[ 1 ]
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.
Friday, 28th April 18/6.
MEMBERS PRESENT Sir Michael Hicks Beach.
Mr.
Brooks.
Mr.
Bruen.
Mr.
Butt.
Mr.
Collins.
Mr.
J.
P.
Cony.
Sir Arthur Guinness.
Mr.
Ivavanagb.
Sir Joseph M'Kenna.
Mr.
Mulhollant!.
Mr.
Murphy.
Mr.
O'Shauglmessy.
Mr.
Rathbone.
Dr.
Ward.
Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH, in the Chair.
Mr.
William Neilson Hancock, ll.d.,
called in; and Examined.
Chairman.
1.
I believe you have studied the question which has been referred to this Committee of Local Government and Taxation of Towns in Ireland ?—Yes;
I was first employed in 1865 to report on a Bill for the Regulation and Audit of Municipal Taxation and Expenditure under Sir Robert Peel.
In 1866 I was employed by Lord Carlingford to draw a Public Health Act for Ireland, and that eventuated in the 14 clauses by which the whole of the Public Health Law of England was extended to Ireland in 1866.
I completed that under Lord Mayo.
The Govern¬ ment was changed, but I went on with the work and completed it for him, and then I reported on the Public Health Legislation of 1866.
I will hand in to the Committee these two Reports on Muni¬ cipal Taxation and Public Health Legislation (delivering in the same).
Then in 1866, in con¬ sequence of a recommendation of the Committee on Irish Taxation in 1865, that Returns of Irish Local Taxation should be collected, I was employed to organise them, and I organised the collection of Local Taxation Returns for the years from 1865 until 1872.
In 1873, in conse¬ quence of an arrangement similar to what has been carried out in England, the collection and compilation of the Local Taxation Returns were transferred to the Irish Local Government Board.
I reported upon the Returns for the several years from 1865 until the year 1872.^
In those Reports I went very fully into the question of the reform of local taxation and local govern¬ ment, and before I gave the Reports up I put an index to the whole series, and here is a collection with an index to the Reports and Returns.
I present one copy with an index prefixed which 0.105.
Chairman—continued.
shows all the matter in the Report and Returns for each year (delivering in the same).
They are all Parliamentary Papers except the first.
The Report on the Sanitary Laws was not presented to Parliament, but was printed for sale by direc¬ tion of the Government.
The Report on Muni¬ cipal Taxation was sent to each town authority in Ireland; both can be got from Mr.
Thorn, the Queen's printer in Dublin.
The Reports from 1865 to 1872 can be got from Hansard.
2.
I think that in the Public Health Act of 1874, there is a section which will pretty well give us a list of the different classes of towns into which it is our duty to inquire?—Yes,the
Public Health Act of 1874 drew a division between the Irish town authorities.
It said that certain town authorities should be the urban sanitary authori¬ ties and certain should not; and the line which it drew was that every town that had above 6,000 inhabitants, and was under a constituted government, should be the urban sanitary autho¬ rity.
Besides these, some few towns in which there were less than 6,000,but which had got local Acts of their own were, nevertheless, constituted sanitary authorities.
In the classification of towns in the Local Taxation Returns for 1874, that dis¬ tinction has not been regarded, "but there is a very nice Table in the census for Ireland, which has classified the towns under the different governments.
I will read from the Census Re¬ port, with one slight correction, what has hap¬ pened since.
The oldest form of existing town government in Ireland is that under the Act of 1828, the 9th Geo.
4.
The towns with urban sanitary authorities under that Act are four : Tralce, Armagh, Bandon and Youghal.
The A next
Air.
W.
N.
Hancock, LL.D.
28 April 1876.
