The report was drawn up after a thorough inspection by Dr.Sigerson and his associate, Dr.Kenny, visiting physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found.

I have just been reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr.Tuke gave me some time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping capital out of the country.

The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr.
Sigerson and Dr.Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by Dr.Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition in which he found Gweedore.

After giving full value to the stock explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as excessive rents, penal laws, born of religious or "racial" animosity, and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and from the lack of varied industries.

Political agitation has checked any flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them would surely have given them better communications and more varied industries.