This is a very important matter. In regard to matters of education I have high hopes of the Minister. Whether they are going to be dashed or not I do not know. I have said on more than one occasion that one of the principal functions of a public man is to regard himself as a trustee of the poor. The children who are going to these schools are the children of the poor. I suggest to the Minister, more especially when he is bringing in a Supplementary Estimate to provide for additional committals to these schools, that he should regard it as part of his duty constantly to review committals to these schools and reformatories, with a view to seeing whether they are being done in the best interests of the children.
We are not here dealing with criminals. There is no element of retribution about the committal of these children. The committal is done exclusively for the purpose of providing the children with the best prospects of normal, healthy development, and that function much more properly belongs to the Minister for Education. That is why I am concerned more with the welfare of children than with any police magistrate in this city.
I am not asking the Minister by his action to imply any rebuke or reproof or repudiation of the magistrate concerned in the administration of juvenile criminal justice, but I am asking him to watch each of these children as though he were himself a trustee for them. They have nobody else to protect them. Their parents are simple people, most of them not knowing that they have a right of appeal in these cases, to a superior court, if they are dissatisfied with the verdict of the court of summary jurisdiction. Many children are carried off to these institutions and the parents do not know that they have a right of appeal. They do not know how to go about it, so that the Minister as their trustee has a heavy responsibility on him, not only to satisfy himself that the children are properly treated in these institutions, but that each individual child committed is having its own best interests served by continued detention there. If he is not satisfied that that is so, then it is his clear duty, in my submission, to exercise his power and to release these children to their parents at once. I can say with reverence that he is not entitled to abrogate to himself the right to improve on Divine dispensations, and if there is a doubt as to whether the children would be better off with their parents or in the schools, then they should be given back to the parents. The doubt should be interpreted in every case in favour of returning the children to the parents. If the Minister does that there will be failures and disappointments, but I want to give this undertaking from this side, that if there are disappointments, and if children sent back to their parents fall into delinquency again, he can rest assured that his action will be endorsed and defended in any gathering where it is called into question.
With regard to reformatory schools, the Minister stated on a previous occasion, in answer to a Parliamentary Question put down by me, that he intended to abolish Glencree and secure more suitable premises. I appreciate the difficulties in getting the right kind of premises, and I would be glad to hear how the negotiations are progressing, and what his hopes are. I do not want to create the impression in this House or elsewhere, that industrial schools, or indeed reformatories, are dreadful places in which children suffer unmentionable wrongs. That would be quite false. These institutions are run largely by Christian Brothers and orders of priests, who do their very best, very often with deplorably inadequate equipment. That is no fault of theirs, but these institutions are not adequate substitutes for good family surroundings, and inasmuch as none of us would suffer our children to be removed to industrial schools, we should be scrupulous to see that no poor person's child should be removed without the same consideration and care being taken in arriving at that decision as would be taken with regard to our own children. I do not want to go over ground that I went over before in regard to reformatories. I do not think it is necessary, because I think the Minister agrees with me. Is it in order to suggest that the Minister should take under his jurisdiction, in addition to the reformatory and industrial schools referred to in the Estimate, the Borstal institution, or would that require legislation?
