In Ireland, out of 33 county councils not one had made by-laws; of the 43 councils of urban districts with a population of over 5000, only 5 had passed regulations. In 1909 the Secretary of State for the Home Department appointed a departmental committee to inquire into the operation of the Employment of Children Act, 1903, and to consider whether any and what further legislative regulation or restriction was required in respect of street trading and other employments dealt with in that act. This committee confined its report, which was submitted in 1910, to the subject of street trading; and its great contribution to the cause of child welfare is its recommendation that street trading should be _prohibited_ rather than regulated. The statute of 1903 prohibits all work by children under the age of eleven years, and its restrictions on street employment by children above that limit, out of school hours, are prohibitions of _night_ work after nine o'clock, consequently a child above the age of eleven years who engages in street trading is restrained, during the day, only by such by-laws as may have been adopted by the local authority. The committee found that even in communities where by-laws had been adopted they were not always observed, and also that where no by-laws had been passed the minimum statutory restrictions were frequently ignored. The report declared that: "A considerable amount of street trading is still done by children under eleven. Special censuses taken in Edinburgh revealed the fact that children as young as seven were trading in the streets. The great bulk of the evidence received in and from Scotland points to the conclusion that the Act [of 1903] has been almost a dead-letter in that country.... Infringements of the Act in Ireland are no less common. In Waterford newspapers are sold by children of nine years old up to 11 P.M. and later."[160] The issuance of licenses and badges was denounced as giving the stamp of official approval to what is recognized as an evil, the adoption of by-laws resulting merely in a partial improvement of conditions even when rigorously enforced.