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CHAPTER 2 The ‘University of Munster’ and the Founding of the National University of Ireland 36 George Wyndham, the chief secretary of Ireland between 1900 and 1905, had very clear policy ideas about how to solve ‘the Irish question’. His constructive unionist policy approach laid great emphasis on the resolution of the Irish university question. The Royal University, founded in 1879, served as an examination body1 for Catholic students. It was not an ideal system. In 1900, the British government, under growing pressure from the Irish Catholic hierarchy and the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, had established a Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson. Trinity College Dublin was not included in its terms of reference.2 The Archbishop of Dublin, William Walsh, refused to give evidence before Robertson. The prelate was a major force in the intellectual and pastoral life of the country. He favoured the establishment of a Catholic College withinTrinity College.There was little prospect, in such a divided climate, of achieving a consensus. The Jesuit president of the Royal College, Fr William Delany, sought an extension of his college.The influential Bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, argued publicly in favour of the establishment of a Catholic university.The report, published in 1903, proposed that the Royal University should be reorganised and established as a federal teaching and examining university. The Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, Cork and Galway were to be constituent colleges. That did not satisfy any of the major figures in Irish Catholic education.The report met with failure. The chief secretary, George Wyndham, and his under-secretary, Antony MacDonnell, published a new scheme in 1904.The Fourth Earl of Dunraven, a unionist with a family seat in Adare, County Limerick, and former under-secretary for the Colonies (1885–7) in the Salisbury government , produced a more advanced draft. It favoured the establishment The ‘University of Munster’ and the Founding of the NUI 37 of two new colleges within the University of Dublin; The Queen’s College, Belfast; and a King’s College in Dublin. The King’s College would give Catholics a college comparable toTrinity.That might have satisfied Archbishop Walsh. Bishop O’Dwyer was opposed and there followed a public argument between Limerick and Dublin.3 The matter of higher education in Ireland remained unresolved in 1904. Wyndham, as seen in the last chapter, was instrumental in coaxing Windle to Ireland to take up the presidency of QCC. He also had a much wider role in mind for his protégé, friend and admirer. Wyndham wanted Windle, who had played a central role in the establishment of the University of Birmingham and demonstrated his worth as a university administrator and reformer, to take a lead role in breaking the logjam in Ireland.Wyndham’s untimely resignation as chief secretary in March 1905 – literally within weeks of Windle’s arrival – was a terrible personal blow for the new QCC president. Undaunted, Windle continued to take a leading role in university reform. He petitioned Wyndham’s successor, Walter Long (12 March 1905–4 December 1905), to continue the constructive policies for the reform of higher education in Ireland. But Windle had lost his patron. What his subsequent career might have been had Wyndham remained in Dublin and the Conservatives in power is a matter of mere conjecture.The Liberals took office in 1906.The new chief secretary , the historian James Bryce, was a man of the highest ability. Born in Belfast, he had spent most of his youth in Scotland.4 Bryce had chaired a Commission on Secondary Education in 1894–5. That had not met with success.5 But it helped raise a sense of misplaced confidence in his ability to resolve the university problem.6 Official attention again turned to the question of the University of Dublin and Trinity College. A Royal Commission, under the Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Edward Fry, was set up. Wyndham, out of office nearly a year, wrote to Windle on 25 January 1906 that he was writing to Bryce to request an interview at an early date. He felt that the Liberals had ‘a chance that I never enjoyed. I hope that they will use it for Irish Education. It is the only Irish question they can advance. I have suffered in that cause and am ready to suffer again. But they must drop “step by step to constitutional Home Rule.” That spells ruin to all practical...

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