asked the Minister for Local Government if he will make a full statement for the benefit of land owners and local authorities as to the maximum and minimum periods for which a man must be employed on a holding so that the land owner will qualify for rate abatement.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Land Owners' Qualification for Rate Abatement.
19.
The employment allowance under the Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Acts, is given in any financial year to rated occupiers of agricultural land in respect of each qualified workman who was at work on the holding during the whole of the previous calendar year. There is provision for the replacement of one person by another in determining whether one man was at work during the whole year. In practice it is recognised that intermissions between the employment of successive workers are unavoidable and that a worker is not in fact expected to be at work for every day of the year. In recognition of this practice I have informed the Dáil during the second reading of the last Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Bill on the 21st May, 1959, and also any local authority which has approached me in the matter that, as far as I am concerned, I see no objection to an employment allowance being granted where the break or the total length of the breaks in employment in any year is not greater than one month. A decision in any particular case is, however, the statutory responsibility of the local authority concerned.
Is the Minister aware that, in the case of the Cork County Council, at all events, it has been the practice not only in recent years but even this year that where a man who is employed with a farmer or a land-owner misses one day, 24 hours, in the full year they deprive that landowner of the full abatement of £17? I am now asking the Minister to give a direction to the Cork County Manager so that in future these cases will be dealt with more reasonably.
In reply to the Deputy's supplementary question and to his request for a direction, I have no authority to give a direction in such a case. I have stated quite clearly on several occasions the mind of Local Government and, indeed, from that mind the approach of the auditors in regard to these cases which is the one difficulty that these local authorities are likely to meet. I would reiterate that in this case, in writing, if the Deputy will furnish me with particulars in writing of the case.