THE

KILLEAN DISMISSAL

.. A HARSH. UNWARRANTED

AND ARBITRARY EXERCISE

OF MANAGERIAL AUTHORITY"

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THE IRISH NATIONAL TEACHERS' ORGANISATION DUBLIN

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FOREWORD

The dismissal of Mrs. Eleanor C. Keenan from her position as teacher in Killean School, Newry, by her Manager, Very Rev. Canon IVlcNally, P.P., Upper Killeavey, Co. Armagh, attracted considerable attention during the spring and summer of 1939. The broad facts of the case were first made known to the public through the medium of the Press reports of a discussion which took place at the Annual Congress of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, held in Belfast dur­ing Easter Week, 1939. The dismissal notice had expired some weeks previously, Le., on March 28th, and Mrs. Keenan was then unemployed. Some two months later a statement from the Manager appeared in the public Press, and this was fol­lowed by a lengthy correspondence between Rev. John Donnelly (Secretary to His Eminence Cardinal MacRory), on the one hand, and the President and Secretary of the I.N.T.O. and Mrs. Keenan herself, on the other.

Following the announcement made at the Belfast Congress, rnmours of the most fantastic and extraordinary character began to be circulated as to what were supposed to be " the real reasons " for the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan. Members of the Organisation, even before they left Belfast, were asked whether it was true that Mrs. Keenan "had written a book against the Church ", whether she was" separated from her husband ", whether the latter was a "non-Catholic and a Communist "; etc. Like all such rumours, their source of origin was, and must evel' remain, a mystery; but it is not difficult to realise that they were born and continued to have their being in the popular and, indeed, understandable belief that a teacher would not be thus deprived of her livelihood and cast on the roadside after long and faithful service unless there were some much more substantial reasons than any which had up to then been disclosed. These rumours persisted despite the fact that it was made clear by the I.N.T.O. Executive that they had been most solemnly assured that there were" no charges of any kind" &gainst her, and that they themselves hpd made the most minute and searching inquiries in order to satisfy themselves that there was nothing in her conduct either as a teacher, a citizen, or a memher of the Catholic community that could be alleged to her discredit. These inquiries went to show that she, with ·her husband and children, were 'a model Catholic family. who were held in high esteem by the people /imong whom they lived and worked. These rumours and

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insinuations were given a new lease of life as a result of the letters published SO'Ille months later in the daily Press over the name of the Rev. J. Donnelly, Secretary to His Eminence the Cardinal. The El<ecutive of the I.N.T.O. are regretfully com­pelled to put on record their belief, based on the most reliable information, that these unfounded rumours still persist in some quarters, where it is held and asserted that " there is much more behind the Keenan case than has appeared on the surface". Father Donnelly's disclaimer in his letter of October 6th, 1939, of any intention either on the part of the Manager or himself to suggest that there were any charges against Mrs. Keenan's moral character " in the cc:>mmonly accepted sense of these words" was somewhat discounted by his insistence that there was, in fact, " a very serious charge" against her in her professional. capacity as a teacher, and more especially by the IManager's final letter of December 30th, 1939, wherein he showed his anxiety lest any such disclaimer could be read into Father Donnelly's letters. It was thus left to the public to infer that, despite all that had been said and written, there still existed some lmdisclosed charges which would not be promulgated or published, since, if that were done, it would " endanger or destroy Mrs. Keenan ~s prospects of further employment ". It will be seen at once that noth­ing could be more calculated to injure the character and pros­pects of a teacher than these veiled hints and suggestions of unnamed charges or irregularities, having regard especially to the quarters from which they emanated, and it is little wonder that, in view of the drastic treatment which was meted out to this teacher, the belief should still persist in certain quarters that Mrs. Keenan was guilty of conduct which rendered her un worthy to occupy the position of teacher in a primary school.

The part played by the Teacbers' Organisation in its efforts to protect the interests of one of its members has been assailed and condemned; its interference has been resented, and its Executive and Officials have been charged with responsibility for what has been described as " a notorious and deplorable case ".

All efforts' on the part of the Organisation to bring about an amicable settlement of this matter having failed, it becomes necessary, in the interests of truth, justice, and fair play, that all the facts and circumstances surrounding the dismissal of this teacher should be placed fully before the public. It is due to the Organisation itself that this should be done, but much more is it due to Mrs. Keenan and to her young family that nothing should be left undone to have her character-personal or professional-cleal;ed of all the aspersions, veiled or other­wise, which have been cast upon it. That is the compelling motive which has induced the Organisation to collect and issue

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in this compact form all the statements which have been made by both sides to the controversy, and to show at the same time how little substance there is in the arguments on which those responsible for Mrs. Keenan's dismissal have based their case. Knowing both sides, the public will be in a position to ~orm its own judgment on the merits of the case. The Teachers' Organisation have no doubt as to its verdict.

-Ma1"Ch, 1942 .

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TENURE OF CATHOLIC PRIMARY TEACHERS-THE "MAYNOOTH RESOLUTION"

Before dealing with the circumstances connected with Mrs. Keenan's dismissal, it may be well to set out hriefly the general conditions governing the tenure of teaehers employed in National, or (as they are termed in Northern Ireland) Public Elementary Schools. With the exception of those schools in Northern Ireland whieh ihave been transferred under the 1923 Act to the local authorities, and a small number of model schools, the government o'f every National and Public Elemen­tary School in Ireland is entrusted to a local Manager who in the ease of schools' attended solely or mainly by Catholi<JS is almost invariably the local Parish Priest-in a few cases the Managership may be held by a Curate appointed to that office by the Bishop.

Subject to eertain conditions as to qualifications which are laid down by the Ministry of Education, the appointment of the teachers rests with the lI'lanager. He is obliged by the official regulations to execute a formal legal agreement between himseIf and each individual teacher appointed by him which provides imter oJ,ia, that the teacher's employment may be ter­minated by ,a three months' notice in writing on either side. The legal ,position, therefore, is that a l\Ilanager may at any time dispense with the serviees of a teacher' by giving him three months' notice in writing, or by paying him three months' salary, and he is under no legal obligation to assign a reaSOn for the removal of the teacher concerned. Obviously the dis­missal ofa teacher without good and sufficient reason could not be regarded otherwise than as a harsh and arbitrary exercise of a legal rigiht. Towards the close of the last century, some such dismissals did take place, and as a result of protests and agitation by the Teachers' Organisation at the time, the Bishops at their meeting in Maynooth in June, 1898, passed a Resolution to the effect that no Catholic teacher could in future be dismissed by a Catholic Clerical Manager without the prior eonsent of the Bishop of the Diocese. This decision of the ~..shops familiarly known and referred to as " The Maynooth Resolution" 'was revised in June, 1916, at the request of the Teachers' Organisation when the following text was adopted :-

" Resolved--That in order to secure uniformity ()f pro­cedure under the Maynooth Resolution of June, 1898, the Bishops will interpret the said resolution in the sense suggested by the teachers, namely-That the teach\l.r shall

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'be afi'orded an opportunity of being heard in his own defence before he is either summarily dismissed, or served with notice of dismissal."

Since its promulgation the" Maynooth Resolution " has been accepted and regarded by Catholic teachers as th.e~r " Magna Charta H. Wherever and whenever its prOVISIOns have operated it has almost without exception prevented the dis­missal of a teacher except on good and sufficient grounds. It thus guarantees virtual security of tenure to all Catholic teachers during good conduct and efficiency. It is but natural, therefore, that the teachers should jealously guard this precious privilege which now through the Decrees of the Maynooth Synod has been transformed into a right. Through their Organisation they have ever been watchful to prevent any invasion or evasion of that right. They are satisfied that if the terms of the Maynooth Resolution are fnlly observed, and that a teaeher is given the opportunity of answering' before his Bishop any charges that may be alleged against him, before a dismissal notice is served on him, no teacher will be dismissed without just cause. The Executive of the Teachers' Organisation maintain that if the terms of the Maynooth Resolution had been fully observed in the manner, and especially in the spirit in which it was intended to operate, in the case of Mrs. Keenan, and in which it has been operated over a period of roughly 50 years, the "Killean Dismissal Case" would never have arisen, and the uneasiness which it has caused to thousands of Catholic teachers, and to many others outside the teaching profession, would have been avoided.

THE KII.I.EAN DISMISSAL CASE

The General Secretary's Statement to Congress

The facts and circumstances surrounding' the dismissal of Mrs. Eleanor Keenan from Killean Public Elementary School by the Very Rev. F. Canon McNally, P.P., the Manager of the School, were first made public in a statement made to the dele­gates present at the Annual Congress of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation held in Belfast during Easter Week, 1939. m1;.e text of this statement, taken from the Official Report of the Congress proceedings, is as follows:-

Permission having been obtained from the Standing Orders Committee to move an emergency resolution regarding the dis­missal of a member of the N emy Branch, the General Secretary, in submitting this resolution to Congress, spoke ,as follows:-

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Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been deputed by the Eltecutive to put before you

to~ay certain facts and circumstances surrounding the removal of one of our members from her position as a teacher, and to ask you to express your opinion on these facts and circumstances as they appear to you when you have heard and considered them.

I should say at the outset that nothing is more repugnant to the Exeeutive, or to myself, personally, than that we should be forced into the position of bringing before you to-day the incidents' I am now about to relate. I can truthfully and honestly say, both on their behalf and my own, that every step it was humanly possible for us to take was taken before that course was decided on. But' we owe a duty to the Organisation that has placed us in a position of trust and responsibility, and to every individual member who, by right, looks to the Organisation and to the Executive for prptection and succour in his hour of need. That duty will not be shirked, no matter from what quarter danger threatens. The weaker and more helpless the victim, the greater and more determined must be the measure of our assistance.

I shall endeavour to state the case as fairly, fully and impar­tially as I can, and if I encroach unduly on your time in doing so, I crave your indulgence. I know you will recognise, as we on the platform recognise, that it is one of the most important issues which Congress has for many years been called on to discuss, and for that reason you will bear with me while I put the facts fully before you. The main facts, briefly and bluntly, are as follows:-

In 1926, Mrs. Eleanor Keenan, was appointed as assistant teacher in Killean Girls' School, Newry. ,seven years ]ater­in 1933-she was appointed as principal in the same school. She fllled both positions to the entire satisfaction of the educational authorities and, apparently, of the Manager also,. for no complaint was made against her on the score of efficiency or conduct.

On December 28th, 1938, the same Manager who had appointed her some thirteen years previously, Rev. Ganon MacNally, P.P., of Killeavey, Newry, served her with a three months' notice, dismissing her from her position as teacher in Killean Girls' School-a position which, first as an assistant, and later as principal, she had filled for a period of thirteen years. Since March 28th last, Mrs. Keenan is numbered among the ranks 'of the unemployed.

You will, naturally, ask what crime has this woman been guilty of, what great wrong has she done, wherein has she failed in her duty, that she should thus be deprived of her livelihood. I can only reply that she has committed no crime,

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she has done no wrong, nor has she been guilty of any derelic­tion of duty. No charge of any kind, either as regards con­duct or efficiency, has been formulated against her. Her character is irreproachable. She is rated as au efficient teacher -in fact, her official rcports are bordering on highly efficient. Yet, this teacher, having given good and faithful service in that school for a period of thirteen years, is now treated as if she had been guilty of some gl'ave moral lapse, or had become grossly and cUlpably inefficient, for she has been visited with the greatest penalty which it is in the power of a manager to inflict on a teaeher.

I have no doubt that you who are listening to me have but • "ne thougbt in your minds at tbis moment. You are, 'each of

you, saying to yourseh'cs: " If this teacher was giving satis­factory service, and if no cbarge of any kind as regards con­auct or chm'acter has been formulated against her, why should her Manager have dismissed her?" And that is, undoubtedly, an obvions and natural question to ask-all the more so hc­cause, as far back as the memory of anyone here g'oes, nothing like this has ever occurred before, and becausc from one end of Ireland to the other the belief had grown up, and had come to be firmly held, that nothing like it would ever occur again. My friends, you have read your history in vain-more especially tbe history of recent events, if you have not realised that the exercise of arbitrary power is never wanting for an alleged reason to justify or excuse its operation. When Canon MacNalJy made up his mind to deprive Mrs. Keenan of her position, he weut back five years to find a reason to justify his action. Please note, bowever, that when I say this I must also say that this is a matter of slll"mise. So far as tbe teacher, or her Org-anisation, is aware, (;'anon IVlacNally has never com­mitted to writing bis reason, even his alleged reason, for dis­missing her. In so far as she or they have any knowledge of what operated to bring about her dismissal, that knowledge was obtained indirectly from those whose duty and privilege it was to hold the balance evenly, fairly, impartially and justly, as between the teaehel: and the iVIanag-cr, and to say whether or not tbese alleg-ed reasons We1"e sufficiently g-rave and impell­ing- to justify her removal from her position.

I shall tell you tbe facts, as we know tbem: In August, 1933, the principalship of KiJlean Girls'

School ·became vacant, owing to the death of the former principal. In view of tbe average attendance (it was, I be­lieve, under fifty), the Ministry r,aised the question of the amalgamation of the school witb the nei.gbbouring boys' school. Tbe Manager, it would appear, objected to this, and, it is assumed, put forward some reasons wby tbe amalgamation shouJ.d not then be carried out. While these discussions and

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negotiations were .going on, the lady who had acted' as substi­tute for the principal, prior to the death of the latter, was allowed to earry on as loculn tenens for three months. By that time, apparently, the Manager had succeeded in inducing the Ministry to drop, or at least shelve, the question·of amalgama­tion, and on December 1st, 1933, the principalship of the Girls' . School was offered to the assistant, Mrs. Keenan, and was formally accepted by her. Let me say here that she positively asserts, and there is no reason to doubt 'her word, that the offer and its ·acceptance were absolutely free from any condi­tions as between the Manager and herself. When the appoint-. ment was notified to the Ministry, however, she was informed that she was sanctioned subject to this proviso, namely, that pending the consideration of the question of amalgamation­and I want you to keep that phrase in mind-that pending the consideration of the question of amalgamation, her appoint­ment would be regarded as temporary or provisional, and that, while pending such consideration, she would be paid full salary, including capitation, she would have no right in case of amalgamativn to be regarded as a privileged assistant iI) the amalgamated schooL * Now, that is .a kind of condition or proviso which is not unfamiliar to teachers on both sides of the Border. The education authorities are ever ready to seize on any chance to make even small economies, and they take pre­cautions to avoid unnecessary commitments. In this case their attitude vis-a-vis the :iVIanager was this: "You are free to fill this vacancy, and to appoint a principal, but if and when amalgamation takes place, the principal so appointed will IlDt be entitled to be recognised as privileged assistant in the amalgamated schooL" Y6u willno.te that it was the Ministry, and not the Manager, that made this condition. The letter con­taining the pro viS(), and setting forth the condition on which she was recognised, was sent by the 'Ministry direct to the teacher, ,and no doubt a copy of it, or a letter in similar terms, was sent to the Manager at the same time.

Long after the date of the Ministry's letter, and when he must have been fully aware of its contents, .the Manager entered into the usual three months' agreement with Mrs. Keenan. The agreement shows. that he appointed her as "Principal Teacher" of Killean Girls' SchooL t From the day on which that agreement was signed until October of last year-practically five years-the questi{lll of her position, or her permanency, was never raised by either Manager or Ministry. Y vu will remember that she was fully recognised " pending the consideration of the question of amalgamation " -these are the Ministry'S own words-and during those five

* See Appendix VI, page 26. t See Appendix I. page 23.

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years the question of amalgamation was never brought up, and never considered, and for all praetical purposes Mrs. Keenan regarded herself, and had every reason to regard herself, as securely fixed in her position as any teacher in this room. There is not the slig'htest doubt but that the Ministry, who made the proviso originally, was satisfied to continue her in the principalship, without any suggestion of change in status or emoluments. I should say here that it is the practice of the Northern Ministry to regard the temporary or provisional nature of an appointment as having lapsed after the position has been occupied for five years.

Early last October, however, the Manager visited the schools, and called the teachers together. He told them that he pro­posed to make changes-that the lady assistant in the boys' school would become principal of the girls' school-that Mrs. Keenan would have the choice of one or other of the assistant­ships. If she chose to stay in the girls' school, then the assistant in the girls' school would be appointed to the boys' school.

Now, I understand that it is alleged that when Mrs. Keenan was faced with this proposal she assented, and agreed to take the position of assistant in the boys' school. Varying state­ments as to this have been made, and there is some conflict of evidence on the point. But, so far as we here are concerned, that is entirely beside the point. It is really immaterial whether she did 01' did not agree at this stage, and for the sake of argument, if the point is pressed, it will not be disputed, because we know only too well that there are very many teachers, and perhaps I should say women teachers, especially, who are not fully aware of their rights-and still less are they aware of the rights and powers which a Manager may exercise. At this stage she turned to her Organisation for advice, and was promptly told that before she could be removed from her position the Manag'er should give her a formal three months' notice in writing, and that before he could do so he must get the permission of the Bishop of the diocese, who would hear her in her own defence prior to g'iving such permission. The school is in the Archdiocese of Arma,gh-the Bishop is His Eminence Cardinal MacRory. When the subject was broached again, therefore, she raised the question of notice, and of the Maynooth Resolution.' The i\'Ianag'er's answer, and attitude, are specially significant, and have a most important bearing on the subsequent issue. He told her that the Cardinal was already aware of the proposed changes, that His Eminence agreed with them, and had sanctioned them; that if she wished she could go to the Cardinal, but if she did, then he, the :';[anager, ,,"ould dismiss her from the school altogether, and Rhe \Y0111c1 t herPflftrr have no position in Killean School. I la~

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special emphasis on this, because' it shows the spirit in which this dismissal was carried out, and because it shows clearly and forcibly that there is no substance or merit in the reason alleged for getting rid of this teacher.

It appears to ,be the Manager's case that Mrs. Keenan was not permanently appointed as principal, and that, therefore, he was free at any time to remove her from that temporary post. Assuming that his contention is correct-that she was only occupying that position temporarily-the very most he would be entitled to do would be to remove her from the tem· porary position she had thus ,occupied, and to put her back in the position from which, according to his own version, he had temporarily promoted her. What justification, even on his own showing, has he had for removing her from Killean School 1 If she had agreed to go quietly, to make no fuss' or bother, she would be given the assjstantship; but if she insisted on her rights-rights to which she was clearly entitled under the law of the land and the law of the Church of which she is a member-then there would be no position .for ·her in Killean School.

Now I come to another, and much more serious aspect of the case, for it concerns not Mrs. Keenan ahme, but every Catholic teacher in Ireland. You all know that there is a cert!lin pro·

. vision commonly known as the " Maynooth Resolution". It came int{l being almost half a century ago in the form of a resolution adopted by the Catholic Hierarchy at their annual meeting in Maynooth-hence the name. It is now embodied in the Maynooth Statutes, and is, consequently, part and parcel of Catholic Church law in this country. It provides that a Catholic Clerical Manager may not dismiss a teacher, or serve him with n{ltice of dismissal, until he has first obtained the consent (If the Bishop of the diocese, after the teacher has been heard in his own defence by the Bishop. That is the Catholic teacher's Magna, Charlllr-that is his court of appeal--that is his protection ag'ainst arbitrary dismissal, and for close on fifty years the teachers have accepted this as a satisfactory assur· ance of their security during good conduct.and efficiency. Let us examine how that safeguard operated in this case. I have already told you that early in October last the l\IIanager had first broached to the teacher the subject of these proposed changes in the staffing of the school. "It was not, however, until December 16th that he definitel) .ssued the verbal order that Mrs. Keenan was to take up duty as assistant in her own school after the Christmas vacation-an order equivalent to summary dismissal from her position as principal of the sch{lol. Despite the very definite terms of the l\IIaynooth Statute, she was thus being dismissed, without being given the opportunity of appearing before her Bishop in her own defence, .

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OnoI' about December 19th, the Executive addressed a letter to the Manager,· pointing out that the provisions of the Maynooth Resolution had not been complied with, and, that being so, it would be the duty of the Organisation to advise Mrs. Keenan to reg·ard any order to vacate her position as being null and void.

The Manager's reply to follows:-

KILLEAl'\ GIRLS'

that is significant. It was as I' Mountain Lodge.

Newry, 22nd December,' 1938.

P.E.S., CO. ARMAGH. HI' )11"5. K€'('nan, ~ Temporar,Y J Principal Teacher

in uhon'-mentioncd School. Uf'ar Sir,

t aIll iil rt'('eipt of ,your ll'tter J and thank ~'OlI for it, though I had, already, ('oll1plied ,dtll my obligations in virtue of the l\faynooth Synod, to 'which ;rOl! are good ellough to J'efer me; and had already told Mrs. Kesnan that tllP \\"a~' was open to her to put her case before my Bishop-Hi!; EminellC'{' Cardinal 3Iac-Rol',y-if she so desired. .

Finding that ::\lnL Keentln btU:; lIot appeared to make her defen~e hefore His Eminul(,(,. 1 havE:' to-day notified her by letter that HIS Ell1illenr(' \i'ill reeein~ hel'l and hear her defence at Ara Coeli, 'Armagh, un Tuesda\' next the 27th instant, at two o'clock, p.m.

If she f~ils to' keep this appointment, or, keeping it, fails to make good 11('1" defencE', 1 shall forthwith send her a three calendar months' notice to dl,tE'l"mine her employment, on the expiration of which her emp10nnent will '~ease. und she will l,e without any position or employ­ment ilt this sehoo1. 'fhe ease is an unusual one, and, notwithstanding your wide experience I 1 douht if 'yOU have ever had a similar -case to treat. I am, dear Sir.

T . • T. O'Cullnell. Esq" (;(>110I"a1 Secrt'tary,

Yours faithfully, (Sgd.) F. MACNALLY, P.P.

Irish Xntionnl Tl'aeh~rs' Organisation, o Gardiner Place, Dublin."

:\ote that in Ihi, letter the Manager states that he had already complied with the conditions of the i\Iaynooth Resolution, though one of the conditions-thclllost essential of all for the teacher­had certainly nol been ohscrwd, for she had not been heard by her Bishop in her own defence. Note, secondly, that it was the 3Ianager, i.e.. the complainant in the case, who makes the arrangement for the judicial hearing of the case-a most unusual procedure. ?>Iote also that the letter summoning the teacher to appear before the Bishop does not set out the charges which she has to answer, and note, finally, the threat formally repeated in his letter that if the Cilse went against her before the Cardinal she would be dismissed, not only from the Principalship but from any position in the school. . I respectfully submit that in making this threat he was usurping the powers and functions of the Court to whom the case was about to be submitted. It was one further attempt, in my humble view, to coerce or induce the

* See Appendix Il, page 23.

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teacher to refrain from putting her case before her Bishop, as she was entitled to do by the laws of her Church. . .

I was appointed by the Executive to accompany Mrs. Keenan" and assist her in making her defence before the Cardinal, and on the date mentioned-December 27th-we went to Armagh, and met His Eminence. He appointed his Vicar-General, Right Rev. Dean MacDonald, P.P., V.G., Dungannon, to hear what we had to say. I will not describe what took place at this interview but I shall read for you a letter which I addressed to His EmiJi.ence on the day following the interview, and befOl\e his decision on the case was announced. The letter is as follows :-

" Irish National Teachers' Organisation, 9 Gal'diner Place, Dublin,

28th December, 1938. His Eminence Cardinal MacRory,

Ara CoeH, Armagh. May it please Your Eminence,

As General Secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, I feel it incwnbent on me to place be{ore Your Eminence certain observations arising out of the interview w hieh took place at Ma. Coeli yesterday, and which, in my opinion, will become the subject of serious consideration by my Executive, and by the general body of Catholic teachers in the country_

Ever since the I Maynooth Resolution' was formulated and accepted by the Organisation as a protection against arbitrary action on the :part of an individual Manager, the teachers have attached very great. Import~nce to the question of the procedure to be adopted when it becomes necessary to invoke that protection. Your Eminence will, no doubt, remember the i,ncidents which induced the Bishops to adopt a revised form of the Resolution in June, 1916, 1Vhen it was laid down that 'before a teacher is dismissed, or served with notice of dismissal, the teacher would be given an opportunity of making his defence before the Bishop.' Since that time especially..' the Organisation has always regarded the Bi~hop as the. tribunal betore whom the teacher has the right to appear and make his defence, after the Manager has put forward the specific reasons on w.hich he grounds his applisation for permission tQ serve the dismissal notice.

It is essential, if the teacher is to be afforded an opportunity of making his de{ence, that he should know beforehand all the charges which have been made against him, and/or all the reasons which the Manager has put forward in support of his application. It has become the recQgnised practice, in cases involving the Maynooth Resolution,' for the Bishop himself to summon the teacher :to appear before him, informing 'him at the same time of the Manager's' application for permission to serve a dismissal notice, and se.tting out specifically the grounds on which that application was based. I have been present on occasions when the Bishop, sitting as a Court, heard not only the Manager and the teacher, but a number o{ witnesses who had been summoned by. each side in support of their"case. I venture humbly to suggest that such procedure is essential if the teachers are to have that full and complete confidence in the efficacy of :the Maynooth Resolution which is so necessary for the continuance of the cordial relations which at present happily exist between the Ecclesiastical Authori.ties and the teaching body.

I trust Your Eminence will pardon me if I express the view that in som~ aspect~ of thE' cas~ which was the subject of discussion at

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yesterday's interview, there has been a wide divergence from this recognised procedure.

In the first place, the Manager notified the teacher of her removal from the Principalship of Kil1ean School before she had any opportunity to appear before Your Eminence. When doing so, he informed her that Your Eminence had approved of the' arrangements' he proposed to make with regard to the staffing of the Killean Schools. True, it was a verbal notice, but when the teacher reminded him of her three months agreement, and of her right to appear before her Bishop, he said, in effect, 'You may go to the Cardinal if you wish, but if you do you \vill forfeit your chance of the assistantship.' On Friday, 16th December, he definitely ordered Mrs. Keenan to assume duty on 2nd January, as assistant in her own school" at the same time instruct­ing the assistant in the boys' school to taKe the -position from which he proposed to remove ::\1rs. Keenun. Though it could be held that such a notice was null and void, and could not operate to remove Mrs. Keenan from the Principalship, m~' Executive deemed it advisable at this stage, in order to avoid a possible scene in the school on January 2nd, to cOllllllunicate formally "'ith the )Iunager, and point out to him that his action was entirely irregular, having regard to the terms of the l\fa:rnooth Hesolution. In the course of his reply he stated that he had already complied with his obligations in virtue of the Maynooth Synod, and had already told 1\11's. Keenan that the way was open to her to a-ppear before Your Eminence, and that as ,she had not done so he had that day formally notified her that Your Eminence would receive hc-r and heal' he/' de/encr on Tuesday. December 27th, at 2 p.m. He continued as follou's: . If she fails to keep this appointment, or, keeping it, fails to make good her defence, I shall forthwith serve her with a three calendar months' notice to determine her employment, on the expiration of which her employment will cease, and she will be without any position or employment in the school.'

Though it was {:onsidercd unusual that the summons to appear at A1"magh had 110t come direct hom Your Eminence, and though Mrs. Keenan would be f'utitled to ask to be supplied beforehand with the Manager's reasons for proposing to dismiss her, my Executive decided to advise her to keep this appointment. Your Eminence will, how­ever, notice the terms of the extract fro111 the l\1anager's letter to me, l.vhich in substance were repeated in the letter addressed to the teacher; neither in the letter to me nor in that sent to lVII'S. Keenan was there any reference to the reasons on l.vhich the Manager grounded his ca:;e for dismissal.

I did not, and do not, question the right of Your Eminence to depute Dean lVIacDonald to hear the case which the teacher had to make, though I do say that, in view of the grave issues involved the teachers would prefer that in all such cases the Bishop, himself should heal' both parties directly, before arriving at his decision. 'In the secular courts, the judges alwa:vs attach the greatest importance to having the principals in the case, as well as their witnesses, actually before them, and their attitude and demeanour is taken into account in assessing the value to be placed on their statements. When I informed Dean MacDonald at the outset that we were in a difficulty, because we did not 1. w what charges we had to meet, he assured me that there were no charges of any kind, that the whole matter hinged on the question of the nature of Mrs. Keenan's appointment five years ago. D~an MacDona.ld took brief notes of what we had to say in regard to thIS, and promIsed that these would be ,placed before Your Eminence, and would be very carefully considered before any decision was made. It was, therefore, a matter of no small surprise to me to learn from Your Eminence, in the course of the conversation which took place as we were about' to leave, and before Your Eminence had had any opportunity o( learning from Dean l\faeDonald the nature of the case

16

which had been made on behalf of the teacher J that, as you alre~dy. lmew the whole facts of the case from the Manager, you had no optIon but to give him the required permission to serve a three months' notice, unless some agreement were coine to between us. When I urged, that there were no reasons why this teacher should be -removed from a pos!tion which ·she had held for five years, Your Erqinence will remem~er Baymg that there were 'other reasons.' That was the first suggestIOn we had of 'other reasons,' and when I asked what they were Your Eminence s~ted that it 'was charged against her that she had attempted in some way to interfere with the attendance by oalling the roll before the proper time. I most humbly and respectfully urge that it is not fair to the_teacher or to her advisers, that a charge of that kind, which had evidently been put before Your Eminence to influence your decision, should remain undisclosed up to- that stage; nor can it be said to accord with the accepted principles of fair play to suggest that she should meet that charge there and then. I had not previously heard o-f the incident referred to. I have since made inquiry, and have learned that on one occasion, at roll call _time, the Assistant in the school observed to _the Principal, who was about to call the roll , IAre you not before the time P' Apart from the fact that the Principai is entirely responsible £or the school records, and that such an observa­tion might well be regarded as an impertinence on the part of the Assistant, the position is that in the absence of a school clock,., the official school time is regulated by the Principal's watch and the Principal is entitled to order the work of the school in accordance with her own watch, and no subordinate teacher has the right to question it.

To the charge that she was.... endeavouring to lower the average of the school, she answers that she gave every possible help and co-operation in the ejforts which succeeded in raising the average "for the June and September quarters to the figure which warranted the promotion of the Junior Assistant Mistress to the position of Assistant, which she now occupies. She says further that as it has been the practice for the past two months or more for the two Curates to go out in the mOJ:ning~ and bring children to school in their cars, and as they frequently arrived at the school round about roll call time, it would be impossible £or her, even if she so wished, to indulge in any irregularities in regard to the rolls.

One might reasonably expect that if a report of this kind reached the Manager he would have made inquiry himself, or have asked the Ministry to make inquiry into its truth or otherwise, before using it AS a reason for the teacher's removal, and', above all, that failing such an inquiry, it should not be made the subject of an undisclosed charge against the teacher, 01' urged as a reason for her dismissal. .

I respectfully suggest to Your Eminence that there are elements in this case, and in the manner in which· it has been treated, which will cause the greatest possible uneasiness to the general body of Catholic teachers. I write before the decision of Your Eminence has been formally notified, and I desire to say that in my humble opinion, there are factors operating in regard to the case which deserve the fullest and most searching inquiry. I am reluctantly compelled to say, irrespective of what the final decision will be, 'that the procedure which has been adopted in dealing with this case cannot be regarded as satis· factory from the teachers' point of view, and that it may have the effect of shaking that confidence which they have hitherto placed in the measure of protection which is afforded to them by :the Maynooth Resolution.

I have the honour to remain, Your most humble and obedient servant,

. (Sgd.) '1'. J. O'CONNELL, General Secretary,"

.,

,~ ... ~.. - '/

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Ta that leter the following reply was received from His Eminence:-

" Ara Coeli, Armagh,

Decem ber 30th, 1938.

}Il'. T. J. 0' O'Connell, General Secretary,

Irish National Teachers' Organisation, 9 Gardiner Place,

Dublin.

Dear Mr. O'Connell, I recei,"ed yesterday your letter of the 28th inst., and in courtesy to

yourself and your Association I write these few lines in reply. But I must remind ~·ou that I have delegated my Vicar-General to act for me in the case of :Mrs. Keenan and it is to him you should write.

r never for a moment regarded the agreement with your Association as binding the Bishops personally to hear such cases. In appointing Right Rev. l\fgr. Dean :MacDonald, P.P., V.G., to represent me, I fully believed I was appointing a man who would be most acceptable to you and your Association, for he is not only the Ecclesiastic in the diocese after myself, but also the son o{ a teacher and the brother of a teacher.

As to Canon :NlcNally's reasons for not appointing Mrs. Keenan Permanent Principal Teacher, he will answer for himself. What I told you and Mrs. Keenan just before you left here on Tuesday, regarding the marking of the Rolls, wa,s meant to show both of you that there is great danger of his not appointing her even as an Assistant unless a peaceful settlement is now reached. I still believe there is that danger, and it is my honest opinion that you ought to advise her for her own sake to take what has been offered her.

My information is that more than one person is prepared to sweclf' to the truth of the charge in relation to the Rolls, and to swear that Mrs. Keenan was in no mistake about the actual time of day, and if that charge he proved in an inquiry :Mrs. KeE'l1an n,-ill probably get no appointment from Canon McNall~t or anybody else.

I remain, dear l\1r. O'Connell, Yours faithfully,

(Sgd.) + J. CARDINAL MAcRORY.

P.S.-I trust this letter will ellrl this correspondence as far as I am concerned. "

I don't propose to offer any comments on either of these communications. They speak for themselves.

On the evening of the interview, December 27th, a letter was addressed by Dean MacDonald to the Manager, authorising him to dismiss Mrs. Keenan from her position as Temporary Principal of Killean School-note the words of that authorisa­tion. A similar letter was sent to Mrs. Keenan. * On December 28th, the Manager served a notice on the teacher, dismissing her from her position as teacher in Killean School t-again

* See Appendix Ill, page 25. t See Appendix IV, page 25.

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note the terms of this notice as compared with the official letter addressed to the Manager by the Very Rev. D~an. The Executive say, and they ask you to say with them, that in dis­missing this teacher in the circumstances I have described, .Canon MacNally's action was a harsh, unwarranted and arbitrary exercise of managerial authority.

On January 7th, the Executive held a special meeting to con­sider the case, and the following statement was forwarded to His Eminence:-

"PROPOSED DiSMISSAL OF MRS. KEENAN, KILLEAN GIRLS' P.E.S.

STATEMENT ADOPTED AT A SPECIAL MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE, JANUARY 7th, 1939, FOR SUBMIS­

SION TO illS EMINENCE CARDINAL MacRORY.

I. Having considered fully all the facts and circumstances connected with the proposed dismissal of Mrs. Keenan from the Principalship of Killean Girls' P.E.S., Newry, including the General Secretary's report of his visit to Armagh on December 27th, and subsequent correspondence, the Executive are forced reluctantly to the conc1usion that in the application of the Maynooth Resolution to this case there has been a wide divergence from the procedure and practice as hitherto adopted, and as understood and believed by the teachers to be essential for its acceptance 'by them as a satisfactory tribunal where the question of tenure is involved.

They are driven to this conclus10n because of the foJrlJwing facts:-

(1) The Manager O'1"rkred the teacher to vacate her position as principal of the school before she had been heard by her Bishop in her own defence.

(2) The Manager stated, and the statement has not been questioned, that her Bishop (i.e., His Eminence the Cardinal) had been informed, and had apptroved of the ' arrangements' which he (the Manager) proposed to make-such ' arrange­ments ' involving the teacher's dismissal.

(3) ,When the Manager's attention was called to the irregu­larity of dismissing the teache;r in disregard of the provisions of the Maynooth Resolution, he replied that he had already complied with his obligations in virtue of the Maynooth Synod, though up to that time the teacher had not been summoned t.o appear before her Bishop to make her defence.

(4) When the teacher, on being ordered to vacate her posi­tion, referred to her signed agreement, and the Maynooth Reso-

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lution, the Manager intimated that an appeal to the 0ardinal would deprive her of the opportunity of filling even a subordi­nate position in the school. This threat, which was repeated in his letters to the General Secretary and to the teacher, written on December 22nd. has now been embodied in the notice served on her on December 28th.

(5) The teacher was not summoned by her Bishop to appear before him in her own defence The notification that she would be so received, accompanied by the above-mentioned threat, came from the Manager.

(6) At no time have the reasons for her removal been formally submitted to her. In fairness, she should have· been made aware of these before being called on to make her defence.

(7) The teacher has not been heard by her Bishop (i.,e., His Eminence the Cardinal) in her own defence. While not presuming to question the right of the Bishop in such cases to delegate his authority to another person, the Executive wish it to be known that this Organisation had hitherto understood and believed that the teacher in all such cases would ' be heard in his own defence by the B;,;hop '.

(8) His Eminence before he bad an opportunity of knowing what the teacher's defence in this case was, informed the General Secretary and the teacher concerned that he knew all the facts of the case, and that he was prepared to give the necessary permission to serve the three months' notice, and that unless there was some agreement the Manager was not likely to give the teacher any appointment in these schools .

.. (9) Though Dean MacDonald, who was delegated to hear the teacher's defence, had definitely informed the General Secre­tary and the teacher at the outset that, allart from the nature of her appointment to the principalship in 1933, there were no reasons for her removal, and that no charges of any kind were alleged against her, His Eminence later on informed the General Secretary and the teacher that there were, in fact, , other reasons " and mentioned one such reason-a charge'of irregularity in regard to the calling of the school roll. The teacher had never previously heard of this charge, and had not been given an opportunity to meet it. Tbe fact tbat it was mentioned by His Eminence, and repeated in his letter on December 30th to the General Secretary, shows the importance which His Eminence attached to this allegation.

(10) The decision to give permission for the service pf a dismissal notice on the teacher was not made by her 13is:'op, even though it had. the Bishop '8 approv!!l, .

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(11) The Manager by this decision was merely informed that there was nothing to prevent him from giving' Mrs. Keenan a three months' notice of dismissal ' trom her position as Ten!-p<Jj"ary Princip&, of KiUean Girls' Scihool '. The agree­ment, which was signed on May 1st, 1934, by both parties to the contract, and which was afterwards approved by the Northern Ministry, showed that the teacher was appointed as 'Principal Teacher' of Killean Girls' School. The nQtice served on December 28th is not, therefore, in accordance with the terms of the decision notified to the Mana.ger by Dean MacDonald. Purporting tu act On that decision, the Manager has now served her with notice of dismissal from her employ­ment' as teacher of Killean Girls' P.E.S.' Had the notice been served in the terms' of the decision conveyed to the Manager'il by Dean MacDonald, it would be legally null and void, inas-much as it would purport to remove her from a ·position which she did not, according to the material evidence, at any time occupy, viz., that of ' Temporary Principal '.

IT. The Executive, having fully considered..all the available evidence in this case, are satisfied that there is no justification for the removal of Mrs. Keenan from the position which she has successfully occupied for over five years, and that her re_­moval from that position would constitute a harsh, unfair and arbitrary exercise of authority on the part of her Manager. They cannot admit that a mere condition made by the Ministry to the effect that in 'a contingency which, in fact, has never arisen, c,ertain payments could not be claimed .by the teacher, could have any relevance to the relations between the Manager and the teacher, nor could it operate in any way to affect the contract signed by both Manager and teacher.

The letter from His Eminence, dated, December 30th, 1938, refers to the Manager's reason 'for not appointing Mrs. Keenan Permanent Principal Teacher '. It is respectfully sub­mitted that as there is no vacancy in the Principalship of Killean Girls' SchQol, the question at issue is not the appoint­mR!/tt of Mrs. Keenan to that position, but rather her removal from it.

The Executive are satisfied that while she continues to give efficient service, she can be removed from that position only by direct action of the Manager, and that in so far as perma­nency is concerned, any teacher appointed to succeed her can he given no greater permanency than that which at present attaches to Mrs. Keenan.

ITl. .Believing as they do that there are no good and suffi­cient reasons for the removal of Mrs. Keena,n from the fri)lll;palship of Killean Girls' School, allil as no charge of

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misconduct or inefficiency has been formally made or sustaIned against her, the Executive could not see their way to advise her to accept the Manager's original proposals, even if that alternative were still open to her. To do so would be to acknowledge that a Manager is justified in removing a teacher from his position without cause assigned, and without any .charge of misconduct or-inefficiency having been sustained against him. It would involve the surrender of a position which the Organisation has endeavoured to maintain during the seventy years of its existence, ·and which it had every reason to hope it would never again be called on to defend. The Executive would much regret if their advice would operate to Mrs. Keenan's detriment so far as her future teaching career is concerned, but should that be so, the Org'anisation would feel it incumbent on it to see that in pursuance of a course which it considered essential in the interests of all its members no individual teacher would be allowed to suffer in so far as the Organisation is in a 129sition to prcwnt it.

IV. Having reg-ard to the views and representations set forth above, the Executive most humbly request his Eminence to review the decision come to in this case, with the object of ensuring' that IIfrs. K~enan will be continued in her present position during good conduct and efficiency."

No reply was received from the Cardinal, personally, but Dean MacDonald wrote to say that the statement had been handed to him to deal with, and, later, he informed us that after the fullest consideration of the position, and all the -cir­cumstances, he was not prepared to alter his original decision.*

There is little more to say, except this-that in the meantime informal efforts and approaches have been made in influential quarters. to induce the :V1anager to wit-hdraw the dismiss.al notice. These efforts have come to noug·ht. On :l'1arch 28th, Mrs. Keenan was ordered to surrender the keys of her school, and on March 29th, a new Principal was installed in her place.

One finds it difficult to express in measured or temperate lan­guage the sense of unfairness which is felt as a result of this arbitrary dismissal of an efficient teacher. We can only express our surprise and pain that the dismissal should have received the authorisation necessary to make it effective.

The Organisation would be untrue to its tradition, and to the memory of the men whose efforts brought about the virtual security which teacbers now enjoy, if it did not enter its most emphatic protest against the victimisation of this teache1'­for that it is victimisation we have no hesitation in saying.

But, while we are naturally indigoant Vhat one of our mem-

• Se. Appendix V, page 25.

bel's should be treated in this fashion, and while, especially, we cannot -be other than disappointed that the machinery· of the 'Maynooth Resolution has failed to protect her against the arbitrary action of her Manager, I feel that there is no cause for uneasiness. After all, serious and all as it is, it is -but an isolated case. I am no:w almost 23 years General Secretary of the Organisation, 'and this is my first experience in all those years of arbitrary dismissal by a Catholic ·Clerical Manager. That is a record that is worth noting, ·and that must not be forgotten. Attempted or threatened dismissals there have been, no doubt, but in all such cases the M·aynooth Resolution operated to save the teacher from injustice.

I should like to say here that we have. never regarded the Maynooth Resolution as a one-sided pact, to be accepted only when the Bishop decided in favour of the teacher. There have been cases w.here the Manager was given the necessary per­mission to remove a teacher, and where the I.N.T.O. accepted that decision without demur or protest, because the teacher was afforded the fullest and fairest opportunity of meeting the charges against him, and the justice of the decision was appa­rent to all. In this case, the complaint is not alone against the decision itself, but more especially against the general pro­cedure adopted in putting the Maynooth Resolution into oper­ation.

'I should like, before concluding, to say one other word. The relations between ourselves and the Ecclesiastical Authorities, both Episcopal and Clerical, were never so close or cordial as they are at the present time, and while we must resent, and protest as strongly as we can against, this individual breach in the citadel whi<l'h they and we have jointly erected for the maintenance and fostering of those essential relations, I would be sorry, indeed, to think that this isolated incident-for it is an isolated incident-would mar in any way that fine feeling of cordiality and mutual goodwill which has been ·built up between the Ecclesiastical Authorities and the teachers, and which has been growing in strength from year to year.

In this discussion, or arising out of it, let nothing, therefore, be said that would in any' way lessen or interfere with that good feeling. Our protest will lose nothing in dignity-it will be none the less strong if expressed in restrained and temperate language. This is the resolution whi0h it is my duty to pro­pose to you for your· adoption:

Cl That, haVing heard the circumstances in which Mrs. Eleanor Keenan has been dismissed from the Principalship: of Killean Girls' School by her Manager, the Very Rev. Oa.non McNally, P.P., Kille .. vey, Newry, and having learned that no charge of any kina hae bean formu­lated against her J Wt;;. the representati-.,es of the teachers of all Ireland, in Congress assembled, declare the dismissal of this efficient teacher to be a'harsh, unwarranted and aIlbitrar! exercis~ of Managerial authoritr!

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and that we are surprised and pained that this action of the Manager should have received the acquiescence and approval which Was necessary under the provisions of the Maynooth Statutes to make th~ dismissal effective; furthermore, we are of opinion that the manner in which the provisions of the Maynooth Resolution were applied and operated in this case was such as to render it practically ineffective as a measure of protection for the teacher concerned. n

[The Resolution was seconded by Mr. M-artin Leyden, in­coming President, and having been put to the meeting was unanimously adopted.]

APPENDICES

f' It is thought advisable that the documents and corres-pondence referred to, or briefly summarised by the General Secretary in the course of his address, should be set out here.

~. They are as follows:-

-

APPENDIX I.

(Extract from Agreement made be,tween Manager and Tea;;h,r).

" MEMORANDUM OF AN AGREEMENT, made the 1st (first) ..... day of May, One Thous.and Nine Hundred and 34 (thirty-four), between Rev. Canon F. McNally. Local Manager of the Killean Girls' Public Elementary School (hereinafter called the Manager), of the one part, and Eleanor C. Keenan, Teacher of the said School (hereinafter called the Teacher), of the other part:

1. The ].tlanager agrees to employ the Teacher as the Principal Teacher of the Killean Girls' School, from the 1st (first) day of December, 1933, henceforth until the expiration of three calendar months from the date at which notice in writing shall have been given by either side to the other to determine the said employment .... "

(The Agreement was executed on May 1st, 1934 and registered at the Office of the Ministry of Education, Belfast, on May 2nd, 1934).

APPENDIX H.

(Lett~r /l'om I.N.T.O. to Manager).

Irish National Teachers' Organis,ation, Head Office,

9 Gardiner Place, Dublin.

Decembe1', 19th, 1938.

Very Rev. F. Canon McNally, P.P., Mountain Lodge, Newry.

Very Rev. Sir, It has been brought to the notice of the above Organisation that you,

as Manager of the Killean Girls' School, have verbally informed the Principal of the school-Mrs. Keenan-that her services as Principal Teacher are to be terminated at the end of the Christmas vacation. If this information is correct, I would respectfully point out that such

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procedur,e would be contrary to the arrangement and understanding entered into over forty years ago between the Bisho~ and the Te~cherBJ Organisation. The terms of that arrangement, which has now come to be known -as the ' Maynooth Resolution,' are now as you are no doubt aware, embodied in tbe decrees of the Maynooth Synod (No. 387, 1927). This arrangement has Ibeen most strictly observed between the Religious Authorities and the teachers since it was first promulgated; and it has always been interpreted in the sense that before a teacher IS dismissed, or served with nc,uce of dismissal, he must be given the opportunity of being heard in his own defence by the Bishop of the diocese. Mrs. Keenan, I understand, has not been served with notice in writing, in accordance with the terms of the Agreement which she signed at the time of her appointment as Principal, but if it is true that she has been verbally ordered to vacate her position then it is our duty on behalf .of one of our members, to call attention to the procedure whlch has for all these years governed the relations between Catholic Clerical Managers and the teachers employed in their schools.

Though it is understood that no specific charges have been m1tde", against Mrs. Keenan, either on the score of conduct or efficiency, which: would warrant her removal from the Principalship of this school, it is not proposed at -this stage to enter into the merits of the case. The appropriate -occasion for doing so would be if and when she were notified by His ;Eminence to appear before him in her own defence.

On !behalf not alone of this tea-eher, but of all our 12,000 members, the Organisation is particularly desirous to ensure that if a teacher is to be removed from her position it will be done only in accordance with the procedure which ha.s had the sanction of the Episcopal Authorities for over forty years.

If I may introduce a personal note, I should like to say that during the twenty-two years which I have held the pooition of General Secre­tary of the Teachers' Organisation, I can trutlifuIly say that no Catholic teacher has been removed from his or her position by a Manager, except in strict accordance with the terms of the Maynooth Resolution, and that not onc'~ in all that time has a teacher been so removed by a. Manager, except in circumstances which were fully warranted, and to which no exception was taken by the Organisation.

My Executive-which have directed me to send this communication,­find it difficult to believe that it is your inoontion to do anything which would be inconsistent with that honourable record. They tr1J.st, there­fore, that it is only necessary to co~icate with you in oraer to get an assurance from you that Mrs. Keenan will be continued in her present position as Principal of Killean School. If, however, for reasons of which we are not 11 ware, you still contemplate removing her from that position, then my Executive must ~sk that the terms of the May­nooth Resolution would be strictly observed, and it will become their duty to inform Mrs. Keenan ~hat any notice, verbal or otherwise~ which is not in accordance with that Resolution, would be null and VOId, a~d as such is to Ibe disregarded by her.

As it is important that the teru:;:her should know ,as early as possible what her poSition is to be when the school reopens iJ' +,he New Y.ear, my Executive would ask especially for the favour of a ..... ply by FrIday next.

I am, Very Rev. Sir;

Faithfully yours, ,

{Sgd.}-T. J. O'OONNELL, General Secretary."

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APPENDIX Ill. (Letter from Dean ~vlacDonald to J11"8. Keenan).

Dear )tIrs. Keellan,

" Ara Caeli, Armagh.

27/12/'38.

Having" been delegated by His Eminence to take a statement of your case, at the interview ·with Mr. O'Connell and yourself to-day, I wrote down carefully what Mr. O'Co11nel1 and yourself had to say on the matter, and read over for you what was written down.

Afterwards, I considered carefully the whole statement, and have come to the conclusion that there is nothing in it to prevent Canon MeN ally from giving you the usual three months notice of dismissal from your position as temporary Principal of Killean Girls' School.

I should say that before coming to the decision I showed -the said statement to his Eminence, who carefplly examined it, and said he fully agreed with my decision. A copy of thIS letter is being sent to Canon McNally.

Dear Mrs. Keenan,

I remain, Dear Mrs. Keenan,

Yours faithfully, (Sgd.) Thomas Dean MacDonald, P.P., V.G.

APPENDIX IV. (Copy of Dismissal Notice).

Mountain Lodge, Newry,

28th December, 1938.

In virtue of an Agreement, made between us, !lIS Teacher and Manager of Killean Girls' Public Elementary School, dated the first day of May, 1934, and in keeping with ita terms, I hereby give you notice that on the expiration of three calendar months from the date of this notice, your employment as Teacher in Killean Girls' P.E.S., shall cease.

. (Sgd.) F. Canon MacNally,

Dated this 28tli day of December, 1938.

Mrs. Eleanor C. Keenan,

Killean Girls' P.E. School.

APPENDIX V.

llIanaaer.

(Dean lIfacDonald's Reply to Executive Stc.ttement) ..

(Copy) .

Dear Dr. Q'Connell, I enclose a document which speaks for itself.

scientiously give a different decision.

Dungannou, 19/1/'39' ..

Sorry I could not COTI-.

Yours sincerely, (Sgd.) Th"". Dean MacDonald.

[ENOLOSURE.]

'tHE CASE OF MRS. KEENAN-Kn.LEAN, P.E.S.

Statement from the Executive of the I.N.T.O., dated 7th January, 1939, was forwarded to His EminElnce Cardinal MacRory, with a request to review the decision in above case. His Eminence handed me the statement, delegated and directed me to acknowledge its receipt, and review the case in order to see if the decision could be reversed. His Eminence said -he, himself, would not take up the case, and that my decision would be his decision.

I -have, therefore, considered carefully aH the points of the statement. r am quite satisfied that at the time the decision was made, the require­ments nf the Maynooth Statute were substantially fulfilled. The points, therefore} in the Executive statement referring to that-cannot in fair­ness be sustained. The other points in the statement appear to me to b~ either irreleva.nt or an unreasonalble .interpretation of words used. Ha.vin~ cOD:.sidered carefully again and again the whole statement of the E:recutlve, which claims that the Executive " considered fully" all the facts and circumstances of the case, I can find in it no valid or sufficient 'reason to justify me in reversing my previous decision, which, like the present decision, is also the decision of the Cardinal (it was submitted to him and approved of by him).

r~ therefore, hereby cc.nfirm my previous decision in the above case.

(Sgd.) Thomas Dean MacDonald, P.P., V.G.

Dungannon, 19th January, 1939.

Ref. lIlo. Ej944jl.

County Armagh. Roll No. 944

APPENDIX VI.

" Ministry of "Education, Belfast. '.

18th IJecentber, 1933.

Killean Girls' Public Elementary School.

Madam, I am directed by the Minister of EduGation to inform you that, 011

the application of .the Manager of the above-named school, you have been recognised as temporary principal teacher in this school as from the 30th November, pending consideration of the question of the amalgamation of Killean Boys' and Girls Public Elementary Schools ..

I am to state that :vou will, as temporary principal teacher, be entitled to Annual Capitation Grant, but you will not be entitle~ to this grant if the schools are amalgamated.

I am. l\iadam. Your obedient servant,

(Sgd.) HUGH O. LOVE, . for Assistant Secretary.

Mrs. Eleanor C. Keenan, Killean Girls' Public Elementary School,

Flunybridge, Newry."

']" .:; ... ~

It was generally recognised that the General Secretary had given the delegates a restrained and impartial statement of the circumstances which had led up to the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan, and it is not necessary to enlarge on that statement of the case to any great extent. It should, however, he re­marked that the Secretary's reference to the efforts which he and the Executive had made to secure a revision of the dis­missal notice, and thus obviate the necessity of having the facts brought before the Congress, was a very modest account of what had actually been done. Various influential people, among them high ecclesiastical dignital~es, had been approached, both by the Executive itself and by others at its instigation, with a view to having the decision revised and the dismissal notice withdrawn. It is known that those who were thus approached made earnest and genuine, but unsuccessful, efforts in that direction, but their expressed desire that their interference should be regarded as confidential, and that they should remain anonymous, must be respected. The final effort to secure an understanding may, howeyer, be related. In the Standing Orders governing procedure at t.he Annual Congress of the I.N.T.O., it is provided that the Report vf the Executive in which its activities during the year are recounted, should be discussed by the delegates on the opening day, and in the ordinary course of events this dismissal case would have been brought before the Congress on the Tuesday of that week. . A request was, however, received from a number of delegates that, 4n order to enable a last effort to be made to effe .. t a settlement, the discussion should be postponed until later in the week. To this the Executive readily agreed. It trans­pired that delegates who belonged to a well-known Catholic social organisation had met and had appointed one of their number TO aet as their representative. While no formal report was thereafter presented to Congress, it is known that the teacher so appointed, who had gone in the first instance to interview his OWn Manager, was fortunate in meeting His Eminence during the interview, and that this case was dis­cussed at some considerable length. The only information con­veyed to the Executive following this visit was that the situa­tion remained unehanged. Consequently no COl1rse remained to the Executive but to place the facts before the delegates as they were in duty bound to do,

•

STATEMENT BY THE MANAGER-CANON McNALLY

The statement made to the Congress received wide publicity in the Press, and the ease was the subject of discussion at a meeting of the Arma.gh Provincial Council Df the Catholic Clerical Managers' Association. A report of this meeting appeared in the public Press on May 29th, 1939. It consisted in the main of a statement submitted to the meeting by the Very Rev. Canon McNally, P.P., the Manager of Killean School. This report was later embodied in a pamphlet and circulated rather widely to managers, teachers and others. Tbe following is a copy of the report as it appeared in pamphlet form :-

"THE ARMAGH PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC CLERICAL MANAGERS, AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING

-IN DUNDALK, HAD UNDER CONSIDERATION A STATEMENT FROM VERY REVD. f. CANON McNALLY ON THE APPOINTMENT OF TEACHERS IN KILLEAN

PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

SECRETARY,

Armagh Provincial Council Ca tholic Clerical Managers.

lVIOuNTAIN LODGE,

NEWRY.

6th ."4lay, 1939. o

I understand you have on your agenda for the meeting of the Managers' Provincial Council, to be held in Dundalk on TuesdaJ, tbe 9th instant, the case of dismissal of a teacher, treated and published by the I.N.T.O. Congress held in Belfast last month.

In view of the misleading statement made to Congress, and the ponderous resolution resting, as itself confesses, on 'circum­stances heard', I beg to state for the information of your Council the few essential facts of the ease, and to supply you with documentary evidence in proof of same.

The School in question is Killean P.RS. The teacher removed is lVlrs. E. Keenan. The Manager is F. Canon McNally.

Towards the end of 1933 a vacancy occurred on the death of the principal-' Mrs. ONeiIl-a highly efficient teacher. The Ministry had already listed this School and the adjoining Boys' School for amalgamation on the occurrence of a vacancy in either.

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The Manager' interviewed the Ministry on the question of amalgamation and appointment of teacher. He convinced the Ministry that amalgamation could not be carried out until structural changes, providing suitable accommodation, were made.

The Ministry pointed out that, in conformity with tbe Rules and Regulations governing such cases, 'no appointment could bc made except in a temporary capacity until the question of tbe need for separate schools has been decided by the Ministry.' (See Regulations Section 14a quoted below).

Under these circumstances I appointed Mrs. Keenan-then assistant in the school-to 'be temporary principal, and appointed a temporary junior assistant mistress in her place.

Here is a copy of my letter to the Ministry on the occasion :-

E. 944/1. Co. Armagil.. Roll No. 944 KiIlean Gs. P.E.S. The Secretary,

Ministry of Education, N. 1.

Sir,

, Mountain Lodge, Newry,

14th November, 1933.

I am in receipt of your letter of the 11th instant, and in view of what it conveys I have appQinted Mrs. E. Keenan (assistant) to be temporary principal, and Miss Farren (pt:esent locum tenens) to be temporary junior assistant mistress in above-named school-both appointments to take effect from the 30th instant., the date on which Miss Farrell's term of office as locum tenens will expire.

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

(Sgd,) F. McNALLY, Manager.'

To this letter the Ministry replied :-, ,,\Vith reference to your letter of the 14th instant. I am directed by

the Minister for Education to inform you that, pending the considera­tion of the question of amalgamation of the above-named schools, the Ministry is prepared to sanction the temporary appointments of Mrs. Eleanor C. Keenan and Miss Ann,ie T. Farrell, as principal teacher and junior assistant mistress, respectively, in Killean GjrIs' Public Elemen~ tary 8chool as from the 30th instant. 1 (Extract from Ministry's letter to Manager dated 23rd November, 1933).

In October, 1938, I had a conversation with Mrs. Keenan in her school, and told her I was anxious to !l"et the KiIIean schools from under the shadow of amalgamatIOn-that the present ;tverages in both schools entitled me to make new appointments and that I intended to appoint her to resume" her former !l0s!-

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tion as assistant in the school, Miss O'Neill in the Boys' School to be 'Permanent principal in the Girls' School, and Miss Toner to take the place of Miss O'Neill in the Boys' School.

Mrs; Keenan cordially agreed to resume her former position in the Girls' School, and added: ' Perhaps I would be happier in the Boys! School.' I said: 'Should you think so, I shall facilitate your change to the Boys' School. There will- be no difficulty in that.'

In proof' that Mrs. Keenan cordially agreed, I may state the fact that before I mentilmed the matter to Miss O'N eil!, Mrs. Keenan asked and urged her several times to make sure and accept the principalship in the Girls: School, if offered to her by the manager, lest he would appoint an extern teacher from another school in the Parish. .

Subsequent to all this I offered the principalship to Miss O'Neill, who was rated highly efficient, and she accepted.

The matter could, and would, have ended here but for the advice and influence of others.

Some days after, Mrs. Keenan called on the manager. She said she would consult some friends, and showed him a set of figures which, she said, would prove that amalgamation must come. The figures, she said, showed the small number of children on the Rolls for the past several years. He said: ' You are making out a fine case for amalgamation, but these are not the figures I will' submit to the Ministry. I ·will submit the average school attendance for the present year.'

She consulted her friends and her case was despatched to the secretary of the I.N.T.O., Dublin, who graciously undertook to relieve Mrs. Keenan of all future anxiety. Mrs. Keenan was not to heed the sayings or doings of the manager any louger, but to follow the instructions and advice of the general secretary. Mrs. Keenan was no longer in the case.

Mr. O'Connell was aware that Mrs. Keenan had already agreed with the manager to resume her former duties and position as assistant, but contended she should deny or go back of her pro- . mise on the grounds that she did not know her rights till in­formed by him.

The following are the only arguments of defence put forward at Congress or elsewhere :-

1. I\fr. Q'Collnell attempts to prove that l\.Irs. Keeoan was a per­manent principal teacher. This is disproved and disposed of by the manager's letter of the 14th November, 1933, to the Ministry, by whioh she is appointed expressly a temporary principal-.and by the Ministry's letter of the 23rd November, 1933, in which letter she is twice designated 'temporary' principal. Those letters show she was appointed and sanctioned as a temporary principal. (See letters enclosed and quoted above).

2. He tries to prove that she was appointed temporary principal until amalgamation would take place, and therefore could not be

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removed from that position till ama'lgamation actually took place. He must never have read, or, if he did, never understood the Regulations of the Ministry of Eduoation, Northern Ireland, under which she was appointed in a temporary capacity, or, in other words, a temporary teacher, pending decision of the Ministry regarding the need for separate schools. ' Where the Ministry is satisfied that two or more neighbouring schools can be amalga­mated with advantage for reasons of education, efficiency, or economy, it roay give notice that after such a date as the Ministry may determine no new appointment of Ht teacher may be made except in a temporary capacity until the question of the need for separate schools has been decided by the Ministry.' (Regulations for Public Elementary Schools, Northern Ireland, section 14 [Bel) ..

It should not be difficult to see that the temporary period of Mrs. Keenan's appointment was to' be ended not when the amalgamation of the two schools actually took place, but when the Ministry gave its decision with regard to the need for separate schools.

I had already the approval of the Ministry for making the changes and appointments mentioned to Mrs. Keenan as before stated, but in December, 1938, I visited the Ministry by appoint­ment, and submitted to them for their consideration and decision the position of Killein Schools in relation to amalgamation and the appointment of teachers.

The Ministry decided that the two separate schools should con­tiIme, and that I had, on the averages shown, the right to appoint a permanent principal in Killean Girls' School.

:ay this decision Mrs. Keenan's appointment and office as tem­porary teacher came to an end, and the shadow of amalgamation disappeared.

Surely this decision shows that Mr. O'Connell's contention that Mrs. Keenan was a:ppointed temporary teacher till amalgamation should be actually carried out is a contention unworthy of the General Secretary.

Mr. O'-Connell also stated that a temporary office or appoint­ment held for five years lapses (and, I presume, he means then becomes permanent), and that such is the practice of the Northern Ministry.

This statement has no foundation in the theory or practice of the Northern Ministry of Education.

I might stop here, but I beg to .make an observation, if I may, on a few of Mr. O'Connell's statements made in Congress. He complains that the manager 'went back five years to find [. reaSOn to justify his action.' Mr. 0 'Connell admits the manager found a sufficient reason to justify his action, but con­demns him for going back so far. According to the General Secretary's conception of rights, a claim in justice or justification ceases with the lapse of five years-strange doctriue, surely.

Further, he asserts' Mrs. Keeuau was dismis~ed without being

32

afforded the opportunity of appearing before her Bishop in h'er own defence.' This is absolutely untrue, as is clear from my letter, quoted by him, in which I stated: ' I had already told the teacher that the way was open for her to put her case before the Bishop of the Diocese, if she so desired,' and now finding that she had not appeared to make her defence I had that day (22nd December, 1938) notified her by letter that the Bishop would see and hear her in Am 'Coeli the following Tuesday at 2 o'clock. Does Mr. O'Connell really forget that he and Mrs. Keenan actually appeared before the Bishop in defence? Strange if he does!

With my letter before him, and from which he quotes, Mr. O"Connell draws the following conclusions-(l) 'Mrs. Keenan was dismissed without being afforded the opportunity of appear­ing before her Bishop in her own defence'; (2) the manager said in effect ' you may go to the 'Cardinal if you wish, but if you do, you will forfeit your chance of the assistantship.' Can anyone with reasoning faculties justify Mr. O'Connell's con­clusions from the premises before him Y

My letter, which he quotes, was in reply to his letter of 19th December, 1938--the only letter I received from him, and the scope of which was to insist on my observance of my obligations under the Synod of Maynooth. My letter in reply stated I had already done so.

Further, Mr. O'Connell mentioned in his letter that he was acting in the interest of the 12,000 members of the I.N.T.O., and was general secretary for 22 years. My simple observation on this was, as appears from my letter, ' The case is an unusual one and, notwithstanding your wide elOperience, I doubt if you have

. ever had a similar case to treat.' This observation gave the Secretary an oppO'rtunity of inquir­

ing what the unusual factor in the case was. He never asked to know what was the unusual nature of the case. Probably he knew it, or did not want to know, or felt hurt by my expressed doubt as to the scope of his vast experience. Anyhow, he never at any time, nor did any member of the I.N.T.O., ask me for the reason of my action. Yet the Secretary complained to Congress that the manager never committed to writing his reason. No_ written reason was ever asked for or necessary. The very nature of the case-the temporary appointment subject to termination by the decision of the Ministry, and the actual decision of the Ministry already given should be enough.

Let me say here that up to this time the question of dismissal did not arise on the part of the Manager. The I.N.T.O. forced the issue.

The teacher had, in the first instance, cordially agreed to re­sume her former position as assistant. The I.N.T.O. advised­I might say forced-her to go back of her 1lromise on the assur-

@ "','

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ance that they would keep her in what they termed her 'present position', which at the time was practically a past position.

Notwithstanding their action and her concurrence, I had hoped, in the best interest of the teacher, that wiser counsel would prevail, and on the 16th December, 1938, I met together the three teachers concerned, confirmed their new appointments, and asked them would they take up their new positions on the 2nd January, 1939-the date of the re-opening of the schools after the Christmas holidays-illl's. Keenan as assistant in the Girls' School, her former position; illiss O'Neill as permanent principal in the Girls' School, and lIliss Toner as assistant in place of Miss O'Neill in the Boys' School. iIliss O'Neill and iIliss Toner said yes, lVII's, Keenan said no. I then asked Mrs. Keenan would she take the assistantship in the Boys' School, and she said : 'No; I will hold what I have and will take nothing else.' She then became very indignant, and recounted some of the gains and advantages amalg'amation would bring bel',

Sbe practically defied the manager to remove her from her temporary position because she had occupied it for five years, IVIr. 0 'Connell gave an echo of this doctl~ne in his speech to Congress.

Someone suggested that I should give Mrs, Keenan a few days 10 reconsider her refusal, and I said I would give her seven days for that purpose. She seemed pleased, and said she and her husband would call on me next evening, but she never came.

Instead, before the seven days of grace accorded her had ex­pired, I received on the 20th December, 1938, a letter from the General Secretary of the I.N.T.O. forcing the issue in another direction. .

Let me repeat-up to this there was no question of dismissal but the question of Mrs. Keenan returning to her former posi­tion, still open for her, in the school. The I.N.T.O. closed the door against this,

With heroic courage, the Secretary proceeded to finish his self-imposed task of undertaking to compel the manager to keep Mrs. Keenan in her temporary position till amalgamation would actually take place, though the temporary position and. office had ceased, from its very nature and condition, and hy the decision of the Ministry of Education.

To effect this, and for this purpose, he carried his ease to the Ecclesiastical Court-the Bishop. His contentions there were groundless-no fault to him-he had no case. In result, the manager was duly notified hy the court that he could justly give the teacher a three months' notice of dismissal, and the notice was given her.

Mr. 0 'ConneH mixes separate events and issues, and from the confused mass araws and leaves others to draw false con-

34

clusions. By this method of argument, he conveys to his readers that Cardinal MacRory prejudged the case he (Mr. 0 'Connell) submitted to his judgment.

The two events he combines in this instance are as far apart as October and December. In October, 1938, with the approval

. of the Ministry of Education, I was prepared to make three changes-three new appointments. Before making them I con­sulted the -Cardinal, as I was bound by the laws of the Maynooth Synod. His Eminence approved of my arrangements and appointments, which did not involve any question of dismissal.

Mr. O'Connell conveys that this approval by his Eminence was his judgment for the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan, while no one

_ thought of dismissal for two months after, when the General Secretary forced the case to Armagh, and made it a question of dismissal. His case "in December and the arrangements in October were two separate issues.

Mr. O'Connell complains that the manager never committed tu writing his reasons for asking Mrs. Keenan to resume her former position. The reason was known to the teacher and her advisers. Her temporary office had ceased-and this was an all­sufficient reason. Besides, they never asked for reasons in writing.

Dissatisfied with the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court, it wa" competent for Mr. O'Connell to appeal'to the Ministry of Educa­tion within six weeks after the notice of dismissal had been served, and an inquiry would be granted to him.

, If, at any time within six weeks after a teacher in a school to or in respect of which grants are made out of moneys pro­vided by Parliament has been notified of dismissal from the school, a petition is presented to the Ministry by the teacher praying for an inqniry into the reasons for his dismissal, the Ministry shall cause to he ma(ksnch inquiry as it thinks fit; and if, as the result of such inquiry (at which the teaeher may be represented) the Ministry is of opinion that the dismissal is not reasonably justifiable, the Ministry shall communicate such opinion to the Education authority and to the teacher, or in the case of a Voluntary School, to the Managers or School Committee of such school and to the teacher, with a view to a reconsidera­tion of the decision, and, in the event of the Education authority, managers or School Committee uot departing from their decision, the Ministry may withhold or reduce any grant payable to or in reS'pect of the School out of moneys provided by Parliament.' (Section 68, Education Act (Northern Ireland), 1923}.

In pursuance of his campaign in this case, Mr. O'Connell wrote the teacher, who, at the reqnest and urgency of Mrs. Keenan, accepted the permanent principalship of the school in question, threatening expulsion from the I.N.T.O. if she did not go back of her acceptance. The teacher refused to do the dishonourable

•

thing, and requested him to remove her name from the list of members. He issued Press notices-North and South-warning teachers who may be offered a position as Principal or Assistant in Killean School, Newry, to communicate with the Head Office, I.N.T.O. before accepting same. It will be interesting to lVIr. O'Gonnell to know that, in less than a week, I had forty appli­cations from qualified teachers-several of them with a degree. I appointed one rated as highly efficient-the one I considered best in the interests of the School.

Signed: F. CANON lVIcNALLY.

The Council gave the statement its careful consideration, ordered· that it be given to the P·ress, and also printed and circulated.

The following resolutions were passed :-

1. That we consider the ::;tatement of Canon ~IacN ally a vindication of his action in the Killean School appointments, and that the resolution of the I.N.T.O. Congress, which pronounced him guilty of 'harsh, unwarrantable and arbitrary' conduct, is undeserved.

2. That the terms of Canon 387, par. 3, Maynooth Statutes, were complied 'With in the case, and that the Statements on this point in the Congress resolution are not sustainable."

1

GENERAl. SE~RETARY'S REPLY TO MANAGER'S STATEMENT

On the day the report of the Armagh Provillcial Council appeared in the Press, i.e., May 29th, the General Secretary, who was then engaged on organising work in Clare and Limerick, gave an interview to the Press, of which the following is a summary:-

Ennis, Monday.-Interviewed at Old Ground Hotel, Ennis, to-day, 'With reference to the statement issued by the Armagh Provincia1 Council of the Catholic Clerical Managers, in con-, .. ~.'-. nection with the dismissal of a teacher, Mrs. E. Keenan, from c, Killean (County Armagh) Public Elementary School, Dr. T. J. O'Connell, General Secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, said he was glad that Canon McNally's statement:' had been published. It served one very useful purpose. It should for ever put an end to the whisperings and the l"UIUOurS that had been prevalent since the Congress, to the effect that there must be " something more behind this dismissal than what appeared on the surface; or what the teachers were willing to disclose ".

These whisperings, he said, had gone on despite the state­ment made by Very Rev. Dean MacDonald, which was quoted at Congress and repeated since to the effect that there were no charges of any kind alleged against Mrs. Keenan. He hoped the suggestions and rumours had now been finally disposed of.

In d~aling with these statements at Ennis, Dr. 0 'Connell stated he was at a disadvantage inasmuch as he had not access to all the documents and correspondence available in his office. There was, however, one very essential feature in the case, which Canon McNally did not refer to in the course of his long statement, and which was the keystone of the whole situation. He wondered whether the Armagh Provincial Ma;nagers, before they passed the resolution vindicating the manager, had adverted to the fact that on May 1, 1934, six months after Mrs. Keenan had taken up duty as Princfpll-I of the s<lhool, the Manager had entered into a formal contract 'with her, of which the following extract forms an essential part:­" The Manager agrees to employ ~he teacher as the principal teacher of the Killean Girls' School from the 1st day of December, 1933, henceforth until the expiration of three calendar months from the date at which notice in writing shall have been given from either side to the other to determine the said employment."

The document, said Dr. 0 'Connell, containing that binding a6

37

clause was signed on May 1, 1934, by Canon McNally an:d by Mrs. Keenan, in the presence of witnesses. It was duly regis­tered at the Ministry of Education on May 2, 1934, and it settled finally and definitely the contractual relations which thenceforth existed between the Manager and the teacher. It will be noted that according to Vhis docmnent, Mrs. Keenan was appointed Principal, not temporary Principal, of Killean School. The Manager has now admitted in his statement that despite the specific terms of this contract, and contrary to them, he proposed on two separate occasions, i.e., in October, 1938, and December, 1938, to remove Mrs. Keenan from the principalship without giving iller this three months' notice in writing which he 'had bound himself to give her, and to which she was clearly entitled under the terms of her contract. This form of contract is exactly in the same terms as that signed by practically every Catholic primary teacher in Ireland. That was why he (Dr. O'Connell) had said at Cong'ress, and he repeated now, that in so far as her relations with her iVlanager were concerned, Mrs. Keenan had every reason to regard her. self as securely fixed in her position as any teacher t'hen listen­ing to him.

The head and fount of Mrs. Keenan's offence, and of that of her Organisation, was that she and t'hey insisted on the ful-

, fihnent of the terms of her signed contract. Every Manager who appointed a teacher and signed the usual contract or agreement provided by the regulations, had the legal right to dismiss the teacher by giving 'him a three months' notice in writing, but in order to obviate the harsh or arbitrary exercise of a Manager's legal rights, an agreement 01' understanding was entered into over forty years ago between the Catholic Hier­archy and the Teachers' Organisation, whereby it was laid down that before a teacher could be dismissed or served with notice of dismissal by a Manager, permission to dismiss or to serve such notice should be sought and obtained from tlia Bishop of the Diocese, who. before giving permission, would hear the teacher in his own defence.

Canon MeN ally now tries to make some nice distinction be­tween what he calls " an arrangement" which involved the

, removal of Mrs. Keenan from her position as Principal and 'her dismissal. He says that in October, 1938. he was prepared to make three changes in the staffing of Killean School. These "hanges admittedly involved the rem", al of Mrs. Keenan from the post to whi0h she had been formally appointed. He states that before malring them he consulted t'he Cardinal, and that his Eminence approved of his arrangements and appointments, which he says did not involve any question of dismissal. He (Dr. O'Connell) couldn't see this nice distinction which was here sought to be made between removal and dismissal. Canon

38

U\:IcNally says that no one thought of dismissal for two months afterwards when " the General Secretary forced the case to Armagh ". By that phrase Ca:non McNally had UIlJWittingly given away his case. Why should it have been made necessa,ry for the General Secretary to force the case to Armagh' Had not the teacher the undisputed rig>ht to go to Armagh and to be heard by her Bishop before the question of her future position was decided 1

With regard to Mrs. Keenan'8 alleged agreement, said Dr. o 'Connell, to the proposed arrangements, in the fuost instance that aspect of the case was dealt with in the statement placed ,before Congress. "All I wish to say," said Dr. O'Con.nell, " is that on the first occasion on which Mrs. Keenan visited me, she informed me that she did not wish to fall in with the Manager's proposals; and, on inquiring as to her position, I informed her that, in accordance with the terms of her agree­ment, she could not be removed from the principalship except hy a formal three months' notice in writing, served in accord­ance with the terms of the Maynooth Resolution. Canon McNally stated that my suggestion that the temporary con­dition proposed by the Ministry would be regarded as having la,psed after a period of five years has no foundation in theory or -practice. I am in a position to quote from 'an official docu­ment* to show that this is in fact the practice of the Ministry, and there was the positive assurance of the Ministry that, so far as they were concerned, they were quite willing to have Mrs. Keenan continued as Principal of the s<lhool."

There were many other points in the statement which, Dr. o 'Connell said, he -could only deal with when he had an oppor­tunity of consulting the files; but there was one statement made by the Manager, which came to him as a ,great surprise. It was even more surprising still that the Armagh Provincial Managers could have apparently allowed the statement to go without comment. Canon McNally had pointed out that under the reguiations of the N Ol1;hern Ministry, it was competent for the teacher to appeal to the Ministry, and the suggestion clearly was that, having been dissatisfied, as he said, with the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court, it had been then open to her to go for justice to the Ministry, and that she had not done so, because of some doubt as to the result.

"On behalf of the Catholic teachers of Ireland, that sug­gestion is vehemently resented," declared Dr. 0 'Connell. "Ca,non McNally should know, and most assuredly the Armagh Provincial Managers should know, why Mrs. Keenan or the IN.T.O. did not appeal over the heads of the Ecclesi­astical authorities to the Northern Ministry. Their one and only reason for refusing to do so was their loyalty to the

• See page 51.

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agreement that had been made over forty years ago with the Catholic Bishops. By that agreement they bound themselves to recognise the Ecclesiastical auuhorities as the final authority on all questions involving the tenure of teachers, and not to appeal from that authority to any lay tribunal whatsoever. That, and that only, was their reason for not availing of the provision of the section which is quoted at length by Canon McNally.

" The way the teachers and, I believe, the public will look at this case is that a teacher who had given long, faithful and effiilient service and against ""hose character no charge had been or could be made, has been deprived of her position so that another might be put into her place, and is MW left with­out the means of earning her livelihood."

The Press interview was followed up by a letter from the General Secretary, written from Ennis, which appeared in the daily papers on June 1st, 1939. This letter was as follows:-

To the Editor.

" Old Ground Hotel, Ennis.

May 30th, 1939.

Dear Sir, I hope you will allow me to supplement the remarks which I made

yesterday to yonr correspondent in the courV of an interview £ollowing a hurried glance through the lengthy statement which Canon McNally submitted to the !,Armagh Provincial Managers, relative to the Newry dismissal case. I have since had the opportunity to study that document more carefully, and to note its many inconsistencies and misleading statements.

The official letters quoted by Canon McNally make it plain that Mrs. Keenan's occupancy of the principalship of Killean School, and her con­tinuance therein, depended on two circumstances viz., on her recognition in that position by the Ministry, and on the consent of her Manager (who, alone, had the power to dismiss her) to her continuance. It is an established fact that from the date of her appointment, until the question of her removal from the principalship was raised by Canon McNally, the Ministry had never once questioned her continuance, and that they were quite prepared to continue her in that position. When Canon MeN ally informed them that he was about to remove Mrs. Keenan and to replace her by another teacher, the Ministry had no option but to agree to his proposal.

Canon McNally, however, seeks to put the responsibility tor her discontinuance on the Mimstry. He states that the period of Mrs. Keenan's appointment was to be ended when the Ministry gave its decision with regard to the need for separate schools. There is no statement to that effect in either of the official letters which he quotes .

It is absolutely contrary to the terms of the formal contract which he, himself, signed on May 1st, 1934, wherein it was provided that Mrs. Keenan was to be continued as principal o£ the school until the expiration of a three months' notice in writing, to be served on her by her Manager. He goes on to say that the Ministry decided that the two separate schools should continue, and that by this decision Mrs. Keenan's appointment and office came to an end. There is no founda­tion for that assertion. The Ministry was moved to make :that decision

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by Canon MeN ally's proposal to 'make changes '-we have his own word for that. It was he, and not they, who raised the issue, after a lapse of five years; hut he must know that the faot that such a deoision was made would have no effect towards the removal of Mrs. Keenan from the principalship, and that her removal was. not neces~ary to take the schools from under the shadow of amalgamation. The .TIght of removal lay with the Manager, and with the Manager alone, a~d he must accept the whole r.esponsibility for the use he has made of It.

Canon MoNally completely misrepresents my attitude in regard to Mrs. Keenan's tenure o£ office. He says 'he (Mr. O'Connell) tries to prove that she was .temporary principal until amalgamatio.n. w0u.!-d take place, and therefore, could not be removed from that posItIon till amalgamation ~ctually took place.' Further on h~ writes: 'Surely this decision (Le., the decision of the Ministry, mentIoned above) B;hows that Mr. O'ConnelPs contention that Mrs. Keenan' was appomted temporary principal till amalgamation should be actually carried out is a contention unworthy of the General Secretary'; and, again, he writes: 'With heroic courage, the S'ecretary proceeded to finish his ,:::~ self-imposed task of undertaking to compel the Manager to keep Mrs. '<1 Keenan in her temporary position till amalgamation would actually take place.' I have never contended, or tried to prove what is here suggested took place, nor did I try to compel the Manager to continue ., .;Ja her until, and, apparently, only until, amalgamation actually took .~~ place. Such a course would have been particularly foolish. What I did contend, and what I tried (successfully, I hope) to prove was that Mrs. Keenan's tenure of office as Principal of Killean School could be terminated only by a three months' notice from her Manager, properly served. on her in accordance with the terms o{ the Maynooth Resolution, and that 'it did not, as he suggests, come automatically to an end immediately he had obtained the sanction of the Ministry for certain proposed changes in the ~ng of the school.

Canon McNalIy stresseWat length Mrs. Keenan's alleged willingness, when these proposals were first made to her, to step down from the position which she had successfully filled for five. years, to surrender the substantial privileges and emoluments which she had enjoyed in that post, to accept a subordinate position in the school, and to see her place as principal being taken by one of the assistants. I have no personal knowledge of all this j but if that were her attitude I am wondering why she should have travelled specially to Dublin _to lay her case before her Organisation and to seek their advice and assistance. If Mrs. Keenan were so complaisant as the Manager would have us believe, and was so readily prepared to surrender her rights and pri-vileges as is now suggested, there' was no reason why she should have carried her oomplaint to the LN.T.O., or sought their help.

When she did come to the LN.T.O., the Secretary did not, as alleged by Canon McN ally, undertake 'graciously' or otherwise to relieve her of all future anxiety, nor did he tell her, or suggest, that she was not any longer to heed tna sayings or doings of the ManaO'er. He has more regard for the office which he holds, for the conaide~tion due to ,~ a clergyman, and for the maintenance of the good relations between managers and teachers than to suggest any such thing. When she inquired as to what her position was, and what her rights were she was to~d, and p-roperly told, that she could be removed from the principal-ShIp only by a three months' notice in writing, served by the Manager in acc?rdance with the terms of the Maynooth Statutes. Whl~e .the Manager me~ely endeavours to convey the impr.ession that

thE} ~Imst~y was responsIble for the. removal of the teacher from the prlllClp~shIP, he wo~d have u~ defimtely to believe that her dismissal from Kdlean School 18 d~e entIrely to the interference of the LN. T.O. He has told us that he Informed the teacher in October that he was

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about to remove her frOlu the principalship. He tells us, a.lso, that before doing' so he had taken the precaution to secure the approval of the Cardinal and the Ministry. He admits that on December 16th he met the teachers again and 'confirmed their new appointments '-in other words, he reaffirmed his decision to remove Mrs. Keenan from the principalship without complying with the conditions of his signe.a contract. He says that he I aslred J them would they take up then new positions on January 2nd, 1939. The 'phone message received at I.N.T.O. Head Office on the evening oe December 16th, from Mrs. Keenan, was to the effect that she was ordered by her Manager to take up duty in the subordinate position on January 2nd. The fact that she was so ordered ",'as stated in my letter to the Manager, of December 19th, and was neither questioned nor otherwise referred to in his reply on December 22nd.

The Manager says ( up to this time the question of wdismissal did not arise.' The ~Ianager would have us believe that his order to the teacher to surrender the poSition which she held, and to accept a subM ordinate position in the scJ;1001 was .something different from dis?Iiss~I. 'The I.N.T.O. forced the Issue,' he says. May I respectfully mqUIre what issue? The letter addressed by the I.N.T.O. to Canon McNally on the 19th December is on record. In that letter, it was pointed out to him that the termination of Mrs. Keellall's services by verbal notice, and befoxe she had appeared before her Bishop to show why notice in writing should not be served on her, was contrary to the provisions of the Maynooth Statutes. It went further and expressed the hope that Mrs. Keenan would be continued in her position as principal of· the school, seeing that there was nothing alleged against her on the score of efficiency or conduct.

What was the Manager's reaction to that? He stated that he had already comp1ied with the Maynooth Statutes, though the teacher had never, up to that time, been summoned to appear before her Bishop. He repeated in his letter the threat (I can eaU it nothing else) which he had already conveyed verbally to the teacher, viz., that if, as he himself has phrased it, the case were' forced to Armagh,' and if she failed there to make good her defence he would serve her with a three months' notice, and ·she would be without any position of employment in Killean School.

The Manager was thus prejudging the issue that was to be decided in Armagh, and holding a threat over the teacher's head as to the result of her appeal. The decision as to what the outcome of that appeal would be should have been a matter for the Cardinal, and not for the ~Ianager.

Let me say here that the teacher went to '.Armagh completely io-norant of the case she had to answer. When she and I explained our difficul~ ties in .that regard, we were told hy Dean MacDonald, who was deputed to hear and decide the case, that there were no charges against her. Though Canon IVfcN ally was present at Ara CoeH that day while the inquiry-such as it was-was in progress, he was not called before the court, or asked' to state his reasons for removing the teacher, so that these mIght be met and answered. r may say here that a prominent clergyman, and Manager, with whom the case was afterwards discussed gave it as his considered opinion that the teacher should have refused to go to Armagh until the specifio charges which she was expected ~o ~eet .had bee1;1 forwarded. to her, and that she would be quite JustIfied In adoptmg that attitude. I am prepared if necessary to furni~h the Secretary of the Armagh Provincial Coun~i1 with the n~me of thIS clergyman.

Dean MacDonald's decision, as conveyed to Canon McNally and to the teacher, was to the effect that nothing had been said on behalf of the teacher to prevent the Manager from giving her ':the usual three

42

months' notice of dismissal' from her ppsition as c temporary Principal of Killean School.' It will be noted that the Rev. Dean, unlike Canon McNally, regarded the removal of the teacher from her position as 'temporary principal' of the school as a dismissal requiring a three months' notice, and that her position on that date was not, as is more than once urged in the Manager's statement a' past ~osition J which was automatically terminated when the Ministry, some tI.~e in Octobe:: had decided that the two separate schools would contmue. It will be further noted that :the decision is expressed in negative terms. It does not attempt to say positively that Mrs. Keenan should be dismissed, or that she deserved to be dismissed. Furthermore, the negative permission contained in the decision was limited to her removal from the principalship. Canon ·McNally went further than.. this. The notice of dismissal ser~d on her next day was to the effect that her employment as teacher in any capacity in Killean School would cease as from March 28th, 1939. After a service .of thirteen years in that school, under Canon McNally's management-eight as ,j assistant and five as principal-she is now thrown on the roadside. ":~ Neither the Northern Ministry, who were satisfied :to leave her undisturbed, nor the I.N.T.O., who merely intervened, as they were bound to do, to see, ill so far as they could, that the rights assured to j her by her signed contract, and by the long established agreement '~:': with the Hierarchy, -werE' accorded to her, can be saddled, with responsibility for her present plight. Not the slightest shadow of a charge has been sustained against her on the score of conduct or efficiency. There is nothing in all of Canon McNally's statement which would alter the opinion expressed in" the Congress resolution to the effect that his action in depriving the teacher of her livelihood was harsh, unwarranted and arbii{rary. In his concluding paragraph, Canon McN ally refers to the ract that he had forty applications frO-ID teachers for the .assistantship which was rendered vacant by the appoint-ment of Miss O'Neill;to Mrs. Keenan's post. Knowing the number of unemployed teachers in the area, I am not surprised; but there is no evidence that anyone of these forty was aware, before she sent in her application, of the circumstances which gave rise to the vaoancy. I do know, definitely, that certain teachers who were acquainted with these circumstances refused to apply. It may interest Canon McNally, also, to know that the lady who now occupies the position informed me by letter that she had been offered, and had accepted the appointment before the notice to \vhich he refers had appeared in the Press.

In view of the possibility that it may arise in another -way, I do not wish at this stage to go into the question of the manner in which the Maynooth Resolution was applied and operated in this case. The Executive representing one party to the long standing arrangement embodied in ,the resolution have alr.eady .~tated their views on this aspect of .the matter. I will only say here that if the Armagh Managers are satisfied that it has been complied 'With in this instance in the spirit in which it had hitherto been so scrupulously observed, then the Catholic teachers of the Archdiocese have some cause for uneasiness.

Finally, I would draw attention to the terms of the Council's first resolution, wherein they accept Canon McNally's statement as a vindi­cation of his action 'in the Killean School appointments.' The issue between Canon MoNally and the LN;T.O. was not one of appoint­ments, but rather of the dismissal o£ a competent teacher, without cause assigned. ~

Yours faithfully,

T. d. O'CONNELL."

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MEETING AT LIMERICK

Some days later, in an address delivered at a meeting in Limerick, the General Secretary again dealt with the Keenan Dismissal. The following summary of his remarks was pub­lished at the time:

Winding up a ten days' organising tour in Limerick and Clal'e, during which he spoke at a series of crowded and inter­ested meetings, Dr. T. J. 0 'Connell, General Secretary, addressed a well-attended meeting at t·he )lechanics' Institute, Limerick.

Mr. Sean Walsh presided. In, his address ~Ir. O'Connell said that he ",as more than

pleased with the healthy condition of the I.N.T.O. in these two counties; he cong'ratulated the members on the hiterest they had shown in the work of the Org·anisation. and their loyalty to its ideals.

Referring to the Killean dismissal case, Dr. 0 'Connell said that to him personally it caused the g'reatest regret and dis­appointment that such an incident should occur. Duriug the twenty-three years he had held the office of General Secretary he had at every opportunity endeavoured to cultivate and foster cordial relations between Managers and teachers, and he was glad to say that until this unfortunate incident occurred there was the greatest possible harmony and co-operation, in­dividually and collectively, between the parties.

In his travels abIoad he was often questioned as to the work­ing of the Managerial System, a system peculiar to this country, and the query most frequently put to him was whether it was possible for teachers to have security of tenure lmder such a system.

He was always glad to be able to say t,hat during his long period of office there had never been a case of arb1trary dis­missal of a teacher by a Catholic Manager. He had fondly hoped that during his time as Secretary he would never be called on to defend a teacher 'ltg'ainst such action. That was why he felt such disappointment over the KilIean case.

Much had been said and written as to the circumstances sur­rounding Mrs. Keenan's appointment to the Principalship of Killean School in 1933. He was satisfied from all the available ~yidence, and from the inferences naturally to be dratVll from *a '

1

the evidence, that Mrs, Keenan at the time of that appointment believed that unless and until the Ministry were to raise some question as to her status, which was most unlikely, she was perfectly secure in the position to which the Manager had appointed her. It was not likely otherwise she would have surrendered a permanent post with no guarantee tltat she could ever 'again resume that post. The Manager was not in a position to give her any such guarantee, because her resumption in the future depended on the average which at that time was below the figure which could warrant the appointment of an assistant. Nor was it likely that if the Manager intended Mrs. Keenan's promotion to be merely temporary he would have then, as he did, made an arrangement whicn involved a reduction of the status of the sllhool in the matter of staffing. Owing to the average he had perforce to replace Mrs. Keenan, a fully quali­fied ·assistant, by a junior assistant mistress. If he intended Mrs. Keenan's tenure of office to be a mere temporary affair would he have thus jeopardised her permanent position in the school, or would she have agreed to take that risk 1 He could have allowed Mrs. Keenan to eontinue as full ·assistant and have brought in an outside teacher to fill the temporary post, or he could have continued the locum tenens who had occupied the Principalship for three months prior to December, 1933, and who had all the necessary qualifications for that appoint­ment. There was no other conclusion to be drawn from the known facts except that in 1933 the Manager was not only willing but anxious that Mrs. Keenan's appointment to the Principalship should be regarded as permanent. It was the Ministry and not the Manager who laid down the conditions on whieh she was to be recognised, and it was reasonable to suppose and to expect that unless the. Ministry afterwards raised some difficulties or made some objection Mrs. Keenan wOl,ld be continued iu her post.

He was not, however, specially concerned with what hap­pened in 1933 beyond the fact that Mrs. Keenan was promoted to the Principalshi,p of the school. For his case the circum­stances surrounding her appointment was not the real or essential issue, because as far as a M·anager's legal right to dismiss a teacher is concerned it does not matter whether the appointment was "temporary" or "permanent ". Every Manager in Ireland' has the legal right to dismiss any teacher in his employment, because the only legal 'contract that exists between Manager and teacher provides for a three months' notice on each side. A legal right was one thing; the manner in which that right 'was exercised was quite another thing, and the question he and his Orgamsation had to consider was whether the dismissal of the particular teacher was neces­&.ry or warranted, or 1"hether she had done anything which

45

would call for such a drastic penalty as had been meted out to her.

It was common ground that during her thirteen years' service under Canon McNally's managership she had given every satis­faction; that during the five years she ooted as Principal of the school she had shown that she was a successful teacher; that there was no complaint as to her conduct or character as a citizen and a member of the co=unity in which she lived. Why, then, should it be necessary to remove her from the position which she had thus satisfaJCtorily filled for five years? Unless some good ,purpose were to be served, and could be served only by her dismissal, then that dismissal was unwar­ranted, and her fellow-members were justified in describing that dismissal as a harsh and arbitrary exercise of managerial authority.

The Manager had stated that he was anxious to get the school from under the shadow {If amalg.amation. The Ministry had not raised the question of amalgamation since 1933, and it was extremely unlikely that even the shadow of amalgamation was then, in 1938, hanging over Killean School; or, if it were, that the danger spot was the girls' school. But if the Manager were so anxious to get the school from under this supposed shadow, and if that were his only reason for the change in the staffing of the school, could he not have accomplished his purpose with­out removing Mrs. Keenan from the position she had success­fully filled for five years, and without making any change in the staff as it existed in December last' There' was no need to deprive Mrs. Keenan of the privileges and emoluments which she had hitherto enjoyed, and to subject ~er to the humiliation of having to step down to a subordinate position after that lapse of time as Principlll. All that was necessary was to request the Ministry to remove the proviso which they had attached to the appointment in 1933. On his awn showing, t,he Ministry wonld have readily agreed to the propos&!, arid all the trouble which has since arisen would have heen avoidcid.

Dealing with the question of the Maynooth Resolution, Dr. o 'Connell said he would prefer at this stage not to go into that at any length. He would, however, direct attention to the Manager's contention in his letter to the I.N. T.O. on 22nd December, ·a contention repeated in his recent published state. u. .t, to the effect that he had already complied with the pro­visions of the Maynooth Statutes before he was requested to do so by the I.N:T.O. If he had really done so, then that should have been an end to it; there should have been no need at all for what happened afterwards-for the notification of an appointment with the Cardinal; for the teacher's visit to Armagh on December 27th; for the formal decision by Dean

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MacDonald; for the formal service of a three months' notice by the Manager on December 28th, following that' decision. The value to be placed on' the l'4anager's other statements can be judged by his insistence that prior to December 16th he had fulfilled his obligations under the Maynooth Statutes.

It 'Was the duty of the Organisation to stand by the victim. ised teacher, and that they were prepared to do at all costs.

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FURTHER COMMENTS ON MANAGER'S STATEMENf

The Manager's statement-apart from its questionable refer­ences to the I.N.T.O., and to the General Secretary-was meant to show that Mrs. Keenan's appointment as Prineipal of fue KilJean School was of a temporary nature and that as such he was entitled to remove her from that position at any time without reference to any agreement and without formal written notiee. The published correspondence and all the surrounding circumstances make it abundantly clear that the temporary proviso which accompanied her appointment was inserted at the express order of the Ministry and was not dne in allY way to the Manager's wish or action. In his speech at Limerick, already quoted, the General Secretary set forth con­clusive arguments to show that this was the only possible inference to be drawn from the events surrounding the appointment. But there is in addition the· Manager's own letter to the Ministry, dated November 14th, 1933, and quoted by him in his statement wherein he wrote" I am in receipt of your letter of the 11th instant, amd ~\n, view of what it conveys, I have appointed Mrs. E. Ke..enan (Assistant) to be tem­porary principal." It is significant that the Ministry's letter . of the 11th November to which the Manager replied in these terms is not -quoted, but it is not difficult to surmise the nature of its contents and to infer that it was because of what it eonveyed the Manager was constrained to make the appoint­ment a temporary one.

If further proof of this is wanted it will be found in an extract from an official letter addressed to Mr. John Beattie M.P. (Northern Divisional Secretary of the I.N.T.O.), by th~ Ministry of Education, under date 27th September, 1939. The extract is as follows:

Dear Mr. Beattie,

" Tyrone House, Ormeau Avenue,

Belfast. 27th September, 1941.

I am sorry I have been unwble to reply earlier to the questions you asked regarding appointments .9f temporary teachers. You will appreciate, however, that to examine the files dealing with appointments of teachers during the five years e,;ded 30th June, 1939, has involved no small amount of work.

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The result of this examination is now available and it reveals that during the period. mentioned there were 24 teachers (18 principal teachers and 6 a.ssistants) appointed in a temporary .capacity where this special condition was imposed hy the Ministry pending the OII'nSideration of the question of school r@OII"ganisation. (The many ca.sea of appointments under the usual proviso are not regarded as temporary appointments and have therefore been ignolY'd.) In none of these cases, however, have we been able to find anything that would indicate that the Manager of the school wished to make the appointment temporary in char­acter. In all of them it was the Ministry which reqnired the appointment to be temporary."

Mrs. Keenan herself asserts positively that until October, 1938, nothing was ever said to her by her Manager which would lead her to think or believe that she would be removed 0-

from the principalship so long as the Ministry were prepared to agree to her continuance in that position, and her statement to this effect has not been challenged.

As the General Secretary stated in his Congress address, she had every reason to regard herself as permanently fixed in her position as any teacher in the service, subject only to the possi-bility that the Ministry held themselves free in certain eventualities not to accord to her the privileges in regard to capitation to which she would become entitled had the proviso in question not accompanied her appointment.* There is no such thing as absolute permanence in a teacher's term of em­ployment. Every teacher in the service, is, legally, subject to removal on three months' notice by virtue of the Agreement which is signed with the Manager. Mrs. Keenan had signed this Agreement, and prOVISO or no proviso, her services could be dispensed with by the service of a formal three months' notice. If, however, that were done without a good and suffi-cient cause, her removal could not be regarded otherwise than as a harsh and arbitrary exercise of a legal right. The insertion of this proviso by the Ministry did not, and could not, absolve the Manager from the contract into which he had formally entered when he signed the Agreement of May, 19::13. The Manager seems to assume that all that was necessary for hjm:-.... · . '1 to show in justification of his action was that Mrs. Keenan's -san·ction as Principal of the school was of a temporary character ; and that once this was clearly est",blished nothing further need be said in defence of his action in removing her from that position, even without complying with the terms of his legal contract. .

* See Ministry's letter to Mrs. Keenan, 18th December, 1933, page 26.

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That is a point of view with which the Organisation cannot agree. Mrs. Keenan had filled this position for almost five years. During that time she had satisfied the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, and no complaint of any kind had been made regarding her work. To all outward appearances she was the regularly appointed and fully established Principal of Killean Girls' School. Her pupils, their parents, the teachers in the district, and the public generally, saw her pro­moted from the position of assistant to that of principal of the school. They saw her occupy that position creditably and honourably for close on five years. What conclusion could they draw had they seen her removed from that position and a suhordinate teacher from the school next door placed over her head as principal! Could they think otherwise than that she was in some way unfitted to be principal of the school, or that she had done something to deserve such a humiliation!' This is an aspect of the matter which does not seem to have occurred to the Rev. Manager when he decided to remove Mrs. Keenan from the position which she had satisfactorily filled for five years, and to appoint a junior teacher from the school next door in her place. Neither then nor since has the Manager ever vouchsafed any reason other than the alleged temporary nature of her appointment to justify the reduction of her status in the school. The Organisation hold the view that the proviso which accompanied her appointment was not sufficient justification for her removal from the principalship, seeing that, in addition to a substantial reduction in emolmnents, such removal would subject her to unneceljllary and undeserved humiliation in the eyes of her neighbours and the parents of her pupils, and that even if the Manager's action were con­fined to dismissing her from the principalship, that action in the circumstances would be, in the words of the Congress reso­lution, "a harsh, unwarranted and arbitrary exercise of managerial authority". There was nothing connected with, 01' arising out of, the case that made it nec~ssary for him t(} remove Mrs. Keenan from the principalship. If, as alleged, he was " anxious to get the Killean Schools from lmder the shadow of amalgamation ", his object could be accomplished without disturbing Mrs. Keenan from her position.

But a worse fate-worse than the mere loss of the principal­ship-was in store for Mrs. Keenan. After her recovery from the first shocl, caused by the "conversation" which the Manager had with bel' in October, 1938, she consulted" some friends", and naturally the first friend a teacher turns to when in trouble is bel' Organisation. The Organisation advised Mrs. Keenan that she was entitled to a three months' notice from the Manager before she could be removed from the principalship of the school, and that as her school was situated

50

in the Archdiocese of Armagh, the Manager would require the formal permission of His Eminence the Cardinal bef<lre such notice could be served. It is not now disputed that these two conditions were a necessary preliminary to her removal. But because the teacher, through her Organisation, insisted that they should be carried out, she was not alone removed from the principalship as was first intended, but she was dismissed from the school and deprived of her means of livelihood. When the teacher originally reminded the Manager of her legal agree-ment and of her claim to appear before her' Bishop, the Manager had warned her that if she went to the Cardinal she would forfeit her chance of the assistantship. He repeated that threat in his letter to the .General Secretary on December 22nd, 1938. These fads we're mentioned in the General Secretary's letter to His Eminence, and they were not then, j or since, challenged. In his statement to the Armagh Provincial . Council, the Manager asserted that IT[:j to a certain stage ffi.l " there _s no question of dismissal, but the question of Mrs. ''''l Keenan returning to her former position, which was still open to her in the school. The I.N.T.O. closed the dwr against this."

Finally we have it in the later correspondence from Father Donnelly, Secretary to his Eminence (see letter of August 16th. 1939, page 63), that " the fans et origo of all the worry and scandal of the case was due to the fact th8ct the I.N.T.O. advised Mrs. Keenan that she was entitled to a three months' dismissal notice served in accordance with the provisions of the' Maynooth Resolution'. " Summed up, therefore, the case presents itself as follows: ,

(1) Mrs. Keenan was to be removed from the principalship because of the alleged nature of her appointment five years previously.

(2) Because her Organisation objected to this, and insisted that in any case it could be done only when certain pre­liminary conditions were fulfilled, she was denied even the right of having her former ,position restored to her and was deprived completely of her means of livelihood.

The protest made by the delegates at the Belfast Congress when they declared that the dismissal of this teacher was " a harsh, unwarranted and arbitrary exercise of Managerial authority" can not in the circumstances be regarded as being otherwise than a pal "cularly mild and moderate one.

Was thIB Dismissal .Autkoil-ised? The Manager, in the cqurse of his letter to the Armagh

Council, stated that " the Manager was duly notified by the Court, (Le., the Ecclesiastical Court) that he 'could justly give

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the teacher a three months' notice of dismissal." How far this statement is correct ean be judged by a reference to the text of Dean McDonald's letter on page 25, in which the decision of the Court was formally conveyed.

"THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE NORTHERN MINISTRY"

The General Secretary had informed Congress that it was the practice of the Northern Ministry to regard the temporary or provisional nature of an appointment as having lapsed after the position had been temporarily oceupied for five year~ In the course of his letter to the Armagh Provincial Council the Manager asserted that the General Secretary's statement had no foundation in the theory or practice of the Northern Ministry of Education.

In order to confirm the General Secretary's later contention that there was documentary evidence to prove that this is the case it becomes necessary to quote an extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the Standing Conference for Elemen­tary Edueation (Northern Ireland) held on November 4th, 1938. This Standing Conference is composed of representatives of the Ministry and of the teachers. Its meetings are held at regular intervals and various questions arising out of the administration of the system are discussed. At this paliicular meeting on November 4th, 1938, the late Mr. A. N. Bonaparte Wyse, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry. presided. The following is the relevant extract taken from the copy of the minutes circulated to the members of the Conference-among whom were members of the I.N.T.O. ;-

"AMALGAMATION OF' SCHOOLS. RULES AND PRACTICE OF THE M'lNISTRY IN REGARD TO THE

RETENTION OF'TEACHERS.

A teacher's rcpreselltath'c said that this matter had frequently been discussed before, but the teachers con­sidered the situation still unsatisfactory. He wished to refer to three classes of cases;-

(1) .................................. ' ................. ..

(2) Teachers provisionally recog'llised prior to and in anticipation of the amalgamation. He thought that the period of five years during which a proviso was operative was too long and shQuld be reduced to two years.

(3) ................................. , .................. ..

A general discussion followed, in the course of which the 'Chairman (Mr. Wyse), expressed a doubt whether in

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actual practice any teacher whose appointment had not . been subject to the proviso had lost employment as a result of amalgamation. He explained the reason for the imposi­tion of the proviso and that it was removed if the ~mallll1r mation did not take ptace withiln five ye(Jll's."

It is significant that the first move to deprive. Mrs. Keenan of the principalship was made some two months prior to the expiry of the five year period, at the conclusion of which she would be entitled to claim that the proviso was no longer operative. . /

THE CONGRESS DISCUSSION

The Executive have reason to believe that the aspect of this case which appears to be most str-ongly resented by those who seek to justify the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan was the Executive's action in placing the facts of the case before the delegates assembled at the Annual Congress of the Organisation. The proceedings at the Congress have been described in responsible quarters as " shameful ", " atrocious ", " impertinent ", and " lIDCatholic ". The Executive fail to tmderstand why the publication. of the facts and circumstances surrounding the removal of this teacher should have aroused such indignation and resentment if it were felt that everything that had been .done in that connection were such as to command public sym­pathy and approval. But as 'has been stated, the Executive in placing the facts before the delegates were doing nothing more than what was their bounden duty. The efforts made by them, and by others, up to the very last moment to obviate the necessity for such a course have already been described. The Executive of the I.N.T.O. is an ,elected body. Every action taken Iby the Executive in its official capacity is taken in the name {)f those from whom its authority is derived in the first instance, i.e., the niembers of the Organisation as a whole. Every year on the occasion of the Annual Congress there is a strict accounting by the Executive of their activities during the previous twelve months. In view of the issues involved, issues which ·concerned every Catholic teacher in this coU1!try, this particular case was naturally and rightly regarded as the most impol1ant matter which had come before the Executive during the year in question. It was common knowledge among the teachers that for some

time previously certain negotiations had been taking place, and even had the Executive wished, it would not have heen possible to leave the <ielegates unaware of the facts of the situation. Had there been any reason to hope that the case would be reopened, and the dismissal dedsion revised, the :Bxecutive .'Quld have asked for a postponement {)f the dis.

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cussion on the grounds that the case was still sub judice, and that the chance of an amicable settlement was still open. But there was no such hope, and the Executive would be false to their trust if they did not place the facts as they knew them before those to whom they were responsible and allow the latter to express their opinion on the course that had been taken. It may be worth noting here that 12 months later, after the Manager's statement and Father Donnelly's letters~ had been published, the delegates assembled at the 1940 Congress in Killarney, by formal resolution and without any suggestion from the Executive, unanimously expressed their entire approval of the action which the Executive had taken in connection with the case. It is likewise worthy of note that not one- of the 200 Branches of the Organisation has at· any time adversely criticised the action 01' attitude of the Executive and that not even from one individual member has any such criticism been forthcoming. Such remarkable nnanimity could not be secured from a body whose traditional loyalty and Catholic spirit have been so frequently and so eloquently com­mended, for any action that could properly be described as " shameful", " atrocious", or " unCatholic". The present Executive wish to put on record their firm conviction that nothing was done by the Organisation or any member thereof in connection with this case which would call for any expres­sion of regret 01' apology and that if the same circumstances were to occur again they see no course that would be open to them to follow other than the one that had been followed by the Executive at the time. As the General Secretary stated in his address to Congress, it is the duty of the Organisation, and its Executive, to protect and succour its members, and to stand by them in their hour of need, and that duty will not be shirked in any circumstances whatsoever.

APPLICATION OF THE MAYNOOTH RESOI.UTION TO THE KII.LEAN CASE

It has been suggested that as the Maynooth Resolution had its origin in an agreement between the Bishops and the Organisation, there was, and is, an implied contract that when a Bishop issues a decision in accordance with the terms Qf t}1Q Resolution, the Organisation will accept it, and that tht I.N.T.O. in this case by refusing to accept the decision of the Bishop, i.e., His Eminence the Cardinal, placed themselves in the wrong. The inference from this, it is said, is that the I.N:T.O. will accept the Bishop's decision only when it is in their favour. It becomes necessary to deal here with these suggestions. .

• S~e correspom!eIlce with Father j)ollnelly, pages 63--87.

Let it be said at once that the Organisation :fully and un" reservedly accepts the proposition that there is an implied contrlwt contained in the Maynooth Resolution which binda the Organisation_ to accept the decision of a Bishop when that decision is issued in accordance with the terms of the Reso~ution. Furthermore, it is not true to say or to suggest that the I.N.T.O. will acc~pt the Bishop's decision only when it is favourable to the teacher. During the past 25 years cases have occurred in whieh the Bishop's decision was llnfavourable to the teacher, but the I.N.T.O. accepted these decisions because they were satisfied that they were made and given strictly in accordance with the terms of the Maynooth Resolution.

The~r qontention was, and is, tlUll in this CJll~ n.either the trial run' thle adiuWiootiom was im, a~o<rdalnOe- with the term.s of tit;) liIe.solution, as 1~ruf1e1'l~tood by the toachlf,rs a.nd tlz;ei,' Organrwtion, that neithflll' t'n the Letter n"'r thie sjYirit we,'e these teJrnzs .applied to this oo.se, and that the dec~on by the Bishop did not a1,th01-ise the Manage,' to remove Mrs. Ke'6nan f"01n [(,71ea.n School. ,

In the statement sent to the Cardinal after their meeting on January 7th, 1939,* the Executive set forth at length their reasons for questioning the procedure which had been adopted, but the main points may be smnmarised here:-

(1) The Resolution specifically states that "the teacher (sihall) be affordeit. the opp01'tnnity of. being hea"d in his own defence" before being dismissed, or served with notice of dis­missal In October, 1938. and more specifically in December, 1938, the Manager ordered Mrs. Keenan to vacate her position as Principal of t,he school and to take up another and sub­ordinate position. This order was of course an order of dis­missal. This was done before any opportlmjty was afforded her of being' heard in her own defence by her Bishop. When tbe Manager was reminded of this by the I.N.T.O. Executive he stated (vide his letter of December 22nd), that he " had already complied with his obligations in virtue of the Maynooth Synod ". Nevertheless, he, the Manager, not the Bishop, there­upon sllOlmoned the teacher to appear before the Bishop to make her defence, fixing the plaee and ,hour at which she waa to attend (vide letter of December 22nd), but without setting forth any readons as to why she should be SO smnmoned and without indicating in any way the nature of the charges, if any, which she was expected to meet; . In his letter summoning' the teacher to appear before the Court the Jl<Ianager. repeated the threat which he had previously verbally made, setting forth what his action would be in certain circumstances, thus fore,

- ", - --- "" • See page 18.

55

stalling the decision of the Court and threatening to penalise the teacher because she insisted on her right to appear before her Bishop.

In previous instances of threatened dismissals the Bishop sai as judge, the Manager set forth and sougbt to establish his charges in the presence of the teacher and his representative, who answered the charges so preferred. The Bishop, having heard both sides, gave his decision. The procedure in this case was totally different. Though the Manager was present at Armagh on the occasion of the teac:her's attendance there he did not appear to state his reaSOns for the proposed removal of the teacher nor was any \lTitten summary of them submitted to the Court. His reasons, such as they \I'ere, were made known

':iit< to the teacher and her representatives through the medium of ':r the Press exactly one month after the dismissal had actually

taken place. The Right Rev. Dean Th'IacDonald, whom his .~ Eminence appointed to ,hear the teacher's defence, asserted

"- ' positively that there were no charges of any kind against her, and ihat her proposed removal from the principalship was entirely based on the nature of her appointment to that position. Having <heard arguments as to why it should not be necessary in these ·circumstances to deprive the teacher of a position which she had satisfactorily filled for five years, and having made brief notes of these, Dean lIfacDonald promised to place the matter before the Cardinal who would carefully consider all that had been said before a decision was made.

•

(2) The decisian to gitVe the Manage,' pe!"Inission to remove the teache!' {"Ol1t the Pr""cipolship was l1lJruJ"e by the Bi.~hop bef01'e the teache,' was hrea"d in her own defence.

This is shown:-

(a) By the Manager's statement to the teacher to the effect that he had informed His Eminence of the proposed removal of Mrs. Keenan from the Prin­cipalship and that His Eminence had approved of the " arrangements ", (See General Secretary's letter to Cardinal MacRory, December 28th, 1938) ;

( b) By the Manager's assertion in his letter of December 22nd, that he had already complied with his obliga­tions under the Maynooth Statute which could only mean that he had received the necessary consent for his proposed removal of Mrs. Keenan;

(c) By the Manager's statement in his letter to the Armagh Council : "In October, 1938, I was pre­pared to make these changes. . ., Before making' them, I consulted the Cardinal, as I was bound 'by

(d)

,'c',',

56

the laws of the Maynooth Synod. His Eminence approved of my arrangements and appointments."

By the statement made by the Cardinal to the General Secretary on the occasion of the Ar~agh interview, and befrn-e he 11LuJ, had ~ lYfJ'Portun~ty of "teaming the natu1-e of the teoxmer's deferooe, to the effect that as His Eminence had already heard the whole facts of the case from the Manager he had no option but to give the required permission to serve a three months' notice, unless some agreement were come"to-j31Hlh agreement being understood to involve the relinquishment of the Principalship.

From all this, it is clear that the Bishop's decision was not,::' made in accordance with the terms of the Maynooth Resolu-tion, and there is nothing in the Resolution, expressed, or -implied, which places an obligation on the Organisation to::~ accept a decision except when it is so made.

Finally, as has already been shown, even had the Bishop's decision been arrived at strictly in accordance with the terms of the Maynooth Resolution, that decision as officially com­municated to the Manager did not authorise him to deprive her of the position in the school from which, 'on his own show­ing, he had temporarily taken her some five years previously.

THE TEACHER'S" CONSENT" TO THE PROPOSED " ARRANGEMENTS"

Much 'capital has been made, in the Manager's statement and elsewhere, of the fact, assuming it is a fact, that the teacher when originally approached by the Manager in October, 1938, gave her consent-qualified or otherwise-to the Manager's proposed " arrangements" and that she then signified her willingness to quit the principalship and accept the subordinate position. .

The circumstances in which this alleged consent was -given, as described by the teacher, and confirmed by the Manager himself, must be borne in mind when estimating the impor-­tance to be attached to the teacher's attitude. The Manager on this occasion paid one of his very rare visits to the school. Without any previous notice or indication of his intention he proposed to Mrs. Keenan that she should relinquish the prin­cipalship and accept the subordinate position of assistant. The natural shock caused by such a proposal would not be such as to conduce to a state of mind which would enable a person less highly strlmg than Mrs. Keenan to weigh up on the instant the significance of the Manager's proposal and its

*'"

: ...

57

effects on her future prospects and emoluments. It is at least highly improbable that a proposed reduction in status and remuneration would be so "cordially" accepted as the Manager would have us believe. Why.her immediate and un­considered reaction, even assuming that it was as stated by the Manager, should be regarded, not alone as a factor, but as a most important factor in the case made for her dismissal is difficult of comprehension. It was not reasonable to expect the teacher to make a deeision of that nature on the spur of the moment, or, if made, to attempt to bind her to it if, after mature consideration, she was satisfied that it was a decision that should not have been made. On the Manager's own show­ing this is exactly what occurred. When the proposed " arrangement" was first mentioned" Mrs. Keenan cordially agreed to resume her former position ", but" some days after­wards Mrs. Keenan <lalled on the Manager. She said she would consult friends". Following these consultations and a reconsideration of her position she informed the Manager of her unwillingness to agree to his proposal and of her intention

•

to claim the rights conferred on her by her legal contract and the Maynooth Resolution. The Organisation are prepared, -for the sake of argument, to assume that the Manager's state­ment of what transpired when he first broached the subject to Mrs. Keenan is substantially correct; but they cannot see that this makes any material differ'ence in regard to the future developments in the mise. ,If it is true that she signified her agreement when the matter was suddenly broached to her, it is equally true that when she came to consider the matter in its full bearings she very soon altered her views. The Manager charges that this ·change of mind was due to the advice and influence of others, as if she were not entitled to seek such advice as was open to her on a matter which so very seri,ously affected her future position and welfare. Naturally," she con­sulted some friends" as the Manager states, and the fact that she did so only goes to show that her agreement to the pro­posed " arrangements " was not quite as " cordial " as the Manager expects us to believe. Naturally also she decided to seek the advice of her Organisation. The advice which was given to her by the Organisation has already been set out. But the fact that she sought and acted on that advice is given as the justification, and the only justification, for depriving Mrs. Keenan of her means of livelihood. The Execl'''ve desires that it should be quite clearly understood that if the urganisa­tion had never been approached or consulted by this teacher, and if the circumstances in which it was proposed to remove her from her position as Principal of the School had come otherwise to their knowledge, they would consic1,er it their bounden duty to give her exactly the same advice, and, hl t.he

58

interests of the whole body of Catholic teachers, to do every­thing in their power to prevent the Manager removing her froJ;ll her 'Position otherwise than inacCJordance with the terms of his legal agreement, and of the Maynooth Resolution. Mrs. Keenan's original consent, therefore, even if it were such as is described by the Manager, is a negligible factor in the con­sideration of the case. Principles affecting every Catholic teacher in the country were at stake. These principles it was the right and duty of the Organisation to protect and safe­guard.

One further fact is worthy of mention. Mrs. Keenan did not change· her mind as a result of the advice given to her by the I.N.T.O. At the time she sought that advice she had very definitely decided that she would not willingly accept the Manager's proposal.

THE MANAGER'S CASE IN A NUTSHELL

'l1he Manager's case for the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan is founded entirely on the assumption that her appoin1Jment· as PHncipal of Killean School had actually lapsed at the tmuJ that ht offered he.· the assistantship in Ocwbe>·, 1938. This is shown in the following quotations:

" The Mini<ltry decided that the two separate schools shol\ld continue. . .. By this decision Mrs. Keenan's appointment and office as temporary teacher came to an end H. (Manager's state­ment, page 31.)

" The I.N.T.O. had no right to interfere at 1he time they did because' Mrs. Keenan had ceased to be a teacher '.

"But I spoke of Mrs. Keenan's definite case in which she who was without appointment was lbeing appointed assistant." (Father Donnelly's second letter, page 71.)

In these and other similar quotations is to be found the whole basis of the attempted justification of Mrs. Keenan's. removal from the principalship. But to show how little foundation there is for such an assumption it is only necessary to state that Mrs. Keenan was recognised by the Ministry, and perforM by the Manager, and paid her salary as Princirxzl of the school up to Marcn 28th, 1939, the date on which the three months' dismissal notice expired. It is quite obvious that if the Manager had not removed her from the Plincipalship she woUld be recog-

ised and paid in that position up to the present day.

THE PROVINCIAL MANAGERS' RESOLUTIONS

The Resolutions adopted by the Armagh Provincial Council call for little eomment.Their reference to the Killean School " appointments ", and their avoidance of any mention of. a

~9

dismissal, seem to show either that they were under a mis­apprehension as to the real issue involved, or that they did not wish to be taken as admitting that a dismissal had taken place. In view of the fact that the :lVIanager himself in the opening sen­tence of his letter to the COlmcil had referred to " the case of the dismissal of a teacher" their choice of terms is some­what significant. It was 'bardly to be expected that they would. express disapproval of the course that had been adopted, though it might be reasonably claimed, had they given to the case the consideration it deserved, that the teachers were at least entitled to the charity of their silence.

PARISHIONERS' PETITION TO OARDINAL

It is now known that some short time before the dismissal notice was due to expire a petition in the following terms, signed by the parents of the pupils attending Killean School, and other parishioners, was forwarded to his Eminence. The nature of the reply, if any, is not within vhe knowledge of the Executive. Certain it is that it had not the effect of preventing or delaying the dismissal:-

" We, the undersigned, humbly beg the privilege of bringing to the notice of your Eminence the sorrow and indignation that prevails throughout the parish at the dis­missal of 1\oIrs. Keenan from Killean School.

" Mrs. Keenan has been here for a great many years now and during that time we have had no cause for complaint. We are quite satisfied that she has done her duty to our girls in every way, and never before in the history of Killean School has a teacher been more beloved and respected by her pupiis, many of whom are now asking to be sent to N ewry School. She ruled not with the rod of cruelty, but with kindness, patience, and perseverance, and girls who were formerly considered too stupid to learn have under her teaching grown into happy, intelligent girls with confidence in themselves and ambition to face the world, and this was achieved only by kindness, patience, and hard work, and in these days, with highly strung, nervous, and delicate ,children, surely a teacher of this type cannot be dismissed without just cause. We can only assl'~~ that old age and failing health is in some measure responsible for our dear Canon McN ally wavering from a life"long praetice of justice, and we are quite confident that if he were about amongst his people, as in days gone by, this trouble would have been averted.

" We have ascertained that Mrs. Keenan is fully quali­fied for the position she holds and that her appointment is not temporary, and we can sympathise with her in not

60

wishing to revert to a junior position a:liter holding her present senior position for five years. We, therefore, beg and pray that our Divine Lord will bless your Eminence in your high office and give you the grace and the strength to see that Mrs. Keenan is granted justice and that she will remain with us for many years to come, and in this way only can we hope to re-estwblish unity, peace, and good example amongst our teachers, pupils, and parents.

" We have the ,honour to be, " Your Eminence's most faithful people."

(HERE FOLLOW THE SIGNATURES)

MRS. KEENAN'S EFFICIENCY

Mrs. Keenan's efficiency as a teacher has at no time been in question in this dispute. Nevertheless it may be well to quote the last three reports furnished by the Ministry on her work-and on the school premises. Here they are:-

MARCH, 1937. General Rating Efficient.

INDIVIDUAL MARKS. English Oral' '" Very Good. English Written Good. Arithmetic '" Very Good. Geography Good. Drawing Good. Physical Training Good. Hygiene and Temperance Good. Needlework '" Very Good. Domestic Eeonomy ... Good.

(Note.-This was the last year in which merit marks were awarded to individual subjects. Under a newly-introdueed system of inspection the Report since then consists of a short Minute giving a general account of the work, school premises, etc.) .

1937-1938. " There is a very agreeable tone in the school. The girls

are tidy in their habits and their demeanour is bright and cheerful. In each Division the progress made gives entire satisfaction.

Further practice in working arithmeti\lal problems to a time limit is desirable in the Senior Division.

61

REMARKS ON OTHER POINTS. The class-room is too small. The offices are only tolerably

suitable. "

1938-1939. " The children in this school are responsive and the tone is

good. Staff and pupils have worked well during the past year. Work in the Senior Division reaches a satisfactory standard and writing books are neatly kept. The training of the girls in habits of self-reliance is suggested as a primary aim in this Division.

The Assistant works in a very small room. Her work shows ,:~ promise.

•

REJ\iIARKS ON OTHER POINTS. The unsuitahility of the building in its present condition is

again stressed."

SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS

Following the publication of thc Manager's statement, and the subsequent correspondence, it became clear that the teachers were gravely disturbed. It was only then they realised to the full the fiimsy nature of the Manager's case. Strong representations to the effect that the matter should not be allowed to rest where it was were made· to the Executive. Acting on advice which had been tendered to them by a high authority before the dismissal took place, the Executive thereupon decided to inquire from his Eminence, as the highest aUDhority in the Catholic Church in this country, as to the steps, if any, which it would be open to a teacher to take if for any reason he felt dissatisfied with the manner in which his case had been dealt with under the lVlaynooth Resolution. A0cordingly the following' letter was addressed to his Eminence:-

"IRISH NATIONAL TEACHERS'

His Eminence Cardmal MacRol'Y, Ara Coeli, Armagh.

ORGANISATION, Head Office,

9 Gardiner Place, DuJblin,

27th June, 1939.

May it please Your Eminence, . My Executive at their meeting on Saturday last, June 24th, had .agam

under cOllsid0ration the "circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Mrs. Keenan from the principalship of Killean School. They much regret that they cannot feel other than dissatisfied with the present position.

,

In view of the possible reactions which this ca&e )l13.y have on the ~e~6ral ~elations between Catholic l\>Ianage!8 and te~er8, the Execu­tIve -desue respectfully to Beek the adVIce and gmda.ri.ce of Your Eminence as to whether there is any Ecclesiastical tribunal to which ,a, Catholic teacher may appeal for a re-consideration of his case, should he feel that it has not been satisfactorily dealt witb under the pro­visions of the 'Maynooth Resclutioll.'

If it is open to a teacher in suc.h circumstances to make such- appeal, the Executive would feel deeply grateful if Your Eminence wonld be so kind as to instruct them in regard to the procedure which the teacher should adopt in order to secure a re-consideration of his C386.

I have the honour to remain ,~_~, Your most obedient an,d humble servant,

(Sgd.) T. J. O'OONNELL, General Secretary.' I

The reply which ·this letter evoked was, to say the least of it, totally unexpected. It was as follQws:-

Mr. T. J. O'Coooe11, General Secretary, I.N.T.O.; 9 Ga~diner Place, Dublin. Dear Sir,

c, Ara Oaeli, Armagh,

28th J",ne, 1939.

In reply to your letter of the 27th inst., His Eminence wishes me to say that he thinks ample provision was made for the security of teachers under the 'Maynooth Resolution.'

He feels that this unfortunate case with all its' possible reactions' is entirely due to the fact that you butted in and attempted to force a venerable and justice-loving Manager to forego his right to appoint his own teacher.

I remain, Yours faithfully

(Sgd.) (Rev.) JOHN DONNELLY, Secretary.' J

The General Secretary lost no time in entering a respectful protest against the suggestion that he, or the I.N.T.O., were in any way responsible for the {lourse whieh the case had taken. On JUly 3rd, 1939, me addressed the following letter to Father Donnelly:-

"IRISH NATIONAL TEACHERS' ORGANISATION,

Rev. John Donnelly, Ara',!iCoeli, Armagh. Rev. Sir,

Head Office, . 9 Garwner Place,

Dublin, July 3rd, 1939.

I desire to acknowledge receipt of .vour letter of the 28th nit., which I sh~ll place before my Executive in due course, for their consideration.

May I, however, at this stage, respectfully submit tha.t the letter from

..• ~.

,

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the Executive was not intended to imply :that the Maynooth Resolution does not make ample provision for the security o£ Catholic teachers. Its purpose was rather to seek the advice and guidance of His Eminence as :to whether or not there was any Ecclesiastical Tribunal to which a Catholic teacher might appeal if he felt that the provisions of the ~1:aynooth Resolution had not been strictly and impartially observed or applied in his particular case.

I cannot bring myself to believe that the second paragraph of your letter correctly represents the views of His Eminence, who must be fully aware that anything I, personally, have done in connection with this case has been done in the course of my official duties, and on the instructions, and by the order of, my Executive Committee, who speak in the name o( 10,000 Catholic teachers. I feel sure that if His Eminence were of opinion that what you term my 'butting in' was impertinent or uncalled for, he would haye so informed me on the occasion of my \'isit to Armagh on December 28th, when I accompanied Mrs. Keenan as her addser. I refuse to believe that His Eminence could so misunderstand my own personal position as to make a suggestion which is so far removed from actual fact, and which on the face of it is so wanting in charity and so entirely undeserved.

May 1 take the further liberty of saying that the LN.T.O. have nE'ver claimed the right to interfere with the discretion of a Manager in the matter of appointments. They do not, however, and cannot agree that the qu€'stion at issne in the Killean Case is one concerning the appointment of a tf1acher. If it Wf1re merely that, the teacher who was about to bp removed from lwr position would not have been summoned to Armagh, the1'(> would have heen no need for His Eminence to appoint Dean MacDonald to 11€'ar this tE'3cher in her own defence, there would have beE'n no need for thf1 Dean to send a formal letter to th(' l\-Ianag€'1', giving him permission to dismiss the tE'Rcher, nor would thf1l'(> have been an~' ne€'d to s€'rve thE' teacher with a three 111011ths' 110tice o( dismissal. That all this was considered necessary is sufficient to show that something more than the mere question of an appointment was at stake.

The I.N.T.O. interfered only when it hecame clear that the Manager in question proposed to remove Mrs .. K€'enan from her position as Principal Teacher of Killean School without having complied with the tf1rms of his own signed contract, or with th€'! provisions and obligations of th(> )fanlOoth Resolution.

. I remain, Yours faithfully J

(Sgd.) T .• T. O'CONNELL, General Secretary."

'J';his correspondence came hefore the Executive at their meeting on August 1st, 1939, who ordered that it should he published without comment. This was done; the letter appeared in the Press on August 7th. In the daily papers of August 16th, 1939, t.he following letter was published over the name of the Cardinal's Secretary, Rev. J. Donnelly:-

THE LN.T.O. 'AND THE KILLEAN TEAOHER CASE.

tI 8ir,-1 hope you will find space in your columns for a brief discussion of the above case, which has already obtained such regret­ta,hle prominence on the platform and in the Press.

Let me say at the outset that the bishops and priests of Ireland have the highest appreciation of the Irish national teachers as a body and of the exC'el1ent work they are doing throughout our country. 'They

,

64

appreciate in particular the splendid work of the Catholic teachers ~d the spirit of loyalty and friendly co-operation which has marked theIT relatIOns with .their managers. Hence they regret exceedingly the occurrence of this Killean case, and are determined to place the respon­sibility for it where it really lies-not on :the national teachers as a body, but on the Executive Committee of the I.N.T.O. and .the General Secretary_

Before I proceed to the main question I wish to make a few remarks op the correspondence regarding this case which pass.ed betweeI!- the. General Secretary and me about five w.eeks ago, and which he published in the Press on the 7th inst. He seeIll8 to think he has a grievance because an inquiry he had made in the name of his Executive was, according to him, not answered. He had inquired whether there is any ecclesiastical tribunal to which a teacher could appeal, should he feel that his case had not been satisfactorily dealt with under the provisions of the' l\1aynooth Resolution.' The innuendo in this was very obvious; it was a reflection on His Eminence Cardinal MacRory's tribunal and an insult to himself; and I replied briefly that His Eminence con­sidered that under the 'Maynooth Resolution' ample provision had been made for the security of teachers. The following is a tranBlation of the pertinent portion of the 'Maynooth Resolution J: 'It is forM bidden :that any clerical manager dismiss or serve with notice of dismissal any princ~_pal or assistant teacher until the. matter has been brought before the Bishop, in order that the teacher, if he choose, may be heard in his own defence by the Bishop.' Now, seeing .that the 'Maynooth Resolution' had already been 'strictly and impartially' complied with in the case of the teacher of Killean School, notwith­standing repeated assertions to the contrary, it was clear from this reply that there could be no room for a further hearing of the KiIIean teache~'s easel and hence clear, too, that the General Secretary's inquiry was adequate y answered.

The General -Secretary has another grievance, and accuses the· Cardinal of being , wanting in charity,' because I had said in my brief letter of the 28th June that His Eminence considered that this unfor­iunate case, with all its 'possible reactions,' was entirely due to the fact that he had butted in and attempted to compel a venerable Manager to forego his right of appointing his own teacher. Adopting a private definition of the word 'butt,' he bitterly complains that His Eminence!, by using the word, attributed his interference to himself alone, ana. not also to his Executive. In this he· reads into the word more than it signifies. The Little Oxford Dictionary defines :the word as meaning: 'To push or run one's head into, go headlong into.' It means, therefore, merely a headlong rush, -without implying whether or not the rush was provoked or approved by others.

Neither His Eminence nor I had any means of knowing whether the General Secretary rushed into this case on his own responsibility or with the approval of his Executive Committee. Had we tried to come to any conclusion on the matter, we should probably have con­cluded that action so rash must have been taken solely on his own responsibility. We regret, therefore, to learn from him tha.t he acted , on the instructions and by the order' of his Executive Committee, and hence that a number of others besides himself are to blame. How blameworthy they aloe I shall now try -to make clear.

At the time when he and they first interfered in the case, Mrs. Keenan was about to accept--indeed, had expressed her wi1lingn~s to accept-the position of assistant, which Canon McNally had offered her, and which she had formerly held before her temporary appointment as principal. Had she accept~d it, this disedifying; and deplorable. case would never have been heard of. But just at this point the General Secretary and his Executive stepped in. Here are his own words,

65

sp'oken to the Congress in Belfast: 'At this stage she turned to her Organisation for advice, and was promptly told that before she could b!O! removed from her position the Manager should give her formal three

. months' notice in writing, and that before he could do so he must first get the permission of the Bishop of the Diocese, who would hear her in her own defence prior to giving such permission.'

Tpere you have in the General Secretary's own wor~ the fateful cause, the fons et origo of all the worry and scandal of thIS case. lAnd the 'pitiful and exasperating thing is that th~ ~dvice they gaye 'lYRS a huge blunder. They advised the teacher to lllSlst on the apphcatlOll of the "Maynooth Resolution" to her case, but the "Maynooth Resolution" applies only to a case of dismissal, or notice of dismissal, and there was then no question of either, but only of the change of a teacher from one position to another in the school. Had they pre­viously called upon Canon McXally-which they never did-and learned the peculiar nature of the case, such a blunder would hardly have been possible. Is it any wonder, then, that, as I wrote to the General Secretary, His Eminence considered that this unfortunate case, with all its 'possible reactions J was entirely due to the fact that he had butted in and attempted to compel a venerable Manager to forego his right of appointing his own teacher?

Having started with this dtal blunder, the Executive Committee and the General Secretary proceeded to· assert and argue that at the time they interfered Mrs. Keenan was a permanent principal teacher. Here, again, they are wrong, for it is not, and cannot be, denied that she was appointed principal only temporarily-that. is, until the question of the need for separate schools should be decided by the l\1Inistl'y-and nothing that happened afterwards did or could make the appointment permanent.

One of their arguments is that it was made permanent by the agree­ment afterwards entered into bv Canon McNally and her. Here, again, they are mistaken. The oontract between Manager and teacher is complete when the teacher accepts the appointment offered by the IVlanager and sanctioned by the Ministr,., j the agreement, which comes on later, does not and cannot change the nature of the appointment previously made. Here is an extract from the Northern Ministry's letter in reply to an inquiry regarding this question: I Whilst the Education Acts and regulations made thereunde'r make it a condition for the payment of a teacher's salary by the Ministry that an agree­ment in the prescribed {arm shall be entered into between tIle Man­ager and teachf'l', the conditions of recognition (italics are mine) and payment of t he teacher are not gm'erned by the terms of any such agree~ent.' Now, Mrs. Keenan was only temporarily appointed or recogmsed as principal j and sinct' 'the conditions of recognition) are not affected by the subseqw"llt agreement., a merely temporarY principal she still remained. .

Another argument by ,vhich tlwy try to establish that at the time ~hey interfered in the case 'Mrs. Keenan was a permanent principal IS based upon an alleged practice of the Northern Ministry. Here is how the General Secretary referred to this matter at the Congress in B~lf~st: 'I should say here that it is t~~ practice of the Northern MIl1Istry to regard the temporary or prOVISIOnal nature of an appoint­ment as having lapsed after the position has been occupied (or five ye~rs:' He means ~hat l\-irs. KeenaI~ ~aving been appointed temporary prmcIpal an~ havmg held. ~he pOSItIOn for five years, automatically by the practIce of t~e MInIstry became permanent principal. But as Canon MeN ally pomted out. such a claim has no foundation in th~ ~heory or practice of ~he Northern Ministry of Education. Not only ~s th~re no such practI?e, but there could not be as long as the l\-fin­Istry s present regulatIOns elldure.* \Vhen Mrs. Keenan was ap-

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pointed temporal'Y principal, the a.ppointment was made by the Manager and consented to, or recognised by the Ministry. The Man­ager had his reasons and the Ministry had its reasons for making a temporary, not a permanent, appointment. Manager and Ministry made the appointment temporary, and temporary it was bound to remain until such time as the Manager and Ministry should concur in making it permanent-neither the Manager alone nor the Ministry alone could give it permanence. If the Ministry alone attempted to do so, it would be usurping the lVlanager's recognised right of a.ppoint­ing his teacher-a thing it is most careful to avoid-and if the Man­ager alone attempted to make the appointment he would very soon be challenged by the Ministry. Yet, the General Secretary and-I suppose I must add-his Executive Committee wish people to believe that Mrs. Keenan's tempOl:ary appointment, because held {or five years, lapsed and became permanent automatically, and that such is the practice under the Northern Ministry!

I have now not merely asserted but proved that the General Secre­tary and his Executive had no right to interfere in the case at the time they butted in, that they blundered grievously in the advice they gave Mrs. Keenan, and, finally, that the arguments by which they have tried to _prove that Mrs. Keenan was a 'permanent principal and, therefore, not to be changed to a lower position in :the schooi without cause shown, are inconclusive and, indeed, utterly worthless.

I had intended also to deal in this letter with the closing stage of this case and the procedure adopted, about which also a lot of foolish and groundless complaint has been made; but, on reflection, I have deemed it b~tter to let the above statement and -arguments on the essential points of the case go before the public for quiet consider­ation, apart from any other distracting questions.

If the above arguments are sound-and I am confident they are-­the public, and, in particular, the teachers of the country, will easily make up their minds as to where the responsibility rests for this now notorious and deplorable case. I think of' the great bodv of teachers in particular, because I feel that many of them can hardly be blamed if they took a wrong view of the case, misled as thev were by the f'irroneous views and 'confident assertions of the General'Secretary and his Executive.

Mrs. Keen~n was not harshly treated. She was, indeed, not con­sidered by Canon MeN ally a suitable person to be permanent.l()rin­cipal of his school, but she was offered her choice of an assistantship in either the boys' or girls' school. In considering the question of the principalship CanoR MeN ally had to take account nQt only of Mrs. Keenan. but also of the welfare of his parish, and I have not the slightest doubt that the appointment he made was made from con­scientious motives. If he made no chargp-S Rg-.ainst Ml'S. Keenan, it is very significant that in regard to that he himself has written: ~ No charge was necessary. Charity is patient, and the Manager would not. promulgate or publish unnecessary charges, calculated to endanger or destroy .her prospects of further employment.' No charges werE\ made, therefore, lest he should endanger or destroy her ,prospects of future- employment as a teacher, and also because he knew an along­what, unfortunately, the General Secretary and his Executive Com­mittee did not know-that without any charges he could legally pass over her for the principalship on account of the temporary character o( her previous appointmenp.-Yours. etc.,

(REV.) J. DONNF.LLY, Secretary . . Am C",li, Armagh, August 15th, 1939." .

This communication @:ave rise to a series of ~etters hetween the Executive and Father Donnelly in the first place, and

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between Mrs. Keenan and Father Donnelly, in respect of certain allegations contained in the letter of August 16th, as published in some, not all, of the daily papers. The" Irish Press" was among the papers which did not publish the particular paragraph of which Mrs. Keenan afterwards complained. This correspondence is here reproduced in full:-

THE PRESIDENT'S LET'I'ER.

(This appeared in the daily papers on August 21st.)

Sil',-I wish to deal briefly with that portion of Father Donnelly's letter 're the Killean cas,e published in your issue of the 16th instant, \vhich has reference to the communication addressed to His Eminence by the Executive of the I.N.T.O. 011 the 27th June last. I want to emphasise as strong1y as I possibly can that in submitting to ffis Eminence the query contained in that letter there was not the remotest intention of makmg any reflection DU: or offering insult to, His Eminence. The Executive had already, jll a statement forwarded to His Eminence following a special meeting on January 7th~ made it clear that they

,,were not satisfied with the manner in which the KilIean dismissal case had been dealt with. In that statement His Eminence was informed that the Executive were "forced reluctantly to the conclusion that in the ap­plication of the I .Maynooth Resolution' to this case there had been a wide divergence from the procedure and practice hitherto adopted, and as understood and believed by the teachers to he essential for its accep­tance by them as a satisfactory tribnual where the question of tenure was involved."

The statement set ont at considerable length the grounds on which that conclusion had been arl'i ... ·ed a·t and asked for a re-consideration of the case.

In view, therefore, of the fact that His Eminence had already been made directly aware of the Executive's opinion, there was no need to convey t.hat opinion in the indirect fashion suggested by Father Don­neIly. Nor did it ever enter the minds of the Executive that such au " innuendo" could be read into what was intended and put forward as a respectful inquiry in regard to .a matter of ecclesiastical procedure. 'l'he Executive having received many representations from branches and individual mentbel's of the Organisation urging that the case should not be allowed to rest where it was. and, not being sure whether or not the l\£a:vnooth Decrees permitted or provided for ,an appeal, decided to see],;: authorita.tive information on that question in what they believed was the proper quarter. Though the query addressed to His Eminence undoubtedl}' arose in consequence of the KIIIean case, the query itself had no specific reference to that case; it was of a general nature. The Executive asked for advice and guidance "as to whether there is any Ecclesiastical Tribunal to which a Catholic teacher may appeal for a reconsideration of his ease, should he feel that it has not been satisfactorily dealt with under the l\1aynooth Statutes.)) That query remains unansi;-ered.

In conclusion, I desire to: draw Father DonlleIly's attention to the following passage in the statement addressed by Canon MacNaIly to the Armagh Provincial Council:-

"Dissatisfied with the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court, it was competent for :1\£1'. O'Connell to appeal to the Ministry of Education within six weeks after the notice of dismissal had been served, and an inquiry would be granted to him."

The reasons wh:,' no appeal was made to the Northern Ministry have

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a!ready . bee" made known-. ~e Executive believed that it was a ques­tIOn whiCh should b~ dealt mth solely by the Ecclesiastical Autboriti .... N~ exceptIOn havmg apparen.tly been ~aken to Canon MacNally's s.ug­

gestion of an appeal to an outsIde lay tnbunal .( the Executive could not have for~seen ~hat a reques~ which merely indicated th~ possibility of ~ re-conSIderatIOn of. a case In accordance with ecclesiastical procedure, If such were permItted, could be regarded, as .it apparently has been, as a cause of grave offence. I can only repeat on behalf of every member of the Executive that neither offence nor insult was intended. 'fhe let~er of th~ 27th June was a simple f8.nd respectful relueet for adVIce and gUIdance on a matter which concerned the welfare of 10,000 Irish Catholic teac~ers.-Yours, etc.,

Irish National Teachers' Organisation. Head Office ' 9 Gardiner Place, Dublin. August 18th, 1939.

MARTIN LEYDEN, President, LN.T.O.

DR. O'CONNELL'S REPLY TO FATHER DONNELLY.

(Published on August 21st.)

Sir ,-In view of the extraordinary letter from Father Donnelly which appeared in your issue of the 16th instant dealing with the Kin~n dis-· missal case, i~ be~o~es necessary, in order to clea.r a.wa.y the smoke­screen by whICh It IS sought to cloud the real issue, to re-state the essential facts.

(1) For thirteen years 1\1rs. Keenall gave faithful and efficient ser­vice as a teac..qer in Killean School, first as an assistant and afterwards as principal.

(2) On May 1st, 1934, her manager and herself entered into a fOl"lll.&l legal contract, the effective clause of which was as follows :-" The manager agrees to employ the teacher as the principal teacher of the Kil1ean Girls' School from the first day of pecember, 1933, henceforth until the expiration of three calendar months' from th,e date at which notice in writing shall have been given by either side to the other to determine the said employment." This agreement, or contract, was duly registered at the Northern Ministry of Education on May 2nd, 1934.

(3) The manager, and the manager alone, had the legal right to re­move Mrs. Keenal1 from the position to which she was thus formally appointed. The Ministry in certain circumstances--for instan~, if she were inefficient, or if the attendance did not warrant her contmuance-­would be entitled to Vi--ithdraw her salary, but as no such circumstances arose, and as the Ministry at no time proposed or suggested her re­moval from the principalship, that factor can be omitted in the con .. sider.ation of the case. .

.(4) On December 28th. th.e ~anager served a formal thr~e .mont~' notice on Mrs. Keenan, disIDISSlllg her, not only from the prmClpalahip, but from .any position in the Kil1ean SchooL

(5) Sine. March 28th Mrs. Keenan has been unemployed. The above facts are not in dispute. It is clear that no perso~. o:r:

hody had the right or power to dismiss Mrs. Keenan from her pOSItion as principal except the manager, and that ~he .manager, by virtue. of this right and this power, did, in fact, dIsmISS her., The question

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naturally a:ise~: Why has this efficient teacher been deprived pf her mean~ ?f lIvelihood? . F~ther Donnelly would have the public believe that It IS because of tlie roterferenee and the blundering of the I.N.T.O. Executive an~/or the general secretary. It becomes necessary, there­fore, to examme the nature and the extent of that interference which according to Father Donnelly, has been responsible for throwing thi~ efficient teacher on the roadside.

For almost five years up to October. 1938 1\'lrs. Keenan sa.tisfactorily carried out her duties as principal teacher. 'According to the manager's own statement to the Armagh Provincial Council he had I (a conversa­tion" with l\Irs. Keenan in October, 1938. in the course of which he told her that he intended to appoint her to her former position as assistant in the school, and that her place as principal would be taken by t?e assistant in the boys' school. "Some days afterwards (I am quoting Canon MacNally's statement) )lrs. Keenan called on the manager. She said she would consult some friends .... She consulted her friends and her case was dispatched to the secretary of the I.N.T.O., Dublin. "

As was stated .at the Belfast Congress, the LN.T.O, having consi­dered the terms of the appointment· and all the relevant documents. advised her" that beforo she could be removed from her position the manager sho lId gi,'e her a formal three months' notice in writing, and that before -he could do so he mnst first get the permission of the bishop of the diocese, who would hear 11(>1' in her own defence prior to giving such permission."

H There," 1'. rites Father Donnell,\', ",Yon have the fateful cause, the Ions et origo, of all the worry and scandal of this case. And the pitiful and exasperating thing is that the advice was a huge blunder." Let us see what was wrong with the advice that has so exasperated Father DonnelIy. Having regard to the iormal contract which had been executed between the parties, there was only one way in which Mrs. Keemm could be legally ~'emoved from the principalship of the school, and that was by a formal three months' notice of dismissal. Any other method would have exposed the managet: to the risk of an action in the courts for wrongful dismissal. anfl the LN.T.O. could not have prevented Mrs. Keeaan from taking such an ;action, if she insisted on doing so. It could, therefore, be argued that the advice in regard to this aspect of the ('ase was not exclusively in the interests of the teacher. One cannot. however, help coming to the conclusion, both from Father Donnelly\s letter and from the statements and atti­tude of the manager, that what caused the greatest exasperation and resentment was the reference to the " i.\laynooth Resolution."

"The advice they gave," ·writes Father Donnelly, "was a huge blunder. They insisted on the application of the Maynooth Resolution to her case." In Canor.. McNally's statement to the Provincial Council he charges the Executive with having forced the case to Armagh. But the terms of the Maynooth Statute quoted by Father Donnelly are clear and definite. A teacher IOay not be dismissed or served with notice of dismissal, except permissioll for such dismissal or ll?tice. has been given b:v the bishop after the teacher has been heard Jll hIS own defence. For over fortv years this arrangement, known popularly as the" May­nooth Resolutio.l.. has been regarded by the teachers as their Magna Charta-their one sure shield against arbitrary dismiss.allby a. manager. Their rights and privileges under this resolution, now embodled in the Maynooth Decrees have always been jealously watched and guarded, and hitherto they'have had very little reason, indeed, to complain of the manner in which its terms have been -observed and applied in the cases, happily rare, that called for its application. ¥ather pOJ:melly and Canon McNallv .allege that the LN.T.O. had no rIght to InSIst on the application or'the "l\faynooth Resolution n to this case. The

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"Maynooth Resolution," l\Tites Father -Donnelly, "applies only. to a case of dismissal or notice of dismissal, 'and there was then no q.uestion of either, but only of the change of a· teacher /rom ooe pOS1.tio" to (ywther in the scho'ol.1I (The italics aTe mine.) If the" Maynooth Reso­lution " could be read in that fashio.n it would be open to any manager, without reason or cauee .assigned, and without seeking or obtaining the permission of his bishop, to remove any principal teacher and appoint him to the most junior position DU the school staff and to argue, if challenged, that he was not, in fact, H dismissing;' the teacher-he was only, in Father Donnelly's words, changing him H from one posi­tion to another in the school." That is an interpretation of the'" MaJ:­nooth Resolution" which the Teachers' Organisation can never accept.

So far as-- I know, this ,is the first occasion during the forty or more years of its existence that such an extraordinary and far-fetched inter­pretation has been sought to be put upon it.

When, late in December, 1938, it became evident that Canon McNally intended to persist in his proposal to remove Mrs. Keenan from the Principalship withou1 giving her the formal notice to which she was entitled under the terms of her contract, and regardless OL the pro­vision of the" Maynooth Resolution," the Executive sent him a polite and. respectful letter asking that the terms of the Resolutio..n should be observed. That letter and the manager's reply have already been pub­lished, and there is no need to repeat them here.

This, then, is the full extent of the Executive's" interference" which has been so bitterly resented, and which is alleged to be H the tOM et origo of all the worry and scandal" of what Father Dounelly so ~tly describes as a l' notorious," "deplorable," "unfortunate," and' dis-edifying" case. ~

Father Donnel1y is not content with objecting to the nature and extent of the interference. He asserts, and claims even that he has proved, that the LN.T.O. had no right to interfere in the case. EVer since its establishment over seventy years ago, the I.N.T.O., through its duly appointed representatives has claimed the right to interfere and make representations on behalf of anyone of its members whose interests might:. in its opinion, appear to require such intervention. From the very beginning that right has been acknowledged and respected, not only by Government Ministers and the educational authorities-British and Irish-but hy the ecclesiastical authorities also. That right will not now be surrendered, nor is it likely ever to be so long as the .Organisation exists, fOI' such surrender would render the Organisation purposeless. The attempted denial of that right must sound strange and surprising, not only to the teachers, but to the hundreds of thousands of organised workers throughout the country. One had -hoped that the day W3.6 long past, in this country at least, when an Organisation, with the history and traditions of the I.N.T,.O .. could be told that it had no right to interfere to protect the interests of one of its members, or that such intervention would result, as it has resulted in this case, in the victimisation of the individual concerned. For both Father Donnelly and Canon l\icNally have now made it clear that if the LN.T.O. had not interfered in the way above described in order to secure that the rights to which Mrs. Keenan was entit1ed under the laws of Church f11ln. State would be respected and accorded ~o her, she would to-day "b~' in" occupation at least of the s~bordin.&te position offered to. h~r last October, but be~ause she an~ h~r Orgams~ tion claimed and InsIsted that she was "entitled to these nAAts, she IS denied even that; she ha. been deprived of her livelihoOd and le!t without hope or prospect of further employment. If such treatmen~ 18 not to be termed victimisation, I fear I do not understand the meamng of the term. .

Much play has been made of the. alleged "temporary ~' nature of

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Mrs. Keenan's original appointment to the Principalship of the school;­but it was the Ministry and not- the Manager that made it a condition that sanction would ilJe temporary pending certain contingencies-a mere technical device to save money if amalgamation ever took place. The contingency which impelled the Ministry to give only temporary sanc­tion never arose, and so far as they were concerned there was no ques­tion of her removal from the Principalship; when the danger of amal­gamation disappeared it was the temporary nature of the appointment, and not the appointment itself, that automatically lapsed. Until October, 1938, there was never any condition or suggestioll t either by the Manager or the Ministry, that Mrs. Keenan would be dlscontinued as Principal so long as the schools continued to exist as separate units. Irrespective, however, of the technicality surrounding the -original appointment, the Organisation 'Would hold that a teacher who had occu­pied a position for five years and who had discharged the duties of tha~ position satisfactorily and efficiently, ought not to be removed from that position merely to make room for another, and they would not consider

:::~ such removal other than harsh, arbitrary and unwarranted. It will take something more than what has yet appeared to convince the pUblic that Mrs. Keenan has not been harshly and arbitrarily treated.

I have purposely refrained from any reference to the final paragraph of Father Donnelly's letter, in which he plainly suggests that there are charges, so far uudisclosed, which if put forward, would be " calculated to endanger or destroy Mrs. Keenan's prospects of further employ­ment." That suggestion is too serious to be made the subject of a newspaper controversy. I have no doubt it will be dealt with in another and more appropriate way.-Yours, etc.,

Irish National Teachers' Organisation, Head Office, 9 Gardiner Place, Dublin, August 18th, 1939.

T. J. O'CONNELL, General Secretary, I.N.T.O.

FATHER DONNELLY'S SECOND LETTER.

To the Editor. Dear Sir .-1 greatly regret the necessity of interfering again in this

discussion, but I feel it a duty to make some remarks on the two letters which appeared in reply to mine, in your issue of the 21st inst.

In my lette~, which appeared in your issue of the 16th inst., I said:-"

" I have now not n)erelv asserted but proved that the General Secretary and his Executive had 110 right to interfere in the ease at they time they Ibutted in, that they blundered grievously in the advice they gave Mrs. Keenan, and finally that the arguments by which they have tried to prove that Mrs. Keenan was a permanent Principal, and therefore, not to be changed to a lower position in the school without cause shown, arc inconclush"e and, indeed, utterly worthless."

Now not one of my proofs there referred to has been refuted or even weakened in the slightest degree by anything said in the two letters. Let us take first the question of whether the General Secretar;v find his Executive had any right to interfere at the time they did. . 'W.hat were the circums.tances? Mrs. Keenan had ceased to be a PrmClpal teacher, for she had been appointed Principal, in the Ministry's own words, only " until the need for separate schools should be decided by

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the Ministry," and that question had already been decided; the Manager by authority of the :Ministry had already appointed a per­manent Principal, and by the same authority had appointed Mrs. Keenan assistant, and she had accepted the appointment. What reason ... able claim, what justification, I ask, had the General Secretary or his Executive to interfere in these circumstances? The answer is, abso-lutely none. -

What is the nature of the General Secretary's reply to this argument? As if I or, indeed, anybody else ever questioned the right in ordinary circuIDstances, of a great organisation to interfere on behalf of its members, he represents me as denying the right of the LN.T.O. to inter­fere at all in this case, and strikes out in an amusing passage of rous­ing indignation. I am sorry the whole passage is too long for quotation here, for it is very characteristic and a fine. example of his controversial metliods. To afford excuse for his indignation it was necessary to mis­represent \",hat I had said, and so, \1 .. hereas I had claimed to have proved that the General Secretary and rus Executive had no right to interfere at the time they did, he makes me deny their right of all or any inter­ference in the case. Here are his words in his letter of the 21st inst. : "He (F.ather Donnel1y) asserts and claims even that he has proved, that the I.N.T.O. had no right to interfere in the case."

Wjth this false text he then launches out, showing that the I.N.T.O. had always claimed the right of interference in teachers' cases-a right.l I may say, which in the vast majority of instances nobody denies-ana. winds up \",ith an eye on the Labour Organisation ani! the sympathy of the workers by say.ing: "The attempted denial of that right must sound strange and surprising, not only to the teachers, but to hundreds of thousands of organh·.ed ·workers throughout the country."

The only justification which the General Secretary and his Executive might perhaps plead for their action when they first interfered" would be their unawareness at the tiple of the nature and implications of the temporary appointment of Mrs.- Keenan as Principal; but such un­awareness would amount, in the General Secretary and Executive of .a teachers' organisation, to culpable ignorance, and would not be accepted as justification by any tribunal in the world. I .assert, there~ fore, once more that they had no right to interfere in this case at the time they first interfered and attempted to compel a venerable Manager to forgo his right of appointin~ his teacher.

I come now to the second pomt proved by me in my previous letter, namely, that the General Secretary and his Executive blundered grie~ vously in the aavice they gave Mrs. Keenan. The Maynooth Resolu- ~ tion refers only to the dismissal or notice of dismissal of a teacher, but in Mrs. Keenan's case there was then no question of either, but· only of her appointment as assistant in the school in which she had been temporary Principal. Could anything be clearer, then, than that they blundered grievously .in advhling her to demand an application of the Maynooth Resolution to her case?

The General Secretary tries to mal& capital out of the fact that I . referred to her Manager's offer of an assistantship to Mre. Keenan as

" only the change of a teacher from one position to another in the school," and pretends to grow alarmed lest, if such a change can be made without the application of the MaynOQth Resolution, sweeping

. changes of Principals to assistants may also be made without .its appli­cation. But I spoke of Mrs. Keenan's definite case, in which she who was wjthout an appointment was being appointed assistant, and it is ridiculous and, I fear I must add,' insincere to pretend to be alarmed lest Principals be similarly changed into assistants.

Just because there is no question of dismissal or notice or dismissal the Maynooth Resolution could not .be applied to either case-though the General Secretary fails to see this-

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but jf any manager were so foolish or so unjust as to attempt "to reduce a teacher from Principal to assistant without just cause, there are ample means, other than the Maynooth Resolution, of dealing with him. The )laynooth Resolution, as it stands, does not touch the case of a manager ,vho might attempt to change a Principal in oue of his schools jnto an :l.ssistantj and if the LN.T.O. wish it to cover such a case they must ask the Bishops of Ireland to extend its scope. To attempt at present to apply it to such a case would be almost as Ibad a blunder as the advice given to )11'8. Keenan.

I have dealt with two of the statements proved in my previous letter, and with the attempted replies to them. The other two points which I proved-namely, that neither the agreement with the Manager nor the practice of the Northern ){inistry made Mrs. Keenan's temporary appointment permanent-seem now to be no longer contested, and that is something to be thankful for.

Driven from their pos.ition that 1\1rs. Keenan had a strict right to be still regarded as permanent Principal of Killean Girls' School, the General Secretary and his Executive now concentrate on establishing that she has been treated harshly, that !:;hc has been vic.-t;imised, deprived of her h,elihood, and left without hope or prospect of future employment.

That she has been victimised I have no desire to deny; but the important question is: \Vho is responsible for the victimisation-Canon McN ally or her advisers? In 1933 the Canon appointed her as Principal in a temporary capacity under the conditions prescribed by the Ministry, and during the following five years she received £100 in capitation in addition to her salary. At the end of the five years he offered her the position of assistant in either the boys' or the girls' school; she expressed her Willingness to accept the offer} and did in fact accept it. At this juncture the LN.T.O. Executive mter­fered and advised her to go back on her acceptance of the appointment, assuring her "hat she was permanent principal, and urging her to demand what they called her rights and accept nothing less than the principalship. Had the I.N.T.O. not interfered Mm. Keenan would now be drawing· a salary ,approximately £300 a year; but she acted on the advice of the General Secretary and his Executive, relying on their promises that the~' would see to it that she should be acknowledged as permanent principal.

~ Now, when .it is borne in mind that they held from the start erroneous views as to the permanency of her position as principal, that they gave her wrong advice through misunderstanding the scope of the Maynooth Resolution, that they relied on arguments now proved to be invalid to continue to persuade her that she was a permanent principal, and, finally, that they urged her to take nothing less than what they called her rights and refuse the assistantship-when all this is borne in mind it is surely not difficult to see where .the responsibility rests for Mrs. Keenan's victimisation.

I now turn to the letter of the President of the I.N.T.O., which also appeared in your issue of the 21st inst. The President caIIs atten­tion to a q uery addr61~sed to His Eminence by the Executive of the I.N.T.O. on the 27th June last, in which information was sought as to whether there js any ecclesiastical tribunal to which a teacher could appeal, should he fepl that his case had not Ibeen satisfactorily dealt with under the provISions of the Maynooth Resolution. The Pl€Bident complains that the query remains unanswered, but, as I showed in my letter of the 16th inst., it was answered, when in reply to it, I wrote that His Eminence considered that under the Maynooth Resolution ample provision had been made for the security of teachers. This was a brief reply, but it is to be borne jn mind that it was a reply to an inquiry, which was offensive, as being a reflection on the Cardinal's

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tribunal. If the reasoning of the reply was too condensed for the Executive I shall now try to make it more clear. .

The tribunal of his Eminence, from which there was question of appealing, was a diocesan tribunal set up in virtue of the Maynooth Resolution; all these diocesan tribunals are governed in essential matters by the same rules; what holds for oue holds for all, and if there is no appeal from one there is none from any. That there ~ no appeal from the Cardinal's tribunal was clear when I replied that His

,Eminence considered that ample provision had been made for the security of teachers under the Maynooth Resolution for the Maynooth Resolution gives 110 right of appeal, but provides solely for the hearing of the teacher's case. And if there was no appeal from the CardinaFs tribunal, it follows from what I have stated albove that there was no room for appeal from any diocesan tribunal of the same kitid to any other tribunal or court. Hence the Executive's query was fully answered. Of course, an appeal to Rome from any ecclesiastical tri­bunal In the world is always possible, but I take it that the query regarded .a tribunal of appeal in these islands.

But why, I ask, should there be any question of appealing from these diocesan tribunals? The teachers had no strict right to this appeal from their manager to their Bishop, the Irish Bishops granted them this privilege for their greater security against unjust dismissal, and it is ungracious and ungrateful to expect any right of further appeal in such circumstances.

The President, towards the end of his letter, refers to the fact that the Executive refrained from bringing this case before the Northern Ministry of Education, and adds: H The reasons why no appeal was made to the Northern Ministry have already been made knOWn-the Executive believed that it was a question which should be dealt with solely by the ecclesiastical authorities." I am very glad the President has referred to this subject. Yes, the Executive !believed that it was a question which should be dealt with solely by the ecclesiastical authQri­ties, they were too loyal to the Bishops to bring it before the lay tribunal of the N orihern Ministry, but not too loyal to bring it before the lay tribunal of the Belfast Teachers' Congress, and there ii:t a Protestant city before a mixed gathering of Protestants and Catholics to misrepresent egregiously the vital facts of the case and, having heard onJy one side, to pass a resolution condemning the action of th~ manager, and finally to give to the world on the wings of the news­papers an account of the entire proceedings. And these are the people who "believed that it 'Was a question which should be dealt with by the ecclesiastical authorities"!

This letter is already too long and I must conclude. But before doing so I wish to say that _His Eminence Cardinal MacRory regrets exceedingly the occurrence of this painful case, Throughout his life he has respected and admired the Irish Catholic teachers, and he respects and admires them still, for though many of them may possibly have taken a wrong view of this case, he knows that they have done 130 only Ibecause they were led astray by the General Secretary and his Executive.

We are all liable to err. At the time the General Secretary and his Executive first interfered in this case, they erroneously, as has been proved" believed that Mrs. Keenan was still a permanent Pt?ncipal. Then 'they . advanced arguments, based on her agreement Wlth her manager and on the alleged practice of the Northern Ministry, to justify their belief, and these arguments have since been prov~ to be invalid. Relying, however ~on their erroneous belief and invalid argu­ments, they advised Mrs. h..eenan to refuse the :position of assistant, to which -her manager had appointed her and which she had, in.. fact, accepted j and her refusal, under their advice, is the Bole reason why

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she is now without employment as teacher, for her manager con­scientiously felt that in justice to his parish he could not appoint her as principal.

If they would even now admit their errors and mistakes nobody wants to rejoice at their discomfiture; but instead they still persist in laying the blame on others and seeking· to wds their own errors and mistakes. Such, in a nutshell, is the honest and true account of the essential points of this most regr~ttable case.

Yours faithfully, (Rev.) .r. DONNELLY, Sec.

Ara Coeli, Armagh.

REPLIES FROM I.N.T.O. GENERAL SECRETARY AND PRESIDENT.

GENERAL SECRETARY'S LETTER. To the Editor.

A Chara-C"t- In his "honest and true account of the essential points J J in the

Keenan dismissal case, Father Donnelly has studiously and consistently ignored the most essential point of all, namely, the formal legal con­tract entered into by the l\ianager and :Mrs. Keen.an on May 1, 1934. I must ask your permiSGion to quote once more the effective clause of that contract, which was as follows:-

I C The Manager agrees to employ the teacher as the Principal Teacher of the Killean Girls' Sohool from the first day of December, 1933, henceforth until. the expiration of th1'ee calendar months from the date at which notice in. writing shall have been given by either side to the othe1' to dete1'1nine the said employment."

In face of that binding contract, to which the Manager and the teacher had both !Solemnly put their names in the presence of witnesses, Father Donllelly now asks the public to believe that at the time the I.N.T.O. "interfered J1 (i.e., early .in December, 1938), Mrs. Keenan d was without an appointment," and that she 11 had ceased to be a prin­cipal teacher." If she had then ceased to be a principal teacher, how came it that she continued to occupy the position of principal of the school until the terms of the albove contract 1:w.d been complied with, Le.; until March 28, 1939, the date on which her three months' notice of dismissal expired? The absurdity of that contention is" obvious.

Father Donnelly would like",rise have your readers believe that the LN.T.O. ".interference," as he terms it, was egregious and uncalled for. The LN.T.O. would know n(}thing of this case-did, in fact, know nothing of it-unless and until Mrs. Keenan sought its advice, as she was entitled to do, and as every member who is faced with a doubt or difficulty is entitled to do.

As the Manager himself has put it, "'She said she would consult some friends. She consulted her friends and her c.ase was despatched to the I.N.T.O." She came then, ~ :he had the right to come, to her organisation for advice. The organisation said to her: "Under this contract which you have signed with your manager you are entitled to a three-months' notice of dismissal in writing before you can be removed from the principalship, and, furthermore, in accordance with the terms of the l\faynooth Decree that dismissal notice will not be served until you are heard in your own defence by 'Your Bishop." That is the sum total of the advice given to Mrs. Keenan. For giving that advice, the Executive are now put in the.dock b;V Father Donnell;v. J

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now ask what other advice could be conscientiously given to a member ~ho came voluntarily and of her own accord to her organisation, feel­mg, rightly or wrongly, that she was being harshly and unfairly dealt with? Yet Father Donnelly says that the I.N.T.O. had absolutely no right to give any such advice and that the advice so given was a " grievous blunder." - '

Father Donnelly's letter contains a series of misrepresentations as to the action and attitlide of the Executive; with these I do not pro­pose to deal; for the main issues are clear and definite. In addition, he makes certain misstatements to which I must briefly refer. He states that the Executive " contrived to persuade her that she was a permanent principal," and he talks of their H promises that they would see that she wauld Ibe acknowledged as permanent prjncipal." Neither the Executive nor I ever used the term "permanent principal." We used no such persuasion and made no such foolish promises.

Every teacher in Ireland can be legally dismiBsed on t~ree months' notice. That is the extent af their' " permanency," but every teacher with whom a legal contract is signed is entitled to that notice. Unless there was some good and sufficient reason, on the grounds of conduct or efficiency, to. dismiss a teacher} his dismissal would be regarded as harsh and arbitrary. Legal right is one thing; the arbitrary exercise of that right is something different.

Father DOllnelly states that the I.N.T.O. advised Mrs. Keenan not to. accept the assistantship. No such advice was ever tendered to. her. Both she and the I.N.T.O. were told by the Manager that if she .",er­cised her rights (rights which he and all concerned were reluctantly induced afterwards to. admit and recognise) she would be without any position in KiIlean School. That was a threat which the I.N.T.O. co.uld not be expected to disregard. In their opinion, it showed a disrespect .amounting almost to contempt for the tribunal to which the issue was about to be referred and which alone in their view had the right to. decide Mrs. Keenan's ultimate fate.

We now know that the Manager's threat has been made effective since Mrs. Keenan decided to claim her legal rights and her rights under the l\Iaynooth Decree, and because of that deciSion, she has not been given the opportunity of saying whether or nat she would accept the suhordinate position. That position was to be her reward if she allowed the Manager to. make his "arrangements" unquestioned. Because she could not see her way to agree, she is denied even the assistantship-a position which she had occupied for eight year.s pre­vioJIs to her .promotion to the principalship ..

Father Donnelly quotes the Ministry's own words to the effect that l\hs. Keenan had .been appointed principal" until the need for separate schools should be decided by the Ministry." I. should like to know the source from which these words are taken. They do not appear in the Ministry's letter to Mrs. Keenan, nor in any official letter quoted by the Manager in his statement to the Armagh Council. Not that they are essential to the issue one w.ay or another-for that issue lies between the Manager and the teacher. The Ministry do not enter into it in any way. ,. .

I now come to a portion of Father Donnelly s letter whICh raISes an issue far transcending the mere individual. case of Mrs. ~eenan, but which sho.ws if that were necessary, how rIght the ExecutIve were to

'regard that particular case as one affecting the interests of the whole body.. . .

Every Catholic teacher in Ireland will have read With astonIShment, and possibly dismay, Father Donnelly's statement to the effect that " The :M:aynooth Resolution as it stands d~. not .touch the ~ase of a. lJlAonager who. might attempt tq. change a prInCIpal III one of hUJ schools

77

into an assistant.)) He has 'here stated. ill clear and definite language what was implied in his former letter, and ill doing 60 he has succeeded in finally knitting the issue involved ill this controversy. The LN.T.O. most empha.tically refuse to accept that interpretation of the Maynooth Statute. As stated in my previous letter, this is the first occasion in the 40 or more years of its existence that such a meaning has been read into it. It is an interpretation wh,jeh is contrary not alone to the spirit, but to the very letter of the Statute. Here are the terms of the Statute as it appears in the " Synod of Maynooth," translated by the Most Rev. Dr. Browne (now Lord Bishop of Galway) and pub~ lished under authority by the Catholic Truth Society:-

"To avoid prejudiee against the managership of schools ... a ('lericaI manager shall not dismiss any teacher 01' assistant, male or female. or gh'e noticE' of dismissal, until the Bishop be notified, :';0 that the teacher. if he ,yill. ma:" bc heard in his own defence hy the Bishop."

A manager can ,. change a. l-,rincipal in one of hi:,; schools into an assistant!! only by first dismis5iilg him from the principalship, and, according to the dl'l'ree alboye quoted. a manager "shall not dismiss any teacher" except in accordance with the terms set forth therein.

The I.N.T.O .. do not, and will not, accept Father DonneHy's inter­pretation of the Stntute as authoritative. Nor do they think it neces­sary to accept his advice to the effect that if they wish the Statute to cover such a case "they must ask the Bishops of Ireland to extend its scope." They have no reason to believe that on this point there is any difference of opinion on the matter of interpretation as between the Hierarchy and themselves, or that it is necessary to extend the scope of the Statute in order to protect a principal teacher from arbi-trary dismissal. ~

One other statement calls for comment. Father Donnelly states that the teachers had no " strict right 11 to this appeal from their Manager to their Bishop-that it was granted to them " as a privilege for their greater·security against unjust dismissal." This right of appeal which Father Donnelly would have us regard as a privilege is embodied in the l\Iaynooth Decrees adopted at the Plenary Council held in Maynooth in 1927 and formally promulgated in November, 1929. The introduc­tory words set forth the .reason for its adoption.

I venture to submit \Vith all due respect that this particular Decree does, in fact, confer Ji a strict right" on every Catholic teacher, and that it does not lie with any person on \VItam these Decrees are binding to deny or deprive him of that right.

The I.N.T.O. is an organisation ,ill which the concern of one is the concern of all. For close 011 four months prior to the Belfast Congress the Executive had made ever~' possible effort to reach an amicable and satisfactorv conclusion of this case. These efforts, as Father Donnelly must' well know, were continued up to the very eve of the day on which the facts were brought to the notice of the delegates. If there had been the sl:-lltest mdication that the case would be recon­sidered. the Executive h ould have been only too glad to ,await the result of such reconsideration. But. as elected representatives, they owed a duty to their members. They had taken certain action in defence of one of their members. It was due to the delegates that they should \be informed of that action-due to the Executive them­selves that they should know whether or not their action had the approval- of the general body.

Father Donnel1y says the vital facts were misrepresented. He does !lot say how; those who heard or read the Congress statem!'lnt anq

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who have followed all the subsequent correspondence ivill judge how far that is correct. In anything the Executive had done there was nothing to regret or apologise for. Consequently they had no reason to fear the fullest publicity. It;s difficult to see how_ the statement of the facts of this case to the delegates assembled at Congress can b. regarded as disloyalty to the Bishops. The loyalty and obedience of the Irish Catholic Teachers to their Hierarchy is above suspicion.

Yours faithfully, T. J. O'CONNELL,

General Secretary, I.N.T.O. I.N.T.O. Head Office,

9 Gardiner Place, Dublin.

PRESIDENT'S LETTER. "A Chara-

I now understand from Father Donnelly's latest letter that the reply to the Executive's query of the 27th June is to the effect that there is no right of appeal from .a Diocesan Tribunal to any Ecclesiastical Tribunal within If these islands," but that such an appeal does lie to Rome.

I sincerely regret that a simple l'epJy in these terms was not sent direct to the Executive in the first instance. If t)Iat course had beeIl adopted, much Of the subsequent unpleasantness woUld have been avooded.

Yours (Mthfully, MARTIN LEYDEN,

President, I.N.T.O.

Irish National Teachers' Organisation, llead Office, 9 Gardiner Place,

Sir,

, Dublin."

FATHER DONNELLY'S FINAL LETTER TO THE PRESS. Ara. Coeli,

Armagh.

The General Secretary's letter published in your .issue of August 30th is for the most part merely a repetition of arguments or statements that have alreMly been refuted. The General Secretary reminds one of another famous teacher of whom many of us read with amusement in our eschool days: "For e'en though v,a,nquished, he can argue still."

Hence I see no useful purpose that could be served by prolonging this discussion j and I am perfectly satisfied to leave the case, as presl3nted by both sides, to the judgment of the public,

. YQ'!lrsJ etp, (Signed) JOH:Ij DONNELLY,"

FURTHER COMMENTS ON FATHER PONNELLY'S LETTER.

The main arguments, such as they were, 'in Father Donnelly's published letters were fully dealt with in the correspondence wh1ch followed, ·but there are a few minor pnints worthy of notice. In the first and penultimate paragraphs of his letter of August 16th he pays a high tribute to the teachers as a body; he suggests that they were' misled, exonerates them from all blll!me and places tl:t~ sole responsibility for this " potQriOljs

.~.

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and deplorable" case on "the General Secretary and his Executive", This attempt to segregate the main body from their leaders-a practice not uncommon when other organised workers ,become involved in a dispute-was never so misplaced as in this instance, as subsequent events have abundantly shown. In all its previous :history it is doubtful if there -has been any question on which there has been such unanimity within the ranks of the Org'anisation, or on which the Executive received such unqualified support in regard to every step which they had taken on behalf of the member concerned.

In the course of the same letter Father Donnelly states: "The Managel"had his reasons, and the Ministry had its reasons for making a temporary, not a permanent appointment". AB already stated, the question as to whether the appointment was " temporary" or " -permanent" does not affect the real issue inasmuch as every teacher's appointment may be terminated on three months' notice. At the same time it should be noted that while the Ministry undoubtedly had its reasons for gTanting tem­porary recognition only, there is, as has already been pointed out, the strongest circumstantial evidence to show that the Manager when filling this vacancy desired to make a "permanent" appointment, using the term in the sense as understood by Father Donnelly.

Here also it may be well to draw particular attention once more to the extraordinary interpretation placed on the Maynooth Resolution by Father Donnelly to the effect that the Resolution applies only to a case of dismissal and not when it is a q!testion of the change of a teache,' f,.mn one position tOCLn.othm· in the school. If that were to hold good the Principal of a girls' school whom a Manager proposed to depress to the position of a junior assistant mistress could not claim as a matter of right the protection of the Maynooth Resolution. It is_difficult to understand how such a fantastic idea of Dhe meaning and sig'nificance of the Maynooth Resolution could be entertained by anyone who had given the matter a moment's serious thought.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MRS. KEENAN AND FATHER DONNELLY.

Rev. J. Donnelly, Ara Caeli, .

Armagh.

" Killean, Newry,

September 28th, 1939.

Rev. Sil',-A letter puhlished over ;O;-OUI' name in several newspapers, on August 16th, contaIlls the following statement referring to me: 'No charges were, therefore, made, lest he (t.he :Manager) should endanger or destroy her prospects of further employment. J

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The letter also contains a passage pur-porting to be a qUQtation from a letter written by Very Rev. Canon McNally, P.P. I have never previously seen the quoted passage, and J must assume that it is now made- public for the first time by you. In :this passage it is sta.ted that the Manager 'would not promulgate or publ~h ullilecessary charges calculated to endanger or destroy her prospects of further' employment.' I am satisfied that these statements, suggesting and implying as they do that I have been ~uilty of conduct which unfits me to occupy the position of principal teacher, or which might, if made mown, endanger IUy chances of future employment in .the capacity of teacher, constitute a grave reflection on my character, and are calculated.) if allowed to go unquestioned, to do Yery serious and irreparable injury to my reputation and to my chances of slecuring employment.

I must request, therefore, that you will, as publicly as you "have made it, withdraw and apologise for the unfounded suggestion that any such charges exist and are capable of being substantiated. If you refuse to do so I shall be compelled to take such steps as I may be advised, and are open to iue, to protect my charaetel' alId reputation, both as a citizen and as a teacher.

Mrs. E. Keenan,

Killean,

Newry.

I

Faithfully Yl.!urs,

(Sgd.) ELEANOR C. KEEN AN,"

" Ara CoeH,

Armagh,

6th October, 1939.

Dear Madam,-The charge referred to in my letter is the Same charge to which his Eminence Cardinal MacRory had referred in a private conversation WIth you and the General Secretary, on the evening your case was heard in Armagh. To that same charge there is reference, when I quoted from a statement by Canon McNally, which I have in my possession, that: 'the Manager would not promulgate or publish unnecessary charges, calculated to endanger or destroy her prospects of further employment.' .

I beg you to bear in mind that the charge and its nature were first made pubiic, not by me, but by the General Secretary in the Teachers' Congress in Belfast. Indeed, the charge need never have become public but for its publication in the Teachers' Congress.

As to the nature of the charge. It had no reference whatever to your moral character in the commonly accepted sense of these words. Its nature had been made quite clear by His Eminence on the evening it was first mentioned, and it was well understood by the -General Secretary, as is proved by his letter written to the Cardinal on the following day.

But though not a charge against your moral character in. the sense already indicated, it was a very serious charge against a teacher; one, . however, which can be substantiated, and will therefore n9t be withdrawn.

Yours fai~hfully,

(Sgd.) J. DONNELLY."

, ,

•

Rev. J. Donnelly, Ara Coeli.

Armagh.

81

f( Killean, Newry.

19th Gc/obe1', 1939.

Revd. Sir.-In your letter published in the Press on August 16th, reference was mrde both in your words and in the words of the Manager as quoted by you to 'charges J which might have been made against me did not charity dictate otherwise. I note that in your latest letter these ' char6es' are nmv narrowed down to one specific ( charge,' and that this relates to a matter which was mentioned, jucidentally, by his Eminence to the Genel al Secretary and myself, after the Right Rev. Dean MacDonald, who had pl'eyiollsly assured us there were no charges of, any kind against me, had heard my case, and before any decision had been made by him as a result of the hearing. I am, naturally, pleased to learn that the references in your published letter, which were capable of being construed as implying serious imputations against my character (and which were) in fact, so construed by many who read them) have now been thus narrowed down to this one specific point. You insist that this sFecific charge can be substantiated and will not be withdrawn. I take that as implying that any suggestion which your letter might have contained to the effect that there are or might be any other charges against me apart from that specified, is entirely without foundation) and I am satisfied to regard your implied assurance to this effect as a withdrawal, and a denial of any such suggestion.

III view of the injury and pain which the pulblication of your letter has caused Ille) and seeing that you now recognise and implicitly admit that there was no foundation or justification for the suggestions which it contained, it would not be unreasonable for me to expect that some apology, or at least some expression of regret, would have been forth­('oming;. As, howe\"er. the main purpose of my letter to you, i.e., to clear m~' character from the imputations made against it, has now been seI'\"ed~ I will leave it to ~'our sense of fair dealing to do what should be appropriate in such circ·umstances.

I now come to the Bpecific charge which you allege can he substan­tiated and which vou sav will not be withdrawn. Not only do I not object'to publicity 'in regard to this matter, I welcome it. I take the liberty therefore) to quote the reference to this charge which is con­tained in the General Secretary's letter to which you refer, and which was addre'ssed to hIS Eminence on the day following our visit to Armagh. I do so as this was the only occasion on which this charge was mentioned to me. The extract is as follows: 'When I urged that there were no reasons why this teacher should be removed from a posi­tion which she had held "for five years, your Eminence will remember sayina that there WE'rl' .. other 1"(>aRons." That was the first suggestion we h;;cl of "otb(>r reasons," and when I asked what they were your Emir r.e stated that it was charged against her that she had attempted in som<:\ way to interfere with the attendance by calling the roll ibefore the proper time. I most humbll and respectfully urge tha~ it is ~ot fair to the teacher or to her adVIsers that a charge of that kmd, which had evidently been put before your Eminence to influence your decision, should remain undisclosed up to that stage; nor can it be said to accord with the accepted principles of fair play to suggest that she should meet that charae there and then.'

The cha~ge was as Hew to me as it was to the General Secretary. The Manager, though evidently making it a count in the ind.ictment against

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me, had never before (nor has he since) mentioned it to me, although he, apparently, thought it necessary to bring it, all unknown to me, to the notice of his Eminence. As you now state that this charge to which, apparently, great importance is being attached, can be sub­stantiated, I must demand the fullest inquiry into the allegation that! has" been made.

I, therefore: ask that I be furnished immediately with details as to the date on which I am charged with calling the rolls before the proper time, and that you -",ill refer me to the particular official rule . or regulation which it is alleged I thus violated.

When I am supplied wjth this information I shall immediately ask the Ministry of Education to hold an official inquiry into this alleged violation of their regulations. The Ministry is, I believe, the proper tribunal to hold an inquiry where a breach of the official regulations is concerned. I do not wish to have even this charge hanging .indefi­nitely over my head, and in view of the use that has Ibeen made, and is being made of it, I trust you will appreciate my desire to have the matter sifted to the bottom. As you are So positive in asserting tltat the charge can be substantiated, I trust you will recognise the obliga­tion which the demand I now m~ke places upon you and/or the Manager, and that, consequently, ;you or he will supply me with the details which I seek, so that I may have an opportunity of meeting and disposing of this charge.

Mrs. Eleanor C. Keenan, Killean,

Newry.

Faithfully yours, (Sgd.) ELEANOR C. KEENAN."

•

" Ara Coeli, Armagh.

25th Octob.", 1939.

, Dear Mrs. Keenan.-In your letter of the 19th inst. you ask that you

be furnished immediately with details as to the date on which you are charged with calling the rol~s before -the proper time.' I do not know all the details. The statement of the facts is a matter for the Maliager, who, I understand, is at present away from home. On his return I am SllTe he would be willing to supply you with all the necessary data.

Mrs. E. Keenan, Killean,

Yours faithfully, (Sgd.) JOHN DONNELLY."

" AI'S Coeli, Armagh.

15th December, 1939.

Newry. Dear Mrs. Keenan.-I have just learned to my surprise in a letter

from Canon MeN ally that you have never asked him for the particulars you said you wanted with a -view to asking for a Ministerial inquiry.

If you want the details you ought to apply to Canon McNally J for as as I told you, I never knew the details.

Yours faithfully J

(Sg.l..) JOHN pONNELLY."

•

Re,'. J. DOllnell~', Ara Caeli,

Armagh.

83

" Killean , Newry.

19th December, 1939.

Rev. Sil',-Your letter of the 15th instant to hand. I have waited for almost two months since the receipt of Jour previous letter in the belief that you would tal;:e some steps to substantiate the ' charge' which in your letter of October 6th you descrihed as a very serious on~ that could be substantiated, and that would not be withdrawn. Justice requires that the person \yho makes a charge which is challenged and denied should either suhstantiate or withdraw it. He cannot get out of his obligation by sa,ying in effect that his charge was based on hearsay evidence, and by endeavouring then to pass on his responsibility to his informant. KoI' should it be expected that the person against whom the charge has been made should be obliged to take the initiative towards proving his mnl illllocence. I cannot feel, therefore, that I am under any obligation to ask Canon McNally for the details of the charge referred to by you in your letter of October 6th, and I have 110 intention of doing so. If Canon l\IcNally had any charge to make against me the time to formulate it and to give me a chance of answering it was when he applied to His Eminence for permission to dismiss me.

If and when such details are supplied I will meet and deal with them, but the duty of supplying them, or seeing that they are supplied, must rest with you, as the writer of the letter published on August 16th.

In an attempt to justify my dismissal from the principalship of Killean School, you stated in that letter that charity alone prevented the Manager from prom~llgating and publishing charges against me, lest these charges should endanger or destroy my prospects of future employment. No more certain or deadly course than this could have been taken to destroy my character in the eyes of -my fellow teachers and the general public. ~Throughout the country people were wonder­ing what it was that could induce a 'venerable and justice-loving Manager' to deprive me of my livelihood after thirteen years of satis­factory service in his school. They could not believe that a Catholic Manager would make Use of a trifling technicality-a mere money­saving device on the part of the Ministry-to remove a teacher from a post which she had so long and faithfully filled, in order to make room for another, or that, if he proposed to do so, he would have received the necessar,': permission. It was only natural that the public should, therefore 1 ask themseh"es whether there was not some hidden reason to account or my dismissal. Your letter supplied the answer. In the circumstances, and hy its ver." nature, it was a cruel libel on me. It left the public (ree to draw all sorts of conclusions as to my personal character, and my conduct as a teacher. The soil was particularly ripe for the reception of the seeds which your letter was calculated to scatter and SO\\' in the interests, no doubt, of justice and fair play I

Now it transpires that even in the case of the one so-called charge on ,vhich you admit you founded your original sweeping insinuations you had no personal knowledge of your own, and that even yet you do not know the details. You were ready on your own responsibility to state that the Manager did not prefer any charges against me lest it should endanger or destroy my chance of future employment. You accepted and puhlisl1(·d that statement \vithout knowing the details o( even one alleged charge, and without knowing even whether it '''''\5 supposed to hav(· occurred hefo1'e or after the }Ianager had notifie:: me of his intention to remove me from the principalship of Killean School. You are ,till, app.renll;'. of the opinion that thi, aUeged calling of the 1'011.

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Oclore the proper time i.3 a 'very serious charge against a teacher.) You stated in a previous letter that the charge could be substantiated and would not be- withdrawn, yet when challenged :to substantiate it you run away from it and seek to shift your responsibility on to the shoulders of someone else.

Perhaps in the meantime you have discovered what a little inquiry would have shown you and others in the beginning, viz., that there is no such offence in the official calendar as 'calling the rolls before the pro_per time.' To call them ajte'1' the proper _time would be a' viplation of :the rule, but every teach8i' and every inspector, and most managers, must have smiled at the nalure of the allegation which you and others seem to regard as a ' very serious charge against a teacher.'

I was treated harshly, and without a scrap of consideration for my previous long and satisfactory service, when 1 was deprived of my means of ·livelihood. 1 regard your attempt .to blacken my character in the eyes of the public by these unfounded suggestions ... ~s an even greater wrong. Yet for this cruel treatment you have not thought fit to offer one single expression of regret or apology. Had I availed of the ·means that were open to me, 1 have little doubt that I would have received ample reparation from my fellow citizens. I am only anxious, however, that the public should know that ther~ \vas, and is, not a shadow of foundation for the insinuations contained in your lettej" of August 16th.

You, yourself, have taken no steps to remove the impression which that letter created in the public mind. Had that been done -it would have gone some way to atone for the injury and pain which the pUblication of yonr letter has caused me. In the circumstances I propose to send this coi:respondence to the Press, leaving it to the public to judge the measure and extent of the justice, charity and (air play that has been meted out to me during the past twelve months.

Yours faithfully, (Sgd.) ELEANOR C. KEENAN."

On December 22nd, Father Donnelly wired, and also wrote; to Mrs. Keenan to say that he was asking the Manager to supply the details.

Mrs. Eleanol' C. Keenan, Killean,

" Ara Coeli, Armagh.

2nd January, 1940.

Newry. Dear Mrs. Keenall.-As I promised in my letter of the 22nd ult. to

do I wrote on the same day to Canon McN ally asking him to SUppll' yoh or me as soon as possible with the details you asked for, and I now enclose his reply.

Yours faithfully, (Signed) J. DONNELLY.

ENCLOSURE.

" Mountain Lodge, . Newry,

31st December, 1939. Dear Father Donnelly.-l am in receipt of your letter of the 22nd

instant, enclosing copies of two letters from Mrs. Keenan to y.0u re Killean School and copies of your reply to them·. The busy Christmas . " .

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times preyented me from making earlier acknowledgment. I -have now read the enclosures.

I see in Mrs. Keenan's letters repeated mention of withdrawals you made, and her expression of satisfaction for same, but I do not see in your letters any mention of withdrawals.

I appreciate l\-In:. Keenan's expressed desire to have all matters that worry her' sifted to the bottom.' For that purpose she asked you for , details '-whatever that connotes-and states she will then, "immediately, ask the )1iuistl'Y of Education-' the proper trilbunal ,-to hold an official inquiry.' .

While appreciating Mrs. Keenan's expressed desires, I cannot believe that her expressed intention of appealing to the Northern Ministry of Education is sincere. .

Twelve months ago it was competent for her and her advisers (the I.N.T.O.) to petition the Ministry of Education, within a period of six weeks, and an inquiry would have been granted them as provided by the Education Act (Northern Ireland). rrhey failed to avail of it, and )Ir. Q'('onnell, General Secretary, stated and pub1ished the reasons why tlH'y refused. He said' th(,ir one and only reason {or refusing to do su was their loyalty to the agreement that had been made, over forty years ago, with the Catholic Bishops.'

I have no reason to assume, and I will not assume, that the loyalty so publicly professed has been withdrawn in favour of an appeal to the Northern Ministry of Education.

Neither have I any right to assume that the same Ministry aTe now competent and 'will now think fit to grant a special inquiry knowing that the parties now begging it refused to avail of the inquiry pro­vided them by Act of Parliament, and knowing, further, :that Mrs. Keenan is not nO\~' in the service of the Ministry. If Mrs. Keenan desir'es to bring her case to the Ministry, she requires no outside infor­mation. She knows her grievances, and knows the redress she seeks.

In 1\Irs. Keenall's letter of the 19th instant I see an illuminative paragraph". It is penned to expel your ignorance, but it throws its searchlight in other directions and on other matters. It is a fair sample of Mrs. Keeuan'6 mentality, and her conception of the rights and duties of teachers in the matter of calling the school rolls at the , proper time 1_the time stated 011 the time-table.

She writes: 'Perhaps in the meantime you have discovered ,,,hat a little inquiry would have S110l"11 you and others in the beginning, viz., that there is 110 such oifenc(' in the official calendar us "calling the rolls before the propel' time." 'I'D call them after the proper time would be a violation of the rule. but every teacher and inspector, and most managers, must h<lcYo smiled at the nature of the allegation ·wpich you and others :'i€PIll to regard as a .. VC'I',Y sf'rious charge against a teacher." ,

Evidentl:,' l\Irs. Keenun dues not read tl~e 3Iinislry's regUlations, but she does better, she makes regulations which no doubt she deems more suitable and com~enientJ and she sees a smile on the face of every teacher. el-ery inspector, and most managers, at the idea that a viola­tion of the )Iinistry's regulations is a serious offence. Surely the goodl" 'l_umber of smilers she classifies and enumerates have no exis­tence \.Hltside her Olvn fertile brain, but if they have any other than an imaginary existence, they ma;v continue to smile-their smiles are harmless-and in a serious moment, if they have one, they should reflect on the natural but evil consequences of Mrs. Keenan's new regulations in their application and observance. . Let them contrast the Ministry's regulations and Mrs. Keenan'6 revised edition of same.

By the Ministry's regulations thE' rolls must be called at the time stat,ed on the time-table (see Reg, Sec. 30). Hence to call the roll

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before this time or after this time is an offence and breach of the regu~ lations. * . ,.

Mrs. Keenan holds it is no offence to call the rolls before the time. The teacher who calls the rolls before the time on the time-table exciudes the .:attendance of all pupils who come into school after he calls the rolls and before the time marked on the time-talble, and his attendance returns to the Ministry are a falsification-a concrete lie. Moreover, by thus lowering the attendance, he can soon remove and .disem"'ploy'" an undesirable colleague, effect amalgamation of the school and in:B.ict other serious injuries on the neighbour. ,Further comment needless. Who runs may read. With compliments and best regards, I am, dear Father Donnelly,

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) F. McNALLY."

~iRS. KEENAN'.s FINAL LETTER.

" Killean , Newry.

JU/VUQTy 8th, 1940. Reverend Sir,-From your wire and letter of 22nd uIt., in which

you stated that you were about to ask Canon MeN ally to supply me with the details of the alleged charge which you had previously stated 'could be substantiated ,and would not be WIthdrawn,' I had assumed· '~ that these details would at last' be forthcoming .

I am sure you will have recognised that the Manager"in his letter, which you have enclosed, has not only failed to supply details of a specific charge, but that he has carefully refrained from any explicit statement as to whether 01' not any such charge as mentioned by you ever existed, Or was capable of formulation, so .far as I am conce:tne:d. Instead, he indulges in a series of abstract speculations! interspersed with the usual innuendoes, all of which are entirely irre evant. They are designed, no doubt, to obscure the simple issue involved in this correspondence. Such tactics will deceive nobody. He endeavours to establish an entirely false analogy between a request made to the Ministry by an individual teacher for an investigation into an alleged breach of an official l'egulation, and an appeal .to the Ministry against a decision of the Ecclesiastical Authorities on the question of th~ dismissal of a teacher. No one more so than the Manager knows that 'there is and can be no such analogy. Investigations of the former type are part of the normal administrative routine, wherehs an appeal against a decision of the Ecclesiastical A&thorities involves a question of policy affecting every Catholic teacher in Ireland.

The Manager's speculations as to whether or not the Ministry is competent, or would be willing, to hold an investigation into your alleged charge are quite heside the. point. The matter could be put to the test,only if a. charge were duly formulated and a request made for an investigation.

* The official RegUlation, i.e. S"ection 30, to which the Ma.nager referred in his final letter is as follows: -" Work must be calTied on in accordance with a time-table prepared by the principal teacher with the approval of the Manager and subject to modification, if required, by the Ministry."

. -Stat1dory Rules a·lId Orde'J's of NOTtheT~ Ireland. There is nothing in this ~r any other Regulation; wh~ch 'You1d support

the Manager's interpretatlOn of the tf'ache;r?s obhgatlon tu the mattev of calli~ the rolls,

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I have no intention of entering into discussions with the Manager as to. the interpretation to 1)6 placed on the official regulations. After th.lrteeu years' practical experience of teaching and school-keeping I lllIght be expected to be thoroughly familiar with them.

The Manager mentions the time-table, and refers to a section of the regulations (which he does not quote). I suggest that before committing himself so definitely to his interpretation of Ml6 regulation which he mentions he -should have examined the official time-table of Killean School, \\"hich bears his own signature. In that and in all official time-tables ·the official entry as to calliuO" the rolls reads as follows: • c . Rolls are marked and attendanc'es full" recorded before -- o'clock.'

L may again remind you that the first hint or suggestion ever made to lI1e I"Pgarding this particular allegation was made on the occasion of my dsit to Armagh, i.e., almost three months after the )Ianager h'ad dl·dal'€'d his intention or rl.'l11oYing me from the principalship, and less than an hOUlI after the Cardinul's representative had assured thp General Se(,l'etar~' and m~'self that no clwrg£'s of an~T kind had hpe-n, or were being, made against me.

Though I haye thought it necessary to refer to these points in the :\lanager's letter, they ha ye l'Pully no hearing on the issue involved in this correspolldeuN>. The responsihility for substantiating or with­drawing the alleged charge must continue to remain with you, You it \\'as who made the charge, and who asserted that it could be suh­stantiated, You haye admitted that this charge 'Was made without personal knowledge-that ~'oul' allegations were lmsed on hearsay state­ments and e\'idenee \\'hich, as it no\," transpires, your informant is not prepared to stand over.

Despite this it does not apppur to han' ot'l'lIl'red to ~'ou that some reparation, even by \\'ay or a withdra\\'al of the ('harge, 01' a simple upology for having made it, 01' for having given the public the impression that charity aloBe pr('Y(>n!ed the forlllulatio~ of ev~n more serious t'harges, was due to me, lou t'allnot complalll that ample opportunity t{) make UH' nec('ssar.,' amends has not becn afforded you, or that 1'havc heen other than ('onsiderate in dealing with the unfounded insinuations which have heen made against me. Your failure to tak(' the obvious ('ourse and t{) make ,tlie necessary reparation If'aves me no alternati\"e but to publish the correspondence which has passed hetween liS sim"e September last.

Faithfully yours, (Sgd.) ELEANOR C. KEENAN"

THE ALLEGED CHARGE RE MARKING OF ROLLS ,

To anyone having an intimate knowledge of practical school work the "charge " of which mention was made in the Cardinal's lettel' to the General Secretary, and whi<Jh was afterwards repeated by Father Donnelly in the published correspondence, will be rated at its true worth, and to those especially it must seem exceeding strange that such a. matter could be elevated into the importance of a major indict­ment. But as this statement of the case is not intended entirely, or even mainly, for those who possess such knowledge, it becomes necessary to examine in some detail both the " charge" itself, and to dwell at some length on the circum­stances in which it came to be made.

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There is in every elementary school a daily roll-call of the pupils whose names are entered on 'the school rolls; the presenCe or absence of each individual pupil must be indicated by a special mark which is entered on the official "Roll Book". The numbers present in each standard mnst be tabulated and the totals entered in another Official Record known as the " Report Book ". All this must be completed before a stated time each morning. The time for its com­pletion is set out on the official Time-Table which is prepared at the beginning of the school year by the teacher and is signed by the Manager to indicate his approval of the school alTangements. The Time-Table, which is an official printed form, bears the words "Rolls are marked and attendances fully recorded before ............ o'clock." The particular hour, which, as a rule, mnst not be later than 10.30 a.m. is entered in the blank space provided on the form.

In Killean School the exact hour befO'l·e wliich the Rolls were to be completed was entered in the usual way on the official Time-Table over the signature of the j\ilanager.......{;anon MeN ally. The Manager in his letter to Father Donnelly, dated December 31st, 1939, sought to draw a distinction between the terms " at the proper time" and " before the proper time". The actual calling of the Rolls and the recording of the attendances may occupy anything from five to ten minutes, or even more, according to the size of the school, and the teacher must alTange to begin calling the Rolls at such a time as will· ensure that the official regulation is carried out, and that all is complete befm·e the time entered on the Time-Table. Obviously there could be no regulation to say that an operation which might occupy a period of from five to fifteen minutes should he performed "at" an exact definite time, before which, and after which, the operation would be ilTegular. We do not, therefore, find an entry on the Time-Table to say that the Rolls must be called "at 10.30 a.m.". Such an entry would be absurd on the face of it. Again there is nO official regulation to say how soon before (he time for the completion of the daily record the roll-call must begin. That is a matter which is left to the teacher's discretion; it will depend on the extent of the task which in tnrn depends on the number of pupils enrolled in the school. All that the regulations require is that the work must be finished be: ·e the time indicated on the Time-Table.

A teacher who fails to complete the necessary entries in due time commits a breach of the regulations. No such charge has, however, been even alleged against l\irs. Keenan. In her. case she is charged with " calling the Rolls before the proper time". If the " proper time" is the time indicated on the Time-Table, and Canon McNally in his final letter so

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defines it, the teacher would have no option but to call the Rolls before the" proper time". She could not do otherwise if the official regulation with regard to tbe time of the o(}om­pletion of the Rolls were to be observed.

So much for the nature and extent of the actual charge itself. Its connection with the dismissal must now be examined. Before entering on this phase of the case, however, it should be stated that the lady who served as a junior assistant mistress in Killean School during the early part of the year 1938 was, on October 1st of that year, promoted to the position of assistant. 'I'his promotion became possible because the average at the school for the two preceding quarters, i.e., those ended on June 30th and September 30th had reached the qualifying figure of 50. It is well kno,~-it has not been denied-that Mrs. Keenan .helped very materially in the effort to secure this increased atteudance during the period men­tioned. She was anxious to do a good turn for her colleague in the sehool and, of course, the increased average would mean additional remlmeration for herself by way of capitation pay­ments. If the average were maintained it would also mean that the school would be placed in a higher category, carrying higlher emoluments for the principal teacher. Even from t.he purely selfish point of view, therefore, it was dearly in Mrs. Keenan's own interest that the attendance should be raised to, and maintained at, the highest possible figure.

A few days after her efforts,. in conjunction with others, to raise the average attendance to 50 had been crowned with success. i.e., in the first week of October, 1938, the Manager had his first fateful " conversation" with Mrs. Keenan, dur­ing which he informed hel' of his intention to remove her from the principalship of the school. If, therefore, hel' alleged " offenee " with reference to the calling of the Rolls was one of the reasons for her removal (and that it was so represented is clear from the Cardinal's statement to the General Secretary on the occasion of the interview at Armagh), then the offence must have been committed on one of those few days during which Mrs. Keenan was congratulating herself on her success in getting the average of the school up to 50 .

The Manager in his final letter of December 21st 1939, not only failed to supply the particulars requested hy Father Donnelly, but was specially careful to avoid 'ating directly that any violation of the regulations ha.d, in fact, taken place . Without saying that Mrs. Keenan had been guilty of what His Eminence and Father Donnelly had been given to under­stand was " a very serious eharge " he set {Jut to show that if Rolls are called " before the proper time" the average attendance at the school might be seriously affected and· to the uninitiated the suggestion was clearly conveyed that Mrs

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Keenan did, in fact, call the Rolls before the 'proper time and that her object in doing so was to reduce the average attendance at the school.

Up to the date early in October, 1938, when the Manager first intimated to Mrs. Keenan his intention of removing her from the principalship she had no reason to think that there was the slightest danger of being disturbed. As Principal of the school, an increased attendance would mean f<Jr her increased emoluments and, therefore, apart from the admitted fact that she had left nothing undone to bring about an increased attendance for the purpose of securing the pro­motion of her colleague, it is inconceivable that she would have done anything prior to the Manager's notification to her in October which miglJJ nave the effect of reducing the attendance at the school. From this it is abundantly clear that whatever else may have been the Manager's m<Jtives f{)r depriving Mrs. Keenan-in the first place Of the principalship, and finally of any pooition in the school, this alleged irregularity was not one of them. Nothing is so obvious than that this allegation on the part of the Manager was an afterthought and that it was used by him to give some shadow of justification to his action. Perhaps it should be explained here, again for the benefit of those who are lmacquainted with ·the practical working of a scho'ol, that if a child who is actually present in the school at the time of roll-cal! is recorded as being absent the attendance for that day will be less by one unit, but before the IWR!I'age attendance for a quarter, or a year, could be reduced by one unit, one child who was actually present would need to be marked absent for every day in the quarter, or in the year, during which the school was open; il' more than one child were marked absent, then the reduction of one unit in the average would be affected in a propor­tionately shorter time. If, therefore, a teacher set out deliberately to mark children absent, it would be quite easy' not {)nly to detect the offence, but to bring it home to the teacher concerned. A Manager, or his representative, or an official of the Ministry-even a member of the public-is entitled at any time to check the number of pupils present with the number recorded in the" Report· Book". If a child who was present is recorded {)n the Rolls as being absent, that child's exercise books can be examined and "'-~cked to see whether he had done any written work on the aay on which he was alleged to have been present.

Consequently it will be seen that any deliberate attempt to bring about a reduction of average in this fashion could be easily detected and that it would 'have to be eontinue<i over a comparatively long period before the desired effect would be produced, even to the extent of a reduction by one unit.

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If Mrs. Keenan had not indulged in this practice prior to that first "conversation" with the Manager in October, it is even less likely that she would have entered on it afterwards when she found herself in what was practieally a hostile camp. Scarcely a day elapsed without a visit from one or hoth of Canon McNally's Curates who during that time

- were making ,almost superhuman efforts to ensure that the average attendance would be maintained at its highest pitch. The other teachers in the Killean schools had an interest in her removal and from them neith.er sympathy nor consideration was to be expected. One of them was named to succeed her as Principal. The father of this young lady was Principal of the adjoining boys' school. In such ·circumstances, it would have been little short of madness for Mrs. Keenan to indulge in a prac­tice which could be instantly detected and reported and which would deliver het:. into the hands of those who were anxious to find an excuse which could be used to bolster up the action which was about to be taken against her. Her fear lest any such semblauce of an excuse might be provided would of itself be sufficient to prevent her from doing anything which might 'be deemed to be irregular, eYen if she were ever so inclined.

It must not be forgotten that lYIrs. Keenan has absolutely and emphatically denied that she was ever guilty of any irregularity in eonnection with the marking' of the Rolls; that she has indicated her willingness to repeat that denial on oath, if necessary, and that she has challenged and courted the funest investigation into her conduct as a teacher. That in itself should be sufficient to satisfy any unprejudiced person that there was no foundation for these insinuations. Bnt in view of the attitude taken up by those who made the charges, and their refusal eit.her to substantiate 01' withdraw them, it became necessary tu ~how. by the circumstantial evidence, set out above, that it was morally impossible for Mrs. Keenan to have been guilty of them.

W,hat then was the origin of tlus trumped-up eharge of " .calling the Rolls beforc the propel' time" which was first mentioned to Mrs. Keenan by his Eminen~e the Cardinal on the occasion of her visit to Armagh, after she had been assured by Dean lIIacDonald that there were" no charges of any kind against her"~ Having' racked her brains to discover what could possibly have given rise to it, Mrs. Keenan could only suggest that an incident which occurred in the school, long after the Manager's intimation of his intention to remove her from the principalship, might have been the grain of mustard seed whieh had by that time assume:l such gigantic proportions.

One morning as she was about to call the Rolls, the assistant teacher had remarked to her: " Are you not before the timeY" Having consulted her v,~tch (there was no clock in the school)

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Mrs. Keenan stated that such was not the ease and proceeded to call and mark the Rolls. The strained relations which by this time had developed between the teachers prevented Mrs. Keenan from inquiring into the reason for this remark, or from resenting, as she would be justified in d~ing, such. ru;t­called for interference on the part of a subordmate. If It IS

the fact that this incident was the origin of the" very serious charge" which was made against Mrs. Keenan, one is temp.ted to speculate on the various stages of development thro~gh which it must have passed before it took final shape. 1W as the assistant teacher whom Mrs. Keenan had helped into her new and much improved position the original tale-bearer? To whom, and in what form did she convey the' information? It is hardly likely that she would have gone direct to the Manager; the latter's attitude to his teachers did not eneourage familiarity. Who then was the intermediary? These specula­tions arise from the assumption that information in some form or another was conveyed to the Manager; any other eonclusion would be unthinkable. But in whatever form it reached him, two things are clear and obvious. He must have regarded the charge as a grave one, and having so regarded it, he failed in his obvious duty as a Manager in not having itinvestigawd there and then. Instead of this, and with{)ut questioll.Q"!' inquiry, he assumed that the teacher was guilty, and in turn conveyed this charge to His Eminence the Cardinal, with whQm the question Qf the re1;ention or dismissal of the teacher WQtild eventually lie.

The importance which His Eminence attached to this charge and his firm belief in its existenee is evident from the PJlb­lished correspondence. In his letter of December 30th, 1938, to the General Secretary, His Eminence stated that his inf{)r­mation was that more than one person was prepared to swear to the truth of the charge in relation to the Rolls and that if that charge were proved in an inquiry Mrs. Keenan would get no appointment from Canon lVlcNally ,or anybody else. In the letter addressed by His Eminence's Secretary to Mrs. Keenan on December 6th, 1939, the charge was repeated and was described as " a very serious charge against a teacher-one that could be substantiated and which, therefore, wotild not be withdrawn". Both these statements show that His EID;~~nce was clearly under the impression that Mrs. Keenan had oeen guilty of a very grave offence, an ,offence whieh could be fully brought home to her, and which if formally established and recorded against her, wotild disqualify her from occupying the position of teacher. The information to which His Eminence referred could have been conveyed to him only by the Manager, and again it is interesting to spectilate as to who the persons were (for according to His Eminence

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there was more than one) who were prepared to swear to the truth of the charge. There is one passage in the Cardinal's letter to the General Secretary which would go to support Mrs. Keenan's suspicion that the charge had its origin in the assistant's remark with regard to the time for roll-call. This incident had been mentioned by the General Secretary in his letter to the Cardinal on December 28th and it was in refer­ence to it that His Eminence in his reply on December 30th stated that more than one person was prepared to swear '" that Mrs. Keenan was in no mistake about the actual time of day". The question must then arise as to who the persons were who '''ere thus prepared to swear to the truth of the allegations and what was the grave and serious charge which was to be the subject of this testimony, There was the assistant herself, of course, but she waS only one. It has never been suggested or alleg'ed that any other adult person was present when this incident oceurred. Were the additional witnesses to be found among the pupilsl If so, what means had they of determining the proper time for roll-call, seeing' that there was no clock in the schooll What guarantee was there even that the assistant's ,,,atch was reliable 1 Was there any evidence that an"' pupil had arri"ed on that day after the Rolls had been called, and. if so, could that pupil's exercises be produced 1 These are the ohvious questions which would Occur to anyone desirous of making an impartial and un­prejudiced investigation of the supposed charge, but appar­ently it never o~eurred to the Manager that not alone did he owe it to his teacher to make such an investigation when the informa tiBn was first conveyed to him, but that it was his duty as a Manager responsible for the government and general 00n­duct of the school to do so.

On the contrary this " justice-loving Manager" did not consider it to be inconsistent with the pI'actice of that estimable virtue to lay this charge before His Eminence, to impress him, as he must have done, with its gravity and to assure him that the charge could be substantiated, on oath if necessary. This could be done for one purpose, and for one purpose alone, namely, to prejudice the tribunal to whom the teacher had sig'nified her determination to appeal and at the same time to lend some coLour of justification to his own action in seeking' to victimise her. To the members of the LN.T.O., and no doubt to others, it IL ;t ever remain a matter for surprise that the existence of this charge was disclosed to the teacher only after she had appeared before her Bishop's representative to make her defence and after she had been solemnly assured that there were no charges of any kind against her.

This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the charge was evidently regarded by His Eminence as a reason,

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and no doubt a substantial one, for the Manager.'s proposed action. The correspondence goes to show that HIS Emmence sincerely believed in the existence of this charge. His Secre­tary, when challenged by lI'Irs. Keenan, informed her that this charge of calling the Rolls before the proper time was a very serious one, that it could be substantiated, and would not be withdrawn. When she demanded that it should be substan­tiated the Secretary (who confessed that he himself did not know all the details, although that had not affected his belief. in their existence) turned to the Manager, who, he felt sure, would be able to supply Mrs. Keenan with " all the necessary' data ".

But no details or data were forthcoming, obviously because the lI'Ianager was unable to furnish them. Instead, he endeavoured in his reply to Father Donnelly tti cover up this failure by a characteristic piece of special pleading, but he was -careful to refrain not only from furnishing the -required details, but even from stating directly that Mrs. Keenan !lad been guilty of any charge whatsoever.

Father Dounelly stated that the charge could be substan­tiated and that, therefore, it would not be withdrawn.- It has not been substantiated, but neither has it been withdrawn. To this day no expression of regret or apology from any quarter has reached Mrs. Keenan in regard to 1hls unfounded charge. To everyone who examines the circumstances in which the charge was made and persisted in, this must be no less surprising than its belated disclosure.

One purpose which the I.N.T.O. Executive have in mind in d welling at such length on this aspect of the Keenan case is to clear away for ever any scrap of doubt or suspicion that may still remain in the minds of the public who, through the columns of the Press, were informed by Father Donnelly that the Manager in his charity had refrained from making charges against her lest it would endanger 01' destroy her prospects of further employment. A veiled insinuation of this kind is far more injurious than a direct charge. One must sympathise, therefore, with Mrs. Keenan in her assertion that she regarded this attempt to blacken her character in the eyes of the public as an even greater wrong than her dismissal. -

FINAL EFFORTS TO SECURE A SETTLEMENT

It is known that, both before and after Mrs. Keenan's dis­missal, eff-orts were made privately by interested individuals and bodies to bring about an amicable settlement of this case and to put an end to what very many people rightly regard as a, very unpleasant and und~ir!!ble state of I,Iff!!ir~.

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Towards this end the Executive were approached more than once by well-meaning people, anxious to obtain the I.N.T.O. point of view, and to learn the facts of the case so far as they were known. The Executive left those people in no doubt as to their own anxiety to have the case amicably disposed of, and their regret that it had ever arisen. They were furthermore informed'that if any desire were shown on the other side to effect a settlement neither Mrs. Keenan herself, nor the I.N.T.O., would be found unreasonable. All such efforts, how­ever, came to naught.

In September, 1940, some nine months or thereabouts after the publication of the correspondence between Father Donnelly and Mrs. Keenan, the Executive decided to make another appeal to His Eminence with a view to having the whole position reconsidered. Accordingly the following letter was addressed to His Eminenee:-

His Eminenc,e Cardinal MacRory J

Ara Coeli,

Armagh.

Your Eminence,

9 Gardiner Place,

Dublin.

September 23rd, 1940.

At th.ir meetin\l held on SaturdaYJ_21Bt inst., my Exeoutive had again under consideratlOll the case of !\irs. Keenan, who Borne eighteen months ago was removed from Killean School by her Manager, Very Rev. Canon MeN ally. For several months past, reports have been continuously coming to hand from many of our branches and county committees in \\'hich grave dissatisfaction is expressed at the con­tinuance at the present situation in regard to this regrettable case, and the Executive cannot but feel concerned at the detrimental effect which such a feeling of dissatisfaction must have on the general relations between managers and teachers throughout the country.

They venture, therefore, to express the hope that Your Eminence would not regard the present as an inapprov.riate occasion, on which to give further consideration to this case, WIth a view to bringing to a speedy termination the unsatisfactory and regrettable situation which has been caused by the dismissal of this teacher.

I have the honour to remain,

Yonr most obedient servant,

(Sgd.) T. J. O'CONNELL, General Secretary."

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This letter, however, brought neither reply nor. aclmowledg­ment.

There the matter rests for the present. Mrs. Keenan is now almost three years unemployed. Not only has she lost salary f{)r that time--she has been deprived of pensi{)n and incre­mental rights which can never be restored to her.

The impartial reader who has thus far fpllowed the account of the Killean Dismissal Case is now left to judge whether or not the teachers were justified in describing that dismissal as a "harsh, unwarranted and arbitrary exercise of Managerial authority ".

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