Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Department of

Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Department of (DATI), created in 1899, in response to the report of Horace Plunkett's Recess Committee, to improve Irish agriculture through education and the encouragement of local co‐operation and initiative. To this end it incorporated a popular element in the form of advisory bodies (the Council of Agriculture, the Agricultural Board, and the Board of Technical Instruction), the majority of whose members were nominated by local authorities. As part of its educational and developmental brief, DATI took over a variety of powers and functions, such as the promotion and inspection of fisheries and the collection of agricultural statistics, previously entrusted to other departments. It was, in fact if not in name, a ministry of agriculture and, in a new departure in Irish administration, its head was expected to represent the department in parliament. The department's work, which included training national schoolteachers in rural science and domestic economy, and improving plant and livestock breeds, was hampered both by conflict with other departments, particularly the Congested Districts Board, and by the suspicion with which it was viewed by nationalists who saw it as an attempt to undermine aspirations to self‐government by improving living standards. After 1922 it was absorbed into the Department of Lands and Agriculture.

Virginia Crossman