Daniel Desmond Sheehan

“ Schemes of cottages were often prepared with great difficulty and expense by rural district councils, they investigated every claim, and passed none which did not appear to them a just and reasonable one, and yet when these schemes were sent forward to the Local Government Board, when inquiries were held and the result sent down to the councils, after all the care and all the trouble that had been taken in communication with them, was it not a galling state of things that frequently more than one-half of the cottages originally applied for were rejected? ”

“ It was a standing ground of complaint with the working men in Ireland that the Labourers Acts were not administered in a manner sympathetic to them, and as this was a question which seriously affected the material and moral progress of the country it was one which should engage the very best attention which the Government could bestow on it. He held if there was to be any respect for the administration of the Labourers Acts in Ireland, definite and conclusive reasons should be assigned in each case by the inspector, setting forth the points of evidence upon which he decided to reject cottages. ”

“ In this age of progress, and when the means of travelling to other countries were so moderate, people would not live in hovels in which the brute beasts would not be housed, and which were the fruitful breeding grounds of epidemics of the worst and most malevolent kind. ”