As I have said, there
were two reports, one signed by four, the other by three Commissioners.
The Majority Report bore the signatures of the Chairman, the Rt. Hon.
Lord Pirrie, Colonel (now Sir) Hutcheson Poe, and Mr. Thomas Sexton,
while the Minority Report was signed by Sir Herbert Jekyll, Mr. W. M.
Acworth, and Mr. (now Sir) John Aspinall. The first-mentioned Report was
not so favourable to the railways as the other, yet the worst thing it
said of the Companies was that they were commercial bodies conducted on
commercial principles and ran the railways for profit, and it admitted
that Irish railway managers neglected few opportunities for developing
traffic. In a sort of way it apologised for the evidence-seeking printed
papers to which I have already referred, and admitted that had the
Commissioners been in possession of the statistics of trade and industry
published in 1906 by the Department of Agriculture (which seemed to have
surprised them by the facts and figures they contained of Ireland's
progress) these circulars might have been framed differently. The Report
also said that the complaints the Commissioners received would have been
fewer in number if some of the public witnesses had been better informed
and had taken pains to verify their statements.
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