ARTANE HEARINGS 4

Q. Was the Resident Manager invariably a Christian Brother?
A. Yes, for the total period.

Q. How would he be appointed?
A. He was appointed by the Provincial Council normally for a period of six years.

Q. What other people would be in the hierarchy of management of the school?
A. One I think that is possibly sometimes neglected was he had a bursar who looked after all that end of things, because obviously all of that area had to be catered for and accounts were kept and so on. Then you had the principal of the primary school. The principal of the primary school was exactly the same as the principal of any other primary school at the time or, for that matter, the principal of the primary school now. There was no Board of Management. At that stage in all primary schools there was a system of unitary management.

In other words, an individual was a manager, and that was the Resident Manager and he was also the manager of the primary school. For the running of the institution outside of primary school, you had a person known as the "Disciplinarian" and his role was also a Brother for the entire duration of the period of relevance here, also for that 30 year period. He was responsible for the day to day management of the students outside of school hours. So for the total time outside of school hours, he was the person in charge there.

Q. I think he was responsible for the general welfare and safety of the boys in all matters other than educational and medical matters?
A. Yes, correct, and for supervision and so on. To an extent if somebody was injured in the yard, or whatever it was, then that child was referred to the infirmary.

Q. To go back to the Resident Manager for a moment, was the Resident Manager a member then of an Association of Resident Managers of industrial reformatory schools?
A. Yes, he was the Resident Manager for all the duration and for quite an amount of the time was an executive member as well. He was also the superior of the local community of Christian Brothers. Then there was an Association of Managers of Industrial Schools under the management of the Christian Brothers, a smaller and less formal one than the Association of
Resident Managers of Industrial and Reformatory Schools. It really met once or twice a year, normally it met in the morning prior to the afternoon meeting of the Resident Manager.

Q. What sort of things would be discussed at those meetings?
A. Mainly looking through the minutes. Finance, unfortunately, was the main item on the agenda.

Q. In the national umbrella group, the Association of Resident Managers of Industrial and Reformatory Schools, what would they do?
A. In relation to all aspects of running an industrial school and particularly in matters that concerned the Department of Education, it was a sort of umbrella group. Rather than having the Department dealing with each individual industrial school, they acted as an umbrella group for the managers of industrial schools and they dealt with all areas of relevance.
Again, finance forms a large portion of the minutes of those meetings.

Q. What about the teaching staff in Artane?
A. Up to about 1947 the teaching staff consisted of 20 something Brothers and then up to I think 46 or 47, there were six lay staff as well on the primary school. Generally they were phased out. From there on in, from 1947 until it closed, it was practically all Brothers with the exception from 1966 or 1967 afterwards in which a remedial teacher was appointed to the staff of the primary school. She was the only lay person on the staff at that stage, the rest were all Brothers.