§ Mr. MEAGHERasked the Chief Secretary whether he is aware that the Local 1209W Government Board for Ireland have issued a circular prescribing terms of dietary for the workhouses in Ireland for the use of the inmates; will he say whether it is their intention to make it compulsory on boards of guardians to adopt the same as the dietary scale therein prescribed as the diet for the inmates of the workhouses; whether the guardians are opposed to changes in the present system or not; and, if so, will he state whether any demand was ever made by any local bodies for the interference by the Local Government Board, seeing that it is the ratepayers whom the guardians represent who pay the cost of the diet of the workhouse inmates?
§ Mr. BIRRELLA circular has recently been issued to all the boards of guardians in Ireland on the subject of dietaries in workhouses. In consequence of the great changes that have taken place in dietetics in recent times and in view of the many aplications from boards of guardians for approval to alterations in their dietary scales, the Local Government Board have found it necessary to revise the dietary Regulations which at present are in force in Irish workhouses. A similar revision was carried out in England in 1900, and in the unions in Ireland, in which the revised dietaries are in force (comprising one-third of the total workhouse population in the country) the guardians have fully approved of the changes, and have expressed themselves as being well satisfied with the results which have proved economical to the ratepayers as well as beneficial to the inmates. The Board have little doubt that the remaining unions will fall into line when the effect of the proposals is fully understood. The new system, so far from hampering the local authorities, will be a great convenience to them, as it will afford them a wider discretion in framing dietary scales, and will obviate to a considerable extent the monotony of the existing scales. The regulation of the dietaries in workhouses is a matter that the Board and their predecessors have always controlled.