284 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Etc., FOR IRELAND. 



By Section 23 of the Act provision was made, as has been said, for the 

 formation of a Consultative Committee of Education, 

 consisting of the Vice-President of the Department as 

 Chairman, and one person appointed by each of the 

 following bodies : — The Commissioners of National 

 Education, the Intermediate Education Board, the 



Agricultural Board, and the Board of Technical Instruction. This Committee 



was fully constituted early in May as follows : — 



The Consultative 



Committee of 



Education. 



2. Organisation of the Department. 



Reference has already been made to the essential unity of purpose which 

 underlies and controls the various functions of the Department, and consti- 

 tutes an intimate relationship between them. This is the leading principle cf 

 the Agriculture and Technical Instruction Act. Though the Act creates new 

 machinery and new powers, a large portion of its intention is to bring order 

 and simplicity into branches of administration where co-related action was not 

 properly provided for before. The statutory aim of the Department is to pro- 

 mote, as far as may be proper to such a Department, the industrial development 

 of the country. To that purpose all the various powers entrusted to it not 

 only are capable of being applied, and should be applied, but it would be 

 impossible to exercise any of them thoroughly well in the general interest unless 

 they were all included, as they are here, under a common direction. The 

 amalgamation of analogous functions hitherto scattered amongst several 

 departments was an obvious step towards efficiency and economy, and the 

 manner in which this part of the work has been given its place in the system 

 of the Department will be found explained in the account of the Branches 

 amongst which that work has been distributed. As to the new or more special 

 work, or those of the transferred functions, which have more direct bearing 

 upon the nev,' work than others, such as the administration of the Science and 

 Art grant, and the management of the Royal College of Science, the Metro- 

 politan School of Art, the Museum, at every step the need for co-ordinate 

 administration is apparent. In a country like Ireland, where there are not 

 extensive manufactures, and where the majority of the provincial towns are as 

 iiiuch rural as urban in their economic characteristics, the problem of Technical 

 Instruction, for example, must largely be a problem how to provide a popula- 

 tion mainly agricultural with a training that will not only fit them to give new 

 developments to agriculture, their chief existing industry, but that will give 

 them in addition aptitudes for industries which do not yet exist, and which 

 their trained intelligence must be the principal factor in creating. Thus it 



