:286 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Etc., FOR IRELAND. 



It will be understood that during the first year of their existence, the De- 

 partment were largely occupied in constructing and organising their machinery, 

 ^nd planning and laying down the principles of their future action. 



3. Local Initiative and Central Direction. 



In the scope of work and effective powers which have been confided to 

 them, involving a commission to attempt not only to 

 Principles of develop the industrial resources of the country, but to 



Administration. influence in vital ways, the education of the people, the 

 Department realise how much may depend for good or 

 ill upon the manner in which they discharge their trust. Feeling the weight 

 of this responsibility, they have resolved to proceed with the utmost possible 

 caution, even at the risk of sometimes taxing the patience of local authorities 

 and others by an insistence on certain principles, and by a hesitation to approve 

 of schemes which have been submitted to them until they have satisfied them- 

 selves, so far as may be possible, of their soundness in all particulars. The 

 Department consider that in such matters a false step in the beginning would 

 be dearly purchased by the country. Two principles of procedure are clearly 

 indicated, as well by the situation the Department have to deal with as by the 

 legislation they are required to administer. 



1. Administration of this kind must fail in its best result unless it seeks to 

 evoke and fortify the self-reliance, enterprise, and sense of responsibility of the 

 people. Both economic and social laws dictate this principle. 



2. In encouraging local initiative and responsibility the danger, on the 

 other side, of an indiscriminate multiplication of unrelated local schemes must 

 be guarded against by a due conservation of the principle of central direction. 

 It is the duty of the Department to keep In mind the national as well as the 

 local point of view, and to bring to bear on schemes and problems that power 

 of co-ordination and that expert aid which the resources of a Central Authority, 

 acting and thinking with and for the whole country, can command. The 

 importance of this principle is well illustrated in the efficiency of the Continental 

 systems of State aid for Technical Instruction and Agriculture, on which the 

 constitution of this Department has been to some extent modelled. 



Both these principles are provided for in the Act in such a way as mutually 

 to strengthen each other. The advisory Boards ot the Department, who 

 control the expenditure of its Endowment Fund, are mainly constituted by the 

 local self-governing bodies of the country. A Department so constructed 

 should be in a favourable position for guiding, in regard to its work, the action 

 of local bodies over whom it exercises no compulsory powers, and who are 

 entirely free to adopt or take no part in the schemes of which it may approve. 

 On the other hand, the local authorities are empowered by the Act to raise 

 rates and borrow money for the purposes of schemes approved by the Depart- 

 ment ; and in order to evoke such local effort and co-operation for local 

 schemes, Section 16 (6) of the Act provides that the Department " shall not, 

 in the absence of special considerations, apply or approve of the application of 

 money under this section to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of 

 money provided by local authorities, or from other local sources." 



The Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act is, so to speak, built into, 

 as well as out of, the system of representative local 



Relations with government established by the legislation of 1898. The 



Local Authorities. Department, paying due regard to this fact, has studied, 



in administering the Act, and in so far as the nature of 



its functions permitted, to extend the responsibilities of the local authorities, 



and it looks forward to having their aid in many ways in strengthening the 



