600 IRELAND 



is now being used for traffic. This company contemplates the opening of a new station in 

 County Mayo, between Westport and Castlebar. The Dublin and South Eastern Railway 

 has taken in hand the diversion of the line from Killiney round Bray Head to Greystones, 

 since recent dangerous encroachments of the sea have rendered this course necessary. The 

 Viceregal Commission on Irish railways issued its final report in 1910. Its majority report 

 advocated State purchase and nationalisation, but a minority report dissented from this 

 recommendation. The Royal Commission on the Canals and Inland Navigation of Ireland 

 issued its final report in the following year. Here again State purchase and control were 

 recommended. This report strongly urged that the problem of arterial drainage and relief 

 from floods should also be attacked by a central authority. The pressing nature of the 

 drainage question has been emphatically evidenced by the flooding, during the winter of 

 1911-12, of the basins of the Shannon, Barrow and Bann, and the consequent wholesale 

 damage to property and public health. Nothing has ye 4 - been done in any of these directions. 

 Projects for no less than 83 new railways were brought before the Viceregal Commission, but 

 even improvements of the existing light railway system had to be abandoned, since there is 

 no means of raising new capital under the system of legislation by which they were con- 

 structed. Road improvement proceeds slowly, but surely, under the local authorities. 

 The Local Government Board of Ireland during the year 1911-12 made orders extending the 

 limit of expenditure in 28 rural districts contained in 13 counties. In 16 cases the increase 

 was required to permit road improvement by steam-rolling to be undertaken; in one case 

 to provide for the repair of sudden damage by the sea, and in one case for the widening 

 of dangerous bog roads. Loans of a total amount of 71,500 were sanctioned. In these 

 districts (all in the West) the extension of communication facilities has been rendered desir- 

 able by the fact that these parts of Ireland look for an increasing part of their prosperity to 

 the tourist traffic. The operation of the Health Resorts (Ireland) Act has also assisted in the 

 opening up of the remoter districts to the tourist; local authorities are now empowered to 

 strike a rate for tourist development purposes. 



Local Government. The Local Government Board for Ireland had occasion up to 

 1912 to pass, in its annual reports, favourable judgment on the smooth working of the 

 various bodies created by the Act of 1898, but the report issued in August 1912 contains 

 nothing under this head, from which it may be inferred that the Irish County Councils 

 and District Councils are continuing to do satisfactory work. At the beginning of 1912 

 the restriction preventing women from being members of County and County Borough 

 Councils was removed, bringing the Irish law into harmony with that in force in England 

 and Scotland. The new Act became operative for the first time at the municipal elec- 

 tions of January 1912. Three women were successful at the polls, one in Dublin (Miss 

 S. C. Harrison, well-known for her interest in distress work) and two in Waterford. 

 New Acts in connection with local administration in Ireland which came into force at 

 the same time were an Act empowering the Dublin Corporation to strike a halfpenny 

 rate for the maintenance of the Dublin Municipal Gallery of Modern An, and an 

 Amending Act to the Irish Labourers Act, which granted another 1,000,000 for the 

 building of labourers' cottages and enabled the Local Government Board to proceed 

 with the scheme already lodged. The working of the Labourers Act gave an oppor- 

 tunity to the United Irishwomen to turn their attention to the provision of a proper 

 water supply in the proximity of labourers' cottages, an object in which an active interest 

 was also taken by the Women's National Health Association, the organization which 

 the Countess of Aberdeen instituted in 1907 in order to combat the growth of tubercu- 

 losis in Ireland. This association has now 150 branches, with about 19,000 members; 

 it has established two garden playgrounds in the most congested districts of Dublin, and 

 a third is in course of preparation; it has established the Collier Memorial Dispensary for 

 the prevention of tuberculosis, which centralises the work previously carried on by the 

 Dublin Hospital Tuberculosis Committee, and formed the Dublin Samaritan Committee 

 in connection with the dispensary, besides several such committees in connection with 

 different branches; it has established a Preventorium at Sutton, a Pasteurised Milk 

 Depot, and numerous babies' clubs in Dublin and throughout the country. The 

 association has also undertaken, in the interval before the County Councils construct 

 the necessary machinery, to work the sanatorium benefit under the Insurance Act, and 

 has received 25,000 of the grant to Ireland for this purpose. The Registrar- General's 

 return for 1911 attributes some part of the fall in the death rate (16.6 for 1000 or .5 

 below the rate of the preceding year) to these agencies. It is also due in part to the 



