Members of the Second Dáil - Thomas Derrig

Thomas Derrig

Thomas Derrig (Irish: Tomás Ó Deirg; 26 November 1897 – 19 November 1956) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician.

Derrig was born on 26 November 1897, in County Mayo.

He was educated locally and at University College Galway. During his time in college he organised a corps of the Irish Volunteers. After the 1916 Easter Rising, he was arrested and imprisoned. After his release he graduated from college and became headmaster in a technical college in Mayo.

During the Irish War of Independence Derrig was interned at the Curragh Camp. While there he was elected a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for Mayo North and West.

Derrig took the republican side during the Irish Civil War. He was later captured by the Irish Free State army. While in custody of the Criminal Investigation Department (Ireland) he was severely injured, having an eye shot out by CID detectives.

According to http://www.reformation.org/jesuits-in-ireland.html,
"Thomas Derring was Minister for Education from 1932 until 1939 and again from 1943 until 1948. He worked closely with de Valera and the Roman hierarchy to ensure an endless supply of male and female children to the reformatories.

Upon entering, all the children were given numbers and the "schools" were run with military precision.

Most of the young boys and girls committed to the reformatories were orphans or came from broken homes. Judges sentenced them to the prisons until they were 16 years old.

The monks (who took vows of poverty) got a substantial sum from the government for every child thus incarcerated.

Slave labor and the substantial sums that they received from the government made the reformatories veritable gold mines. These institutions for boys and girls were found all over the country."

At the June 1927 general election, he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for Carlow–Kilkenny. In Éamon de Valera's first government in 1932 Derrig was appointed Minister for Education. Derrig initiated a review of industrial and reformatory schools and the rules under the Children Act 1908, resulting in the critical 1936 Cussen Report, which he shelved. His lack of action was noted in 2009 when the Ryan Report examined the subsequent management of these "residential institutions"; Derrig was the first minister to seek a report that could have resulted in much-needed reforms. It has been suggested that he did not want to follow British law reforms in the 1920s and 1930s because of his strong anti-British views, and that Irish children had suffered needlessly as a result.

From 1939 to 1943 he served as Minister for Lands. He was re-appointed to Education in 1943 until 1948. Between 1951 and 1954 he became Minister for Lands again.

Thomas Derrig died in Dublin on 19 November 1956, seven days before his 59th birthday.