When I reported progress I was about to ask the Minister if he would explain a little more clearly to the House the need for this amendment. I do not see any reason for it. The Minister knows that under the Interpretation Act, 1937, where necessary, the singular can be taken as the plural. Can the Minister tell us whether there is any reason for substituting the word "parties" for the word "person"?
Private Members' Business. - Land Bill, 1963—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following amendment:
In page 12, line 7, to delete "person" and insert "parties".
As I have said, the amendment is merely to avoid confusion. If the Deputy rereads the text, he will see that the word "person" occurs three times and where it occurs the third time it relates back to the first time. The second person mentioned is another party altogether. As I have said, it is purely a drafting amendment. The meaning of the subsection is clear enough but it is better to avoid any possibility of confusion by making the amendment. The use of the plural is intended to give further emphasis to the distinction and avoid confusion.
It is just to avoid confusion?
Yes, it is purely a drafting amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 21, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 22.
Question proposed: "That section 22 stand part of the Bill."
Perhaps the Minister would tell us why this section is necessary. I am not objecting to it, but I would like to hear from the Minister on what grounds he thinks it is necessary.
The reason for bringing in this section is to deal with cases where agreements are defective or have been mislaid. Where an allotment has been made by a purchase agreement, the usual method of vesting is by fiat of the Land Commission but some difficulties have arisen where an agreement is defective and it is not practical to have a new one completed, or where an agreement has been mislaid. Some purchase agreements have been filled with junior office staff and it can happen that there was some mistake. If agreements have been mislaid, or some mistake is discovered, this difficulty has arisen and the easier remedy is to use a vesting order. Some doubt has been expressed as to the validity of a vesting order where there was in existence a valid purchase agreement although it was lost. The Deputy will appreciate that this is enabling procedure to deal with a practical difficulty that has arisen and to save trouble and expense where such difficulties have arisen. That is the purpose of the section.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 23.
Question proposed: "That section 23 stand part of the Bill."
This section is designed to recoup from the Exchequer deficiencies arising mainly on remote islands and other such lands. I welcome that provision. No doubt it will give considerable relief to a number of persons whose circumstances can be described as bad. We had the experience some time ago of a number of islanders off the coast of Galway who were sent to Limerick Jail for refusing to pay rates. In similar circumstances. I feel they will be covered by this section. Perhaps the Minister will give us a guarantee in that regard.
Can the Minister hold out any hope that the section will cover people in congested districts, when they are confined under this Bill, whose land is of very poor quality, where the Land Commission or the Minister can be satisfied that it is yielding no great financial return to the owner, or whether due to family circumstances or other circumstances, it would be a hardship on such a person to make a payment. I would be glad if such persons are covered under this section. Does the Minister hope to extend this section and, if so, can he tell the House who is likely to benefit from it. If people such as the islanders to whom I have referred will get relief under this section, I welcome it. Naturally, Deputies on this side of the House are extremely anxious to help and facilitate persons whose circumstances are similar to the circumstances of the persons on the islands off the coast of Galway. If the Minister can give us any further information we would be grateful.
The section deals with the legal position so far as annuities are concerned and has nothing to do with rates, which are the concern of the local authorities, except in so far as the law provides for reimbursement to the local authorities where there was a deficiency in the guarantee fund which was set up to ensure that deficiencies in annuities did not finally fall on the rates. The position is that the Land Commission have found it impracticable to collect annuities due out of certain holdings situated almost entirely in islands which are difficult of access. As time runs out, they will lose all title to these annuities which will cease to exist. An annuity which has ceased cannot be a charge to the guarantee fund but we want to legislate positively about this matter.
Generally speaking, we can say that this section is in relief of certain liabilities on local authorities in respect of those people whose annuities cannot be collected on these islands. The annuities which were formerly proper to the Purchase Annuities Fund accrued to the benefit of the Exchequer and they will now be lost to it. No action is necessary in this matter. Where, however, the local loans fund or the land bond fund are affected it is necessary to provide a compensating source of income. We are concerned here with these cases on these remote islands. It is a relief to the local authority in respect of these people. Deputies who are familiar with these islands know that in many cases the people do not pay rates at all. Some pay and some do not pay. In many cases they do not pay annuities. This is to relieve local authorities in cases of this kind.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 24.
Question proposed: "That section 24 stand part of the Bill".
In this section, it is proposed that the Land Commission should have power, on consent, to order the consolidation of any two or more holdings; that such holdings should become one for virtually all purposes and that they should be registered as one holding in the Land Registry under the Registration of Title Act. The present legal position is that section 66 of the Land Act, 1923, provides only for the consolidation of lands subject to land purchase annuity. Therefore, consolidations cannot ordinarily be effected with lands which were never subject to annuity or on which the annuities have been redeemed or amortised. Allotments made on a cash basis cannot be consolidated with other lands held by the allottee. As part of the general land structure reform, and in keeping with the global subdivision control proposed in section 12 of the Bill, it is desirable that there should be power to effect consolidation in all suitable cases without regard to these rather irrelevant technical considerations.
This section depends on the consent of the owner or the proprietor. The Land Commission will not be able compulsorily to consolidate his two or three holdings unless the owner is willing to do so. Of course, this generally happens where the Land Commission are giving him some inducement to do so, in addition, by way of housing loan or by way of rearrangement. It generally arises in that way. It has happened in a number of cases that there is fragmentation, although the owner would wish consolidation, because of the different types of title under which he holds the different patches of land and it is to secure that situation that this secion is here.
This is a very desirable section and we have no objection to it. It will do good.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 25.
Question proposed: "That section 25 stand part of the Bill".
This section is designed to eliminate a source of dissatisfaction to landowners who receive payment in land bonds. The Minister, no doubt, in his professional capacity, which is of long standing, and in his experience as Minister for Lands, will agree that there has been a good deal of dissatisfaction on the part of persons whose lands are acquired by the Land Commission and who are paid in land bonds. I feel that over the years this has not been any great encouragement to the owners of land. The Land Commission now have such a steady pool of land that we have instances of cash payments as compared to the amounts available for payment in land bonds.
In the past, a good deal of hardship was imposed on persons whose lands fell into the hands of the Land Commission and who were obliged to take payment in land bonds. Let us hope that the dissatisfaction which has prevailed in the past in this regard will now finish and that on the passage of this Bill that very genuine grievance will be eliminated. There have been many instances of landowners establishing to the Land Commission and to others very genuine grievances in this regard. For that reason, we welcome any change that may do good.
If the section we are now debating will relieve or, indeed, completely eliminate the dissatisfaction which existed in the past we may consider it a step in the right direction. The Minister, the officers of his Department and, indeed, any Deputy who has been connected with the acquisition of land and particularly who came in contact with the owners of such land know that the position in the past has been most unsatisfactory in so far as the payment of land bonds is concerned. For that reason, we may hope that this section will eliminate any such grievances and that the persons who are dealing with the Land Commission will now have the guarantee from the Minister on this section that the unsatisfactory state of affairs that prevailed in many instances in the past will be remedied and that there is no likelihood of such grievances and dissatisfaction prevailing in the future.
I cannot see the fair play in the Government's paying for land with land bonds and paying for everything else they buy with money. I cannot see why, if the Government buy a farm for £10,000 for land division, they cannot pay for that land with money and thus place the person who has received the money in the position of being able immediately to reinvest it or, indeed, perhaps to buy property which he can work himself to earn his living. Land bonds are not an easily saleable commodity. The unpopularity of the land bonds has to do with the trend in interest rates over the years. From that point of view, it is perhaps not the fault of the people who first drew up this system.
As interest rates went over the years, it is a fact that if you wanted to sell some land bonds that in earlier years were issued at an interest rate as low as 3¾ per cent in some instances, you had to take something like £78 for £100 worth of land bonds. Surely this is unjust. This section goes a little way towards looking after any change in interest rates that might occur in between the agreement on price and the actual issue of the land bonds. But can anybody, in fairness, see why the Government for below-the-line of expenditure should, for instance, pay something like a fertiliser subsidy to a fertiliser manufacturer in cash and when they take a man's farm, pay for it in land bonds? I cannot see why.
Perhaps this case may be made more appropriately on the next section and I shall try to expand it then but this small step forward holds out very little hope for those who might expect to get a fair deal from the Land Commission. Stocks and shares of all kinds can be fashionable and unfashionable and land bonds are notoriously unfashionable. From that point of view, you will find that a land bond that might bear just as good an interest rate as another security will not be as easily or readily saleable. I feel that sections 25 and 26 could have been incorporated in a section providing that the Government would pay cash. I know the advantage to the Government that it does not have to provide a capital sum on the purchase of lands. By a simple book-keeping entry, it can postpone payment of this capital sum for a long period and by funding it in the charge for below-the-line expenditure that is made in the Budget each year, it can more easily produce from the Exchequer the money needed to purchase lands.
This is not fair play for those who would prefer to have money which is always negotiable and which they could invest perhaps in industrial securities where they would have a chance of appreciation as inflation decreases the value of money. This is the snag about any land bond: it remains the same. If £100 is given in land bonds and if inflation goes on as it is going, on redemption the bonds will be worth something like £30. That is the record. The £1 today is worth something like 3/4d. or 3/8d. compared with its value before the First World War. If this trend continues—if it does not, every Government in the world and a lot of people will go broke —the issue of land bonds is completely unfair to the person who, mark you, is not a willing seller. In 50 per cent of cases, those who sell land to the Land Commission are not willing sellers. Yet, when it comes to payment, the buyer decides on the form of payment. That is unjust and I intend to develop the point further on the next section because I believe that many people— very often old people—who depend entirely for their income on the interest rate on money they will get for their land are left in the position of having a steadily depreciating asset which they cannot sell.
First, I had better put on record the position under existing law, which is that land bonds were created under section 4(2) of the Land Bond Act of 1934 to supply the need over a specified period, usually the calendar year. All prices agreed or fixed in the period specified are payable in bonds of that particular series. If, between the date of fixation and the date of possession, a new series of bonds is created with a higher interest rate, the owner or tenant feels aggrieved. He may not unreasonably say the action of the Minister for Finance in creating a better bond has depreciated the earlier bonds and it is to cure that situation that this section is here.
The position generally about bonds is that we used roughly £1 million worth of bonds in the purchase of land last year in comparison with approximately £200,000 in cash. Deputies may recollect that only in certain instances may the Land Commission purchase in cash under the 1950 Land Act. There must be a rearrangement of holdings involved. In many cases they are precluded from using cash for this purpose. These disabilities are being wiped out under other provisions of this Bill but I should like to point out to Deputy Donegan that at least 50 per cent of the land acquired in this fashion last year was acquired by voluntary agreement, which means that the owners, who knew their business, were satisfied to accept payment in land bonds.
I should also remind the House that however one may criticise fixed interest securities, the land bonds are Government securities with a six per cent yield which is fair enough and in accordance with the present day money market. Deputy Donegan may be under a misapprehension about the next section because I do not propose to move it as I have already introduced and got passed through the Oireachtas a new Land Bond Bill under which we are creating £10 million worth of new land bonds.
There is also this to be said about land bonds generally. I considered how much of them might be used for the purchase of land and whether the system should be changed. As somebody concerned with land division, I think it would be a very dangerous change to make. The temptation to any Government who might find themselves in financial straits in future to cut back on the Land Commission and save a couple of million pounds in cash would be very grave. I therefore regard the system we have of utilising land bonds as an insurance that the programme of land acquisition and division will be reasonably safe in the future as far as land bond creation is concerned and there will not be the temptation for a Minister for Finance in times of financial stringency to save at the expense of the land programme on which the country has embarked.
It is the intention to issue the new land bonds in different series from time to time so that if there are changes, as has been suggested, in money values, such changes can be taken into consideration. As things are now, most reasonable people will agree that a guaranteed rate of six per cent gives a reasonable return. Steps are taken so far as possible to keep these bonds at par and they have been running at or about par fairly consistently in recent times. I think Deputies will see this if they look at the records.
I agree that many years ago there was a great sense of grievance. I agree that people were paid in land bonds when the price was very depressed but I would regard, as Minister for Lands, and indeed as a member of any Government, that practice as being unrealistic financially. I have had experience of courts and of judges taking that matter into consideration in fixing certain values. I do not believe there is any provision in law for them to do so. Anybody familiar with the operation of these courts realises that that was done and it would be beyond human nature to expect a judge to ignore a very depressed form of currency if, on the other hand, he had to operate to give what was laid down by law as the market value for the land. So, whatever may have been the position in the past—and I accept there was hardship some years ago—that practice has now changed by the issue of different series of land bonds from time to time. We have now provision for the issue of £10 million of them and Deputies need not fear the old position returning to us.
At all events, if this trend continues, there will be more and more land coming in voluntarily from people who are obviously satisfied with payment in land bonds. Secondly, the provisions in this Bill provide for more and more cash for land and the restrictions on cash proportions, which formerly existed, will be removed.
I can see the Minister's position in this matter as his Government and himself have decided on this course of action but it is not fair play. When the Minister says 50 per cent was acquired by the Land Commission last year, I would make two comparisons on that. I would say, first of all, if you find a firm in voluntary liquidation, does that mean they want to liquidate? I believe in 99 cases out of 100 they did not want to do so but circumstances forced them to do so. That is the case in a very high percentage of the sales of land to the Land Commission. They have to accept payment for the land in land bonds and later they find themselves in the same position as the company which goes into voluntary liquidation. The real truth is that it is a misnomer. The people who sold land last year were not the people who wanted to sell. These people had no choice but to accept the land bonds or, if they had the choice, it was to fight and accept a lower cash value and so their decision was that it was better to accept land bonds than to fight.
I had a chat with a solicitor at home recently. He said every old age pensioner who is knocked down by a car nowadays and gets a sum of money wants you to put it in industrials. When you put things in industrials, the value of the company and its earning power increases. As inflation reduces the value of money, so the value of shares increases. Land bonds, as I said, are notoriously unsaleable. We have land being acquired by the Land Commission and being paid for by land bonds, which are steadily declining in value. When the proposed time for redemption arrives, the money refunded is much less at the redemption date. This to me is unfair. It is an indication that these people whose land has been taken by the Land Commission are in fact second-class citizens.
A Government cheque goes out for every other item. How would civil servants like it if portion of their wages were paid in land bonds or work bonds? This practice has gone on in this country for the past 25 years. I was speaking with a businessman a relative of whose was in negotiation with the Land Commission. This matter will no doubt be concluded by voluntary sale which I do not believe is voluntary sale. This man said to me, on the question of land bonds: "All over the years, each Government has robbed the sellers and now you expect us to sell." If you give somebody frozen assets in practice all they are going to get is a steadily depreciating rate of interest, whether it is six per cent, five per cent or less.
Land bonds are not saleable. It is true to say you can sell a Government loan, a National Loan, much more easily than you can sell land bonds. I cannot see that the figure of six per cent mentioned by the Minister is a fair figure. If the Minister has money, he can buy stock for it. He can buy it for £98 and take it out at par at three months' notice. Any increase of interest rate would affect his investment and any inflation would reduce the value of the £. Here we are with six per cent land bonds and the Government bookkeeping means we can spend £1 million next year in bonds and only pay out £200,000 in cash for cash purchases. All we have to do over the next 30 years, whatever its redemption date, is to increase that amount. The fact that the first Cumann na nGaedheal Government did it, the fact that the 1944 Act did it, does not ring a bell with me. If this very important Bill goes through and becomes an Act, it will bring in many changes. We, on this side of the House, would certainly be very pleased if the Minister would tell us in relation to this £1 million in bonds, of which he says £500,000 was paid out on voluntary sales, how many of the sellers were in fact in a position to refuse? I am sure the records in his Department could give us the answer to that.
Would the Minister not agree in the case of the purchase of all land from land owners to give some choice as to whether they should be paid in land bonds or in cash? It may be that some land owners prefer to be paid in six per cent land bonds. I have no doubt that is the case. Very recently an extensive farmer in my constituency who was a customer of mine was selling his farm to the Land Commission but he was selling it on the condition that he would be paid in land bonds. It may be there are people who elect to be paid in this fashion.
If we are to make a serious endeavour to eliminate grievances in regard to the payments for land in land bonds, perhaps there should be a new approach to the Land Commission, requesting them to inquire from the owner whether or not he desires to be paid in cash or in land bonds. If he desires to be paid in hard cash, pay him that way and let the moneys be provided annually under the Estimate for the Department of Lands. On the other hand, if he elects to be paid in land bonds, that is his business. That is what he finds more satisfactory to meet his and his family's requirements. If people themselves elect to be paid in land bonds, they cannot afterwards say that they find the position unsatisfactory. That is their own business. If they desire to be paid in cash, that is their own affair. In order to facilitate land owners in this regard, the Land Commission should endeavour to leave the choice as to what form of payment they wanted to the land owners, giving them full market value for their property.
It is necessary for me to contradict in the most emphatic manner the allegation that the six per cent land bonds are unsaleable. Deputy Donegan seems to be of the opinion that people cannot sell these bonds at all. I know there is no difficulty whatever either in borrowing money on them or selling them.
At par?
At par, but that is a fraction of it—a hen's kick.
Would the hen want to kick far?
No, if she were a Mayo hen.
The Minister will be fairer with that kind of hen.
Other hens do not kick so generously.
The only difficulty I have experienced in my time was in dealing with small lots. My experience is that it has been difficult to get the full par price for small lots but we experience no difficulty in selling any reasonably-sized lot of these six per cent land bonds, nor do people find any difficulty in using them as a full gilt-edged security in raising money from banks.
It is all very fine for Deputy Donegan to talk about industrial equities and you can draw out the argument for donkey's years as to whether somebody should go for security with a fixed interest rate guaranteed by Government or whether he should take the chance in the rough and tumble of the industrial market. Deputy Donegan may be fortunate enough not to have been holding industrial equities when he saw this awful notice, which he mentioned—in voluntary liquidation. If he had, he would have had a different view as to whether he was wise or otherwise in investing in land bonds or taking his chance in the industrial jungle. That is a decision each and every individual must make for himself in this field.
I want to say this about the amount of these bonds used last year in voluntary sales. To my own knowledge, in several voluntary sales in respect of which bonds were paid, they were not the type Deputy Donegan alleges and would have to be sold to the Land Commission anyhow. Let me emphasise that under existing law and until it is changed in this Bill, they can buy at public auction only in certain limited circumstances. In many places, to my knowledge, they were not able to buy at public auction but they came along to the owner afterwards, or the auctioneer and made a deal and that was a voluntary sale which was paid for in land bonds. There were many of these transactions. I am glad to say they are on the increase and there is every indication that this type of voluntary sale will increase. It is also true to say that more land will be purchased for cash because of the removal of those legal disabilities which spring from the Land Commission in regard to public purchases under the 1950 Land Act.
This section makes the provision that if the Land Commission issue a series in one year at six per cent and if there happens to be a sudden fluctuation in the money market and the next issue goes up by one quarter, then a man whose land in the first instance was taken over at £x in land bonds would have the privilege of being paid at 6¼ per cent if there was a new issue before his title was proved and taken over by the Land Commission. The complaints in past years arose from the fact that there was one issue at the same rate for too long, without new issues at a higher rate to keep in realistic touch with the money market existing. All I can say of this is to assure the House that it is our intention in the Land Bond Bill to keep the land bonds at reasonable parity with the money market as it exists from time to time.
I have not had the experience the Minister thinks I might have had, namely, in stocks and shares. I never had anything but a large overdraft. The Minister speaks again about this question of voluntary sale after an auction. If the Land Commission has interest in land with the powers they have, and will have when this Bill becomes law, it will be quite impossible to think of anything like a voluntary sale. We had a long discussion, and a vote, here yesterday on a section which will allow the Minister to have lands inspected, and which will freeze these lands for six months. On the first occasion he was going to freeze them for 12 months. This is the position the voluntary seller might find himself in when he comes to deal with an officer of the Land Commission. Supposing one of us here met Cassius Clay and he said: "Come in, Deputy so and so, or Minister for Lands, and have a bottle of beer." He then catches the Deputy by the shirt, drags him in and shoves a glass of beer in his face. Is that Deputy voluntarily going in for a bottle of beer? I was looking for a Pioneer pin on Deputy Dolan's lapel. In the circumstances I have outlined, would Deputy Carter be going in voluntarily for that bottle of beer?
There is a famous story, but I shall not trouble to contradict the Deputy.
This is the situation the seller will find himself in with the Land Commission. The Land Commission can walk in and say: "You sell me your land". That man goes to his solicitor and is advised, but at the snap of a finger, the Minister can have the land inspected and that land is frozen for 12 months and that can go on for years and years. Would that not be a most involuntary sale, paid for by land bonds? That sale is no more voluntary than would Deputy Carter's consumption of the bottle of beer forced on him by Cassius Clay.
It is a very poor simile. We do not believe that for a moment on this side of the House. An infant would not believe it. We do not believe there is coercion in the makeup of the Land Commission. What the Deputy has said is all nonsense. That has been proved time and time again. If Deputy Donegan lived in the midlands he would be pleased to note that the vendor, the seller of land, is usually glad to see Land Commission officials present. That condemns completely Deputy Donegan's argument about this matter of coercion, of voluntary or involuntary liquidation.
The Deputy made a comparison in regard to industrial equities. We all know there is no comparison: we all know that a gilt-edged security remains a gilt-edged security and that industrial or commercial equities are regarded as high risks in the investor's mind because, as the Deputy says, the company can be in voluntary or involuntary liquidation within a week. The fact that the Minister has tried in this section to bring land bonds up to date reminds us that during the period of the past three or four years the land bond market has been very still. For that reason, it is wrong to say, and especially wrong to have it go out from this House, that there is anything wrong in accepting land bonds. The farmers of this country are not fools. Therefore, I suggest that Deputy Donegan should amend his argument.
I did not say anything about industrial equities in reply to the Minister's reference to the industrial jungle. The truth about it is that the average increase in share value, because of inflation in the British Isles, has been something of the order of six or seven per cent during the past ten years. In other words, an industrial share worth 100/- ten years ago is now worth 107/-.
And the average rate of bankruptcy has gone up by 800 per cent.
If the Minister is suggesting there is any real risk in investing at the present moment in something like P.J. Carroll or Arthur Guinness, he is quite naive.
They are industrial leaders and the Deputy knows it.
You can buy shares in them; you can get your 6 per cent and your shares are appreciating in value. If your land is paid for in land bonds, your capital value is frozen. I cannot see how anybody could desire to have his land paid for in land bonds. I feel sure that Deputy Seán Flanagan has not a client who would desire payment in that form.
The Deputy has not the experience.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 26.
Is the Minister seeking to delete this section?
I am not moving it. It was provided for in the Land Bond Bill last summer.
Section 26 deleted.
SECTION 27.
Question proposed: "That section 27 stand part of the Bill".
This is a section which we consider to be not alone objectionable but absolutely undesirable. Let us consider for a moment the implications of this section. It provides that power to decide on an inspection of land with a view to possible acquisition may properly be delegated by the Minister for Lands to an official of the Land Commission not below the rank of senior inspector. This is supposedly designed to expedite acquisition proceedings. That is the excuse of the Minister. To us it means we have now reached the stage in the history of this country where provision is being made in a Land Act to give such extraordinary power to the political head of a Department.
We have had in this country the British Government, the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, the Fianna Fáil Government, the inter-Party Government of 1948 to 1951, again a Fianna Fáil Government, again in 1954 an inter-Party Government and now another Fianna Fáil Government, but this is the first time a Government have sought to place this extraordinary power in the hands of the political head of the Department.
This is a dangerous power to put in the hands of any man. Power to order an inspection of any man's land with a view to acquisition is something this House should never give to any individual Member of the House. The Minister for Lands has been very cute in his alibi when seeking this power. He says he wants it simply to expedite acquisition. It is as good an excuse as any, but it is not the real reason why this extraordinary power is being sought. It means that if any deputation make strong representations from any area to the Minister for Lands, without having due regard to the circumstances of an individual landowner the Minister may order an inspection. I put this to the Minister: why not leave the position as it is where it is the Land Commission who order an inspection? Who up to now has authorised the various officials of the Land Commission to carry out inspections?
In my experience of dealing with the Land Commission, particularly over the past 22 years, I have found on every occasion that it was the Land Commission who ordered a senior inspector to carry out an inspection and were as independent of the Minister for Lands in this regard as they were of any Deputy. But the Land Commission were always prepared up to now to listen to representations made by Deputies or by the general public or by landowners, their organisations and associations, their clergy, their solicitors or anybody who elected to speak on their behalf or on behalf of those who might be seeking land. On every occasion it was the Land Commission that decided when a farm would be inspected for the purpose of acquisition.
Section 27 of this Bill entitles the Minister for Lands to delegate an officer to inspect lands with a view to acquisition. Does that mean that the Minister for Lands will have his own selected officers in his Department for the purpose of carrying out these inspections? Up to now inspections have been carried out on the instructions of the Commissioners. The change which the Minister is now seeking to introduce under this section is that it will be for him to select whatever senior officer he wishes. Naturally enough, he is going to convey to the senior officer the reasons for carrying out the inspection or, as Minister, he will be entitled to withhold the reasons and merely give an instruction to a senior inspector of his Department to carry out an inspection.
Will the Minister explain to the House why the Commissioners cannot delegate an officer to do this? Why must it be the Minister? Is this now a disclosure that the Minister for Lands has no confidence in the men who are authorising inspection of lands? Is it the case that the Minister for Lands will make a confession to this House tonight that the inspections that have been authorised by the Land Commission to date have not been authorised in a satisfactory manner and that, because of that, he is now asking the House to give him the greatest power that this House has ever been asked to give to any Minister and the most dangerous power, that is, the right to send an inspector to inspect any man's land for the purpose of acquisition, for the purpose of reducing its value, for the purpose of arousing an organised effort by neighbours to secure land that might be divided, or, as might quite likely happen, on the eve of a general election, for the Minister to authorise a team of inspectors to go to any part of the country and inspect various farms, just as we have promises about the drainage of the Shannon and so on, for electioneering purposes? In the knowledge of the fact that there are always more applicants for land than there are owners, the Minister would be sufficiently cute to send his inspectors to places where there is the greatest need, the greatest hunger, for land, so as to make an effort to build up the local organisation of which the Minister may be a member. That is disgraceful and dishonest. It is a trick being incorporated into legislation by the House. It is dangerous and mean. Section 27 of this Bill is a section which the House should seriously consider rejecting.
I can see an even greater danger. The Minister for Lands as the political head of the Department is now going to authorise senior officers of his Department to inspect land but he told us last night, and he will probably repeat tonight, that it is the Land Commission that must acquire the lands, not he. The Secretary of his Department, a civil servant, is to be one of the Land Commissioners. How can a proper decision be given by the Land Commission if the Minister for Lands authorises the Secretary of his Department to authorise a senior officer to carry out an inspection and to report back to him, as Secretary of the Department, so that he may sit in judgment on the report, as chief inspector and senior civil servant of the Department?
The Minister for Lands has already made it clear in this Bill and elsewhere that the Secretary of the Department of Lands is to be a Commissioner. Therefore, if the Secretary sends for one of his officials and tells him to carry out an inspection of a farm and to have the report delivered within 48 hours, that the Minister is interested and has ordered the inspection and is anxious that no time be lost in making a report available, immediataely that will convey, directly or indirectly, to the official that the Minister wants a favourable report. Assuming that the senior official does not give the report as the Minister wants it but furnishes a broadminded, honest report, it is bad, unsound and very dangerous that the Secretary of the Department should sit as a Commissioner to decide whether or not the lands are to be acquired.
I have raised before the point as to whether or not the Secretary of the Department should be a Commissioner. I want to make it clear that I raise this matter out of no disrespect to the present holder of that office, who is one of the most eminent authorities on land and one of the most qualified men in Ireland to occupy the position of Land Commissioner. Nevertheless, it is wrong in principle that the head civil servant of a Department should have judicial decision on reports of officers who are under him and who are paid for carrying out his instructions and requests. I feel the Minister has not considered sufficiently the serious consequences that this section is likely to have and the embarrassment it is likely to cause to the Secretary of his Department, whoever he may be.
In the past, Secretaries of the Minister's Department have sat as Commissioners but, if they have, the Minister had not the power he is seeking in this Bill. That is the difference. Nobody in this House or outside it has any objection to the Secretary of the Department of Lands being a Commissioner. It is quite true that the Secretary of the Department of Lands must be kept up to date on all the activities of the Land Commission and we grant that the Secretary of the Department is kept fully informed of all such activities, but there are now new circumstances, circumstances which have not previously existed. The Minister told us some time ago that the Secretary of the Department of Lands must be a Commissioner. However desirable that may be normally, it is absolutely undesirable when the Minister has the power and the authority which he seeks under this section. The Minister knows very well that the circumstances in which either Mr. Deegan was or Mr. O'Brien is a Commissioner—the latter is at present a Commissioner — are made entirely new by the introduction of this section.
The House is very eagerly awaiting a full explanation from the Minister as to the real reasons why he is seeking this power. When I was speaking on another section of this Bill I made reference to the fact that this is a power being vested in the Minister which could lead to very serious abuses. From time to time Governments change and Ministers change and while we may have a guarantee from the Minister for Lands that he will act in the most commendable manner in relation to his order of inspections, we have no guarantee that his successor will do that. Once this is on the Statute Book we have no guarantee that others who may occupy the exalted position of Minister for Lands will not order inspections at random for party political purposes.
I do not see any Fianna Fáil farmer Deputy in the House at the moment but assuming any member is the owner of an extensive farm that could be the subject of an inspection on an order by the Minister, I feel this provision is one which should be very seriously opposed. Everyone in this House knows the record which the Fianna Fáil Party have where threats and intimidation are concerned. The greatest weapon of intimidation is the weapon which the Minister for Lands seeks in this section, the right to order an inspection of the lands of any landowner in Ireland, and the moment the section is passed it gives a feeling of insecurity to every landowner in Ireland who is not Fianna Fáil.
I put this to the Minister for Lands. What is to stop the Minister for Lands, when this section is passed, sending for one of his inspectors and saying: "Go down and inspect the lands of Mr. So-and-So. He is an active speaker in the Fine Gael Party"—or in the Labour Party or in any other Party—"and the moment you go down and inspect his land that will quieten him and keep him from speaking too loudly against the Party of which I, as Minister for Lands, am a member. I can deprive him of every acre of his land if I so desire, and even if I do not intend to deprive him of his land I can make it embarrassing for him among his neighbours. I can reduce the value of his farm overnight once I have the foot of any of the Land Commission inspectors inside his fence"?
On the other hand, assuming there was a Fine Gael Government and that the Minister for Lands, whether it would be myself or Deputy Donegan, authorised an inspection of the farm of the Minister for Agriculture at Raheny, I imagine the very first man to be up in arms against the inspection of his establishment by a Fine Gael Minister for Lands would be the Minister for Agriculture himself. I am sorry the Minister for Agriculture is not here tonight for the purpose of realising the danger in which his farm at Raheny might be.
I cannot understand why Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party who are landowners have not taken a more serious interest in this section of the Bill. It is wrong for any political Party to have such an extraordinary power and I only want to repeat what the Leader of this Party has said time and again, that is, that the right of inspectors to enter any man's farm should be on the invitation of the owner of the holding. It is only right to place on record that after the next general election one of the first acts of the new Government will be to repeal this section. The Minister is trying to convey down the country that this is a Bill designed to wage war on the 100-acre farm but this section is as detrimental to the man who owns five, ten or 20 acres as it is to the man who owns 300 acres.
I want to say with the authority of the Fine Gael Party that this is a power which nobody seeks and nobody has ever sought, except the present Minister for Lands, and that it is a power which the next Government will repeal so as to put back into the hands of the Land Commissioners the right to cause an inspection to be made of anybody's land. I am very much afraid that this section will be used over the next couple of years for Party political purposes. That is why I oppose it so strongly. That is why we feel in this Party that not alone should Fianna Fáil not be put in the position in which they can carry out an inspection of any man's lands but it should not be left in the hands of any Party to decide whose lands should be inspected with a view to acquisition or otherwise.
That is why we will put this section to a vote. We feel it is wrong. We feel it is unjust. We feel nobody wants the power except the Minister and the Minister has given no valid reason for wanting this extraordinary power beyond the pious expression here and throughout the country that, the moment he gets it, it will expedite land division. Perhaps it will, for all we know. Perhaps the moment he gets this power, every single acre in the country, the property of every member of the NFA who spoke against Fianna Fáil, who organised the NFA in the teeth of Fianna Fáil opposition, and who voted against Fianna Fáil, will be inspected. Perhaps there is a list compiled in the Minister's office of every single——
We have plenty of members in the NFA.
——farmer who is not a Fianna Fáil supporter.
Nonsense.
Perhaps there is a plan in the Minister's office that, the moment he gets this section, he will inspect one after another all these farms and, on the lines of Deputy Donegan's story, he will do Cassius Clay on them, one way or the other. If he cannot get their support in one way, he will force their support in the other; he will force it by the threat of inspecting their lands with a view to acquisition. That is something so serious that it must be resisted not alone here but outside the House.
Why did we achieve fixity of tenure? Is not fixity of tenure one of the greatest blessings our people enjoy? Is not fixity of tenure one of the hopes young people have when they aspire to the ownership of their own holdings? Is not fixity of tenure the hope the father has for the family he is leaving behind him? The moment this section is passed, it will wipe out with one stroke of the pen the fixity of tenure of every landowner, big and small. I should be glad to hear from the Minister what his inward intentions are in relation to what he proposes to do in the way of ordering his staff around to carry out these inspections.
The Minister is an expert in this matter.
This is a serious matter and the people must be made to realise its gravity. It is something landowners may realise to their grief if this section is passed. They may tolerate it until there is a change of Government and, when there is, we assure them that such extraordinary powers will once more be vested in independent people, like the Commissioners, who have no political affiliations with the areas concerned and who can act in an honourable, independent, broadminded, politically-free manner.
I had no doubt that we would have on this section the usual song and dance from Deputy Flanagan. He has tried to terrorise people into the belief that some extraordinary power is being sought here by me for some sinister motive. I should like to get the House back to the realities. Section 27 provides:
For the removal of doubt, it is hereby declared that the determination of the land to be inspected under subsection (6) of section 40 of the Land Act, 1923, as amended by this Act, is not an excepted matter for the purposes of section 12 of the Land Act, 1950; provided that the Minister shall not authorise (pursuant to subsection (2) of section 12 of the Land Act, 1950) an officer to make such determination unless the officer is an officer of the Land Commission and not below the rank of Senior Inspector.
This section is designed to remove doubts from existing law. The powers of the Lay Commissioners in regard to excepted matters are dealt with in the land code. I want to quote now section 12 of the 1950 Act which sets out the excepted matters. The section provides:
(1) The following matters shall be excepted matters for the purposes of this section:—
(a) the determination of the persons from whom land is to be acquired or resumed;
(b) the determination of the actual lands to be acquired or resumed;
(c) the determination of the price to be paid for land so acquired or resumed;
(d) the determination (other than any determination arising in or being part of a re-arrangement scheme) of the persons to be selected as allottees of any land;
(e) the determination (other than any determination arising in or being part of a re-arrangement scheme) of the price at which land is to be sold to any such allottee;
(f) the determination whether a tenant or proprietor would be or would not be entitled to require the Land Commission to resume or acquire the whole of his lands and provide him with a new holding and the determination of the new holding to be provided for a tenant or proprietor whose land is resumed or acquired by the Land Commission;
(g) the determination whether or not a holding has been used by the tenant or proprietor thereof as an ordinary farm in accordance with proper methods of husbandry;
(h) the determination of the amount of any standard purchase annuity;
(i) the determination whether any particular holding of tenanted land or parcel of untenanted land shall vest in the Land Commission on the appointed day;
(j) the determination of the sporting rights, fishing rights and fisheries to be vested in the Land Commission, the prices to be paid for them, the persons to whom the fishing rights and fisheries are to be resold and the prices to be charged for them;
(k) the determination of the easements and rights to be conferred, defined, extended or extinguished and any questions of compensation relating thereto;
(l) the determination of the bogs for which turbary regulations are to be made and the making of the regulations;
(m) the determination of the highest offer to be made by the Land Commission in the case of a proposed purchase under section 27 of this Act;
(n) the determination whether or not a gratuity is to be paid under section 29 of this Act and, if it is to be paid, the amount thereof.
In this subsection, the expression "re-arrangement scheme" means a scheme for the re-arrangement of lands held in rundale or intermixed plots whether with or without the distribution of other lands to facilitate the said re-arrangement, such other lands being either adjoining any of the lands held in rundale or intermixed plots or not more distant than three miles from any of such rundale lands or such intermixed plots.
In not a single provision in that section is there any reference to the appointment of inspectors to go and inspect land as a reserved matter for the Lay Commissioners. The excepted matters are clearly set out in this and other statutes. There is not a single indication there that the power to make inspections is either a reserved or an excepted matter.
There is, in fact, another subsection of section 12 which reads:
Any power or duty for the time being vested by law (including this Act) in the Land Commission or the Lay Commissioners may, save in relation to excepted matters, be exercised or performed by—
(a) the Minister, or
(b) any officer of the Minister or the Land Commission for the time being authorised, whether specifically or by reference to a class of such officers, in that behalf by the Minister.
The only other reference that I can find in this Act to such reasons for inspection is in subsection (8) of the same section which says:
The following provisions shall have effect in relation to schemes for the re-arrangement of lands held in rundale or inter-mixed plots whether with or without the distribution of other lands to facilitate the said re-arrangement:—
(a) no such scheme shall be approved by virtue of subsection (2) of this section save by an officer;
(b) the Minister shall not authorise pursuant to that subsection an officer to approve any such scheme unless the officer is an officer of the Land Commission and not below the rank of Senior Inspector.
That section is taken virtually word for word here to remove the doubts as to whether the matter of inspection of lands was an excepted matter or not. I challenge anybody in this House to produce any authority in the Land Acts in which it is clearly specified that the question of inspection was an excepted matter for the Lay Commissioners of the Land Commission.
Let Deputies understand what we are doing here, what procedure we are trying to deal with. The procedure at the moment is that some officer of the Land Commission gets a report about some place that should be acquired for the relief of congestion. The file comes to the local officer and there is a section 40 notice served. The local officer comes in and inspects the lands and it is only after this inspection and after that officer reports back to the Lay Commissioners that the question of whether the lands be acquired or not can be decided one way or another. In the first instance the notice must be signed by the Lay Commissioners in Dublin. Here we have this shuttlecock of documents which are gathering cobwebs up and down the country while these lands are being got rid of by the owners of the land and the Land Commission's intentions are being stultified. The purpose of this section is to get rid of the red tape and remove the codology in this day and age and streamline the Land Commission machine. There is no other purpose whatever. I know that Deputy Flanagan has an imagination of which one might be proud but no matter how he stretches his imagination he will have a job to get the people to accept these fears and this woeful picture he has painted of me signing orders and getting all the senior inspectors of the Land Commission to go down and inspect the farms of his political friends.
Let me point out that this inspection can only be carried out by a senior official authorised by one of the senior inspectors of the Land Commission and I think—I am speaking from recollection—there are only four Divisional Inspectors in the country. These are the four top senior men, the four most experienced men outside the Secretary and the Chief Inspector in the whole Land Commission. It must be one of these men who authorises the inspection so instead of having the file waiting to gather cobwebs going up and down to Dublin and in the meantime, as a result of that delay, finding the Land Commission's efforts to acquire these lands being frustrated and stultified, this section is being brought in. I have pointed out that there is no specific provision that ever said, as far as we can judge, that this matter was an excepted matter but we felt it better, for the purpose of removing doubts, to make the law clear when we had a Land Act coming before the House and enable the streamlining of the machine in the manner I have described to the House.
The people who have been shedding crocodile tears, both on the earlier discussion of this Bill and now on this discussion, as to cutting in on the excepted matters of the Lay Commissioners have very short memories. I would invite them to go again and read their own 1950 Land Act in which they specifically took away from the Lay Commissioners the determination arising in connection with part of or any re-arrangement scheme. Re-arrangement schemes and the settlement of rundale plots, which is the most important land settlement work in all the congested counties in the west of Ireland, were, prior to this Act, a reserved or excepted matter for the Lay Commissioners but when Deputy Flanagan's Party were bringing the 1950 Act before the Dáil we heard nothing about what a terrible thing it would be to cut in on these alleged sacrosanct powers of the Commissioners. They had no hesitation in giving the then political head power to send in and decide what re-arrangement should be carried out in all these areas. Then we have men like these alleging that under this section I am taking some revolutionary powers but the power taken away from the Lay Commissioners in connection with re-arrangement under section 12 of the 1950 Act is a mountain compared with the molehill I am asking the House to accept in the interests of good administration and in the interests of division in congested areas. I would ask the House to accept the fact that this section is really for the removal of doubts and indeed, expressing my own opinion, I am of the view that this was never the reserve of the Lay Commissioners of the Land Commission. It seems to me that it was a misnomer to call the Lay Commissioners judges because the status of circuit court judges was removed by Deputy Flanagan's Government under the Land Act of 1923.
Let me say that there is a reason for this provision, a reason for the expedition of the work of the Land Commission, of enabling the Land Commission not to be frustrated in their efforts where people, as I said last night, jumped the gun when they found that the Land Commission were interested in acquiring their lands. The only purpose of the provision is to remove these doubts as to who has the power to authorise the senior inspector to go in. But there were no doubts to be removed when these powers in connection with rearrangement schemes or their allotment or settlement were being removed from the Lay Commissioners by the Deputy's Party. He voted behind Deputy Blowick in 1950 to take away all these powers from the Lay Commissioners. I should say that it is unnecessary for any more crocodile tears to be shed in this House on this issue or any more crying for the alleged three F's. There was no talk of the three F's when the political head was authorised to deal with every rearrangement scheme in the country.
I commend this section to the House. It is essential for the expedition of the work of a Department that did not have a great reputation for expedition, and to meet the complaints which I get month in month out from Deputies due to the Land Commission's slow procedure and when many farms are being sold which should be taken over for the relief of congestion.
If there were no doubt, there would be no need to clarify. The question of practice in this case is extremely important. Everybody knows that the whole principle under which the Land Commission operated was that the decision to acquire or inspect, or any other decision affecting the individual land owner, was treated as a reserved function. The Minister, who is also a successful solicitor, may give his legal interpretation of the 1950 Act, but that does not change one whit the practice pre-1950 and up to the present day of the Lay Commissioners and the Land Commission.
The position now is that not only is the situation being changed by this definition, as the Minister likes to call it, but it has also been changed by the previous section, which deals with the inspection of land and its freezing for six months. It is the Minister who will cause the inspection. That is the factual change. All the reading of the 1950 Act is of no avail, when you look at the Bill and see there is need for clarification and when you know the practice was quite different from what the practice will be when this Bill becomes an Act. Let us consider how politics work in relation to this situation. Politics, as we know, is the science of the possible. It is the science, to be brutal about it, of what you can get away with.
It is the art of the possible.
It is the science of what you can get away with.
That is not a very good recommendation for politics.
It may not be.
Talk for yourself, then.
I think Deputies will agree that, when it comes down to what you do in politics, it is a question of what you can get away with.
Cod!
Nonsense!
We ought to elevate it by having some order.
Let us look at the situation in the United States. I do not say any Party here would do it, but nepotism is expected in the United States. It is an accepted fact of government there. If the Presidency of the United States had changed last night, the situation would be that the entire top Civil Service would change and in would come the new man's aids and executives. In this Bill we have a political figure taking a power which, if one were naive, one would say he would never use. But we know the practical politician will use it. That is the problem. You might tell me to speak for myself, but maybe I am being a bit too honest.
The Deputy was a bit too rash there. I do not think he meant it.
I did mean it. I believe the present Minister for Lands is a practical politician and he will operate the powers given to him, not only to give to the people the services his Ministry should, but at the same time to further the interests of his Party as far as he can. I do not think there is any other politician in this House who would behave differently. You are putting a power into the hands of the Minister which he should not have.
Let us take the position of the Secretary of the Department. He will be a member of the Lay Commissioners, and a member of his staff, which he must control, will be delegated by the Minister, the political head, to decide which land will be inspected and which will be frozen for six months. The first qualification for the Secretary in this new situation is that he should be suffering from schizophrenia. First, he has to have the Lay Commissioner's view; then he has to control his staff; then he has to realise that a member of his staff will be delegated to do something the Minister wishes. He has to have three different points of view at different times. He has to be in the position of turning on and off the tap at will, when he goes to meetings of the Lay Commissioners, when he has consultations with the Minister and when he deals with members of his staff delegated to look after the situation. Is that right or wrong? I say it is quite wrong that it should be done. There was great worry a moment ago as to whether or not every politician was an absolute purist.
Or a neophyte.
At present if you want a job with the Board of Works, you have to have your membership card with you.
Your union card.
Let us face it; I know they are all decent men in the Government, but if you want to be a temporary postman, you have to have your membership card with you. These are things we all know about. We can pass them over and say we are wonderful people if we like. What are we doing here but allowing the political head of the Department to have a say, however slight, as to whose lands shall or shall not be frozen? I would rather be honest and say I have a good idea of what will happen, if not with this Minister who has had all these discussions about it, but with his successor or his successor's successor.
Men in politics do not neglect to use the powers given to them. Not so long ago, I complained bitterly to a great supporter of the Party opposite in respect of certain operations of members of that Party in a certain instance. He looked at me and said: "They are only applying modern business methods to politics." That is true. I found myself in agreement with him. All over the world, politics is the science, and most certainly as far as the Party opposite are concerned, of what you can get away with doing. I am not afraid to say that.
Is this a political lecture?
In relation to the matter we are discussing, a political lecture is probably the only honest discussion we can have. We are now giving to a political figure the right to invade the rights of a private individual—his right to own and sell land. The decision of the Minister, who delegates to his officials the inspection of land, means you cannot sell that land for six months. It means you put a label on it, as surely as there is a label on a bottle of Guinness, that the Land Commission are interested in that land. That means that land will be bought at a very bad price and only by very few people.
Over the past few months, some of us have got into the habit of judging everybody by our own standards and describing in a general way what we would do or what we would like to do and attributing it to everybody else. I think that is wrong. I would most certainly object to anybody being prepared to say what we would do in certain circumstances. As far as we in the Labour Party are concerned, section 27 is a natural follow on to the controversial section 13. If you have one without the other, there is no point in going ahead with the Bill.
I do not care whether it is something with which Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael agree or disagree. I am putting the point of view of my Party. I do not believe this section is put in to give the Minister the right to decide what land will be taken over, because it does not give the Minister such a right. It gives the Minister the right to tell his officials that they are to inspect land. Can anyone tell me what Minister for Lands did not at one time or another say to the Land Commission that a certain farm should be inspected, and if that instruction were given, would it not be inspected?
The land would not be frozen.
Is it not true that it would be inspected?
It would not be frozen.
As soon as the inspector appeared, if the owner was a rogue, he ran off and got someone to buy it and left the baby in someone else's arms. That is the reason the section is put in. I disagree with dozens of different provisions in this Bill, but I agree that if we are to have the Bill, this change should be made. The whole essence is that the procedure should be speeded up to stop land from passing into the hands of someone else. I agree with the Minister on that point, and so do this Party. This section is put in for the purpose of ensuring that land cannot be passed on to prevent the Land Commission from taking it over.
I agree with the NFA that 12 months or six months is too long, but I do not think it could be done in one month. I am quite satisfied this could not be done in one month. I hope the Land Commission will be able to do it in six months. They will want to move faster than they usually do to get it done in six months. We all know of cases where, when an inspector simply passed by the road, a man decided he was after a particular farm and he went off quickly to find an auctioneer. If he could not find an auctioneer, he made private arrangements with someone else. If we are to talk about honesty, we all know those are facts. When it comes to the final vote on the Bill, we will vote against it, but if the Bill is passed, as I assume it will, there are sections in it against which we are not prepared to vote.
It is extraordinary that Deputy Donegan was able to waste so much time giving us what was, in effect, a political lecture. He talked about politics being the art of the possible. It is, but there are qualifications to be added to that. The Deputy did not refer to that fact. He might have added that its practitioners cannot afford the luxury of anger or certainty. That makes a big difference.
I did not hear that.
I will quote it again for the Deputy in the Lobby. Deputy O.J. Flanagan led off with the official policy of the Fine Gael Party. He wants to make out that we are stripping the auctioneers and leaving them standing in their nightshirts, in effect. That is not so.
Surely they have advanced beyond nightshirts.
We on this side of the House are entitled to protest against the flippant manner in which the Fine Gael Party are treating this Bill. This is a serious attempt by the Minister, who knows the position very well, to come to grips for the first time with the land problem. It is a real assault on the depressed standard of living of some of our farmers. It is the first time a real attempt has been made to put teeth into a Land Bill to ensure that a pool of land will be in the hands of the Land Commission to relieve the pressure we find in the country.
Deputy O.J. Flanagan, of course, is an auctioneer. I do not want to be personal, but may I say, in passing, that the Fine Gael Party were quite personal when it came to dealing with politics and accused us of nepotism. We can catch that phrase in our hands, fling it back across the House, and say it is nepotism that has the Fine Gael Party in Opposition. Fine Gael cannot have it both ways. They must be either for land division, or re-arrangement, or against it. I want to draw an admission from Deputy O.J. Flanagan whether he is for land division or against it.
I am for it.
At a price.
For it.
At the price of paying the auctioneers 5 per cent. Is that not so?
It was your Minister brought that in, not I.
Any manipulation of land that has taken place in this country was through the offices of the auctioneers in the commercial market. It could not have taken place otherwise. What is the Minister trying to achieve? His aim is quite simple. Being Minister for Lands, he must have some power, and having some power he must be in a position to delegate it. If he cannot delegate his power to experienced senior inspectors, what use is he?
Fine Gael believe in toothless watchdogs. That has been their policy all down the years. They do not believe in a Bill with some teeth in it which makes a serious attempt to acquire and allot land, and to carry out re-arrangement in an orderly manner. We subscribe to the view held by no less a personality than the late Pope John. When we try to provide legislation to carry out the wishes of the great majority of farmers, the great majority of the thinking public, and the great majority of the farmers' organisations, it is not good enough for Fine Gael to accuse us of trying to sabotage, as it were, the workings of the NFA. That is completely wrong because we have on our side of the House as many members of the NFA as there are on the other side—in fact, more I think. To that extent we have no difficulty in blowing that argument to smithereens.
The Minister said at the outset, and practically every time he spoke on the subject, that he subscribed to the view of the family farm. I want to quote now from a little booklet of comments and reflections by the Reverend Daniel Duffy, D.D.
I hope it is related to the section.
It is much more related than some of the matters which have been discussed.
I hope it is related absolutely and not in a comparative fashion.
Absolutely, and with malice aforethought. It sets out that the ideal aim is, roughly speaking, an economic unit. In order to provide that unit, we are seeking provision in this Bill to acquire land, just to do that work, to provide, in so far as is humanly possible, a viable unit for every uneconomic farmer who requires it. Indeed, if we include all of them, we can say that quite a number of them do require viable units. What is wrong with that?
To come back again to the point made by Deputy O.J. Flanagan that we shall impair and destroy the three F's, let me say that that, of course, is not so. There is no substance whatever in that argument. The Deputy knows as well as I do that any Government elected by popular vote of the people will not make an assault, in turn, on the people. I could go one better than that and say that our aim is not merely to affirm the three F's but to ensure that those who live under the charter of the three F's will live in a reasonable standard of comfort.
I would not mind if some of the arguments we have heard tonight were in fact related to the section under discussion. However, it is open to us on this side of the House to say that those arguments were merely miserable propaganda. There is a by-election in the offing, of course, and that is moving in the back of the mind of Fine Gael. This attempt here tonight is an attempt by them to create the usual confusion —the confusion that now exists even in the upper crust of the Fine Gael Party.
Is Deputy Paddy Smith sitting on that crust?
The Deputy has his own problem in that regard. We, I think, are able to solve ours. We have solved them reasonably well so far and we hope to be able to look out for ourselves for the future.
You will look out for yourselves, all right.
I do not doubt that at all.
I think the Minister for Lands is doing his best in an open, honest and forthright way to create, as he said, a viable unit for the farmer. If the Deputy lived in my county or indeed in the county next to it, he would know the problem created by the land pattern there He would further know that, arising from the difficulties of the Famine years and even in the years subsequent to the Famine, not merely had we uneconomic farms but, in certain circumstances, small farmers divided their farms and made two units out of one. If the first unit was uneconomic, surely the second unit was bound to be doubly uneconomic.
We are trying to even out the demographic pattern. We are misrepre-presented merely for the purpose of creating doubt and despondency in the minds of the electorate of Galway. That is what the Deputy's speech was designed to do.
I am afraid that Deputy Carter and some others who have spoken do not yet realise the seriousness of this section. Deputy Carter asks if Fine Gael are for or against land division. He asked a straight question to which a straight answer should be given. We are for land division; we are for the making of economic holdings. We know there is a congestion problem and we shall endeavour to solve it. Not alone do we intend to do that but we shall implement a scheme to give land to farmers' sons who are now landless and who are well prepared, financed and equipped to work land.
I cannot see how the question can be argued on section 27, which deals specifically with the inspection of land and the method of inspection.
Deputy Carter asked a straight question. I thought I would be entitled to tell him and the country, as he asked that question, that we are for land division and to a greater degree than the present Government.
Red herrings again.
The only difference is that we shall give land to people who cannot get it and we shall not confiscate any person's property.
Deputies
Where will you get it?
We shall not evict people from their holdings. We shall not see the political head of a Department respond to the call and whim of his political Party supporters. Let me put this picture as clearly as I possibly can. Assume for one moment that I am Minister for Lands——
Deputies
God forbid.
——and that I order an inspection of the lands of, say, Deputy Corry who is a good farmer. Whatever else may be said about him, Deputy Corry is a good farmer. It is recognised all over every part of Cork that Deputy Corry is a good farmer.
But, sure, you are not.
He is a better one than the new Minister for Agriculture.
Assuming that the word "farmer" may embarrass Deputy Corry, let us take the new Minister for Agriculture as an example. Let us assume that I receive a list of applicants for land from Donnycarney and Raheny who ask for allotments on the Haughey estate at Raheny. I immediately send for the senior officers of the Department as a result of those representations and order an inspection of the Haughey estate. I then submit the report to the Lay Commissioners, one of whom is the Secretary of my Department who had assisted in ordering and in carrying out the inspection.
I feel that this is not, as Deputy Carter and as other Deputies have said, a means of speeding up land division. We have seen that, over the years, Fianna Fáil's growth in rural Ireland was based on land division. If they could get a farm of ten, 15 or 20 acres, with four applicants for that land, they would immediately have an organised Fianna Fáil cumann as a result. They were not concerned with the owner of the land and in many cases, they were not concerned with the four applicants: they were concerned with furthering their Party political interest. We have recently seen published in the papers a specimen application form for land which bears the recommendation and the signature of local Fianna Fáil cumainn. The late Deputy Donnellan told us how the local Fianna Fáil Deputy used rake out the ashes of the turf fire and tell his listeners: "This is Mick's; this is Pat's; and this is Joe's." Then John would come in and he would rub all the marks out with his foot and go over the ashes and divide it again saying: "and this is yours, John." That may be very funny for Fianna Fáil Deputies but not for the unfortunate people of the country who, when this Bill is passed, will be dispossessed of their holdings because of the political views they hold.
What is wrong with leaving the authorisation of an inspection of land to the Land Commissioners? If the Minister and others tell us that the land policy has not been satisfactory in the past and not to their liking, is that a reflection on the men who have carried out numerous schemes of successful land division? The Minister is availing of this opportunity to slight the members of the Land Commission who in my opinion have done a valuable amount of work in parts of the country. That work is now to be taken completely out of their hands as regards inspection. The Minister knows that in order to carry out the inspection of a farm it is sufficient to arouse local public interest for Party political purposes.
There are many decent landowners who are terrified of this section because they do not share the political views of the Minister. Anybody who knows Fianna Fáil's record in this regard cannot have a feeling of security on the land whether he owns five or five hundred acres. This section is designed to give a power to the political heads of the Department that no Irish Government sought since the State was founded and that even the British Government did not seek when they were here. What is the difference between the landlord days and having a head landlord known as Micheál Ó Móráin? This section gives Micheál Ó Móráin or any Minister for Lands the right to inspect Deputy Corry's, Deputy Moher's or Deputy Medlar's land and the land of every decent farmer but we know that while Fianna Fáil are in office the lands of Deputy Corry, Deputy Moher and Deputy Medlar are quite safe. Assuming a Minister comes into office not so favourably disposed to those Deputies as the present Minister, what guarantee have they that a senior inspector will not walk their land and that they will not be reduced in value overnight?
This is a dangerous power to have in the hands of any man. It should only be vested in Lay Commissioners. Because of Fianna Fáil's record and their greed for power and because of their desire to bring people under their banner by threats, I venture to say that if this section is passed it will undoubtedly bring grist to their mill. We know one extensive farmer in particular in the Kildare constituency who was afraid his lands would be used for division and he is now one of the most active men in the Fianna Fáil organisation. He simply joined the organisation in order to save his lands. How much more will people now flock into the organisation in order to save their lands?
We have a public duty to safeguard the people against this kind of thing that we might describe as rotten administration. This might be a good section for Tito or Khrushchev or Castro to introduce in their legislatures, or for any of these gentlemen who have a greed for power and the desire to crush all before them to secure it, but here we find we have in our own country an Irish Minister for Lands taking the same power to himself in relation to lands that Tito, Khrushchev and Castro have in their respective countries. What is the difference? The order of inspection with a view to State confiscation could not be more dangerous. We have a duty to alert our people and see that they are made aware of the danger of their property being confiscated by the State. Would any Fianna Fáil Deputy like the State to confiscate his own private property? No more than the other people who own land in the country. I suggest it is the small farmer, who is put to the pin of his collar to eke out an existence, the man who must emigrate temporarily to seek a living abroad, who will suffer most severely as a result of power vested in the Minister for Lands.
That is the man the Deputy wants to keep down.
That is the man to whom we want to give more land and the man we want to help. The only way the Deputy's Party could help him was to force him to emigrate. We want to bring him back, settle him on the land and keep him there by making his life attractive and paying him for what he produces. That is the great difference between Fianna Fáil and this side of the House. Fianna Fáil are quite satisfied to see people flying from the land, to see the smallholders who will be affected by this section, going and endeavouring to set their holdings because they cannot live on them. We want to make life better for them and give them additions to their holdings enabling them to live in decency on the land. That is our policy and that is what we propose to do.
The Minister's explanation as to why he is bringing in this section to give him these extraordinary powers is not acceptable to me. I do not believe for one moment that the Minister is introducing this section for the purpose of expediting land division. He is bringing in the section because of his greed for power, because of the greed for power in his Party and because of their desire to hang on by any means, fair, foul or dishonest. They have seen that by depriving a landowner of one of the three F's, fixity of tenure, they may be able to bring him within their power by the fear that if he does not join their ranks he will be dispossessed.
Deputy MacEoin told a story here last night about the man who voted in Longford in bygone days. He recorded his vote according to his conscience but, because he did so, he was dispossessed of his property. I venture to say that if this Bill goes through in its present form and if the Minister gets the power he is now seeking there is many a small farmer who, if he disagrees with Fianna Fáil, will be dispossessed. For the information of Deputy Carter, who talks about bye-elections, it is only right the people of Galway should be told——
They will not believe the Deputy.
The people of Roscommon believed us.
The point is, whether they believe us or not, we have a duty to tell them and it is up to themselves one way or the other. The Minister tries to convey to this House that he always had power in the laws passed by this House to authorise inspection but that is something I could find in no statute. Would the Minister quote me any single section of any Land Act since the State was founded, or before the State was founded, which authorises the Minister for Lands to inspect any man's land?
I quoted it for the Deputy.
The Minister did not quote any section which gives absolute authority to the Minister for Lands, as the head of the Department of Lands, to authorise an inspection of any man's lands. I feel that this power is of such an extraordinary character that the Minister would be well advised not to press this matter hurriedly but to allow his Party to think over it for a while because it is as dangerous to them as it is to any other section of our people.
If Fine Gael were in office now and were bringing in the same type of legislation or seeking the same powers which the Minister is now seeking there would be an uproar by every Fianna Fáil Deputy who has only five acres of land or more. The strange thing about this section is that the only single Fianna Fáil Deputy who spoke on it was Deputy Carter. We pay tribute to him for having the courage to get up and express his view. I should love if I could encourage Deputy Corry to speak and give his honest views.
Let the Deputy sit down and listen.
I shall sit down and give Deputy Corry a chance.
I do not often intervene on questions dealing with land nor have I intervened much in the debate on this particular Land Bill. I have been in this House for something like 19 years now and, with all due respect to the various Ministers for Lands, I always availed of the period in which they were answering questions to go out for a smoke. I did this because it seemed to me that the whole business was most frustrating.
I have heard wide criticism of the Irish Land Commission and its inertia. I have always had a certain amount of pity for the Minister for Lands who, in the heelhunt of answering his questions and the various Supplementaries, tells his questioners he has no function and that it is a matter for the Land Commission. That has been the experience of most Deputies over the last 40 years no matter what side of the House they were on.
I welcome this particular section because it gives the Minister for Lands some function. It allows those who are mainly interested in the division of land an opportunity of holding the Minister responsible for some activities in connection with the inspection, acquisition and division of land. He can say to the senior officers that there is such an estate in such a part of the country and he considers it should be inspected.
Deputy O.J. Flanagan is a personal friend of mine but I do not believe in his forecast of gloom and disaster for the Irish farmers, whether they are big or small farmers. I do not believe any Minister for Lands would act in the way Deputy O.J. Flanagan and Deputy Donegan have described. I believe people would revolt against that to the detriment of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil are wise enough to know that if they abuse this power they would lose support rather than gain it. I do not know what is sacrosanct about a man's privacy in that an inspector can look at land to see whether or not it can be divided, because, whether anybody likes it or not there is land in this country which should be divided and should have been acquired long ago. If this particular section of this Bill does that and if the present Minister for Lands takes the initiative and encourages this he should be applauded for it. If the Minister abuses this section he will hear about it in the Dáil, at bye-elections or at a general election.
When the Minister for Finance initiates expenditure, I assume he is doing it for the good of the country, whether or not we say he is doing it for the Fianna Fáil cumann. I do not believe the Minister for Lands is doing anything which is not good for the people of the country. I am not a farmer myself but I have a garden. If this Bill is for the purpose of doing good I applaud it.
The Minister can tell his officers to acquire land. As everybody knows— Deputy Flanagan included—he has sufficient faith in the Lay Commissioners to know they will act on good judgment and not be influenced when it comes to division as to whether land should be acquired. They also will decide who should get the land. I do not believe we are giving extraordinary power to the Minister. As a matter of fact, we are putting responsibility on him to spur the Land Commission on to greater effort and, above all, get them to do the job quickly. There is this six months period during which they must decide. I have heard questions from this and that side of the House to the Minister for Lands about the same old estates in Cork, Kildare, Roscommon, Donegal and Wexford for years and years. I trust the insertion of this section in the Bill will ensure that if there is the possibility of getting a farm or estate in this or that county, a decision will be made quickly. It is for that reason that we in this Party see no objection whatever in this responsibility being given to the Minister to ensure that things will be done quickly.
As far as the allottees are concerned we hope there will be a new look in the Land Commission, that they will work more quickly than they have worked in the past and that they will give land to really deserving persons, persons who need land, whether they be farmers' sons or men with uneconomic holdings.
This, to my mind, is the best section of this Bill, if for no other reason than that it is the first breakthrough in the matter of making the Minister responsible to this House. I do not mind what Deputy O.J. Flanagan says. I am sorry Deputy T. O'Donnell is gone. Anyone who heard Deputy T. O'Donnell giving his description on television last night as to what should be done with the county managers——
That does not arise on this section.
The trouble is there is a choice and the people of this country have a choice. The people should decide once and for all on whether the elected representatives are to rule, or whether it will be left to some official in the Department. Let us take the mask off and let us look it in the face. We come in here with the troubles of our constituencies and ask questions of a Minister, and the unfortunate man has to stand up and endeavour to define some idiotic action that was done and about which he knows nothing. That is happening too often in this House, to my knowledge. I can speak as one who has been here for the past 30 years. I shall give an instance to Deputy O.J. Flanagan if he wants it. At Whitegate, East Cork, there are 425 acres of land, the makings of a few good farms of the best land in East Cork. We came in here and we appealed to Deputy Blowick to take that land over. It was sold to an alien at that time for £7,000. It was purchased from him by an Irishman, living in England now, for £17,000. He sold it to a German for £30,000 odd. The Land Commission had to come in and take over that farm about two months ago. During the whole of that period, that land was used as one huge ranch, by a cattle dealer in England sending his cattle over there every year. That is the way Deputy O.J. Flanagan, and his brother in arms, Deputy Blowick divided up the land in this country.
I shall give another case. There is a place down in Cloyne comprising 1,000 acres and I got after the Land Commission to have it taken over. Lo and behold, after all the machines had been worked and all the twists and twirls were made, only 12½ acres out of this 1,000 acres were taken over by the Land Commission for division. I can prove every word of what I say.
We have to change and I think Deputy Flanagan will agree it is time for a change. I came in here one day with three questions on the Order Paper and with these three questions I swept 1,000 acres of land out of the hands of foreigners in my constituency. There are about 1,500 acres more and I intend having them, please God, for Christmas.
For all you know about agriculture, they did not make you Minister. They passed you over.
(Interruptions.)
Order.
Stick them up his nostrils, says Master McGrath.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for some people, I hope, at the last general election a big stretch of country was thrown into my arms— from Rockchapel to the boundaries of Kerry and Limerick. I went out and saw conditions and what was happening there. One Friday night when I came back from Dublin, I got a wire from some of my constituents who wanted to see me immediately. I went out the following Monday night.
You divided it up with the tongs in the ashes, I suppose.
That farm has been lying here for the past four or five years. The Land Commission cannot buy it except by paying bonds because of some idiotic law that was made one time or another. It was hanging along that way and I went over and inspected it.
Did you inspect it with the lights of your car?
I inspected it with the lights of the bloody car. I found a bunch of unfortunate people living around that holding on 13 or 14 acres.
With the headlights of a car.
Some of the unfortunates could not get married. They were afraid to bring a woman in. That was on Monday night. On Tuesday morning I was in the Land Commission offices in Cork. They could do nothing. I then got in touch with the Minister's office. On Wednesday morning I went up to the Minister's office and a fortnight afterwards that farm was in the possession of the Land Commission for division. It was about this time of the year. Thank God, the farm was divided by Christmas. That is the kind of a Minister we want.
Had they put the houses on it by the New Year?
There was no occasion for putting houses on it. If Deputy Flanagan likes, I shall bring him down there on a little trip. Then he might go back and succeed in doing something for the unfortunates in Laois. But, of course, he knows nothing about land. In my constituency you had a whole side of country with nothing but little pieces of land which the people could do nothing with, afraid to bring a woman in, until we got a proper Minister for Lands. That is the kind of Minister we want, a Minister who will take responsibility and not run away from responsibility when he is questioned in the House. We do not want to be told: "It is not my function", as we were by Deputy Blowick. All we got from him was a grin across the floor of the House, a quiet smile for five or six years.
Let us be clear on this. If I had the kind of mind Deputy Flanagan has, as indicated by his behaviour here—of course he does not believe in one-tenth of what he says—hang it, I would be ashamed to be a public representative. It is no wonder we have the boyos like Backbencher and MacAonghusa and every other twopenny-halfpenny idiot attacking the responsible elected representatives, saying that they have no opinions but praising people like Deputy Oliver Flanagan to the stars.
On a point of order, is it right that Mr. MacAonghusa should be mentioned here and described as a twopenny-halfpenny idiot when he cannot be here to defend himself?
Private individuals should not be mentioned in debates.
Will the Chair take steps to see that line of debate is not persisted in?
If Deputy Oliver Flanagan thinks that any hired scribe can in the open attack representatives of the people of this country, members of this House, I shall not be long telling him he will get his answer here.
How does this arise on section 27?
I am giving the House the benefit of my interpretation of statements made here by Deputy Oliver Flanagan. He tried to tell us the minds not only of Deputies but of Ministers.
Is the Deputy withdrawing his remarks about Mr. MacAonghusa? It is an extraordinary thing that a man in Mr. MacAonghusa's position and of his reputation should be described here as Deputy Corry described him. It is disgraceful.
Deputy Oliver Flanagan got up here and spoke about corruption, about Fianna Fáil corruption, about the Minister doing something wrong. He said the power should not be given to the Minister for Lands in view of corruption by Fianna Fáil clubs. He cannot deny that he said that. He is getting his leathering now and he should learn to take it.
Will the Chair take any action to see that Mr. MacAonghusa's name is not dragged in here?
I cannot prevent the mentioning of names. Members should of course avoid the naming of private individuals.
That ruling might be distributed. Deputy Donegan said that Fine Gael Deputies were here for the purpose of seeing what they could get away with.
Which Deputies? Would the Minister mind repeating it?
It is on record.
It is not on record.
The Deputy will not get away with this sort of thing. I have given the House the position as it was in my constituency. I did not intervene in this debate before now because I consider that the whole key to this Bill is this section. The key is the provision in the Bill giving the elected representative in this House who has the honour to be Minister for Lands, in charge of the Land Commission, the power as well as the name. Let us have it. I look on the provisions contained in this section as the first great benefit this Bill will confer on the country. I only hope the example will be followed in every Department of State. Let us have more of it. Then, when we ask a question in the House, we will not be told the Minister has no function.
That does not arise on this section.
That is the key.
Answers by Ministers do not arise.
What arises on this section is whether or not the Minister for Lands is to have any function in the division of land. I am very happy to see this breakthrough. The Minister is the man who has to face the people who put him here, not some gentleman protected by all the barbed wire entanglements that can be put up in the Civil Service. The Minister has to face his people. The other gentlemen have not. They can sit quietly after doing the most outrageous things but the unfortunate Minister has to come in here and if I raise a question I am told by the Chair that the Minister is responsible for his Department.
The Minister is responsible for the Department and the Deputy should not attack the officials of the Department.
This section will make him fully responsible and that is the main reason why I am in favour of it. I have given instances of what happened in my constituency; I have repeated them time after time, day after day. I know exactly where the shoe pinches.
We want land divided so that the people can work and increase production. As I have stated already, a responsible Minister of State refused, in 1948, to purchase a 425-acre holding. This is 1964. From 1948 to 1964 that farm has been run as a ranch simply because a Minister was not responsible to this House or had not the guts to step in. It will cost the Irish taxpayer over £30,000 to buy a farm that was offered in 1948 for £7,000. A large portion of that will have to be paid for by the unfortunate men going into it. That is the sin of it. The evil that men did is living after them. That is the curse of it. There was the action of a Department and of a Minister of State in connection with a holding of 1,100 acres that was owned by an absentee landlord. They took 12½ acres of it for division. If I were in Deputy Flanagan's boots and the ghosts of those Ministers were rising up about me, I would clear out the door. That is why I am glad that now, at last, we have the breakthrough and will have a Minister who will be responsible for the division of land.
Deputy Corry has convinced me that there is no necessity at all for this section. He says it is a breakthrough. He described how he was able to break through himself to any Minister or to the Land Commission, how he was able to view a farm with the lights of his car and the farm was taken over and divided in a matter of weeks.
With the help of the Minister.
If the Minister has the powers Deputy Corry describes, why should he seek these extraordinary powers now? Deputy Corry is true to his old form. He is running away as he always runs away.
Order. Section 27.
A good deal has been said about this section but I will have to comment on what Deputy Corry said. He made the statement in this House that he will have 1,000 acres in his hands by Christmas. That is the kind of thing we are objecting to, that it would be in his power to nominate who was to go into it. All the men will meet around the fire and the ashes will be pulled out and he will have a game of snap apple or, perhaps, will invent a new Halloween game, perhaps put all the names at the bottom of a barrel and let the applicants dive down for them.
Santa Claus will give it for Christmas.
That is typical of the Fianna Fáil claptrap to which we have listened all down the years. Reference has been made to a farm that was not divided in 1948. What was the man doing whose Party got into office in 1951? When he asserts that the price was £7,000 in 1948, does he object to the price going up? Or are farmers to be in the position that their land will stay at a fixed value? The increase in the value of land has been an advantage to all farmers. I should like the House to remember that we are not talking about Lord Clanrickarde. We are talking about ordinary Irish farmers who may have 40 or 50 acres of land. It is for them that this Bill is being passed. The Fianna Fáil Deputies object to the price of land having appreciated in the past ten or 12 years. It was a great thing that it did because land was lying in the slough of despond after 16 years of Fianna Fáil administration. Farmers were able to raise their heads again after being weighed down by overdrafts, with no chance of obtaining credit. They discovered that the value of their land had appreciated so much that they were again viable for loans, not from the Agricultural Credit Corporation—the majority of people can get money there—people who do not want it—but from the ordinary banks. A farmer was in a position to say to a bank to which he owed money that he had, say, 60 acres and if the bank did not advance another £500 to enable him to purchase stock he could go to another bank and get it.
We are not talking about big estates over the walls of which land-hungry men are looking. We are talking about 45 and 50 acre farms. We are talking about men who were broken and who are now trying to fight their way up and who in many cases have to leave their farms and go away to work.
I am afraid we are not talking about section 27.
I am talking about the power the Minister seeks to order an inspection. That inspection could apply to small farms. It is the small farmers I am thinking of. They are the people who are coming to me. They are in a state of alarm and the Minister knows they are in a state of alarm. I would be afraid to give that power to the Minister for Lands that this section would give him, when we hear a Fianna Fáil Deputy stating here tonight that he could take it into his own head to inspect land with the lights of his car and could come up here and influence a Minister to take it over. It is amazing to me that the man who has stated here tonight that he knows everything about land law and all the rest of it was not made Minister for Lands.
That does not arise on the section.
It was an obvious remark. You could not blame me for making it. He came in here and was able to make personal attacks on everyone in the House and on people outside the House. That did not arise on the section either. I am sure I do not have to write to Deputy Corry for a licence to come in here and speak about land. He made a personal attack on me, asking what did I know about land. It would appear that I would have to be a land lawyer like him before being allowed to address this House on the subject of land. Anybody like Deputy Corry who comes into this House to talk about land division should look over his shoulder.
We are all interested in settling people on land and in land division but I am not in favour of taking small farms or of giving the power to a Minister to take small farms from Irish farmers. I would give the Minister power to take estates from people who were not using them properly or to take big ranches. The Land Commission should examine its conscience. They could probably go to Deputy Corry for some help. People are in danger of having their land taken over because they will not farm their holdings properly. The biggest sinner in this respect is the Land Commission itself. There are thousands of acres of land of which the Land Commission have been in possession for years and they have let them to be mined for wheat and barley crops and they are now a disgrace to any country, full of weeds and pruiseach and they are the property of the Land Commission. They were taken over a long time ago for division and have not been divided. Evidently, this great and wonderful Santa Claus, Deputy Corry, was not able to get to work there.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 5th November, 1964.