60 State Aid to Agriculture in Ireland. 



for the improvement of cattle, asses, and swine, and the improve- 

 ment of the breeds of poultry engaged a good deal of attention 

 with very satisfactory results. The Board also devoted a great 

 deal of attention to bee-keeping and potato spraying. Grants 

 were made for cottage dairies and the calf feeding experiments 

 which were carried on. 



The second period of the Board's activities took place after 

 the formation of the Department of Agriculture, which led to 

 some temporary complication. The difficulty was caused by 

 what appears to have been an oversight in the drafting of the 

 Agriculture and Technical Act of 1899. The situation was 

 this : — The Department's agricultural endowment of 100,000Z. 

 was ear-marked for the non-congested portions of Ireland, and 

 could not therefore be applied to an area scheduled as congested. 

 Neither could the Department apply funds to a . district in 

 respect of which a rate was not raised for the purpose of their 

 Act. But the unit of area adopted in scheduling a ciistrict as 

 congested was not co-extensive with the unit of rating under 

 the Local Government Act. A way out had to be found, so it 

 was decided to raise the rate for the purpose of the Depart- 

 ment's work over the non-congested and mainly non-congested 

 rural districts, and to exclude the congested and mainly 

 congested rural districts, these being therefore administered 

 through the Board as before. 



From 1904 on, however — the third period of the Board's 

 activities — the Board, after the passing of an Act in 1902, 

 enabling the County Councils to include all non-congested and 

 exclude all congested electoral divisions from the rate, decided 

 that their funds, hitherto applied to agricultural development, 

 should in future be diverted from the purpose and be applied 

 primarily to land purchase. From 1903 to 1909, therefore, the 

 Department's County schemes were applicable to the congested 

 districts. These schemes were supplemented, where the 

 Department thought advisable, by special teaching in agri- 

 culture, dairying, poultry-keeping, horticulture, bee-keeping, 

 rural domestic economy and cottage industries. Since 1909, of 

 course, all the work rehiting to the improvement of agriculture 

 in the congested districts devolves upon the Department, and 

 in a most thoughtful and able Memorandum prepared by Mr. 

 J. R. Campbell, Assistant Secretary to the Department, in 

 connection with the evidence given by him before the Royal 

 Commission on Congestion in Ireland (which the interested 

 reader ought to consult) the special agricultural needs of 

 congested areas are discussed with a view to future work in 

 this part of Ireland. 



The last published Report of the Congested Districts points 

 to yet another direction in which improved agriculture may 



I 



