Schools had, the year before last, an average attendance, all taken together, of 283 pupils; they had an expenditure of £6,500, out of which the sum of £1,300 went for exhibitions and prizes. In some particular cases the contrast between expenditure and result was even more striking than that indicated by the figures just quoted. He took the Royal School of Dungannon, which had an 17 average attendance of 31 pupils and distributed prizes and exhibitions among them amounting annually to £468. That was not an expenditure which ought to be longer tolerated. He might give many cases of abuse among those schools; and, to say the very least, of totally inefficient results obtained from the expenditure of the endowments. He might mention the school in the borough of Swords. It was a curious case. The borough of Swords was disfranchised at the time of the Union; and for some reason or other which he did not quite understand it received from Parliament as compensation for its disfranchisement a sum of money which now amounted to £24,000 in Government Stock, which produced an annual income of £741. That income was professedly devoted to the maintenance of the school, which, according to its foundation and its charter, was established to promote education in the Christian religion, morality, industry, cleanliness, order, and so forth. But how did the endowment perform its services under those terms? The parish had about 2,200 inhabitants, of whom 250 were Protestants, and all the rest were Roman Catholics. The school contained only 63 pupils; it was taught by a Protestant clergyman, and was in all respects an exclusively Protestant school. That was a case which eminently required to be looked into. Without giving further instances, he might say that the £83,000 a-year belonging to the Irish endowed schools was now producing results utterly incommensurate with the benefit which the interests of education ought to derive from such an income. It was known that a large amount of good was being done by the Intermediate Education Commissioners with their comparatively moderate income; and one could well conceive how much support and assistance their operations would receive from the due application of some portion of the endowments of which he was now speaking. Now, it was provided in that Bill that the Commissioners should have power, in framing their schemes, to hand over some of the endowments intended for secondary education to the Commissioners of Intermediate Education, and also to hand over endowments intended for primary education to the National Board in Dublin. It was quite evident that unless assistance 18 could be obtained from those endowments for the object in view, the Commissioners of Intermediate Education would before long make very strong, and, he thought, irresistible application to Parliament for the purpose of increasing their means of carrying on the great work in which they were engaged. There was no more need for inquiry. Inquiries had been conducted ad nauseam. The time had now come for action; and the Government proposed to take action in the same way as it had been taken both in England and Scotland on the subject of educational endowments. The Bill which he had brought in did not attempt to deal directly and in detail by Parliamentary action with those endowments. It did not seek to impose upon Parliament the task of re-organizing them; but, as in the case of England and Scotland, it proposed to create an Executive Commission which would undertake that work. The Bill was framed almost entirely on the lines of the Scotch Endowment Act of the year before last; the powers of the Commissioners and the definition of the endowments which were to be dealt with by the Commissioners were, he thought, almost identical. There was, indeed, one respect in which the definition of those endowments in the Bill differed from the Scotch Act, but agreed with the English Act—namely, that the Commissioners should not have power to deal with any endowment made within the last 50 years. Under that Bill, as in the English and Scotch Acts, schemes would be framed either by the Commissioners or by the Governing Bodies themselves, and would come before the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council, and be dealt with throughout with the usual forms of notice and inquiry, and with the same power as in former Acts of application to Parliament in the case of an opposed scheme. Every scheme framed would contain provisions for inspection and audit of accounts—a matter which had been long desired, and which was considered to be of vital importance. It was not intended that the Commission should be prolonged beyond the end of 1886. It was not likely that beyond that time there would be work for the Executive Commission. He did not know that he need describe the Bill in more detail; but he trusted that their Lordships would give it a good reception. 19 He could not help hoping that at last Parliament would thus secure to Ireland by means of those endowments for all time to come far greater benefits than had ever been derived from them before. The noble Lord concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

THE EARL OF BELMORE
said, he did not intend to oppose the Bill at that stage; but he wished to call the attention of their Lordships to one or two points in the measure. He did not know that the second reading of the Bill was to be taken that day. Although he had heard rumours as to what the Bill proposed to do, he found that the Bill, to a certain extent, did what he expected. There were some things which he had hoped the Bill would have contained, but which he did not find in it. For instance, he did not find that any power was given to the Irish Education Board to sell their landed estates. This power was very desirable, because, although in the present state of Ireland they might not be able to sell them to any great advantage, yet, if a Bill introduced in "another place" should pass, it was not unreasonable to expect that by degrees those estates of the Irish Education Board might be disposed of. They produced £5,000 or £6,000 a-year; but of late years it had been extremely difficult to get any rent. He could not find that this power had been given in the Bill; but he expressed the hope that something might be done in this respect. He believed the provisions of the Bill would give rise to a great deal of discussion in both Houses.

§ LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL)
said, the suggestions of the noble Earl would be carefully considered before the next stage was taken.

§ THE EARL OF COURTOWN
asked that some delay should take place before the Committee stage was taken, in order that the Bill might be considered in Ireland.