Sir Charles Scotter was appointed Chairman of the Commission.  He was Chairman of the London and South Western Railway; had risen from the ranks in the railway service; had been a general manager, and was unquestionably a man of great ability; but he was handicapped by his age, which even then exceeded the Psalmist’s allotted span.  His health moreover was not good, and in less than six months after the completion of the work of the Commission, he departed this life at the age of 75.

Mr. George Shanahan, Assistant Secretary of the Board of Works, was the capable Secretary of the Commission.  He had the advantage of being a railwayman.  From the service of the Great Northern Railway, Robertson took him with him to the Board of Works in the year 1896.

Before the Commission began its public sittings it issued and freely circulated a printed paper entitled “Draft Heads of Evidence for Traders, Industrial Associations, Commercial and Public Bodies, etc.”  This paper invited complaints under various set headings and concluded with these words:—­

“Whether there is any other question that might be usefully considered in determining the causes that have retarded the expansion of traffic upon the Irish lines, and their full utilization for the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of the country.”

The italics are mine.  We, rightly or wrongly, looked upon this paragraph as assuming the case against the Companies to have some foundation in fact and likely to bias neutral opinion against us, and when (after the hearing was concluded) three of the seven Commissioners reported that the evidence “led them to doubt whether expansion of traffic had been retarded,” we felt that our view was not without justification.  But I am anticipating the findings of the Commission, and perhaps, after all, the peculiar Terms of the Reference largely dictated the course of procedure which the Commission adopted.

The first public sitting was held in Dublin on the 12th of October, 1906, and the last in the same city on the 29th of January, 1909.  There were 95 public sittings in all; and 293 witnesses were examined, 29 of whom appeared on behalf of the Railway Companies.  The Reports of the Commissioners (for there were two—­a Majority and a Minority Report) did not appear till the 4th of July, 1910, so from the time of its appointment until the conclusion of its work the Commission covered a period of four years, all but fourteen days.

During the course of this Inquiry I passed through a crisis in my life.  From more than a year before the Commission was appointed I had been in most indifferent health, the cause of which doctors both in Dublin and in London were unable to discover.  As time went on I became worse.  Recurring attacks of intense internal pain and constant loss of sleep worked havoc with my strength; but I held on grimly to my work,