To-day I asked the Minister for Education if he would exercise his statutory right to review the case of a child, a juvenile, committed to an institution under his care, with a view to determining whether it was now expedient to release that child back to his family. I did that, Sir, because, in my opinion, a very unsatisfactory situation is developing in the juvenile court which is normally held in Morgan Place here in Dublin. During the last five years, the records for committals by that court of juveniles to industrial schools or reformatories has risen from 16 committals in 1935, and 19 in 1936, to 50 in 1937, and 93 in 1938.
The Adjournment. - Committal of Juveniles to Industrial Schools.
Sixteen, is it?
Sixteen, 19, 50 and 93. If there had never been any such dramatic rise, and we were simply confronted with the fact that 93 children had been taken from their parents and locked up in industrial schools or reformatories, that is a situation which, I think, prima facie, calls for investigation, and for some reassuring statement from the Minister for Education that he is satisfied in his mind that the best is being done for these children. I ask Deputies to consider what this means. I know the case of a boy of 12 years of age, the son of perfectly respectable parents, coming from a good home, and a child whose past record was that he was a well-behaved, lively youngster, who went, admittedly, into another person's premises and stole grapes to the value of 5/-.
That was a very wrong thing for the child to do and he certainly should have been punished by his parents and brought to book. What actually happened? He was convicted in the children's court and sent to an industrial school for three years. Can any Deputy in this House imagine how he would feel, if his child stole from a neighbour's house or from the village shop 5/- worth of goods and had given no evidence of abnormality or recidivous villainy, and that the Guards came up to the Deputy's house and took the child out of the house and sent it away for three years? What would the Deputy's wife say? What would he say himself? The thing is unthinkable. That actually happened in this city. I must hasten to add at once that my information is that when these facts were brought before the Minister and he examined the case it was one of the cases in which he exercised his discretion and released the child.
I would call the Deputy's attention to the fact that it is not permissible in this House to criticise the decisions of the judiciary, justices or otherwise. We have no power to review sentences. The Deputy may ask the Minister to consider certain circumstances.
Should there not be some provision to review cases like that?
The Deputy, I am sure, recognises that himself.
I am a little at bay, Sir. What remedy have we if sentences are passed through the courts which appear to be entirely out of keeping with the spirit of the statute?
The Dáil has no function in that matter.
Can we not suggest that the statute under which the sentence was imposed should be amended if it be used in the way it has been used in these courts? However, I quite see the underlying principle of the ruling laid down by the Chair and I pass from specific cases. But, in the knowledge that the interpretation of the law, as it at present exists, can give rise to situations of that kind, and bearing in mind the anguish and distress that that must necessarily cause any normal parent, when we discover that 93 children have been sent either to industrial schools or reformatories in the year 1938, in that situation may we not legitimately turn to the Minister for Education, not for the purpose of indicting him, not for the purpose of making him responsible but for the purpose of asking him to look into the cases of the children and to come back to the House and say: "I took that sample year, which alarmed the Deputy and others of my colleagues. I went through those cases, though I cannot undertake to do so every year, but because that year, prima facie, looked bad, I called for the records of all those children. I do not propose to set myself up as a court of appeal but I have got to report to the House that I found nothing in those records which would justify me in intervening, except at the request of the presiding justice”. If the Minister said that to us, it might astonish us; it might induce us to examine the whole code of law with a view to seeking amendment of the law; but, at least, we would have the assurance that, whatever amendment the law required, there was being no miscarriage of law, no glaring miscarriage of law, and that justice with children was being tempered with that paternal mercy which it was clearly intended should prevail in the children's court as opposed to any other court.
I want Deputies to consider what all this business means. As I see it, it is a much graver thing to remove a child to a place of detention than it is to remove a grown-up person. I am glad to say that, so far as my information goes, the administration of Glencree, which is one of the places of detention, and of the industrial schools, is good. The accommodation at Glencree is monstrously inadequate. It is a dreadful place. It is an old military barracks that was erected, I think, in the eighteenth century, and is a barren, inadequate, scandalous structure. It is, however, happily, administered by an excellent Order of priests, who seem to command the confidence of the boys there, and to be doing the best they possibly can with the equipment at their disposal for these youths, youngsters that they are.
The industrial school that we mainly know is Artane. There are others. I think we can all rest easy in our minds that an institution controlled by the Irish Christian Brothers will be as well run as it is humanly possible to run it. We may have our views about the prudence of having such large numbers as are at Artane, and the desirability of dividing these schools into smaller units, but, on the whole, there is no necessity to be unduly apprehensive about the administration of these places.
That being admitted, we have got to consider the question of whether it is right, in an ordinary case, to remove a young person from the custody of its parents for an offence for which it is brought before the court. I say that it is much graver to take a child into a place of detention than to take a grown-up person. A grown-up person has gone out from the family circle; he is standing on his own feet and, if he transgresses the law flagrantly, has to take the consequences of it, but a child, who has never left the family circle, has imposed upon him, not only the rigour of strict confinement within the institution where he is put, but also is deprived of the championship and guidance of the father and mother that the Lord Almighty put over him. We have got to realise that, if you take a child out of the family circle, you are interfering with a divine institution, which preceded the State, and which has superior rights to the State. The child has a God-given right, which the State has no right to take away— except for grave reason and in the child's interests,—to remain within its family circle until it reaches maturity.
It is the gravest possible thing you can do to transgress that natural right and you should never do it unless you are convinced that there is no other possible way of saving the child from perdition. I find that 93 children have been taken out of their homes by the Guards and forcibly removed to industrial schools or reformatories. In a matter of this kind we have got not to let humanitarian sentiment run away with us. There is no use closing our eyes to the fact that children are brought before the Children's Court in Dublin, and that the presiding justice, even if he were most anxious to avoid it, would be coerced into taking those children and putting them into an institution of some kind. There are cases of that kind. I know that there are cases in which the parents have come down to the court and said that they had lost control of the children. Even in the case of girls they have come down and said, "We have lost control of her, and for her own good lock her up, because we cannot keep her out of trouble." I have heard the same said of boys. In those circumstances no prudent person will demur at the removal of such a child to an industrial school designed for its proper accommodation and control; but the vast majority of these 93 children were, I have no doubt, taken from lamenting parents, parents appalled and horrified at the prospect of losing their children, who are now incarcerated for three long years. I have paid tribute, and I did so gladly, to the administration of these establishments, but there is no use closing our eyes to the fact that if a workingman's son is taken from the family and put into a reformatory or an industrial school as a result of a decision in the Children's Court, he is marked for life.
We have got to face that fact. There are cases in which we have got to reconcile ourselves to this, that where there is no other means of saving children from sinking into a career of crime, it is better to catch them young and endeavour as best we can to make them decent by institutional treatment. But I think that the taking of 93 children and locking them up is appalling. Mind you, I detest anything that savours of class war, but we have got to face this fact that none of these children are the children of rich people. No rich person would ever be treated in this way. Can you imagine the son or the daughter of a resident of Fitzwilliam Square being brought down to Morgan Place and sent from there to an industrial school because he stole 5/- worth of grapes?
The Deputy is again on very dangerous ground. It is very well to demur at the removal of those children from their parents' control, but in so demurring is the Deputy not criticising judicial decisions?
I hope I am not. I will not pursue that, but I do not think that I have been criticising judicial decisions. I am not making any suggestion on the presiding justice's discretion in this matter, but if you go back on the cases you will find that no rich people's children have gone to industrial schools. That is the fact and that kind of thing is liable to give rise to a bitter sense of resentment in the hearts of a large number of people. The primary purpose of the Children's Court is to save the children from themselves. To imagine that we are doing that by sending 93 children away from their families into institutions, no matter how good those institutions are, seems to me fantastic.
For that reason I ask the Minister not to accept my point of view, not to admit that my apprehensions are well founded, but to say that "if the Deputy feels those apprehensions I sympathise with him and will take the precautions that he asks: I will run through this list of cases and see if there is anything outstanding, and if there is not I will tell the House that I found nothing which gave me reason for apprehension or anxiety." That is all I ask. I have not put this in any controversial way. I simply asked the Minister to review "all cases of committal of juveniles to industrial schools under the school Attendance Act"— I put that restriction in—"with a view to examining whether the best interests of the children in question are served by such committal." The Minister replies that he will not do it: that it might offend the presiding justices and that it would be a reflection on their discretion. I do not think that is the way to meet a restrained, moderate request for reassurance from somebody, however humble, who is a Deputy of this House. I claim no special privileges in this House beyond that of any other Deputy, but I consider that when a Deputy submits an interrogation to a Minister, asking for a reassurance, he is entitled to get it.
We have to remember that the proceedings in the Children's Court are of a semi-confidential character. One of the greatest safeguards of our liberty, where judicial proceedings of that kind take place, provided in any democratic State, is the right of parliamentary question to review and call in question what may be passing, as was done on a memorable occasion in the British House of Commons when justice was strikingly vindicated, when there was a danger of a grave miscarriage. When such questions are raised in a democratic Parliament the Minister should be solicitous to give all reasonable information even though he himself may feel that his questioner is unduly sensitive.
The Deputy asked me a question to-day in which the information he sought was, whether I would be prepared to review all cases of committal of juveniles to industrial schools under the School Attendance Act. The Deputy knows very well that I have not the power, legally, to review the decisions of the courts. That is the meaning I take out of the Deputy's question. If the Deputy had desired to call my attention to individual cases, he could easily have done so, if he is interested in such cases. He himself has admitted, and every Deputy in the House knows, that Deputies from time to time have made representations to me about individual cases, but the position of the Minister for Justice and myself is that we are not going to allow ourselves to be put into the position by Deputy Dillon or by anybody else of attempting to dictate to the justices how the law should be administered. That is the justices' business, and if the justices are not carrying out their duties satisfactorily, there should be a remedy, and there is a remedy, in another way; but I suggest that it is not the manner in which Deputy Dillon has taken it upon himself to raise this question. Although the question generally might have been taken to refer to the whole country, the Deputy in his supplementary question went on to refer specifically to a particular area, and to a particular court — the Dublin District Court.
I suggest, a Chinn Comhairle, that the Deputy has put the House in a very unfair position by raising here, or attempting to arise, the general question of decision that have been given in that court over a certain period of time. He ended his supplementary question to-day by asking whether I would look into the fact "that 93 children have been passed over to this custoday within the last 12 months from the police courts," and would I take steps "to inquire whether these children are properly in custody now". Perhaps the Deputy did not mean what the Official Reports have him down as saying, but it seems an extraordinary question to address to me—whether these children are properly in custody or not.
Will the Minister read all my supplementary question, if he purports to read any of it?
The Deputy also quoted some figures, and I suggest to him that these figures are not likely to serve any useful purpose. They may advance the Deputy's case, and, with the publicity which he will get in the newspapers, he may be able to persuade the public by raising a question on this matter that the situation, from the point of view of parents or children who may be brought before the courts, is extremely serious. But I am in a position to say that the figures are very incomplete and, as they stand, I think I would be justified in describing them as misleading. One requires to have segregated from the number of commitals to industrial schools the number of commitals under the School Attendance Act, figures which are not available at the moment and which it will take some time to collect. The Deputy has no doubt but that the majority of these 93 children were committed because of breaches of the School Attendance Act.
I never said any such thing, and the Minister knows that I never said any such thing.
We have to wait for the complete figures before we are in a position to come to a decision in this matter. Not alone have we to segregate the committals under the School Attendance Act from the general figures, but we have to look at the position in the country. We ought to take note of the number of offences which have come under the notice of the police over a certain period and what is the state of affairs generally. The Deputy also referred in his supplementary question to reformatory schools.
Boys or girls who are being committed under the School Attendance Act are not sent to reformatory schools. I have power to order the discharge of children from industrial schools and I have exercised that power. I have refused to discharge children, after making enquiries in certain cases, because I felt that, having regard to all the circumstances, the enquiries I was in a position to make satisfied me that the home conditions of the children were not such as to enable me, at any rate, to convince myself that the children would not be better off in the industrial school, where they were being well treated, got a good education, and some preparation for life, and where their moral, as well as their material welfare, was being well looked after. In the school year ending 31st July, 1938, there were 105 committals under the School Attendance Act, and during the same period there were 23 applications made to me for discharges. All these applications were dealt with and, of the 23, only four were granted.
Not 105 children put into industrial schools for not going to school?
That is the latest information I have been able to get. We have not got the figures for the complete year 1938. These are the figures for the school year.
Does the Minister tell me that 105 have been sent in for three years?
The Minister has only ten minutes in which to reply.
The position with regard to the enforcement of the School Attendance Act in the City of Dublin is that you have a number of school attendance committees — I think, five or six. These committees consist of representatives of the clergy, teachers, and other prominent and reputable citizens. So far as I know, in addition to getting usual warning before action is taken, having been visited by the school attendance officer, parents are called before the committee and are asked to give an explanation as to why their children did not attend school, if they have been accused of breaches of the School Attendance Act. Then, if it is found that the committee is unable to get the parents to send their children to school, prosecutions may have to be instituted. I assume that these prosecutions are in all cases carried out at the request of these school attendance committees. They are bodies to which the school attendance officers in Dublin are responsible. Apparently a parent has to be convicted more than once under the School Attendance Act before a child can be sent to an industrial school. Are we to assume that, under the administration of the law in this city, there is not some very sound reason why these committals have been increased?
105! Damnable!
The Deputy takes it upon himself to assure the House and the country that the parents are in no way blameworthy. It may happen, of course, that when individual children are being committed for this or other offences, one may look upon their case with compassion, but the law is there. The parents receive a warning; they are brought, as I said, before the committee, and if the committee cannot get the parents to undertake the elementary duty of parenthood and ensure that the children get an ordinary elementary education, are they just to throw up their hands? Are they not rather entitled to enforce the powers which the House has given to them, and to carry out the duties which we have placed upon their shoulders?
As I said applications for the release children before the completion of the normal period of detention — I think that would be up to 16 years — are considered in my Department. Whenever such an application is received, suitable enquiries are made as to the home conditions of the child before any decision is arrived at; all the factors are examined, in so far as I have knowledge of them, and, if the circumstances warrant, the child may be discharged conditionally or unconditionally. The case of each child is dealt with on its merits.
I would suggest, in conclusion, that the Deputy ought to address some of his remarks to the parents. We hear constantly of the sons of respectable parents being in trouble. If the parents were doing their duty, these things should not occur, at least to the extent that the newspapers tell us they have been occurring in Dublin. The Deputy tells us of the anguish and distress of the parents; he also tries to suggest that in some way or other the poor man's child is at a disadvantage. I do not think there is any foundation whatever for that suggestion. Undoubtedly, the public will take the Deputy as suggesting that there is some discrimination. I do not think there is any discrimination whatever. The Deputy has now admitted that the Glencree reformatory is well administered and the industrial schools also. He has taken one of the leading ones and says that it is very well managed.
I am satisfied that the Orders, the Priests, Brothers and Nuns in charge of these reformatories and industrial schools take the greatest interest in the children placed under their care. I know that they go to great lengths to endeavour to secure employment for them; that they try while they are under their care to give them a good sound moral training, and to teach them a trade, in so far as their resources permit, to prepare them for life. I certainly think that it is not advancing the administration of the law, or getting the parents to realise that it is their bounden duty to get their children to attend regularly at school, to be raising questions in this manner in the House.
They will be raised again and again.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until Wednesday, 29th March, at 3 p.m.