ed in each case to collect the
facts necessary to enable us to differentiate between the parts played
respectively by State aid and the efforts of the people themselves in
producing these results. With this information before us, after long and
earnest deliberation we came to a unanimous agreement upon the main
facts of the situation with which we had to deal, and upon the
recommendations for remedial legislation which we should make to the
Government.

The substance of our recommendations was that a Department of Government
should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to
Parliament at its head. The central body was to be assisted by a
Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The
Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and
was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland
upon principles which were fully described. The proposal to amalgamate
agriculture and industries under one Department was adopted largely on
account of the opinion expressed by M. Tisserand, late Director-General
of Agriculture in France, one of the highest authorities in Europe upon
the administration of State aid to agriculture.[43] The creation of a
new minister directly responsible to Parliament was considered a
necessary provision. Ireland is governed by a number of Boards, all,
with the exception of the Board of Works (which is really a branch of
the Treasury), responsible to the Chief Secretary--practically a whole
cabinet under one hat--who is supposed to be responsible for them to
Parliament and to the Lord Lieutenant. The bearers of this burden are
generally men of great ability. But no Chief Secretary could possibly
take under his wing yet another department with the entirely new and
important functions now to be discharged. What these functions were to
be need not here be described, as the Department thus 'agitated' for has
now been three years at work and will form the subject of the next two
chapters.

On August 1st, 1896, less than a year from the issue of the invitation
to the political leaders, the Report was forwarded to the Chief
Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, with a covering letter,
setting out the considerations upon which the Committee relied for the
justification of its course of action. Attention was drawn to the terms
of the original proposal, its exceptional nature and essential
informality, the political conditions whi