FOOTNOTES:
[89] In writing the above I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the address published by Dr. Starkie in 1911 for many useful facts and figures.
[90] See the 76th and 77th Reports of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland—Cd. 5340, 1910, and Cd. 5903, 1911.
[91] The residential buildings of the Commissioners' Training College in Marlborough Street, Dublin, still require to be completed by the addition of a new residence for women students, at a cost of about £50,000 spread over three or four years.
XX
THE PROBLEM OF TRANSIT AND TRANSPORT IN IRELAND
BY AN IRISH RAILWAY DIRECTOR
Any scheme giving self-government to Ireland must seriously affect the problem of local transit and transport, by rail and water, which all parties in Ireland agree to be pressing and important. Nor is it merely a local question. As recent returns show, the trade between Ireland and Great Britain has of late years enormously increased, to the great advantage of both; for if Irish farmers profit by the export of beef, mutton, milk, eggs, butter, bacon and other articles, Great Britain has the benefit of a near food supply within the United Kingdom. Nor does any one doubt that this trade is capable of enormous increase. The improvement of Irish agricultural methods, the growth in England of a town population, the increased price of the necessaries of life, are some of the factors pointing in this direction.
If this trade is to expand, Irish traffic routes and facilities with Great Britain must be improved and increased, especially as the articles carried are largely of a perishable kind. Moreover, the internal traffic of Ireland, by rail, waterways, and canals is capable of and needs great development, as witness the recent Reports of the Viceregal Commission on Irish Railways, and of the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways.[92] The problem of inland navigation is again intimately bound up with that of arterial drainage, as the Commissioners have reported. It is then strange to find, that on these pressing questions of first importance, there is an almost absolute silence on the part of those who advocate Home Rule in and out of Parliament.