description of some of the most important
features of the Department's policy and programme. I shall add a
sufficiency of detail from the actual work accomplished in these
organising and experimental years, to illustrate both the difficulties
which are incidental to such a policy, and the manner in which these
difficulties may be surmounted.

When it became manifest that both the country and the Department were
anxious to drive ahead, the first thing to do was to lay down a _modus
operandi_ which would assign to the local and central bodies their
proper shares in the work and responsibilities and secure some degree of
order and uniformity in administration. This was quickly done, and the
plan adopted works smoothly. The Department gives the local committee
general information as to the kind of purpose to which it can legally
and properly apply the funds jointly contributed from the rates and the
central exchequer. The committee, after full consideration of the
conditions, needs and industrial environment of the community for which
it acts, selects certain definite projects which it considers most
applicable to its district, allocates the amount required to each
project, and sends the scheme to the Department for its approval. When
the scheme is formally approved, it becomes the official scheme in the
locality for the current year; and the local committee has to carry it
out.

Although harmony now usually exists between the local and central
authorities to the advantage and comfort of both, a considerable amount
of friction was inevitable until they got to understand each other. The
occasional over-riding of local desires by the 'autocratic' Department,
which in the first rush of its work had to act in a somewhat peremptory
fashion, was, no doubt, irritating. Now, however, it is generally
recognised that the central body, having not only the advice of its
experts and access to information from similar Departments in other
countries to guide it, but also being in a position to profit by the
exchange of ideas which is constantly going on between it and all the
local committees in Ireland, is in a position of special advantage for
deciding as to the bearing of local schemes upon national interests, and
sometimes even as to their soundness from a purely local point of view.

Passing now from the conditions under which the Department's work is
done, we come to review some typical portions of the work itself so far
as it h