I do not suggest that the questions relating to the revival of industry in our large manufacturing centres and provincial towns are not of the first importance.

The local authorities in these places have eagerly come into the movement, and the Department has already taken part in founding, in our cities and larger towns, comprehensive schemes of technical education, as to the outcome of which we have every reason to be hopeful.

Not only that, but it is highly necessary for the Department to consider these schemes in close relation to its work upon the more specially rural problems, for, as I have said elsewhere,[48] the interdependence of town and country, and the establishment of proper relations between their systems of industry and education, is a prime factor in Irish prosperity.

But the rural problem, as I have so often reiterated, is the core of the Irish Question; and to deal at all adequately with technical education, so far as we carry it on upon lines common both to Great Britain and Ireland, would lead us too far afield on the present occasion.

I must, therefore, content myself with indicating my reasons for leaving it rather on one side, and pass on to a brief description of the Department's educational work in respect of its two-fold aim of developing agriculture and the subsidiary industries.
In the case of agriculture our task is perfectly plain.