IRISH UNIVERSITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13780, 19 June 1908, Page 5

IRISH UNIVERSITIES.

ATTITUDE OF THE CLERGY. UNSATISFACTORY MEASURE. By Telegraph—Press Association.— (Reeeived June 18. 10 p.m.) ' London, June 18. The Roman Catholic Archbishops of Ireland have issued a statement in reference to the Irish Universities Bill. They declare that a Bill constructed on a plan suited to the country's need would be likely to lead to finality, and go on to say: "It is regrettable, as one of the evils incidental to the present system of legislation for Ireland, that the provisions relating to the University of Dublin and its colleges were not framed in accordance with the convictions of a Roman Catholic nation. "We believe that within the fundamental conditions which the Government must accept much more might and ought to be done to meet legitimate requirements. Headmasters of secondary schools should be represented on the governing body of provincial colleges. In regard to the^ University College about to be established in Dublin, if the determination that it is not to be residential is persevered in the consequence may be disastrous from the moral and religious equally with the educational standpoint. It is indefensible to throw hundreds of youths into the streets of Dublin side by side with the splendid provision made at the cost of the Irish nation for the Protestant colleges."

THE POPE'S SANCTION. \ London, June 17. Referring to the statement of the Bishop of Limerick (Dr. E. T. O'Dwyer), •. that the Irish Bishops met Mr. Birrell's Irish Universities Bill in a liberal spirit, and submitted to-principles utterly foreign to the Catholic Church, the Times states that unless the Pope sanctioned submission he might at any moment repudiate a bargain made behind his back. .., The Times asks Mr. Birrell to state if Rome has clearly and formally sanctioned his scheme. The Bill proposes to ~ create by Royal charter two new Universities, one at Dublin and the other at Belfast. Dublin University will .comprise three colleges, the reconstituted Queen's Colleges of Cork and Gal way, and the New College, Dublin. Belfast University will consist of one college only. There are to be no religious tests for professors or student*, though Mr. Birrell said, on the occasion of the first reading of the Bill, that he thought that the first president of the New College at Dublin ought to be a Roman Catholic layman. The sum of £20.000 a year from the Irish Churches' Fund, which is now allocated to the Royal University Of. Ireland, is to be divided" equally between the two new universities, which will receive £80,000 a year from the Exchequer, instead of £36,500, which comprises the present grant for Irish university education. Apart from the churches' fund, Belfast University will receive an annual endowment of £19.000, the New Dublin College £32,000, Queen's, College. Cork, £18,000,- and Queen's College, Galwav, £12,000. As building grants ; Belfast receives . £60,000 . and Dublin,, £150,000. The new universities will fee.iittj" denominational, though" Dublin University may have a. Catholic, and Belfast a Presbyterian complexion.