DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND 

 TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION 



Its Origin 



Six years after the meeting of Sir Horace Plunkett and Mr 

 Anderson, when they initiated the self-help movement in Ireland, 

 Sir Horace wrote a letter to the Irish press, suggesting that the 

 Nationalist party should name three or four practical men, that 

 the Independent party should name two, and that the Unionist 

 party should name two, as a committee — afterwards known as 

 the Eecess Committee because it met in the recess of 1896 — 

 with power to add to their number any practical Irishmen, 

 whether members of Parliament or not, to consider specially the 

 establishment of a Department of Agriculture for Ireland and the 

 passing of a Technical Education Bill. Justin M'Carthy, the then 

 leader of the Nationalist party, refused to join the Committee on 

 the ground that it had for its object the seeking of a substitute 

 for Home Eule. Mr John Redmond, who was then leader of the 

 Independent party, had no such scruples. He joined the Com- 

 mittee, although, after Sir Horace published his remarkable book — 

 " Ireland in the New Century " — which no student of rural economy 

 much less of Irish agriculture can afford to neglect,^ Mr Eedmond 

 publicly repudiated further connection with the new movement on 

 the ground that Sir Horace's object, then made clear, was to divert 

 the minds of the people from Home Rule, the only thing he 

 believed which could ever lead to a real revival of Irish industries. 

 Nationalists, Unionists, and Tories joined the Committee along 

 with certain captains of industry and others whose politics were 

 not so pronounced as the polities of their fellow-members. It was 

 predicted that such a conglomeration of Irishmen would fall foul 

 of each other and that the Committee would break up without any 

 good result. These predictions were falsified. 



The Recess Committee at Work 



Sir Horace was appointed Chairman, and the Committee set 

 to work. It first devoted its attention to the economic condition 

 of Ireland and the immediately available resources of the country. 

 It then appointed one of its own number, Mr T. P. Gill, editor of 

 the Dublin Daily Express, and Mr Michael G. Mulhall, the eminent 

 statistician, as Commissioners to Continental countries, to obtain 

 information as to the development in each country of its industrial 

 resources "through the agency of State aid and the active co- 

 operation of the inhabitants." Mr Gill visited France and 



' " Ireland in the New Century" is published by John Murray at Is. 



