Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 15 Dec 1964

Vol. 213 No. 7

Land Bill, 1963: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage.

Debate resumed on the following amendment:

In page 14, between lines 40 and 41, to insert a new subsection as follows:

"( ) The Minister shall lay before Dáil Éireann on the 1st day of February, the 1st day of May, the 1st day of August and the 1st day of November in every year a list giving particulars of the cases in which he has authorised an officer to make a determination pursuant to subsection (1) of this section."

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Perhaps during the weekend the Minister for Lands may have had an opportunity of considering the seriousness of this position. Perhaps he has come to the conclusion that the amendment represents a commonsense point of view which he can now accept. Before proceeding further, may I inquire if he is now convinced of the wisdom of accepting the amendment? If, as a result of consultations over the weekend, he now feels himself in agreement with the amendment, there is little use in detaining the House further.

This is an amendment on which this Party feels very strongly. Despite the comments that have been made inside and outside this House that this Party are deliberately obstructing the passage of the Land Bill and that the discussion on the amendment has been long drawn out, I feel that in itself is an unreasonable attitude for the Government to adopt. This Party are taking into consideration the very serious consequences the landowners of this country will be faced with on the passage of this Bill, unless the amendment is passed by this House or accepted by the Minister. We are particularly anxious to have the benefit of the views of all members of the House on this amendment because of the points raised by the leader of the main Opposition last week.

We now find that unless the amendment is passed, we will be faced with the position whereby inspections will be carried out. All we ask in the amendment is that the Minister will place details of these inspections on the Table of the House in order that we may see the extent to which he is working. I think, by having written into the law that the Minister is bound to do so will prevent him from unduly exercising, without due consideration or as a result of political pressure or influence being brought upon him, his powers in order to further his own political interests and the political interests of the Government. It will be a safeguard to the many landowners in this country who do not share the Minister's political beliefs and it may prevent the Government ordering the inspection of land unless it can be established that there is a genuine reason for such inspection.

I ask the Minister this question. If there is nothing to hide, if the work of the Minister in relation to the powers he has taken unto himself in this Bill is above board, without question or without suspicion, what reason has he for failing to give this House, at least four times a year, the details which this amendment asks? Is he satisfied that there is to be continued secrecy, whispering and privacy as to whose lands are to be confiscated?

Mr. Moran

The House is discussing amendment No. 9. The Deputy seems to be discussing the amendment which was defeated without a division last week.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Let us hear the Minister on amendment No. 9.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy knows we are on Report Stage.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I do.

Mr. Moran

On this amendment we largely had a rehash of what we had on Committee Stage from Deputy Dillon and Deputy Flanagan. The same type of arguments were advanced and the same bogeys raised. In view of what has been reiterated here by both these Deputies on this amendment, which they moved on the last day, I have to come back again to section 27. It takes the determination of land to be inspected out of the category of excepted matters if it was ever in such a category. The relevant statute is the Land Act 1923, section 40 subsection (6), which reads:

Any inspector or other person appointed by the Land Commission may after notice sent by post to the person who appears to be owner or occupier of any land, enter upon the land and make all such enquiries as may be necessary to enable the Land Commission to ascertain the extent and character thereof, and such other particulars in relation thereto as they may require for the purposes of this Act.

It says:

Any inspector or other person appointed by the Land Commission may ... enter upon the land and make all such enquiries as may be necessary ...

There is no reference there to the Lay Commissioners, nor is there any reference under the 1950 Act defining excepted matters which indicates or implies that the question of issuing a section 40 notice is, or ever was, an excepted matter. Therefore, as I pointed out, the section to which this amendment has been tabled starts off with the proposition for the purpose of removing doubts. The material words in the relevant section of the 1923 Act are:

Any inspector or other person appointed by the Land Commission may after notice sent by post to the person who appears to be owner or occupier of any land, enter upon the land...

That is the position since 1923. I see the words as meaning that any inspector of the Land Commission is thereby entitled to carry out an inspection under that section of the 1923 Act. In case anybody should contend that is not so, I am simply putting the matter beyond doubt.

I am satisfied that a mere reporting of the facts concerning any land, its ownership, character, user and conditions of local congestion is not the determination of section 12 of the Land Act of 1950. That determination is left to the Commissioners as an excepted matter and there is no reason to doubt that this position will alter the prevailing situation where a little more than one half of the land inspected will in the last analysis be moved forward for proceedings. There will follow a right of objection up to 40 per cent, even when a fraction of the lands proceeded for are normally liberated for proceedings after court hearings.

The House will understand that in the first instance representations are being made that certain lands should be taken; then there is this inspection notice. When the report comes back to the Lay Commissioners it is their sole right to decide in any particular case whether any further steps should be taken at that stage. In many cases they decide that no further steps should be taken and that is the end of the matter at this stage. Where they decide that acquisition proceedings should go ahead, a notice is published in Iris Oifigiúil. Even after hearings only 40 per cent of these cases are acquired by the Land Commission.

On this section the question has also been raised of the Secretary of the Department of Lands being also a Commissioner. This particular matter has been continually adverted to by a few Deputies in a series of vague generalities involving such words as "judicial" and "quasi-judicial", all the emphasis being on the judicial aspect. The plain fact is that they are not judicial personages. Again, I want to put on the record section 4 (4) of the Land Law (Commission) Act, 1923, which provides:

So much of Subsection (3) of Section 28 of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, as provides that each Commissioner of the Irish Land Commission shall hold his office by the same tenure as if he was a County Court Judge in Ireland shall not apply to Commissioners appointed under this section.

That position was provided for under the 1923 Land Act, to which I have referred. They lost their judicial status— the position of county court judges then—and that is their position since.

Mr. Dillon

What is their position now—independent arbitrators?

Mr. Moran

In my view, they are official arbitrators. They administer the law on excepted matters, as laid down by this House. In fact, by one definition, which is section 2 of the Land Act, 1933, the expression "officer of the Land Commission" includes the Lay Commissioners, the Land Commissioners.

There has been talk, too, of the Commissioners being utterly independent of the Minister—as if they were some body completely at large in all things. This is not so. They are independent in excepted matters——

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Moran

——but, in all other cases, they are dependent. I want to quote section 12 (3) of the Land Act, 1950 on this issue:

The Land Commission, in the exercise and performance by the Land Commission of the powers and duties for the time being vested in it by law (including this Act), and the Lay Commissioners, in the exercise and performance by the Lay Commissioners of the powers and duties for the time being specifically vested in them by law (including this Act), shall, save in relation to excepted matters, act under and in accordance with the directions, whether general or particular, of the Minister, and the Minister shall have and may exercise, if and so far as he shall think proper, full and unrestricted power of regulating and controlling every and any exercise or performance by the Land Commission or the Lay Commissioners (as the case may be) of any such power or duty not relating to an excepted matter and also power of reserving to himself rights of approval and disapproval or of reconsideration, revision and confirmation of every or any act done by the Land Commission or the Lay Commissioners not relating to an excepted matter or done by any officer in the exercise or performance by virtue of subsection (2) of this section of any power or duty.

"Save in relation to excepted matters": let me again emphasise that the Lay Commissioners, the same as every other official of the Land Commission, as the section states here— and this is the Deputy's Act—"... shall, save in relation to excepted matters, act under and in accordance with the directions, whether general or particular, of the Minister, and the Minister shall have and may exercise, if and so far as he shall think proper, full and unrestricted power of regulating and controlling every and any exercise or performance by the Land Commission or the Lay Commissioners (as the case may be)..." That, I think, should be a full indication to the House of the amount of control that is laid down by law which a Minister may exercise over these same Lay Commissioners.

In actual fact, I have had an examination made of the amount of time taken up by the Lay Commissioners in exercising their functions: their—what Deputy Dillon called— quasi-judicial functions, that is, deciding in court whether land should or should not be taken for the purpose of the Land Acts. I am reliably informed that for only approximately 50 hours in any one year these men are engaged in that particular function. Therefore, Deputies will appreciate that, outside those 50 hours, these men are exercising functions, in the main, in respect of which they are subject as this section states, to the control of the Minister in charge.

The position is that each Commissioner, be he a Commissioner alone or Commissioner-cum-Secretary, is answerable to the Minister in very many things. Deputy Dillon invents a very special dilemma for one of them, that is, if he happens to be Secretary as well as Commissioner. Each Commissioner, as such, has the same measure of independence, limited to a special sphere. I will not accept the suggestion that any one of them, as a matter of strict conscience, will act other than by the test of his conscience in the functions he has to perform.

A case is continuously being made by Deputy Dillon about the awful things that may transpire when we have the Secretary of the Land Commission also a Commissioner. It does not appear to me to be appreciated by Deputy Dillon that it takes two Commissioners to decide in any particular case whether land should or should not be taken for the purpose of the Land Acts.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Moran

So, if it is suggested that in some particular way the Secretary of the Land Commission, acting as a Commissioner, is any more under the control of the Minister than any of the other Commissioners—and I do not accept that he is for the reason I pointed out—let it be clearly understood that it takes two Commissioners to decide in any particular case. Deputy Dillon gave us, probably as his principal ammunition piece, the following view, reported at column 955 of the Official Report of Thursday, 12th November, 1964:

The objection is that if the inspector sent out to walk those lands on the orders of the Secretary of the Department of Lands recommends the acquisition to the Land Commission, when the Land Commission Court goes down to the district to hear the case of whether these lands should be acquired or not, sitting on the bench of the Lay Commissioners Court is the man who initiated the proceedings for the acquisition of the land which he is now hearing as a judge.

But is that not precisely the position that obtains today under the existing law and that has obtained for years back? Can Deputy Dillon be so out of touch with Land Commission procedure that he does not appreciate that in every case down through the years the issuing of the section 40 notice is authorised by two of the Land Commissioners and that they themselves are sitting on the case in respect of which they authorise inspection? That is the charge he is making against Commissioner O'Brien—as if the situation had arisen for the first time under this Bill.

Actually, the situation down through all the years has been the very same and no objection was ever taken by anybody to it. A prima facie certificate comes before these Commissioners to be discharged or made absolute entirely on the arguments or evidence adduced at the hearing of any particular case. Satisfied with that, I cannot understand on what Deputy Dillon's present protests about this procedure are based. It is recognised in very many spheres that a secretary acts in a dual capacity. Indeed, that is provided for under the Companies Acts, as well. He can be both director and secretary.

Some other Opposition Deputy suggested here that inspectors would go so far as to put a gloss on their evidence— I think it was Deputy Flanagan—in order to curry favour : these were the words he used. If that suggestion is seriously to be considered by anybody, it is not a condemnation of the Secretary-Commissioner or any other Commissioner but of the inspectors. It is a malicious charge which I must immediately refute on behalf of these inspectors.

Again if Deputies opposite are even remotely aware of Land Commission procedure, they will know that in all these cases the Land Commission inspectors have to come in and be sworn and give evidence on oath and are subject to crossexamination by the owner or his representatives. The suggestion that because they were instructed by any Commissioner, even under the existing law, they would in some way taint their evidence on oath is one that should be rejected by the House and indeed it is an unworthy suggestion to start off with. The plan of the Opposition under this amendment and under this section is to try to sell the idea that this is to turn the business of land inspection into a virtual vice. Time and again I have explained that inspection is merely fact-finding and it will continue to be; that inspection is first a report on ground that is known to those resident in the locality and probably for miles around. There is nothing top secret about a section 40 notice of inspection.

The business of inspecting land crops up and has cropped up in practically every law passed by our Parliament dealing with rural Ireland. Again may I quote section 11 (1) of the Forestry Act, 1946:

Any authorised officers may enter on and survey any land for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is suitable for afforestation or for the purpose of inspecting any timber thereon or for any other business in connection with the exercise of the powers of the Minister under this Act.

Here is a section passed away back in 1946 in the Forestry Act, 1946, setting out that any officer of the Land Commission, on the instructions of the Minister for Lands, can enter upon any lands for the purposes of that section. There was no song and dance in this House when that section was being enacted. No crocodile tears were shed that the whole of Ireland would be pilloried by inspectors of the Forestry Division of my Department, that they would be ordered out for political purposes to inspect lands.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

There is no section which freezes the land in the Forestry Act.

Mr. Moran

I read the section for the Deputy.

Mr. Blowick

There is no relevance at all. The Minister is wasting his time. There is no compulsory power——

Mr. Moran

The Deputy must have forgotten the compulsory powers there are for the purpose of acquiring land for forestry if they are required. That particular section enabled the Deputy, as political head of his Department, to order any officer in to inspect any land for the purpose of that Act when or wherever he liked. No crocodile tears were shed on that occasion about fixity of tenure or about any of the other fears that have been expressed for certain purposes under this Bill.

Let me quote section 16 of the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act, 1964:

A person appointed by the Minister or by a sanitary authority to be an authorised officer for the purposes of this Act may enter and inspect any land for the purpose of obtaining any information which the Minister or the authority, as the case may be, may require for the purposes of this Act.

Once again, when that was enacted, the charge was not levelled that the political head of the Department would order all his minions to enter upon land all over the country and frighten the "living daylights" out of the people. It is again typical of the efforts being made here.

The members of the Opposition know that, generally speaking, farmers are not acquainted with the land law as it stands. They are taking these opportunities to raise these fears in the minds of the people that for dire and fell purposes a Minister for Lands will use this section to pillory his political opponents. If any Minister for Lands either now or in the future tried to operate a section of this kind for the purpose of inspection and picking out some political opponent to harm him, I can forecast what the position in the Dáil would be the following day or the following week. Of course the reality is that Deputies who have been arguing this matter know quite well that no such procedure will ever take place. They are doing this for their own particular purposes.

I do not want to follow all of Deputy Dillon's arguments about the type of man the late Commissioner Deegan was and what were his idiosyncracies or otherwise. The fact remains he was both Secretary and Commissioner of the Land Commission for a long number of years. The fact also remains that he thought fit, before leaving the Land Commission, to advise in writing and to leave on record to the then Minister for Lands, the following:

Before leaving the Department I want to place on record my most definite view that the Secretary of the Land Commission cannot do his work as satisfactorily as he would wish to do it or as he should do it, unless he is at the same time a Commissioner. From my administrative experience in other Departments and from outside knowledge of the Land Commission, I held that view when I came here as Secretary in 1930; my years as Secretary and Commissioner from 1930 confirmed it; the past couple of years when I have been Commissioner without administrative responsibility have doubly confirmed it for me.

He goes on to show why it was essential, in his view, that the Secretary of the Land Commission should also be a Land Commissioner.

It is all very fine for Deputy Dillon to wave aside the letter of Deputy McGilligan's of 26th April, 1949 and to say this was a letter written and signed by a Minister for Finance and in one case, suggesting that Deputy McGilligan did not appreciate what was in the letter and in another, that it was a typical letter written by the Department of Finance. This letter was not written or signed as would be the case if Deputy Dillon's allegation was true, by the Secretary of the Department. There was no reference number on it and it starts off: "With reference to your letter of the 1st April—

Mr. Dillon

It starts off "Dear Minister."

Mr. Moran

Yes. It reads:

With reference to your letter of the 1st April, 1949 and to our discussion of the 21st idem about the future position of the Land Commissioners, I set out hereunder in a modified form some of my suggestions dealing with the problem.

He confirms that there was a verbal discussion between himself and Deputy Blowick, prior to the writing of the letter, about the whole future of the Land Commission and sets out in no uncertain way his view that no legal barrier should be placed on a Commissioner who also held an administrative post or the post of Chief Inspector.

He went on to say:

In my opinion it is desirable where four Commissioners are operating that both the post of Secretary of the Department of Lands and that of Chief Inspector should be held by Commissioners and though this is not a practical issue at the moment I hope you will leave the way open for such a point of view in future. If you wish to have provisions made enabling two Commissioners to form a quorum for court sittings, I am prepared to agree. The case is not so strong if there are to be four Commissioners.

There is the view set out by Deputy McGilligan in his letter of 26th April, 1949.

Mr. Dillon

I take it this is an official document which the Minister will lay on the Table of the House?

Mr. Moran

I am quoting from a document I have already put on the records of the House by reading it in full, I think, twice already.

Mr. Tully

At least twice.

Mr. Moran

Does the Deputy doubt that?

Mr. Dillon

If the Minister has read it in full, that meets my requirements.

Mr. Moran

I referred before to Deputy McGilligan's reputation as a constitutional lawyer. Here he is telling Deputy Blowick that not alone is it legal but it is desirable to do the very thing I am doing, that is, to make the Secretary of the Department a Commissioner of the Land Commission. Deputy Dillon has been warning us what terrible things will occur if this goes ahead, what a terribly unconstitutional procedure it would be. He is completely overlooking the fact that for many years Commissioner Deegan was both Secretary of the Land Commission and a Commissioner and that several other officials of the Land Commission, in addition to holding such positions as Assistant Secretary and so on under the Land Commission, were also Land Commissioners and acted as such.

Is anybody going to accept that Deputy McGilligan wrote this letter with his tongue in his cheek? If what Deputy Dillon alleges is true, there would be a very simple way of dealing with this letter. Deputy McGilligan is a member of this House. How is it that, when we came to this discussion any time Deputy McGilligan was here, he left the House? It would be a very simple matter for Deputy McGilligan to confirm what Deputy Dillon alleges —that he only signed this letter because it was prepared for him by somebody in the Department of Finance. Deputy McGilligan is available. If it is alleged there is something "phony" about this letter, would it not be the simplest thing in the world for the Leader of the main Opposition to ask his own colleague and member of his own Party to come in and say: "Yes, this was not my legal view. What Deputy Dillon says is correct. I did not appreciate what was being written in my name in this letter. I knew nothing about it"? Deputy McGilligan has not come in to support the dire legal prophesies of the Leader of the main Opposition. Surely he is the person, the Professor of Constitutional Law, who should be brought in here to support the arguments of the Leader of the Opposition, if there was any weight in them?

The fact remains that this section, in respect of which this amendment is tabled, is merely an inspection section. It is designed solely for the purpose of cutting red tape, so that when a place goes up for sale, a place badly wanted by the Land Commission, and action is needed quickly, the divisional inspector can enable one of his inspectors to go in and make a report on that place to ascertain its suitability or otherwise for acquisition for Land Commission purposes. That report must still go to two Commissioners of the Land Commission to be decided on. The Lay Commissioners will still decide what land is or is not taken. The section is purely for cutting red tape in the Land Commission, enabling a speedy decision to be taken at the preliminary stages, so that land that should come into the Land Commission machine will not be disposed of before the Commissioners get an opportunity of examining the facts.

I am satisfied this section is essential for the expeditious working of the Land Commission. I am satisfied the arguments used here, as I have demonstrated, cannot stand up to any legal examination and have been uttered solely for the purpose of frightening people outside into the view that something terrible is being done under this section to interfere with the rights of the ordinary Irish landowner.

Mr. Blowick

Did I hear the Minister correctly saying that the purpose of this section is to enable a divisional inspector to instruct another inspector under him to make an inspection under this section?

Mr. Moran

Under section 40.

Mr. Blowick

What does the Minister mean at all? I take it the old rule still stands that the senior inspector set out in this section means an inspector of a rank not lower than divisional? This is appalling. I want to point out to Deputies that this section says that no one below the rank of senior inspector can make an inspection of the land.

Mr. Moran

I never said any such thing. If the Deputy can appreciate what I have said, what I said is that the effect of this is going to be that a senior inspector, for the purpose of removing doubt, can in future sign a notice authorising an inspection under section 40.

Mr. Blowick

But this section says specifically that it is only a senior inspector who can make the inspection.

Mr. Moran

No.

Mr. Blowick

Yes. Let us read it so:

For the removal of doubt ... the Minister shall not authorise ... an officer to make such determination unless the officer is an officer of the Land Commission and not below the rank of Senior Inspector.

The more I hear the Minister on this section, the more I regard him as being pretty desperate to get the powers being conferred on him here. No matter how the Minister tries to polish it over, I will not be deceived as to what will happen if this section passes as it is. What does the Minister want this section for? This was always an accepted matter to be determined by the Commissioners, one that was always very carefully withheld by this House from the political head of the Department. What does the Minister want it for? Is it a slur on the Commissioners that they will not act unless he acts for them?

Having made the inspection, what will the Minister do about it? The very fact the Minister has made the inspection will antagonise the Commissioners, whose duty it has been up to now. They may say: "This is the Minister's responsibility. We will put our pen through it to show this bounder he will not interfere with our authority." The Minister is making a complete hash of himself in this. I was not here last week but I read in the Dáil Debates of last Thursday where the Minister drew a parallel with certain sections of the 1950 act whereby an inspector was given power to finalise rearrangement schemes in rundale villages. There is absolutely no parallel between the two.

In that instance what happened was that, up to the passing of the 1950 Act, an inspector went into a townland, rearranged and got the consent of all the tenants to a certain settlement. The old procedure was that he had to submit the case through all the cumbersome machinery of the Land Commission, to the hierarchy, that is, the Commissioners, for sanction. By the time sanction came down, some tenants had died, some had changed their mind and months of work of an inspector had gone for naught.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Blowick

One thing to be borne in mind is that a rearrangement scheme is not the inspector's scheme; it is the tenants' scheme.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear.

Mr. Blowick

The moment a rearrangement scheme is agreed to by the tenants, it is essential that the inspector should say: "All right; if that is the settlement you have in mind, I am the man who will put it into operation for you and copperfasten it straight away." The Minister, in a very lamelegged fashion, tries to hide his own misdeeds under that section of the 1950 Act.

I do not want to go over past history. I positively refuse to do it. There is no comparison between the position under that Act and the proposal that the present Secretary of the Land Commission be appointed a Commissioner. That does not disturb me in the least, knowing what I know of him. I am not interested in that matter but I am very interested in the section that gives the Minister power to send in an inspector on my land or on the land of any other person.

The Minister drew another parallel here a few minutes ago, showing how desperate he is to get the power into his hands. He quoted a section in the Forestry Act, 1946, introduced by the late Deputy Moylan when he was Minister for Lands. Compulsory powers cannot be used to acquire lands for forestry—except in an extreme case of commonage, the details of which I shall not go into but of which most Deputies are aware—for the very simple reason that when the Department purchase land for forestry it is absolutely essential that the sale should be voluntary so as to secure the goodwill, not alone of the owner of the land, but of the neighbours, who would very soon put the forest up in flames, as did happen in Tipperary on several occasions until finally the Forestry Division had to abandon a certain hillside which had been a sheep run.

The Minister is pulling every single string he can in an effort to bolster up his proposal. What does he want this power for? I have tried to visualise every kind of situation in which the Minister would meet these bales of red tape he is so anxious to cut with a scissors. I would point out to Deputies that the Minister is taking unto himself a power which is nothing more or less than an instrument of terror for the average farmer throughout the country. He will not send an inspector to me or to any other TD but if there is a pocket of land in an area and if the Minister is desperate enough in a time of an election he can order his inspectors to inspect the holding of every opponent in the constituency.

Let him say what he likes about the inspection of land by local government officials, sanitary officials and all the rest of it. There is no comparison. Every farmer knows the terror he feels at the very notion of a Land Commission inspector's car arriving outside his door. He thinks he is going to be, as we in the west say, "betook" the next day. Nobody knows better than the Minister, in view of all the people making a trail to his office in Castle-bar, the terror the arrival of the Land Commission inspector strikes into the heart of a man who owns land.

Windows have come to me in tears in regard to the section the Minister is seeking to put into the Bill. They have asked me what they ought to do. Their husbands are dead. Their children are too young to operate the farms. They have had to let a few fields. They have asked if the Minister is now going to grab the holding. I do not know whether other Deputies have had a similar experience but many widows have come to me and that is the reason I am raising my voice so strongly against the section.

Let me repeat the question: What does the Minister want the power for? The Bill will not help to relieve congestion. A great deal of it is nonsense. There are a few good points in the Bill, but that is all, and all the rest, as far as I can see, is nothing but amendments of amendments that would be due in any case.

Then there is the question of the letting of land. Anybody who wants to sell a cock of hay must go to the Minister or to one of the Land Commission inspectors with cap in hand and ask to be allowed, for God's sake, to sell it.

A person who wants to tide himself over a temporary period of financial embarrassment by letting a few acres of conacre must do the same. The Minister is taking this sledge hammer power, as much as to say: "I will send an inspector on your land if you do not vote for me". In its broadest form, that is precisely what it is. Let the Minister, before this Bill goes through, tell us what he wants the power for.

Mr. Dillon

I do not know if the Minister is as much impressed by Deputy Blowick's plain-spoken intervention as I am. Deputy Blowick knows what he is talking about. He was Minister for Lands in two Administrations. Deputy Blowick, in a very few sentences, has summed up the whole case against this accursed section.

Mr. Blowick

"Accursed" is the word.

Mr. Dillon

This amendment, as you will observe, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, is designed merely to delimit the operation of that section. As Deputy Flanagan and I have said here before, these are amendments on which we do not propose to press a division, lest it might appear that in voting for them we placed ourselves on record as saying that section 27, thus amended, would be unobjectionable. We regard section 27 as rotten, vicious and dangerous in principle. We will repeal it. That is certain.

Mr. Blowick

Thank God for that, anyway.

Mr. Dillon

Ad interim, we are trying to take such steps as we may to mitigate its legal operation until the opportunity is afforded us of eliminating it altogether from the law.

I can see that the Minister is today in a more temperate state of mind than he was on previous occasions but I do want him to understand this: This amendment purports to restrict the Minister from exercising the powers conferred on him by subsection (1) of section 27 at any time when a Land Commissioner is a person who holds a position as a civil servant of the Government.

This is a question of fact: Does the holding by a Lay Commissioner of the two capacities of Secretary of the Department of Lands and Lay Commissioner put in jeopardy the constitutionality of this procedure and of all the acts of a Land Commission Court of which the Secretary of the Department of Lands for the time being constitutes a part?

I want to put it to the Minister, for the reasons set out by me in Volume 213 Col. 883 and the columns following thereafter in our debate of Thursday, 10th December, that the best opinion, that I can get in any case, is that there is serious danger that if anyone goes to the High Court and has this tale to tell, the High Court will declare the procedure unconstitutional, whereupon all analogous cases will be called in question—and this is the tale that I envisage could be told: under section 27 the Minister for Lands instructed the Secretary of his Department to instruct the divisional inspector to make an order No. 40, directing that my land should be inspected for acquisition. First the Land Commissioners published a notice declaring that my lands were to be acquired. I objected and attended at the Land Commission Court when my objection was being heard. The court consisted of two Lay Commissioners of the Land Commission, one of whom was the Secretary of the Department of Lands.

There came before that court the inspectors of the Department of Lands to make their report. My representative cross-examined one of them on oath: "Were you directed by the divisional inspector, on the order of the Minister for the time being, to carry out this inspection?" The inspector would reply: "I was.""Is the Secretary of the Department the executive officer of the Minister for Lands?" The inspector would have to reply: "He is.""Are you the Secretary of the Department of Lands or is one of the Commissioners sitting here the Secretary of the Department of Lands?" The inspector must reply that one of them is. The next question is: "Is it then the case that the man who sent you to inspect my lands is now the man who is to determine whether the land is to be acquired or not?", and the answer must be: "Yes, it is."

I want to ask any rational Deputy— not querying the bona fides of anybody concerned in this transaction, the inspector, the divisional inspector, the Secretary of the Department of Lands or anybody else—if the case is made to the High Court—and remember this is as vital a matter to me as the question whether I am to be sent to jail— and I ask this simple right that justice will not only be done but that it will appear to be done, what will the High Court say? I can tell you and I assure the House that most experienced ex-members of the Land Commission are almost unanimous in their view, that the High Court would say that justice had not appeared to be done and that there would have to be a further extension of the decision in the Dunleavy case where all the existing procedures of the Land Commission were lacerated by the Supreme Court and radically altered because that was the first time these procedures had ever been brought before the court.

All this abracadabra is founded on the propositions first, that the Minister wants to cut red tape and, secondly, that he wishes to give effect to the last testament of the late Mr. Deegan when he was leaving the Department of Lands. I have already elaborated on the references I have quoted and I do not intend to go into them here again today, that the considered opinion of every available ex-Commissioner in this country is that this procedure of section 27 will not expedite the inspection of land by one hour and that if expedition is the only purpose the Minister has in mind, the way to achieve it is (1) to strengthen the inspectorial staff in the field, and (2) to arrange for some senior inspectors to be available in the Department of Lands to go down and visit any area where inspection or acquisition proceedings are not going forward as promptly as the Minister thinks they should.

The second ground on which the Minister seeks to justify this provision is that the late Mr. Deegan told him so, that he was convinced that unless the Secretary were a Lay Commissioner he could not do the job right. I can quote against that the late Commissioner Browne and every other person who has ever been a Land Commissioner, and I challenge the Minister to find a single ex-Commissioner in the country or to find a memorandum of any ex-Commissioner which does not correspond with what I say and which does not contradict what the late Commissioner Deegan said.

We all know that the late Commissioner Deegan had this unique view but we also know that Mr. Waddell, Mr. Nally and a third whose name escapes me at the moment all held a diametrically opposite view and that Mr. Nally carried his opposition to the length of going to the Minister for Lands for the time being and begging him to be relieved of his executive functions, on the ground that he could not discharge his executive duty and his Land Commissioner duty at the same time.

I have gone out of my way to emphasise the esteem and respect I had for Mr. Deegan and for his memory. He was a most distinguished public servant but because he was, that is no reason why his view should prevail against the view of every other distinguished public servant. I am perfectly certain that every word of advice he tendered to the Minister directly or by way of memorandum was done in the highest of good faith. It was the best advice he had to offer but he was wrong. He had that quality of a highly efficient and widely experienced bureaucrat, that he detested lawyers, that he detested the whole procedures of court which he thought dilatory and clumsy and which, in his heart of hearts, he believed was prejudiced against bureaucracy as a whole.

I have challenged the Minister—and the Minister was very careful not to refer to that challenge—to go back to his records and look at the Bill Mr. Deegan drafted. Mr. Deegan, with the then Minister for Lands, drafted a Bill the idea of which was to abolish all the reserved land. He said this idea of erecting a protective barrier between the Minister and the pressures from outside was all cod. It was only when that draft Bill was submitted to the then head of the Government in 1936 or 1937 that the then head of the Government tore it up and summoned the Minister, who I think was the late Deputy Derrig, and Mr. Deegan to his office and dictated to them an amended form of legislation which he said was the minimum he would allow to be considered by the Government.

That is the kind of man the late Commissioner Deegan was: A great public servant but of the most extreme bureaucratic character that it was possible for a public servant to be. The Finance memorandum which the Minister has read bears no relation whatever to Deputy McGilligan's view on the merits of that issue. It was a Government memorandum of which I suppose not less than 20 are laid on the desk of the Minister for Finance every morning. I do not want to recapitulate what I said on last Thursday when I described for the House what was common knowledge to every person who served in Government before how such memoranda are prepared and I venture to swear that the memorandum which the Minister read out to the House was drafted by Mr. Deegan. Was Mr. Deegan in the Department at that time? I think he was. I can see the picture of himself in the office of the Department of Lands crossing over the street to the Department of Finance in Upper Merrion Street and Mr. Deegan with the Finance officials in the Department of Finance concocting that memorandum which incorporates what Commissioner Deegan wanted and at the same time produces an eminently desirable result from the Finance point of view, that you pay two men to do four men's jobs for two men's salaries. That is a memorandum which the Department of Finance would always endorse and applaud.

It is nonsense to say that in respect of every such memorandum the Minister for Finance gives his personal attention to the specific matters set out and the Minister for Finance knows that perfectly well, nor would the Minister for Finance have time to do it. In a matter of this kind he would depend almost entirely on the advice of his Establishment Officer. These are details which those of us who are familiar with the procedure of government understand perfectly well.

I am very glad that Deputy Blowick had an opportunity of intervening in the debate to state bluntly and plainly and without frills or furbelows what really goes to the heart of this matter. It is a bad, evil section which we are trying to mend as far as possible. No mending or repair we can do upon it will make it good or even acceptable to the bulk of our people. The only remedy for section 27 is to repeal it and we give our unqualified pledge that one of the first pieces of legislation for which we shall be responsible when we take office is the repeal of that section.

I sympathise completely with Deputy Blowick when he asks the Minister: What do you want this power for? It is not true that this power will expedite the work of the Land Commission. Nobody who is in a position to judge that agrees with the Minister in his view that it will. What does he want the power for? When I ask myself that question, I think back to the description of Deputy Corry out inspecting his neighbours land at midnight by the headlights of his car. Is there any Deputy on any side of the House who will ask himself this question: if tomorrow morning a member of the Fine Gael Party were Minister for Lands and a Fianna Fáil farmer who had been out campaigning energetically for Fianna Fáil who had lost the election, suddenly saw a Fine Gael TD come down to his holding by night turning the headlights of his car on that holding and examining it for all the neighbours to see, shining the light into the kitchen window, is there a member of the Fianna Fáil Party who would not revolt if he thought that the Fine Gael Minister for Lands had the power to send to that independent man's holding an inspector to inspect it for the purpose of acquisition?

Unless they are all creepy-crawlies, they would revolt. They should revolt; they should say it would be an outrage. That is what we are saying: it would be a detestable outrage that a Fine Gael Minister for Lands should have such power. It is a detestable outrage that a Fianna Fáil Minister for Lands should seek it. It is a source of amazement to me that there is not one member of the Fianna Fáil Party with the courage to say what a lot of them believe, that this is a detestable proposal.

The Minister could have given some evidence of good faith if he had accepted this amendment. If he will not, so be it. It makes it all the more important that we should be given the opportunity of repealing this section and removing it from the statute law of Ireland.

Amendment put and declared negatived.

Bill recommitted in respect of amendment No. 10.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 10.

In page 16, line 18, to delete "and", and, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following:

"(b) By the insertion in subsection (3) after `confers and defines' of `or "extended or improved', (d) by the insertion in subsection (4) after `right of access conferred' of `or extended or improved', and".

Through some slip in the drafting of section 39 of the Land Act, 1931, it was not made clear that the Land Commission should have power to carry out works on an extension of a right of way. Under subsection (3) of the 1931 provision, they were clearly given this right in relation to a newly-created passway but, apparently through an oversight, there was no mention of extensions.

For example, if there were an old right of way eight feet wide, the Land Commission could by order enlarge it to 12 feet and their allottees could lawfully be given the use of the extra four feet of width. But on the letter of the law, the servient owner possibly could forbid the Land Commission from metalling these extra four feet or could prevent them from widening a gateway to suit modern conditions. Fortunately, it has not given rise to practical trouble so far.

As section 33 of this Bill is remedying other flaws in the older section. I think we should take the opportunity to remove this drafting anomaly also.

Mr. Dillon

We are not going to encourage anybody to frustrate the Minister's desire to improve roads.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment reported and agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 11:

In page 21, line 26, to delete "tenancy," and substitute "tenancy (including an interest under a grant for a term of years whether or not reserving a rent),".

I believe it might be possible to bypass the section by taking over a farm for a fixed term of years on payment of a bulk sum in cash. This would be neither an outright purchase nor the taking of a tenancy, but if the term of years were sufficiently long the transaction would, for practical purposes, be as good as a purchase. It seems best to ensure that this gap is closed although we have no evidence that it has ever been availed of.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 21, to insert the following paragraph between lines 30 and 31:

"(e) an interest referable to a right to become registered as owner of the land or of a charge thereon under the Registration of Title Acts, 1891 and 1942, or the Registration of Title Act, 1964,".

One of the most likely avenues of approach towards the evasion of a control such as we now seek to impose is the uncompleted transaction, that is to say, some form of contract which gives a non-national the right to full ownership without this fact being recorded in public records. In line 35, on page 21, the words "equitable and beneficial interests" are intended to cover such cases but since the Committee Stage, I have developed some slight doubts as to whether they cover all possible cases.

In relation to registered land, in any event, I think we should take the precaution of spelling out the fact that even a right to become registered is caught by the section. If there were certain transactions and the parties did not register the documents, these transactions would not be recorded and would not be traceable in public records, and this aims at making assurance doubly sure.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Can the Minister say how it happened that this was omitted when the Bill was originally being drafted? Is it only as a result of the discussions which took place on the later Stages of the Bill that he sees the necessity for rectifying this omission?

Mr. Moran

I thought over the possible means of evasion. I have been advised of the different types of evasion they could possibly get away with, with the type of procedure here. I thought it better, in case it might be tried, to make assurance doubly sure.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 13:

In page 21, line 34, to delete "possessory title" and substitute "possession".

It deals with a rather fine point of drafting. It is a purely drafting amendment. The phrase "with a possessory title" is used in the Registration of Title Act, 1964 to mean a particular type or quality of registered ownership —generally, what used to be known as "subject to equities". In the Land Bill "possessory title" was intended to have the broader traditional meaning of a squatter's title—not necessarily confined to registered land. As there are many points of contact between the Registration Act and this Land Bill, confusion would certainly be caused by having the same phrase meaning different things in these two enactments. Accordingly, I think it safer to delete "a possessory title" and to use instead "possession" which expresses the broader idea.

I would remind the House that the Registration of Title Act, to which I have referred, was passed while this Bill was under discussion here and these words had a purely legal, artificial meaning in that Act. I want, for our purpose, to hold the meaning of "possession" meaning "squatter's title".

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

This is a very necessary amendment. The reasons given by the Minister for it are certainly reasons of commonsense. The amendment captures land, where the occupier has acquired title to it, but who has never been registered in the Land Registry as the owner of the land. This gives me an opportunity of repeating a query which I have made to the Minister on many occasions. What is the number of holdings in this country, particularly where the owner has been in occupation for very many years but has never been in a position to put the title in order with the Land Registry?

I am sure when a Bill of this kind was being drafted every information in regard to titles, good and bad, was obtained by the officers of the Land Commission from the Land Registry. Perhaps the Minister—if not now, probably at a later date—may be able to give us some idea as to the extent— in rural Ireland it is very great—to which occupiers of holdings are not registered in the Land Registry and to which registration was never effected because of costs and the difficulty for solicitors getting agreement between, probably the next-of-kin and the original owner. Some of those people may be in Australia, Canada, USA or Britain and the claims of the various members of the family may be somehow involved.

There must be in this country a vast number of holdings where the occupier is not registered in the Land Registry. I have been wondering what steps it is proposed, or, may be proposed, to take, at a later stage, to deal with such a problem, provided it were of any magnitude. I am sure the Minister, as Minister for Lands, has looked into this proposal and I have often wondered if he has looked at any statistics, if any have been found, of the number of such holdings existing in the country?

Mr. Moran

We have not statistics in the Land Commission on the particular problem to which the Deputy has referred. I know, from my experience outside this House, of quite a few such holdings. The short answer to what the Deputy has mentioned is that under the new Registration of Title Act, to which I have referred, and which was passed while this Bill was being discussed, there is procedure for registration of possessory title. I understand, under the new Act, a person can have registration of title; without going to court and that he can get himself registered to possessory title. I cannot say how many such cases would be affected. No doubt there are quite a few of them. Whether the amount is large or small, it is much easier now and certainly much less expensive under the new procedure to which I have referred.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I move amendment No. 14:

In page 22, between lines 21 and 22 to insert: " `town' means any town mentioned in the First Schedule to the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1963."

I have come to the conclusion, having taken into consideration the importance of this section, that it is a necessity for us to define in this section, for the purposes of bringing clarity into the law, what a town is and means. Urban districts are defined in various Local Government statutes. "Town" is also defined in the Act of 1937. We can see that the word "town" means an area comprising a town, not being an urban district, in which the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act, 1884 is in operation. That definition is not very clear. It is not alone not very clear but it is an unsatisfactory definition. In other words, it is a definition which only sends the fool further to seek other statutes and to make further inquiries to evade the legal position in regard to the definition of the word "town".

A list of towns is set out in the Schedule of the 1963 Local Government (Planning and Development) Act. There can be no doubt whatever in so far as that Act is concerned what a town is. I have here with me the Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill, 1963, which is now an Act. We can see here clearly the definition as set out in the First Schedule. Towns are set out as the areas in which there are no urban councils but in which there are town commissioners. The Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill has set out very clearly what a town is and where towns are situated. All I ask is that we adopt for the purposes of this Bill exactly the same procedure in order to clarify the law and know exactly where we stand.

If the Minister looks at the First Schedule to the Town Planning Act he will see that towns are clearly defined: Ardee, Balbriggan, Ballybeg, Ballyshannon, Bandon, Bantry, Belturbet, Boyle, Callan, Cootehill, Droichead Nua, Edenderry, Fethard in the county of Tipperary South Riding, Gorey, Granard, Kilkee, Lismore, Loughrea, Mountmellick, Muinebeag, Mullingar, Newcastle West, Passage West, Portlaoighise, Rathkeale, Roscommon, Tramore and Tuam. Part II deals with smaller towns, some with very small populations indeed.

For the purposes of this Bill I suggest we should have some form of clarity. If the Minister is not prepared to accept the towns I have just mentioned what areas will he include in addition to those in that First Schedule? The wider we make this the more we will cater for the alien who will want to purchase lands convenient to a town and, to use the Minister's own expression, in order to remove any doubt I think it would be worthwhile making the position clear from the point of view of this section.

I do not know whether the Minister is prepared to accept my amendment. It is a reasonable amendment and I recommend it strongly to the Minister. No one can say that the Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill did not get very careful and very serious consideration from both the Government and the Opposition. The First Schedule was fully considered. The Minister can have no good grounds for refusing to accept this amendment. Not alone will the amendment clarify the law but it will simplify the section very considerably for the Land Commission. The word "town" is used in the third line of section 45 of the Bill in relation to the definition of land. I direct the Minister's attention very specifically to that. He should be a little clearer, I think, where the word "town" is concerned and I suggest we adopt the same procedure on this occasion which was so successfully adopted in the Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill.

Mr. Moran

On an earlier stage of this Bill, I said I would have this matter examined. I have had the matter examined. While I agree the Deputy has a good point, the form of his amendment is too wide. I have no objection to the idea underlying the amendment but I am sure I will be able to satisfy the Deputy——

Mr. Tully

Is this not on the wrong page?

Mr. Moran

Amendment No. 14 to section 45 (1) in the name of Deputy Oliver Flanagan.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

That is what we are dealing with.

Mr. Tully

But that is page 21, not page 22.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes, page 21.

Mr. Tully

The amendment refers to page 22.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

It is not important.

Mr. Tully

It is very important. It would look darned stupid if it were inserted on page 22.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It seems to relate to page 21.

Mr. Moran

Perhaps Deputy Flanagan could look at the end of the definitions which go over the page. That may be the reason for it. The important thing is that in order to avoid confusion amongst conveyancers and people in the Land Registry, it is necessary to have a clear idea of what we mean by "town". It must be possible to say clearly from a map whether a piece of land is urban or rural, for the purpose of the section. However, I am satisfied the word "town" covers those towns which are listed in the first part of the schedule to which Deputy Flanagan referred. I am advised that these towns have, in the main, clearly defined boundaries. That is not the position in the second part of the same schedule which comprises, I think, 58 or 60 towns, and in many cases they are non-municipal towns, and in many cases they are not de-limited.

The second part of the schedule includes many built-up districts which appear to be towns but they are not distinct legal entities and do not have definite boundaries. It would create endless problems for the Registrar of Titles if these non-municipal towns were to be included in the definition, and, therefore, excluded from the control. Accordingly, I have no option but to recommend the rejection of the amendment. I want to say this, however. As and when the non-municipal towns achieve full status or are precisely de-limited by their appropriate planning authorities under the Planning Act, I shall consider whether it is appropriate to exclude them from the operation of the section. I consider this could be done by regulation under subsection (1) of sub-paragraph (x).

Part I of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1963 lists the municipal towns answering the description in the Interpretation Act, 1937, which reads:

The word "town" means the area comprised in a town (not being an urban district) in which the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act, 1854, is in operation.

Part II lists non-municipal towns or built-up areas which have not the legal status of towns. This is the real point. Under section 19 of the Planning Act, every authority must produce the plan for its own area of responsibility within three years. Section 2 empowers the authority to de-limit the areas of the non-municipal towns in Part 2 of the schedule. So, effectively, these towns must be properly de-limited in the next three years. In the meantime the uncertainty as to the future boundaries of these towns would make it very difficult to operate the section in the vicinity of such towns if they were excluded from the operation of the new control.

For that reason, and because I am advised we have power to make the regulation under this section to deal with this matter. I have to reject Deputy Flanagan's amendment, although I agree with the idea behind it.

Mr. Tully

I was slightly confused about this because I agreed with the amendment. It does not refer to the section. It simply says: "In page 22, between lines 21 and 22 to insert..." If we do that, it does not refer to towns at all. For that reason I was not quite sure about what was in the Minister's mind. Deputy Flanagan made his case very well, and so far as I can remember during Committee Stage, the Minister said he was prepared to bring in an amendment stating what a town really is within the meaning of this Bill. That has not been done so far. If we go ahead with it as it is, I do not think it will have the effect which we all expect it to have.

There are many towns in the country called Ballythis or Ballythat. People could quote the Irish version and say: "This must be a town within the meaning of the Act." I believe the Minister should have introduced something that would set out the type of town to which he was referring. There is no point in saying that in three years time we will be able to do it. If we wait a further three years the problem with which we are now trying to deal will have become so great that we will be nearly too late to do anything about it. I know the Minister does not agree. I know he has said this is not a big problem, but I am satisfied it is a big problem. I know the Minister has taken certain steps, but if he leaves the section as loose as it is now, he will not achieve what we all hoped would be achieved by the section.

Mr. Dillon

The purpose of this amendment is to remove ambiguity from the law. Apparently that is an object with which the Minister has sympathy. I understand him to say now that the position is that he cannot put his hand at present on a definition which would effectively capture all the categories of land which it is intended to capture, that he forsees that when the Planning Act is in operation there will then emerge a statutory definition which could be incorporated in this section, but unless and until that is formulated by the Minister for Local Government it is impossible to anticipate exactly what form it will take. I imagine Deputy Flanagan and I can sympathise with that dilemma, and if the Minister would say that as soon as there is a clear definitive statutory definition under the Planning Act he proposes to incorporate it by amendment of the law or by regulation——

Mr. Moran

By regulation.

Mr. Dillon

——to remove ambiguity, that would be all right.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

If the Minister can give that undertaking, that meets the point.

Mr. Moran

I can give that undertaking.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): I move amendment No. 15:

In page 22, between lines 50 and 51, to insert a new paragraph as follows:

"(d) Where application for written consent is made to the Land Commission under this section the Land Commission shall cause the land in respect of which the application is made to be inspected with a view to determining its suitability for acquisition by the Land Commission for the purpose of division, or for the relief of congestion, and if such land is suitable for either such purpose then the Land Commission shall not give its written consent."

The purpose of this amendment is to strengthen the restriction on the powers of vesting. In section 45 there is a list of qualified persons, in all, nine. Then we have the addition of No. 10: "Any category declared by the Minister by regulations to be an additional category for the purpose of this definition."

Subsection (2) states:

... except with the written consent (whether general or particular) of the Land Commission and subject to any conditions attached to the consent having been complied with.

That seems to me to give a discretionary power to the Commissioners as regards the giving of exemptions. I have incorporated this amendment to make it obligatory on the Land Commission that, before they give any exemption to unknown qualified persons—which would ordinarily mean aliens—they would have the land inspected to see whether it was suitable for acquisition and whether there was a local demand for land.

Mr. Cosgrave

There has been a good deal of discussion during the course of the debate, and elsewhere, about the extensive acquisition by foreigners of property here, and I believe the proposal enshrined in Deputy Hogan's amendment is desirable because of certain experiences which have resulted from foreigners acquiring property. I think there would be general agreement that provided foreigners behaved themselves here, they would be welcomed, but it behoves us, at the same time, to take care that the extent to which land is acquired by foreigners does not constitute a serious problem against which remedial action should be taken.

In that connection, it seems to me that if there is need in any locality—as, indeed, there is certainly general need —to relieve congestion then Land Commission action should be taken against property owned by foreigners, rather than in cases where property is owned by Irish people. Quite recently land has been acquired in west Wicklow, and in that part of the country for generations, as well as in the adjoining area of Kildare, the Kildare Hunt has hunted. It includes in its members farmers in the area, as well as landowners and other people who are not employed or working as farmers. That hunt has had a very sporting tradition and in that district is probably more welcome than in any other portion of the area over which it hunts.

There has been a spirit of friendliness and goodwill and co-operation manifested towards the hunt by all the people in the area. In recent years, a farm has been acquired by two Germans, I understand, princes, and as a result of what they considered to be damage to their crops, they have erected what can only be described as a barbed wire entanglement. Whatever their experience may have been abroad, it is not necessary in this country for neighbours to fence themselves in in this way.

That spirit has never existed either there or anywhere else in this country. I believe the Minister and his Department should make it quite clear that serious notice will be taken of such unjustified interference with sporting interests by foreigners who acquire property here. Down through our history, our people have fought for the right to own their own land, to farm it and live on it in peace and harmony, and it would be a most regrettable thing if, having withstood attempted conquest by the sword, we should now find that conquest can be made by the cheque book.

I submit that any outsider who acquires property here has an obligation to respect the rights and interests of his neighbours, sporting and otherwise, and the sporting interests in this country, apart from their value as sport, have also value to farmers in so far as they avail themselves of the market provided by those who own and hunt horses—for the purchase of oats and straw and for the general employment given in the provision and maintenance of a hunt, as well as the provision and maintenance of horses, hunters and bloodstock generally by those who are interested in that sport.

It has also to be borne in mind that the members and officials of the hunt are familiar with possible damage to crops. They have hunted there for generations, as have their predecessors, and they appreciate and understand what are headlands and what are not, and any damage which has been or may be caused is minimal. With the exception of a few isolated cases, which have always been settled between the hunt and the farmers concerned, there has been no deterioration of the spirit which exists—one of general goodwill.

It has got to be made quite clear that appropriate action will be taken by the Land Commission, through the acquisition, if necessary, by the Land Commission of sporting rights, to ensure that those who come in here will respect the spirit in which they are allowed in and also in which those who in certain cases owned these places in the past respected them. Such intolerant and aggressive attitudes to their neighbours by those who have been allowed to come in here, are entirely unjustified. It is up to those of us responsible for legislating in matters of this kind to ensure that no interference of this sort will be allowed to creep in.

Mr. Moran

I shall take Deputy Cosgrave's point first. I should like to point out that I am not familiar with this line of country. What I suspect the position to be is that people can hunt over land only by the consent of the owner of that land. Having said so much, I think that anybody in any part of rural Ireland who ignores local traditions is a fool——

Mr. Cosgrave

Hear, hear.

Mr. Moran

——from his own point of view, whether it be by hunts or any other forms of sport. There are sections of the Bill which give the Land Commission certain powers to deal with certain things, not with this issue because I do not think it could be dealt with except in a different way —by the local people themselves. There are such questions as the establishment of rights of way to lakes and stretches of water and so on, where the Land Commission are satisfied such rights had been traditionally enjoyed by the people in the area concerned. In this particular instance, I am not familiar with the rules applying to hunt clubs of this kind. I assume they would have to get the permission of those concerned to hunt over their land. Again, anybody who ignores local tradition to that effect is merely building up trouble for himself and, no doubt, will live to regret it.

Deputy Hogan misconceives the position in his amendment. In the first place, under the new section that has been introduced, any non-national, except the excepted categories set out under the new law, will have to get the consent of the Land Commission to purchase land. I cannot see, therefore, that there should be any reason for this amendment. The Land Commission will be aware of the policy in relation to purchase of land by a non-national, and they will also be aware of their ordinary duties to press ahead with the programme of land reform. It has been the policy of successive Governments to give that power and make decisions in specific cases, and I do not see why we should change that. If we were to write into the law "you must inspect a case as set out here", then we are taking away from the Commissioners the freedom to make sensible decisions on the merits of individual cases.

We have spent a considerable time talking about excepted matters and the powers that should be left to the Commissioners. This is one of these powers. It is a question for them to decide whether a place is, what I described as a "white elephant" or whether a foreigner should be allowed to buy it or move in and take it. If they decide it is necessary for their purpose, they can refuse consent, under these new sections, to the non-national to purchase the land at all. Therefore, for all these reasons, there is no necessity now for the new provisions of this amendment, and it should still be left, I think, to the discretion of the Commissioners to deal with as they do with every individual case that comes before them.

Mr. Tully

I would be prepared to give the Land Commission and the Government every power they need to curb the buying of land by non-nationals. Last week Deputy Dillon stated that he thought I would like to see all the land of this country vested in the State and that the State would have the right to do what they liked with it. That is not my view and Deputy Dillon knows that. Perhaps he was making a joke.

I certainly would not suggest that those people who do not allow the hunt over their land should have their land taken from them for that reason only. I suggest the Minister and the Land Commission should get every assistance possible to ensure that this cod of allowing non-nationals to continue buying land under every possible guise should be stopped. When I read this amendment first, I thought it would have strengthened their hand but, having had another look at it, I do not think it will. It would not achieve what I am sure the Deputy felt he would like it to achieve. It suggests that, under certain circumstances, the Commissioners must do a thing. But, when you make exceptions in, you must make exceptions out. Under certain circumstances other people might be affected in a certain way. Section 45, which the Government so belatedly included in the Bill, would be better left as it is. For that reason, I would have to recommend my Party to vote against it.

Mr. Dillon

This is an amendment to a section which was inserted by way of amendment by the Minister for Lands. It is important to remember that this section of the Bill, which was inserted by way of amendment by the Minister for Lands, was produced after this Bill had been discussed on Second Stage in this House and three years after we had proposed a Bill in this House which the Minister rejected and which was designed to achieve the purpose of the section which he has now inserted. Now we are getting another amendment from Deputy Hogan. I do not understand Deputy Tully's exception to it. All this amendment proposes is that where the Land Commission are satisfied that a piece of land which somebody wants to buy requires a licence from the Government, and it is suitable for the relief of congestion or for the other purposes of the Land Commission, that the Land Commission should not give their consent to the purchase of it. I should have thought that went without saying, that if the Land Commission were satisfied that a piece of land purchased by a non-national was needed for the purposes of the Land Commission, it is unthinkable that the Land Commission would give their consent to the purchase by the non-national. This is an amendment to eliminate doubt if the Land Commission should, by inadvertence, overlook doing that which the House would desire them to do.

Of course, I accept Deputy Tully's assurances that he does not believe in the nationalisation of the land of Ireland. I am not in a position to search his soul. All I can do is listen to what his lips say. I gave careful note to what his lips said and I shall keep it on the record. I am particularly gratified to hear him speak on behalf of the Labour Party. He has nailed his flag firmly to the mast. That is a very valuable development——

Mr. Tully

It is just a continuity——

Mr. Dillon

——for the removal of doubt. There are certain consequences, Sir, which for the removal of doubt are very valuable and I am sure the Deputy has done a public service by making on behalf of the Labour Party the declaration he has made only for the removal of doubt.

Mr. Tully

I am sure everybody was aware of it except Deputy Dillon.

Mr. Dillon

We are all happy now and it is delightful to find all sides of the House joined in rejoicing that any ill-founded doubt has been removed from everybody's mind. When these important events occur, it is suitable that they should be suitably dwelt upon lest they subsequently be forgotten. This can never be forgotten and that is the purpose of the tribute I pay to Deputy Tully's far-sighted intervention for the purpose of removing this unhappy doubt which troubled the minds——

Mr. Tully

Of the Fine Gael Party. That would give me great sorrow.

Mr. Dillon

——of people in the country. I think there is a good case to be made for this amendment, particularly in the light of what Deputy Cosgrave has said here today. The case raised by Deputy Cosgrave is not at all analogous to the cases mentioned by the Minister.

I think it is quite recognisable that, if there is an old-established right of way to the foreshore or what the Minister will readily recognise as an old-established Mass path, the land Commission should have power affirmatively to assert that right on behalf of the public. When it comes to the right to hunt over your neighbour's land, it is a very different type of right, but it goes to the whole root of this matter.

Where we are all Irish and living together on the land, all the people living in a hunting area, if they have any complaint about the members of the hunt, will go to the Master of the Hunt and say: "Will you come down and look at the damage that has been done?" Nobody will be more incensed or sympathetic if real damage has been done than the Master of the Hunt. He will give an undertaking that whatever damage was done will be repaired and he will remonstrate with the members of the hunt, at the next meet, because of the foolishness of certain followers who interfered with a man's crops or so rode in the hunt as to injure his property, and all parties will find out a satisfactory procedure.

It is not impossible that a situation could arise in rural Ireland in which a man might legitimately say to a hunt, if they persistently act unreasonably: "Very well, then, I shall not let you hunt over my land any more", but it would be an extremely unusual sanction for an Irish owner of land to take against his own neighbour. However, it could happen and it could happen in circumstances in which the Minister for Lands or the Land Commission should not intervene.

It is important to recognise that you will occasionally get an old crank of a fellow who will unreasonably assert his rights but we should not legislate to deal with one old crank. It takes all sorts to make a world. One of the joys of the society in which we live is that it is a free society. Unless a person's crankiness carries them to the point of trespassing on their neighbour's rights, an individual in this country has a right to be a crank: he can be a great old nuisance of a crank. If he is one of our own, we have a habit of saying that he is a head case or that he may get sensible after a while.

However, when we get a head case arriving from the other end of the earth—we shall not particularise any country—and setting up in the middle of a peaceful community who are living in good friendship with one another and he starts erecting barbed wire entanglements and forbidding all and sundry to do as they have been doing for generations, whether it is reasonable or whether it is unreasonable it will give rise to malaise and ill-feeling in the neighbourhood, which is a social disaster for that particular part of the country. God knows, one would think the people coming here would have the good sense to take advice before they resorted to extreme courses of action.

In the case mentioned by Deputy Cosgrave, if the gentleman concerned had gone to a solicitor or to any prudent adviser in the neighbourhood —either the Protestant rector or the parish priest—and asked advice he would have been told that the sensible thing to do would be to see the Master of the Hunt, to point out the damage and to ask him to see that it would not be done again but, of all things, not to get tough unless he was in a position to demonstrate that he had exhausted every reasonable method of persuasion to protect his reasonable interest. That is the danger. It is only one of the many dangers of facilitating the acquisition of agricultural land by non-nationals.

I do not want to go down through a whole litany of the social dangers that are involved but I do recall with admiration—Deputy Flanagan referred to it already in this House—the late Herr Reifenscheidt, a distinguished Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in this country, during his period as Ambassador here, going home to Germany and, at a public function there, saying he wanted to tell his fellow-countrymen that they were most welcome in Ireland if they came for the purpose of promoting industry or for the purpose of acquiring a residence with suitable pleasure grounds around it but, in the special circumstances obtaining in Ireland, he would advise them not to come here for the purpose of securing agricultural land. I wish to God we had as far sighted Ambassadors from every country located here in Ireland as was the late Herr Reifenscheidt who had the courage to give that advice while he was Ambassador here.

The trouble about this kind of question referred to by Deputy Cosgrave is that it excites a great deal of ill-will and ill-feeling possibly against other individuals who may be doing all in their power to act in a responsible and neighbourly way. I feel there is a good deal to be said for Deputy Hogan's proposal and that is, without being too rigid and making an absolute prohibition on the acquisition of agricultural land by anybody other than an Irish national, to say: "If anybody sets in motion the machinery for disposing of agricultural land to a non-national he ought to know that the law requires him to seek a special licence from the Land Commission to effect the transfer to a non-national." That sets in motion the machinery of this subsection and requires the Land Commission, if it is satisfied that the land could suitably be used for the general purposes of the Land Commission, to withhold consent for its transfer to a non-national. It would then be for the Land Commission to determine whether, at that time of withholding sanction, it is expedient for it to initiate acquisition proceedings —to inspect the land itself.

The amendment has much to commend it. I think it prudently reinforces the general sense of the Oireachtas and that is that this wholesale acquisition of land by foreigners ought to stop. I commend it strongly to the Minister. I cannot see how it would embarrass him or embarrass the Land Commission and it would be a material reinforcement of the amendment which he so belatedly offered to the House, and which the House very gladly accepted, three years after it should have been enacted.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The last words of Deputy Dillon, speaking in favour of Deputy Hogan's amendment, made reference to the fact that three years ago—not this year or last year—the Fine Gael Party took a very serious view of the purchase of agricultural land in this country by aliens. Not alone did they take a serious view but they introduced a Bill to cope with the situation. Some months after the first debates on this Bill, without a single word from the Minister, this amendment was born in the town of Loughrea, the announcement being made by the then Minister for Justice, now the Minister for Agriculture. This belated amendment is something on which the Minister has not satisfied the House by any reference or statement whatever. The Minister should avail himself of this opportunity to tell the House what the practice in future is to be in so far as the purchase of lands by aliens is concerned.

Deputy Hogan is submitting an amendment which has been recommended by all Deputies who spoke after him and it is one which I feel will strengthen the hand of the Land Commission in dealing with this problem of the purchase of land by aliens. May I say for the record that it is not since these discussions took place that the Fine Gael Party became interested in this problem which this amendment now endeavours to rectify? May I say that this Land Bill, when it is passed, will not be the last occasion on which the Fine Gael Party will be heard in regard to the purchase of land by aliens? Even if the Minister does not accept this amendment, we propose as a Party to keep this matter under constant review because we have been reinforced in our view by the cases to which Deputy Dillon has referred and the case Deputy Cosgrave mentioned today.

I venture to say that there is not one of us who could not give further examples. I know of a case in my constituency where an extensive farmer signed a contract to sell his land to an alien and when he went home to his house in the village of Kinnitty and told his wife and family what he was doing, they went into hysterics. The result was that he went back to his solicitor and asked to be released from the contract, which he had signed without considering the matter fully, for the sale to a German. Now the German has the audacity to say he will not release this Offaly farmer from the contract and the Land Commission have been asked to interest themselves——

Mr. Moran

Surely that has nothing to do with the amendment?

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes: when this Bill is passed, as it will be we hope before night, this amendment, if it is accepted by the Minister, will help to solve the problem that has arisen on the Kildare-Wicklow borders to which Deputy Cosgrave so ably referred and also the problem of the Kinnitty farmer who is now being put on the roadside by a German and which will not happen as long as I represent——

An Ceann Comhairle

This amendment is in general terms and——

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I agree. This amendment is in general terms and covers all individual cases.

An Ceann Comhairle

Individual cases may not be discussed on it.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Agreed. If we were to discuss individual cases, we would be here until this night 12 months, bearing in mind that this is the 1963 Land Bill which is being passed on the very threshold of 1965. I want to make this position very clear. We are not satisfied with the belated action on the part of the Government in relation to the purchase of land by aliens. I venture to say that the Minister's amendment has been put down against his personal wishes because it was the Minister for Agriculture who announced this in Loughrea. I challenge the Minister—and it is only right that on such an important matter he should be challenged—to come into the open and let us know what is to happen in the future with regard to the purchase of land by aliens. Will he admit that his amendment is closing the stable door when the horse has gone?

Deputy Dillon, not today or yesterday, but three years ago warned the Government of the serious consequences flowing from the purchase of land by foreigners. At that time the Minister for Lands said it was not a matter of urgency, not a grave problem and did not call for any action on his part. But when the Galway by-election was taking place, they said at the convention: "This is worth a shot; there might be a vote or two in this", but it backfired on them. They endeavoured to take the sting out of the bad sections and they said: "We will bring in a section making it difficult for aliens to purchase land", knowing that a number of holdings in Galway had been purchased by aliens and also on the borders of Galway to the north, south and east. The Minister now has an opportunity of giving the House his opinions, with particular reference to the speech of the Minister for Agriculture outside the House, and also to the Minister's silence in this House and outside it in regard to this matter and to let us know if it is not a fact that this measure of his Party is a case of too little and too late.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): When I raised this matter some time last May or June, the Minister was completely opposed to it on the ground that it was an interference with the relationship between a solicitor and his client. As far as I remember that was one of the reasons given, that it was a breach of professional confidence. It was a completely childish reason. The second reason was equally childish, that is, that I had not drafted my proposal properly. I am not a Parliamentary draftsman and I do not purport to be an expert in putting these things into the accepted jargon, but the purpose is clear and simple, and without specifically saying that an alien may not buy land, it is indirectly saying that when an alien buys land, before he is vested, he will get the consent of the Land Commission and it will be seen that there is no demand locally for the land, no local congestion problem.

It is clear that from the beginning, for some reason I do not know, the Minister has had objections to any restrictive measures of this nature. It is amongst the nine categories mentioned here of people who are qualified to have land vested in them and he has in fact introduced a tenth category, and by regulation may create a new category. That in itself makes me look askance at it and at his general attitude to this question, as well as his former attitude. It required the Minister for Agriculture to make a pronouncement at a conference in Loughrea so that this attitude adopted by the Minister would be reconsidered and that certain measures would be taken to control the purchase of land by aliens. It is odd that that pronouncement did not come from the Minister.

This section states that the Land Commission can give exemption to non-qualified persons to purchase land or have it vested in them. It does not state in what conditions. There is merely a reference to any conditions attached to the consent having been complied with. The conditions are completely unspecified. The Minister says we should not interfere with the working of the Land Commission— that we are interfering with their autonomy. We have been defending the autonomy of the Land Commissioners all through this Bill, particularly on section 27, in the interests of the plain people of Ireland. The Minister has been asking for certain powers of inspection, primarily emanating from himself, in the interest of expedition. But when we come to ask that the discretionary powers of the Land Commission be removed and that nobody's land be purchased by aliens or a vesting order made until it is inspected, we find suddenly he is most solicitous for maintaining the discretionary powers and the autonomy of the Lay Commissioners. It is a bivalent attitude we find hard to understand.

We are anxious to preserve the existing powers vested in the Land Commissioners when we are speaking about Irish citizens, but when we speak about aliens purchasing land, we have no hesitation in limiting their powers and no hesitation in trying to seek by legal means to make it obligatory and mandatory on them that no such purchase should be completed without preliminary inspection to see if the land is wanted by our own people. I am surprised that the members of the Labour Party did not come vigorously to our assistance on this amendment. I cannot see anything wrong with it. I do not think anybody could see anything wrong with it and I do not think the electorate of Roscommon and East Galway saw anything wrong with it.

Mr. Tully

There is nothing wrong in it but I cannot see any use in it.

Amendment put and declared lost.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 16:

In page 22—

(a) to insert "a certificate by the person in whom the interest is purported to be vested" after "contains" in line 55,

(b) to delete "a certificate certifying an appropriate consent having" in lines 56 and 57 and to substitute "that an appropriate consent has", and

in page 23—

(c) to delete "certifying compliance therewith" in lines 1 and 2 and to substitute "that they have been complied with", and

(d) to delete "a certificate by the person in whom the interest is purported to be vested" in lines 3 and 4 and "a certificate" in line 11 and in line 16.

This is purely a drafting amendment. Subsection (3) deals generally with the various types of certificate, one of which must be given in relation to a transaction if it is to be regarded as having passed the test imposed by this section. The text of the subsection is, however, open to the possible criticism that it does not clearly say by whom the certificate should be given. To avoid any confusion on this issue, the amendment provides that in each of the different cases the certificate shall be given by the person in whom the interest is purported to be vested. In this way, the scope for evasion should be minimised and should be put in greater jeopardy.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 17:

In page 23, line 25, to delete "who" and to insert "and that he" before "has".

Again, this is a drafting amendment. It needs to be made clear that the Land Commission can have opinion on two points: (1) that a man is unqualified, and (2) that he is in occupation. This amendment is to enable us to deal with a very fine point of interpretation. When it comes to the drafting of a requisition under subsection (4) to elicit information from a person suspected of evading the control machinery it will need to be quite clear that the Land Commission are entitled to assert that in their opinion he is both an unqualified person and a person in occupation of the land. The system of requisition would be frustrated if he could refuse to answer until they proved him to be an unqualified person.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 18:

In page 23, line 42, to delete "company" and substitute "body corporate".

This is also a drafting amendment. It is purely a drafting point. The word "company" in line 42 is out of harmony with the rest of the text and the phrase "body corporate" is clearly more appropriate.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill recommitted in respect of amendments Nos. 19 and 20.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 19:

In page 24, to delete lines 3, 4 and 5 and substitute as follows:

"misleading—

(i) in connection with an application for a certificate under paragraph (iii) or (ix) of the definition of `qualified person' contained in subsection (1) of this section,

(ii) in connection with an application for a consent under subsection (2) of this section,

(iii) in a certificate under subsection (3) of this section, or

(iv) in reply to a requisition under this section, or,".

This is simply another drafting point. There are various ways in which a person might supply "false or misleading" information for the purpose of defeating this section and I want to make sure—by spelling them out singly—that each of them is a punishable offence.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 20:

In page 24, line 17, to delete "one" and substitute "ten".

On the Committee Stage, I got the impression that the House was uncertain as to whether the penalties for illegal evasion were heavy enough, bearing in mind the wealthy persons and the valuable properties which in some cases might be involved. I do not think there is going to be any great problem because I expect the section to be quite effective in frightening off any unqualified persons who would be tempted to occupy land illegally. However, to meet this point, I am now proposing a maximum fine of £10,000 on conviction on indictment. If any Deputy thinks this penalty heavy, I would ask him to bear in mind that it is the maximum and could only attach to persons and bodies corporate who deliberately enter into a criminal scheme to defeat an important and much publicised part of this Bill.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

This would refer to aliens who would make an effort to defraud the Revenue. I feel it is desirable and necessary. We certainly have no objection to it. I hope it will have the desired effect.

Mr. Tully

I think it is an excellent idea to include it. As I said on the previous Stage, it is possible that people prepared to pay anything from £40,000 to £70,000 would not be frightened away by a fine of £1,000. I think the Minister has taken the right action in saying £10,000 instead of £1,000. Imprisonment was also mentioned. We know how hard it is to get some of those administering justice to impose imprisonment, particularly for civil offences. For that reason, I believe this is the way in which these people can be stopped.

Mr. Moran

This seems to be agreed. Deputies will appreciate that for any of these specified offences under this section, along with the £10,000 fine, they can get imprisonment for three years or both.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

With hard labour, I presume.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 reported and agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 24, to insert the following subsection between lines 27 and 28:

"(8) (a) In a prosecution for an offence under this section relating to a certificate under subsection (3) of this section, it shall be presumed, until the contrary is shown by the defendant—

(i) if the certificate is pursuant to subparagraph (i) of paragraph (a) of that subsection and the statement is with respect to the giving of an appropriate consent —that such a consent was not given,

(ii) if the certificate is pursuant to subparagraph (ii) of that paragraph—that the person who became entitled to the entire beneficial interest in the interest (or, where more than one person became entitled to a beneficial interest therein, each of them) was not a qualified person by reference to the category specified for him,

(iii) if the certificate is pursuant to subparagraph (iii) of that paragraph—that the instrument was not consequent upon a contract entered into before the passing of this Act, and

(iv) if the certificate is pursuant to subparagraph (iv) of that paragraph—that the case was not within subparagraph (iii) of paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of this section.

(b) In a prosecution for an offence under this section relating to a disclosure required by subsection (5) of this section, it shall be presumed, until the contrary is shown by the defendant, that the transferee was not a qualified person.

(c) In a prosecution for an offence under this section relating to a requisition under subsection (4) of this section, evidence that the Land Commission were of the opinion specified in that subsection may be given by production of a certificate under the seal of the Land Commission certifying that they were of that opinion".

The purpose of this amendment, briefly, is to provide that where a person is charged with a criminal offence under this section, he shall in certain limited respects be obliged to clear himself by producing the positive proofs which would be well within his knowledge and competence.

Deputies will be aware that it can often be almost impossibly difficult to prove a negative. For example, if it were suspected that a man had been born in a remote village in some distant country, it might well prove impracticable, even through diplomatic channels, to obtain acceptable proof of his origin, and then, especially with such a thing as dual citizenship, it would be impossible to aver with absolute certainty that he had never in his lifetime acquired Irish citizenship. The defendant would win his case not by proving his innocence but merely by remaining silent.

Similarly, if a person certified that he had got the Land Commission consent to purchase land and it was later suspected that his certificate was false, the problem of proving a negative would again arise. There are many officers of senior and middle rank authorised to sign letters on behalf of the Land Commission and the list changes from time to time. After the lapse of a few years, it would become very difficult to prove conclusively that no one of them had ever issued a letter of consent in a particular case. The only solution to this problem is that if the defendant claims to have a consent, he must be prepared to produce it for scrutiny by the court.

I am satisfied that this amendment is necessary if we are to have effective prosecutions against offenders. Innocent persons will not be troubled by this provision because they will normally produce the documentary evidence of their innocence before matters reach the stage of prosecution at all.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 22:

In page 24, line 40, to delete "included" and substitute "contained".

This is purely a drafting point. The word "included" in line 40 is not quite in harmony with the word "contains" in page 22, line 55. As the two are rather closely linked by the reference back from subsection (8) to subsection (3) it seems safer to use the word "contained" in the later reference, to keep them in conformity.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

This is just an improvement in drafting?

Mr. Moran

That is all.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Moran

I move amendment No. 23:—

In page 24, to insert the following subsections (in section 45) between lines 48 and 49:

"(11) The provisions of this section providing for restriction on vesting of interests in land to which this section applies shall be deemed to be included in the restrictive provisions to which subsection (1) of section 38 of the Registration of Title Act, 1891, and subsection (1) of section 59 of the Registration of Title Act, 1964, apply.

(12) Every regulation made under paragraph (x) of the definition of `qualified person' contained in subsection (1) of this section shall be laid before Dáil Éireann as soon as may be after it is made."

I move this amendment because I gave an undertaking to the House on Committee Stage to deal with this matter. Deputies will see that the amendment covers two distinct matters. The first of these is purely a matter of establishing a link between this Bill and the Registration of Title Acts. The purpose is to make it perfectly clear that the Registrar in the Land Registry may refuse to register a transfer which does not meet the requirements of this section, even though in all other respects it is apparently a valid transfer and ought ordinarily to be accepted. This amendment also ensures that the prohibition on sale to a non-national is effective, even though it is not actually recorded on the relevant folio in the Land Registry.

The second part of the amendment accords with the wishes of the House as expressed in the Committee Stage debate. It is proposed that if the Minister for Lands makes a regulation adding any new category of "qualified person" to the list in subsection (1), he must table it in the House.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Minister has not gone to any great pains to explain the real purpose of the amendment. It is not clear. Perhaps the Minister would assist the House by explaining the matter more clearly, if that is possible? It appears to be intended to add to section 38 a further restriction which is to be noted by the Land Registry on the Register. The effect this will have is not clear. Perhaps the Minister will explain what the position will be?

The amendment also provides that regulations made under the section shall be laid before Dáil Éireann. That is a very desirable provision. Regulations of this kind should definitely be tabled in the House. In that way, the regulations come under public notice. The Department of Lands, in particular, is an offender in that it appears that most of the work seems to be carried out behind closed doors and few, if any, of their rules, orders or regulations are laid before the Oireachtas. Orders, rules and regulations covered by this section should be subject to the condition that they must be laid before each House of the Oireachtas, with the usual power of annulment within 21 days of being tabled.

It is good from the point of view of the general public that such regulations should be tabled. It is a source of valuable information and would help to keep Members of the Dáil and Seanad up to date so far as the activities of the Department of Lands under this section are concerned. Therefore, I have no objection to that part of the amendment but I repeat that the amendment is not as clear as one would like it to be. Perhaps the Minister will further explain the effect of the proposal to add to section 38 a further restriction which has to be noted by the Land Registry on the Register? That is not clear. Perhaps he would indicate what effect, in his opinion, it will have?

An Ceann Comhairle

This, of course, is Report Stage.

Mr. Dillon

Is the Minister not finishing?

An Ceann Comhairle

When the Minister speaks, he concludes, on Report Stage.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Yes.

Mr. Moran

I thought I did make clear the purpose of the first part of this amendment to section 45. It is to establish a link between this Bill and this section and the Registration of Title Acts, and to make clear the position down in the Land Registry. It is to make it clear that the Registrar in the Land Registry may refuse to register a transfer which does not meet the requirement of this section although, on the face of it, at least, it has been suggested, he could register it and ignore the provisions of this section. It is to remove any doubt that, whatever kind of documents are produced to him there, he cannot ignore this section and that where this question of the non-national comes in in registered land, even though documents are signed and held, allegedly, for a purpose, not disclosed, no matter whose name is on the folio, the title to that land will not pass if this section is ignored dealing with aliens. That is the purpose of the first part of the amendment. The second part deals, as the Deputy has said, with the laying of regulations on the table of the House. That is to meet a point made on Committee Stage.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill, as amended, received for final consideration.

Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass."

Mr. Dillon

We have a word to say on the Fifth Stage of this Bill. There are certain aspects of it on which we deem it expedient to dwell and I think it right to give you notice now, Sir, that on this Stage of the Bill we propose to divide the House because we believe that very great matters of principle are involved. Before coming to the matters of major principle, I direct the attention of the House to one feature which I think has been lost sight of by many people who have been concerned—I think we will ring the bell. I should like to get some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies in.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is the Deputy asking for a House?

Mr. Dillon

Yes; it does them good to hear the truth.

Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted and 20 Members being present.

Mr. Dillon

One of the features of this Bill which has been overlooked is that we are creating under this section 7 for the first time in the history of the land code two separate classes of annuitants, one of whom have the benefit of the 1933 Land Act, whereunder their annuity is halved, and another category who will be required to pay 100 per cent of the economic price of the holding.

There can be powerful arguments made that everybody should pay the full price of his holding, that there is no valid reason why anybody should get land at half its value simply because he buys it through the Land Commission. However, it seems to me to be an entirely new and objectionable principle that we should establish two classes of annuitant, one of whom will pay 100 per cent of the purchase price of the holding and another only 50 per cent.

In the course of our discussion on the earlier Stages of this Bill, we have pointed out the very grave danger of providing that a civil servant should be a Lay Commissioner. I want to make it perfectly clear that I, in common with most other persons in the public life of this country who have borne the responsibility of being a Minister, have learned the inestimable value to our community of the Civil Service of this State. We often hear uninformed and captious criticism of public servants with the suggestion that they fall far short of what the public are entitled to expect of them. I gladly testify to the fact that one of the greatest assets this public has is the splendid tradition and the wholly admirable personnel of the public service. But in common with all the most distinguished members of that service, I take the view that civil servants are servants of the people and must never be constituted their masters. In my experience, that is the view of every responsible member of the Civil Service in this country.

Yet in section 8 of this Bill we propose that in his capacity as a Lay Commissioner the Secretary of the Department of Lands, a civil servant, shall have the power to summon witnesses to attend before him, to examine these witness on oath and to require any such witness to produce to him any document in his power or control. If the Secretary of the Department of Lands, acting in his capacity as a Lay Commissioner, signs this summons under subsection (4) (a) of section 8 if any person so summoned to appear before the Lay Commissioners makes default in attending, or

(b) being in attendance as a witness at such a hearing refuses to take an oath legally required by the Lay Commissioners to be taken, or to produce any document in his power or control legally required by the Lay Commissioners to be produced by him, or to answer any question to which a Lay Commissioner may legally require an answer, or

(c) does any other thing which would, if the Lay Commissioners were a court of law having power to commit for contempt of court, be contempt of such court,

the Lay Commissioners may certify the offence of that person under the common seal of the Land Commission to the High Court and the High Court may, after such inquiry as it thinks proper to make, punish or take steps for the punishment of that person in like manner as if he had been guilty of contempt of the High Court.

That is a section in the same Bill where the Minister has been claiming that the Lay Commissioners are most inappropriately described as persons with quasi-judicial status. I am sure the Minister will agree with me that Land Commissioners who have the power to summon a witness and to require him to attend to answer any question which the Commissioners are legally entitled to ask and who can take action against such witness in the event of his doing any other thing which would, if the Lay Commissioners were a court of law having power to commit for contempt of court, be contempt of such court, if their status is not that of judges it is mighty near it and short of giving them the power to commit a man indefinitely for contempt of court, a condemnation from which there is no appeal, we have given them every power that a judge could seek.

I am prepared to say that in the effort to find a peaceful solution of the complicated tangle of land tenure in this country, we forged this unprecedented instrument in respect of the Lay Commissioners and quite deliberately gave them a quasi-judicial status, because we had this incredibly difficult problem of dispossessing the whole landlord class and thus at one stroke sweeping away all existing systems of security of land tenure that operated up to 1885 and subsequently up to 1923 and substituting for it a more enduring system of fixity of tenure which we wove into the tapestry of life in rural Ireland. For that extremely complex purpose, we established that unprecedented body, the Lay Commissioners and the Land Commission, and in respect of their reserved function, we gave them this very special status. All that I think was justified; experience has proved us to have been right. The genius of our device has commanded international admiration.

Into that, we now insert the proposition that somebody who is a civil servant, who, far from being in a judicial status is the servant of everybody and ought to glory in that status, is now to be put into the position in which he can summon any citizen, request him to answer any questions and cite him for contempt if his attitude and answers do not correspond to what the civil servant thinks appropriate in the circumstances. Is there any Deputy who believes that such duties, obligations or powers should be conferred upon a civil servant? Does any Deputy believe that there is not a fundamental contradiction of the whole tradition and attitude of the Civil Service in conferring on them a right appropriate to judge vis-à-vis a litigant? It is crazy. Every person of experience who has been concerned for the administration of land law since 1881, with one exception, has declared this to be outrageous.

There is weighty support for the view that if it were tested constitutionally, it would be found that the Constitution prohibits it. It is notorious that the only individual to advocate it was a man who had spent his life in the Civil Service and had been so far carried away by his passionate devotion to that form of public service that he had developed that relatively common symptom of the high-minded civil servant believing that the courts were an unreasonable brake on the efficiency of the Executive.

In our judgment this arrangement is thoroughly unsound. If the Minister persists in it he may create the gravest difficulties, because if it were ever challenged and the High Court or Supreme Court held it to be unconstitutional a vast area of settlement matters would be thrown back into the melting pot with endless litigation possible by people seeking damages against the Land Commission for the improper division of land, litigation which this House might be incapable of curing retrospectively.

Why in the name of all that is sensible the Minister for Lands should set his heart on this extraordinary arrangement, God knows. There are dozens of men at present in the Land Commission service who would function most admirably as Land Commissioners, none more so than the present secretary of the Department, but there is not in existence any man or woman who can function satisfactorily in a dual capacity. Why we do not make the secretary of the Department of Lands a Land Commissioner and then go through the whole Department, find whatever official he wants and make him secretary, is a complete mystery to me. The funny part of it is that from the earliest stages of the debate the Minister has never produced any indication of why he believes in it except to say that the late Mr. Deegan said so; he left him a memorandum.

I always believed that the quintessence of sane parliamentary procedure is that a question is debated and if it transpires that one side hold that it is a matter of principle and the other side hold it as a matter of principle but in the opposite sense, then we take to the lobbies and settle it and whichever side prevails, that thereafter is the law. But if the House in debating an issue conclude that one side hold it is merely a matter of expediency and the other side hold it to be a matter of fundamental principle, every effort is made to find a via media which would avoid violating the deeply-held conviction of a minority while substantially achieving the purpose of expediency that the majority seek to serve.

I have suggested to the House on more than one occasion that the real test of a democracy is not the majority which the Government is in a position to command but the solicitude manifested by a Government, supported by no matter how great a majority, to protect the fundamental beliefs of the minority. That is not the situation in this case. The Government party are in a minority in the House, depending for survival on a few Independent votes. It is a coalition between the Fianna Fáil Party and a few Independents. How much more should a Government in that position be solicitous to ensure that it will not use its coalition materials to enforce upon half of the House a gross violation of what appears to them to be a fundamental matter on no better grounds than that they believe it will expedite the work the Government are charged to do?

Major de Valera

Does the Deputy consider it a matter of principle?

Mr. Dillon

I regard it as a matter of principle.

Major de Valera

Would the Deputy consider it a matter of principle if he had power to legislate?

Mr. Dillon

I said so most emphatically in regard to section 27. I think it is wrong to have the Secretary of the Land Commission a Lay Commissioner. I believe it is unconstitutional in its result and I believe it should never be done. We put down an amendment prohibiting it. We stated that in no circumstances should the Secretary of the Department of Lands be a Lay Commissioner. I would certainly legislate to change that. This officer should not be at one and the same time a servant of the Minister for Lands and a Lay Commissioner.

Major de Valera

The point is, the Deputy believes that this puts such a degree of uncertainty into the law that in successive Governments it would not be workable.

Mr. Dillon

The thing I am trying to warn the Minister about is that he is doing something unconstitutional. The danger is if he proceeds on this basis and a case is brought by some individual to the High Court on the ground that the present Secretary of the Department of Lands has, at the Minister's instance, ordered the divisional inspector to inspect land with a view to acquisition and his presence on the Land Commission Court determines the ultimate question of acquisition which is still a reserved function under the law, the court will regard the proceedings as null and void. They would do so with all the results which would flow from such a decision. Therefore, I am entirely at a loss when I recapitulate the powers envisaged by section 8, which seem to me so ludicrously inappropriate for a civil servant. I say this because of the advice which I have in my possession and which I offered to the Minister, which is the experience of ex-Lay Commissioners of the Land Commission.

It is a mystery to me why the Minister wants to proceed with this. The implication is that the only one person who is fit to be a Secretary of the Land Commission is a Lay Commissioner. If the Minister makes the Secretary of the Department of Lands a Lay Commissioner, there are dozens of officers in that Department who would do the job of Secretary with the highest degree of efficiency. I most urgently beg all Deputies, who have any sense of the gravity of such matters, to study the terms of section 8 and ask themselves if they think it is suitable, with our tradition and our whole constitutional set-up, that such powers should be given vis-à-vis the Secretary of the Department of Lands.

I now come to the gravest evil inherent in this Bill, that is, section 27. I want to warn the House that section 27 is pregnant with awful danger to this country. Mind you, there are, I am convinced, a number of Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party who agree with me. I make no apology for recalling to the House the illustration to which I directed their attention on a previous occasion. It appeared in the Irish Times of 8th December and was reproduced from a British periodical called, I think, The Sphere, in 1880. It illustrated an evicted farmer standing on the roadside with his wife and two children looking back at his home. It portrayed a number of bailiffs and members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who were in the course of clearing up the place, having evicted the tenant.

Most Deputies would say that that illustration brings to them something belonging to the remote history of this country, outside the ken of any human being in Irish society today. Some of them would remember with astonishment that that picture was portraying the situation as it then was, that it was meant to illustrate an incident which was then taking place in 1880. I know that to some of the younger members of this House 1880 seems a very remote time. It does not so seem to me because I have heard, as many other Deputies have heard, their own fathers and mothers talking of it as if it were yesterday. It is part of their experience.

This is so grave a matter that I want to recall to Deputies what that realisation conjures up in the memory of our people. I knew people who saw the footmen running before the landlord's carriage driving into the town of Ballaghaderreen. They tossed the ass and cart into the ditch rather than ask it to get out of the way. That was their function. I knew men who stood in the square of Ballaghaderreen and if they did not remove their hats when the landlord's agent entered the town and remain uncovered until the bailiff gave the signal that he had entered the rent office, they would be evicted when they went up to pay their rent. I personally knew people of whom that was true.

The thing I want to bring home to the House is that in land settlement in Ireland, the Land Commission and the old Congested Districts Board proceeded slowly to lay those ghosts. I would ask Deputies to remember that the passionate feelings born of this experience began a whole dynamic outrage. You had murdered bailiffs; you had murdered landlords; you had carding, which is as savage a procedure as it is possible to think of, associated with bailiffs and emergency men in rural Ireland in the indescribable horror associated with the word "eviction". I knew, and many Deputies who know the recent history of this country also knew, the struggle it was to put an end to that violence, to bring all that within control and to lay these evils without resort to violence.

This was achieved, not in one year or ten years. It took years to wean the people away from the expedient of violent reaction to the kind of injustice illustrated by that picture which I describe. It was done and the whole evolution of land tenure in this country began with the Gladstone Land Act of 1885. Remember the Act of 1881 only removed the grosser laws of eviction. It was in 1885 that the great changes began but it was not until 1909 that compulsory powers were taken to deal with the real recalcitrant landlords because for 25 years they had continued to usurp their notorious rights.

The Birrell Act of 1909 was the first one that conferred on the Land Commission compulsory powers. Then, on the establishment of the State, the Hogan Land Act put an end to the whole landlord system. That evolution removed from rural Ireland the whole horror of eviction; the whole concept began to die and the thought that anyone with an interest would interfere with one's security of tenure was gradually obliterated from the people's minds and they came to look upon the old Congested Districts Board as their friend, and then on the Land Commission, and not only as their friend but as their protector.

How different was the reception of the Land Commission inspector or the CDB inspector from that of the bailiff or the agent. That was a great social revolution in this country and every one of us who sits in this House has seen from time to time irresponsible members amongst us appealing to Ministers for Land to take over the power that used to be the landlord's, to take unto the Minister for Lands for the time being power to point the finger at any particular man's holding and say: "Let that holding be acquired. He is not a suitable tenant." The aphorism employed here by Deputies who do not understand this question is that these people are not using their lands properly.

There never was a landlord in this country, who evicted a tenant, who did not give that excuse. That was always the excuse and, if there was evidence called for, it was pointed out that the rent was in arrear; the tenant would not pay his rent. Nobody got a holding from a landlord unless he accepted it on the basis of a hanging gale; 12 months' rent was always due and any time the landlord or the agent wanted to kick a tenant out, he went and asked for a year's rent; but it was not a year's rent—it was two years. They said he was not a good farmer and he was thrown out.

Deputies have on occasion asked Ministers for Lands to take power to see the land is rightly used and, if there is a farmer who is not using his land properly, to kick him out; and Minister after Minister has said in my hearing in this House during the past 30 years, and for ten years before that: "I have nothing whatever to do with it". That discretion to throw him out on the side of the road was taken away the day we banished the landlord and God forbid it should ever come back to any individual in this country with an interest again. Time and time again I have heard Ministers of my own Government, of the Fianna Fáil Government and of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government upbraided because they would not grasp this nettle firmly and, time and time again, I have commended Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government, as well as of the Government to which I belonged, for their firm refusal to have anything whatever to do with the inspection of the land for its acquisition because all the old experienced officers of the Land Commission said to them: "Do not raise these old ghosts again. If you raise the horrors we laid, God only knows where this whole business will end. The people have accepted the fact that the Land Commissioners have no interest. The people have accepted the fact that nobody can induce them, nobody can coerce them, nobody can corruptly persuade them."

Mark you, we have passed through a number of periods in which there was great difficulty in maintaining the conviction that the Land Commission was being allowed to function as it was designed to function. There was a period in the Thirties when land was being distributed on a basis we found it very difficult to accept and believe represented the unfettered discretion of the Land Commission. I remember the late Deputy Seán Moylan bringing in a Bill, when he was Minister for Lands, to undo a great deal of the work done in the Thirties. Other Deputies will remember that also. They will remember him coming in here to acquire the power to take back from certain individuals land that had been given to them, land on which they had never set their foot from the day the allotment was made; and houses had been built for them in which no one but a crow had ever taken up residence.

We managed to get through that difficult period and to re-establish in the minds of the people the conviction that the Land Commission was incorruptible and independent. I cannot understand how any man born, and reared, and spending his professional life in the centre of the County Mayo, could willingly call all that precious structure in question and strike at its very foundations. It is an utter mystery how any man, born and reared, and practising his whole professional life as a solicitor in the heart of County Mayo could ever create a situation in which ordinary people would believe that Deputy Corry would have the right to go out by night and turn his headlights on a neighbour's farm, and inspect it, and go thereafter to the Minister for Lands to get the lands inspected with a view to acquisition.

I put the case again: I ask any Fianna Fáil Deputy on those front benches there if, tomorrow morning, I formed a Government and appointed a Fine Gael Minister for Lands and they themselves saw a member of my Party go out on a winter's night and turn the headlights of his car on to the holding of a stalwart Fianna Fáil supporter, and flash them in the kitchen window, would they not come into this House to protest personally? I know I would and if I thought it happened, I would be the first to join with any Deputy in demanding the resignation of a Minister who claimed such a power.

Now the present Minister for Lands says that is all fantasy, all nonsense. Who imagines any Minister for Lands will use this power the way I suggest it could be used? I say to him: if that is not the purpose, why does he want the power?

Mr. Blowick

Hear, hear.

Mr. Dillon

Why does he want this power? Did anyone answer? The Minister's only answer is he wants it to expedite proceedings. I say to him the universal testimony of every experienced servant of his Department, and I have access only to those who have ceased to serve, is that the root of delay in acquisition proceedings lies in a shortage of inspectors and is very rarely due to inadequacy of supervision in the field. We say to the Minister we will support him in getting any accretion of inspectors he thinks necessary to secure the maximum expedition in the work of the Department of Lands and, if he wants extra senior staff to conduct the kind of surveillance it has been suggested may be necessary from time to time, we will support that. We want to help him to secure the maximum expedition in the discharge of the duties of the Irish Land Commission under the land code from the first Land Act down to the most recent. But let not the Minister pursue his desire for section 27. We are met with the answer: "I want section 27 and I am going to have it." All I can say is that so long as they have their hangers-on and their votes, they can get this power, but I pledge my Party that when we get the chance our first responsibility will be to repeal section 27 of this Bill.

If I were the head of the Government, I would be ashamed to face the House or the people claiming for a Government of which I was a member the detestable prerogative of the landlord and the grabber which it cost so much to rid our people of. Section 27 is the charter of the landlord and the grabber and I warn the Minister—and I know whereof I speak—that if he persists in section 27, he will raise ghosts that he will not be able to lay. I pray God they will never cease to walk until section 27 is stricken from the Statute Book. We will do it because we will be doing what we know to be right, and I believe we will be doing what a considerable number of Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party know to be right, but have not the moral courage to get up now and tell the Minister what they believe. The Minister has stupidly committed himself to this

There is one last aspect on which I want to say a word. The Minister has made the cases that we sought to raise a bogey here on the early stages of the debate on this Bill, that we sought to delude and mislead the people on this issue. I do not believe in rubbing political reverses or successes into one another in this House. When we fight a by-election and the battle is over, very often the less we say the better. We sometimes win and we sometimes lose. Jeering one another over the results is a fruitless occupation. We are all bound by our presence in public life faithfully to accept the verdict of the people, whatever it may be.

If we were concerned to raise bogeys which had no substance, or to raise rumours that had no foundation in truth, in the name of commonsense, why should we go down to the very county which Lord Clanrickarde lived in and owned, to Woodford, Headford, and all the famous battlefields of the Land War, to make this case to the children of the people whose lives were conditioned by an intimate knowledge of the battle about which we were joining issue with the Government? What better testimony could there be of the certainty of our knowledge that in this regard we were right?

I went down myself to put this matter in issue in Portumna where Clanrickarde lived. Our original plan of campaign was launched in Loughrea, the centre of the bitterest evictions that ever took place in Ireland. If it was all moonshine, in what other area in Ireland could I have been more expeditiously and effectively exposed? This was not an issue we suddenly pulled out of the bag on the last Sunday of the campaign. I do not mind admitting there were prudent individuals who said to me: "You are going to a county of small farmers, people who are hungry for land, and you will get no particular reaction if you talk about security of tenure." I said: "Let us not think of this in terms of politics, but in terms of fundamentals. Let us go and make the case we know to be right." The Minister himself and his colleagues came down to meet that case, amply briefed. They challenged it on every platform, argued it before the people, and we know the result.

This is one of the first Land Bills in my experience in this House which has become the subject of acrimonious debate. Most Land Bills might be argued on one detail or another, but with general acceptance on all sides of the purpose of expediting land purchase, re-settlement, and expansion of holdings so far as our resources permitted. We might differ on methods, or means, or devices we sought to employ, but this is one of the first Land Bills I remember discussing since 1933 in which we argued fundamental principles.

What exasperates me is that I am not met on the other side by the deployment of a corresponding principle. If I were met on the other side by a claim that the time had come to reassert the principle that the Government were the landlords of the people, then issue would be joined on which we could part; but I am not. I am told section 27 is the merest administrative device to expedite operations and cut red tape. Those are the grounds on which a democratic Government claim to violate the most fundamental belief in this sphere of legislation relating to land which the principal Opposition Party in this country could hold.

This is not democracy. This is not parliamentary Government. This is insanity. If this be true, I must ask myself: "Can the Minister be mad? Can all his colleagues be mad?" If they are not, I am driven back to the query: why does he want this power? Why is he prepared to fight for it to the end? I believe he wants it for the very reason I believe it to be evil. I believe he wants it as an instrument of political blackmail in rural Ireland. If that is so, it is a shocking thing, a dreadful thing.

There is no doubt whatever that it can be used as a terrible weapon of blackmail, but let those who plan to use it remember that bigger men than they are had the same assumption when our people were very much poorer, very much more vulnerable than they are today. Those who threatened to use it found it broke in their hands: the threat of vengeance by those who had been subjected to that blackmail broke about their heads and nothing but the patient statesmanship of those who established this State saved them from the extermination that an outraged people could very easily have visited on them.

I am not afraid of the ultimate effect of an attempt to proceed to use this section, except in so far as it produces reaction on the individual members of the Fianna Fáil Party, because I do not want to see revisited on this country the kind of hatred and spirit of revenge that the grabber, the landlord, the agent and the bailiff begot in the hearts of our people 80 years ago.

There are other features of the Bill which call for comment, but I shall not comment on them. Section 27 is truly the heart of the matter. If that section were not here, if its proposal to thrust on public servants duties they should not be called on to discharge were not embraced in this Bill, we should not vote against it, but if it were the last vote I was called on to record in an Irish Parliament I would glory in casting it against section 27. If it is the last thing I do in public life in this country, I hope and pray it will be to redeem the promise I now most formally make—on the first available opportunity to expunge this outrage from the Statute Book of Ireland.

Mr. Tully

In view of the fact that the various Parties have agreed that Public Business will be concluded before 12 o'clock tonight, I propose to be very brief in my comments on the Fifth Stage. Section 4 deals with the congested areas, and the only comment I wish to make in that respect is that, because of the section being phrased in such a manner, it is possible for the Minister to declare as congested areas districts which, in fact, were settled by the Land Commission—places like Gibbstown in County Meath, where 50-acre farms were given out many years ago.

They can now be declared congested areas and those people would fall for special treatment while people near them, with much smaller farms, would not be included. I submit the Minister must be very careful about the way this section is enforced. Section 5 deals with the giving of money to people in congested areas to buy farms in the uncongested areas and there will be real fear among the people in the midlands and the east who for many years have been saving up money for the purpose of buying small farms or people who own small farms and wish to increase their holdings by buying other small farms, that they will be priced out of this market by people who will have the use of Government money.

It is unfair that an attempt should be made in this country to differentiate between people who live in one area and those who live in another with regard to the giving of loans. What this provision proposes is to finance people in one area to compete against their brethren in another part of the country. It is a proposal the Minister should have a good look at. It is something I believe must be altered before very long.

Section 7 deals with the matter on which, mainly, we in the Labour Party are opposing this Bill in its final stages. It lays down that when a farm is divided, if a local person receives portion of that farm he will pay the full annuity while a migrant who gets a similar portion will pay only half. If anything were directed towards starting animosity among local farmers this is it. One can picture a situation where a man from the extreme south, or from the west, or from Donegal, comes to Meath to a 45 acre farm. He will be asked to pay only half the annuity while a local man, who has lived on his farm all his life and is in poor circumstances, must pay double the amount.

Not alone is that wrong politically: it is morally wrong as well. It is stupid action without justification. I can assure the Minister it will cause an immense amount of unrest. In an area where migrants have been coming in for many years, we in my part of the country have done all we could to get land for local people but, nevertheless, we have always treated migrants as equals, displayed no animosity towards them. This section will perpetuate any animosity that may arise when migrants come in. It is a bad mistake to include in the Bill a section which endeavours to prove that there are two different races in this country. Of course, there are not.

Section 12 uses a phrase which I submit is rather dangerous. Subsection (2) states:

The power of the Land Commission to withhold their consent under this section shall be so exercised as to prevent the creation or continuance of holdings which, in the opinion of the Land Commission, are not economic holdings.

There is a danger there that the Land Commission will have a right to say that people who may have been willed farms are governed by the phrase "continuance of an uneconomic holding" and that they should not be given the right to get any more, thus putting them into the position of a man who has no land and who will not be allowed to buy an uneconomic holding.

On section 27, I must disagree entirely with the attitude of the Fine Gael Party. I have said it before, and I repeat it, that we believe it was necessary to introduce some system by which the smart people who own land and who are not using it properly —who have not done so for years— must allow the Land Commission to take it over. Any Deputy in the House who has any knowledge of the land problems will not deny that up to now people who have not been properly using their land and who become aware that the Land Commission were interested, sold that land, usually to a non-national. The result was it was not any longer available for acquisition and division.

I do not agree there is any land grabbing involved in it. Neither do I agree this section will raise any type of ghost. Throughout rural Ireland there are many farms which are not being used properly. I am not talking now of the small farms and the people Deputy Dillon referred to who had their land taken from them in 1932, 1933 and 1934. That was a type of land grabbing which would not be tolerated now. The people who have the big farms are the people who got them in a shady manner, who have farms and are holding on to them. It is only right that every assistance should be given to the Land Commission to inspect these farms and, if necessary, take them. If the Land Commission decide that they are farms suitable for acquisition, those people have the right to fight their case in the Land Court, a right which the people referred to by Deputy Dillon had not in 1933 and 1934. The sooner we face up to this the better.

Finally, in regard to section 45, I do not care where it was introduced, but I am glad it has been introduced. Section 45 lays down that in future the Land Commission will have the right to refuse permission to a non-national to purchase land in this country. It lays down certain exceptions. An extraordinary thing is that those exceptions are all exactly the same as those contained in an amendment introduced by the Labour Party in June and which was described by the Minister, though he denied it on Committee Stage, as being rather ridiculous and that we could not stand up to it. The position is that our amendment suggested that non-nationals should be allowed to buy a small amount of park land with a big house, or a small farm on which they were going to start an industry but that they should not be allowed to buy land in any other circumstances. That is almost exactly what is contained in the Minister's amendment.

As far as I am concerned, I welcome that, knowing almost certainly that the Bill will go through if there is a vote here tonight. My Party have agreed that we will vote for that particular section but, because of the other objectionable sections, the Labour Party will vote against the final Stages of the Bill.

Mr. Blowick

This Bill is now about to take its final jump, to face the final hurdle. As regards most of the Bill, the best that can be said of it is that it is harmless. Two parts of it are objectionable, the first of which is section 12 which prohibits a farmer from letting his land or from selling crops off his land because that is what it boils down to. The Minister has given his repeated assurances that such is not the case. We must accept the use of the language in the Bill and the section says very definitely that a farmer shall not let or sublet his land. I am fully agreed that he should not sublet, but letting is a different word and has an entirely different meaning. Any court that examines it shall only decide that a farmer shall not let his lands in conacre or dispose of his crops without the permission of the Land Commission. That is an obnoxious section.

The other obnoxious section is section 27. I have said all that needs to be said on that already. Deputy Tully, an able Deputy, seems to have a completely wrong interpretation of that section. For the benefit of the House, let me say the section is very clear. It does no more and no less than give the Minister power for the first time to send an inspector to inspect any person's land he wishes. It does not assist the relief of congestion in the slightest. I have repeatedly asked the Minister what he wants the power for, in what way it would expedite the relief of congestion. He has carefully avoided answering these two questions. But the answer is simple: it does not help the relief of congestion in the slightest.

Seeing that this is the last time I shall be able to speak on this Bill in the House, as I expect it will go through tonight, I want to say that in 1881 Gladstone, the Prime Minister of England, introduced the first Land Act setting up the Land Commissioners. He gave them that power and did not take that power himself, the power the Minister is now seeking under section 27 of the Bill. Gladstone gave the Commissioners, and the Commissioners only, power to inspect a man's land for the purpose of acquisition. Every Land Act down through the years, under British rule and under our own, very carefully defined that nobody except the Commissioners, sitting after making a judicial decision, shall have the right to inspect or enter a man's property.

The Minister is for the first time breaking away from that and taking all the security of tenure, which that one simple thing implies, from the farmers of this country. I want to be perfectly clear. If I were Minister for Lands again tomorrow morning and I were unscrupulous enough to take advantage of the powers this section confers, I could terrorise every single farmer who did not vote for me. I could release a shower of inspectors on the holdings. Perhaps that is what Fianna Fáil want.

Mr. N. Egan

We do not want it at all

Mr. Blowick

If you do vote for this section tonight, I want to point out that you are starting a land war. If an inspector comes to inspect my land on an order from the Minister—I do not care who the Minister is—I shall meet him with a gun. I shall meet him at the will with a gun. I shall allow an inspector to inspect my land if he comes as a result of a judicial decision by the Commissioners but I shall not allow any upstart politician to send an inspector to my land which I own wholly and entirely. I feel that strongly about it. That is all I have to say on the Bill. While the Bill contains many good points I am in favour of, it reminds me strongly of a viper who is polished all the way until you come to his sting and that is what section 27 is.

Let me repeat for those who may not be aware of it, section 27 does not further the relief of congestion by one iota. It gives the Minister power to terrorise his political opponents at the time of election. There is no use in his coming in here and saying: "I shall not do it". I have asked him in what way will it help the relief of congestion. He has inspectors there already—the Commisioners are there to inspect land as they have always been doing. The Minister has more or less conveyed it, and Deputy Tully says the same, that it is to prevent a man who hears that the Land Commission are about to take over his land from putting that land up for sale. It does no such thing, and we shall see it if the Bill goes through. The one redeeming feature of the whole passage of this Bill is the assurance given by Deputy Dillon that if Fianna Fáil are ever put out of power, one of the first things Deputy Dillon will do is to repeal that section.

Mr. Corry

I listened to Deputy Blowick on this section. Of course the elected representatives of the people are all upstart politicians. Deputy Blowick gave a good example of the ruling of this country, that power is to be in the hands of permanent civil servants. The Minister has to come in here, like Deputy Blowick had to come in, and answer questions as to why this or that estate was not divided, without having any power whatever or anything to do with it. That is the picture and if Deputy Blowick wants to know how that picture works, no man can tell him better than I. I wonder what official went down to inspect the 400/ 500 acres at Finnure during Deputy Blowick's régime. Questions were asked in this House, not by him, but by members of the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party in connection with the division of that holding. The holding was bought by an Englishman for £7,000. It was sold afterwards to a cattle dealer for £17,000. He, in turn, sold it to a German for over £30,000. The Land Commission are now taking up that holding. Deputy Blowick's inaction in that case has cost this country and the unfortunate people who will now go into that divided holding the difference between £30,000 odd and £7,000.

Deputy Blowick also dealt with the Flower estate of Castlemary, Cloyne, 1,000 acres. Under Deputy Blowick's régime, he thought the proper amount to take from that 1,000 acres for division was 15½ acres. Let us see how this thing worked out. May God forbid, as far as our small holders are concerned, that Deputy Blowick should ever again get the opportunity of muddling as he did during that period.

We have to approach this matter in a sensible way. When we talk of land in conacre, the usual vision is of the poor young fellow who comes along and takes 12 or 13 acres. I would remind this House that one conacre gentleman, living in Africa, sold wheat grown on conacre land and got a cheque for £27,000 for that wheat from Mr. Peter Odlum. What kind of conacre land was that, under which that condition of affairs prevailed? What condition of conacre allows a gentleman who is producing cement blocks in Cork to have 600 acres in County Tipperary under wheat? What kind of conacre is that? Those are the things that we are brought face to face with. Only last week, another one of those merchants dropped into my constituency and picked up 280 acres of land.

There is only sufficient land in this country, if there is sufficient, for the people working on it—the small farmers, the farmers' sons and the workers. Let us proceed according to that principle and let the gentlemen who have made fortunes in industry and who want to hide their income by buying land and pretending to lose money on it get some other outlet for ducking the income tax inspector. Let us look at the matter in that way and look at it sensibly and then we shall have a completely different attitude and programme. I am prepared at any time to have those things straightened out. It is time they were straightened out. Consider a person living in Britain who holds 1,000 acres of land here whilst, all around that holding, there are men with 10, 15 and 20 acres trying to rear a family. It is time that kind of thing were ended. It is time that not alone this Party but every Party in the House made up their minds to end it. Those are the facts and those are the conditions. I do not want to delay business in this House but I could not sit here patiently and listen to Deputy Blowick's harangue on section 27 and on the taking of land for conacre, and so on, without letting him know the position under his régime and what happened.

Mr. Blowick

It is about time you wakened up, anyhow, after your 32 years here.

Mr. Corry

I tried to wake you up, but you were dead all the time.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

One thing I have to do is to place on record congratulations to Deputy Corry for bravery. He appears to be the only Fianna Fáil Deputy who has expressed any kind of opinion, for or against, in connection with the Land Bill. I do not suppose a Bill ever passed through this House that was treated with the same silent contempt as this Land Bill was treated by Fianna Fáil. The only speaker we heard offer an opinion was the Minister—and he remained silent on everything critical or controversial. The only Fianna Fáil Deputy who offered an opinion—be it good or bad —was Deputy Corry. We are now reaching the closing stages of the Land Bill. There are sections in the Bill which cannot be described as other than good and there are sections in it which are disastrous.

I feel that the Fianna Fáil Party have been unfair, unreasonable and uncharitable in their criticism of the Opposition's action in regard to this Bill. We have been accused, during the Roscommon and Galway by-elections, of deliberately obstructing the passage of this Bill in the House. We have been accused of talking the Bill out and of deliberately obstructing the Government in their efforts to relieve congestion. It is not the duty of any opposition to allow legislation to pass without putting it to the closest possible test of examination. In our role as the Opposition for the time being, the Land Bill was critically examined by Fine Gael so much so that, when this Bill was first put into print, I addressed, on 24th October, 1963, the following letter to the following persons:

I am sending you attached herewith a copy of the Land Bill, 1963. I would be deeply grateful to have your views and that of your Association in regard to this Bill, so that same may be taken into consideration by my Party when deciding our lines of action in regard to this matter, when it comes before Dáil Éireann at a very early date. I will be glad to have your full observations in regard to same at your earliest convenience.

With kind regards and good wishes.

That letter was addressed to Mr. Seán Healy, General Secretary, National Farmers' Association, National Farmers' Association House, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin; Mr. Frank Liddy, General Secretary, Muintir na Tíre, Limerick; Mr. John Feeley, Hon. Secretary, Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association; Michael J. Grey, Secretary, Irish Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Association, 38 Merrion Square, Dublin, and Mr. Brendan Sheedy, General Secretary, Macra na Feirme, 50 Northumberland Road, Dublin. We addressed this Bill to those organisations and associations so that we might solicit from them their considered and impartial views to be a guide to us here, as the main Opposition, in whatever constructive thought and constructive opposition we should have to offer on this Bill. Our conduct over the past 12 months, in so far as this Bill is concerned, has been based on the considered opinions and views of the people to whom I addressed that communication, together with the considered views of the Fine Gael Party, who represent a very high proportion of the people. Unlike Fianna Fáil who sought nobody's views other than their own, we sat down at our Party meetings and decided on a plan of action and considered fully on their merits the observations and views of our Party members, particularly those who had a practical knowledge of the difficulties of congestion, especially in the west of Ireland.

I cannot deny that there is a great congestion problem which must be solved and which will be solved but it is a problem that exists after more than 30 years of Fianna Fáil Government. The Minister, when he gets this Bill, will wave a magic wand and that will be the end of congestion. If that is to be the case, why was this Bill not forthcoming on 18th February, 1932, when Fianna Fáil were first elected to office? If it had been, we would not be in the position of having to solve the problem of congestion after 30 years of Fianna Fáil administration. It goes to show that whatever was done in relation to land settlement or land division does not reflect great credit on the land policy of the past 30 years.

We have in this Bill a section which makes it attractive for the aged, infirm or disabled landowner to retire. When he retires and makes over his land to a son or daughter, or to the member of the family who is going to carry on, he will be left in residence in the house on the holding and he will be given what will be known as an annuity. We have been promised that the Minister for Social Welfare will bring in a Bill so that certain portions of this annuity will not be considered for old age pension purposes. How are we going to treat the aged, infirm or disabled landowner who will make over his holding to a son or daughter? We are going to find that between the Minister for Lands and the Minister for Social Welfare this annuity will be fixed and we will have the old age pension means test and other restrictions. A sum will be provided that will not permit the landowner to live in Christian decency in his retirement but he will be offered what we can only describe as a meagre, unattractive allowance.

This annuity will be limited. Let us compare this position with the position in relation to persons who have retired in Britain and elswhere. We see that Lady Dorothy Macmillan, wife of Sir Harold Macmillan, the former Prime Minister of England, can draw £3 10s. a week old age pension, while at the same time her husband can be in receipt of a pension of £2,000 a year because he was a Prime Minister of Britain. Why not do the thing decently and not be tinkering with people on the land who are anxious to give over their holdings if they can be put into an independent position? That will be one of the grounds on which the Land Bill, 1966, will be based. Another very important point which will be included, please God, in the Land Bill, 1966, is a scheme by the Fine Gael Party to provide farms for young farmers which can be leased for a period of years at an annual rent. In this way young farmers will be able to use their capital and their credit to provide stock and equipment. There is nothing in this Bill to provide holdings for young farmers or landless men, or to provide people with the equipment to work the land and nothing to provide for the many people eking out their existence on conacre land and producing food for man and beast, land which they will now be denied——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I must point out that on the Fifth Stage only matters contained in the Bill can be discussed.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I quite agree. It is no harm to forewarn the Government that this will not be the last Bill about land settlement which will be passed.

On this Bill the Leader of the main Opposition dealt with many points, particularly in regard to the objectionable sections and he has given certain undertakings which it is unnecessary for anybody on this side to repeat. I am sorry that the Labour Party, for whom I have the greatest respect, do not seem to realise the seriousness of interference by the State, or officials of the State, with the right of ownership of land. I hope that the exercise of this power by the officials of the Land Commission under this Bill will be extremely limited. I am not advocating the drastic action advocated by Deputy Blowick in the event of his seeing an official of the Land Commission being sent to inspect his holding on the instruction of the Secretary of the Department who may also be a Land Commissioner.

We were told the Bill was designed to relieve congestion, particularly west of the Shannon. This Bill was sieved and finecombed and went through every homestead west of the Shannon; it was finecombed by every landowner in Roscommon and Galway and when it was finecombed by the congests of East Galway and of Roscommon, they gave a verdict in no uncertain terms. Their verdict was that they were going to hold on to what they had and they were not going to allow Micheál Ó Moráin to style himself High Landlord of Ireland and that his servants or officials were not going to go at his call or behest and inspect and confiscate the land which they had won through great sacrifices and a great struggle and which they are proud to own.

Fixity of tenure is now at stake. I put it to the Minister he has no authority from the people to take unto himself the powers he is taking in this Bill. I believe these powers are ill-conceived and evilly disposed and are being taken for the purpose of furthering the Minister's political henchmen. While the Minister has given guarantees and told the general public there is no danger of political victimisation, never since the foundation of this State—and even before it in the British days—has a Minister had the authority the Minister for Lands is giving himself in this Bill— the power to direct the inspection of any man's land he so desires.

When this Bill becomes law, I can visualise the queues of Fianna Fáil Deputies lining up outside the Land Commission office awaiting their turn to gain admission, with the doors closed and the blinds drawn, to whisper into the ear of the Minister. This Bill does not permit of the laying on the Table of this House of lists of persons in respect of whom orders were made by the Minister directing inspection of their holdings. It is being done under a cloak of secrecy and surrounded by suspicion. While Fianna Fáil may try to paint the picture that this is a Bill designed to get at the big farmer, I say it is a Bill designed to ruin and destroy the small farmer, as it will destroy him. The small man, the man who has to take conacre or seek employment in order to supplement his limited income from the land, will get the severest lash from this Land Bill. He is the man I am concerned about. He is the man who in the long run will be the victim of this disastrous section.

Every single line of every section of this Bill has already been debated at length. There is nothing I can say on this final Stage that I have not already said on some other Stage. I am glad the Bill has had the closest possible examination. I am sadly disappointed by the dictatorial fashion in which the Minister has treated the many suggestions, amendments and pleas of the Leader of the Opposition to insert into this Bill some degree of sanity, reasonableness and fairplay.

There is little doubt that within the next half hour or so this Bill will be passed. There is nothing the people in the country can do about it. It will be passed by a coalition of Fianna Fáil and any other bag of rags they can get to support them on this Bill either inside or outside the House. It will be passed by a coalition of Independents and Fianna Fáil. That coalition must realise they have neither the consent nor the permission of the people of this country to pass this Bill. But when it is passed, the landowners, the congests, the young farmers, all the organisations that have expressed views, all those in fear and dread of confiscation because they now find the Minister can hold the heavy, dead hand over their holdings, all have one ray of hope. That ray of hope is this: Whenever the next general election comes, be it next year or not— most certainly it will be the following year—they have an undertaking from the Leader of the Opposition that immediately afterwards they will be relieved of the handcuffs which this Bill puts on every landowner, whether his holding be ten acres, 100 acres or 500 acres. That undertaking given by Deputy Dillon will be honoured by this Party.

It is no harm to throw out a challenge to the Government. They lost on this Bill west of the Shannon and they will lose on this Bill in every parish in Ireland. If they feel this is a Bill on which their honour stands, the Minister and the Taoiseach should get together and say: "This is a controversial Bill. It is a matter of principle between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. The Three F's are being challenged. The right of free sale and fixity of tenure is being taken from our people. We now feel this is an issue that should be put to the people." If they put this Bill to the test of the people of rural Ireland, they will be taught a lesson. That lesson will be that they cannot interfere with private property. You cannot confiscate from any man a holding on which he has lived with great pride and joy. Above all, as Deputy Dillon said, you cannot interfere with the right of ownership of land.

Mr. Medlar

I want to ask a question because, as a farmer listening to legal men talking, I am confused. On the one hand, we have statements that after this vote tonight fixity of tenure and the right of free sale will disappear. On the other hand, we have the Minister for Lands stating that fixity of tenure and the right of free sale remains as it was since 1923. This is the confusing point to me. In 1930 in my parish of Paulstown, County Kilkenny, the Land Commission sent down a notice to the owner of the Paulstown estate that they were taking compulsory acquisition proceedings because the land was not being properly worked. That land was subsequently acquired by the Land Commission and divided among the people of my parish.

A year later, Hector Kearney Toler Aylwood, Shankill Castle, put up for auction a farm in that townland. The auctioneer was Thomas Connolly, Bagenalstown, and that farm was subsequently sold to about six small-holders and deposits paid. However, the Land Commission came down the following week and compulsorily took over the whole lot. I want the brilliant legal men in the Opposition to define whether or not that was an interference with the right of free sale.

Country people reading newspaper accounts of debates in Dáil Éireann judge issues on the facts as they know them from experience of what is happening at their own doorstep every day. I am not convinced to any degree by the eloquent arguments put up by the Opposition here on the subject of fixity of tenure or free sale. Perhaps they would give me a satisfactory explanation as to the powers of the Land Commission in respect of the two instances I have mentioned? If they do, then I will agree with them that fixity of tenure and the right of free sale end here tonight.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I should like to add to what has been said from this side of the House in relation to what is contained in this Bill. It is worth drawing the attention of the House to the fact that there can rarely have been a piece of legislation proposed in this House which during its passage through the House has twice been made an issue before the people in two different by-elections. It is worth recalling that at the outset of the by-election in Roscommon in the earlier part of this year, the Taoiseach, presiding at the Fianna Fáil convention, told the people of Roscommon that they would have an opportunity in the by-election of expressing their approval or disapproval of the Land Bill. At the same time the Leader of the Opposition, presiding over the Fine Gael convention, said precisely the same thing to the delegates at that convention. There can be no doubt that in the Roscommon by-election each of the two major Parties made this Bill an issue and it certainly must cause Fianna Fáil Deputies to pause and think before they vote for its passage that in that by-election, if the election of Deputy Mrs. Burke is to be interpreted in the way that the Leaders of both Parties suggested it should be, the people of Roscommon in a very decisive manner decided against this Bill.

It was the same story in the recent by-election in East Galway. I listened to speeches by Fianna Fáil Deputies and Ministers in different parts of that constituency and, indeed, it is worth saying that I have rarely heard an effort made in a more pronounced way to go back over 40 years and to enkindle issues which should have been long since dead. The suggestion was made that this Party, a member of which had introduced the Land Act of 1923, was a Party of ranchers and that we were concerned in the debate on this Bill to prevent the resettlement of our people on the land.

We challenged those assertions. We explained to the people in East Galway, unfortunate people, the poorest of the poor, living on rundale holdings and small bits of land, that under this Bill there was no addition in the powers that could lead to land division or resettlement but that there was a transfer of certain powers from the Land Commissioners to the Minister and that that transfer represented a real threat to the security of any landholder, big or small.

We pointed out that the one object of land division and resettlement, hackneyed though the phrase may be, must be to obtain and secure for the tenant farmer who got the land his right to run and hold and work his land without being compelled to doff the cap to anyone. That is what two of the important three F's have always meant in the land history of this country—fixity of tenure and free sale.

Deputy Medlar talked about some experience in his own constituency. Under the Hogan Land Act when land was divided and given to allottees, there was a period which intervened when a rent in lieu of annuity was paid because the State, having advanced money, was in the position that it was getting back the proceeds of the money that went for the land purchase. During that period no estate that had been allotted to a tenant could have been disposed of or could be disposed of by him without the consent of the Land Commission. That has always been there. It is perfectly understandable.

Mr. Medlar

There was compulsory acquisition before the sale in one case and after the sale in another.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

No. In the case the Deputy was talking about, there was a breach of the conditions under which the allotment was made and the Land Commission took back the land.

Mr. S. Flanagan

When did this take place?

Mr. Medlar

In 1930. Cumann na nGaedheal were in office.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

That is quite a different thing.

Mr. Medlar

The Deputy did not answer my statement.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Under the land code up to this, once a person became the vested owner of his holding, then he was entitled to work it and use it as he wished. That has been the principle.

Mr. S. Flanagan

This is grand new law.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

It is not new law. It is not new.

Mr. S. Flanagan

It is not the law.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

It is the law. Once the land is vested in the owner, he is the owner of his land. I am going to suggest to the House that——

Mr. S. Flanagan

May I ask the Deputy a question?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

——in so far as there is involved in this Bill a threat to that right of property, an interference with the person's right to dispose of his land as he wishes, there is an infringement of the rights of property laid down in the Constitution, and I do not believe that this Bill as it stands now, no matter how often we pass it here, will be held to be valid. That will be another day's work for somebody else in another place but, certainly, in relation to the constitutional guarantees with regard to rights of property, there appears to be the most open defiance of them in the provisions of this Bill. I believe that the people in the country fear this Bill.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Deputy may be sure of it

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

It is something which amounts to a threat to the things that people prize and to the fruits of the land movement right throughout this century and the last century. It is a threat to the individual and to the one asset, small and humble as it may be, that our people have succeeded in winning. I would feel that the Bill having been debated here very fully— and in that respect a mountain of work by Deputy Flanagan has gone into it on behalf of the Fine Gael Party— having been sifted fully in the House and tested fully outside, even at this late stage the Minister could achieve a very good result if he retained the good provisions in this Bill and removed the objectionable features.

What need is there for the Minister to have the power, through his Department, to order an inspection of a man's land and then to tie up that land for the period laid down in the Bill? What does that add up to? It is certainly an unjustifiable interference with property and, in my view, it is one that will not in fact be held to be valid if it is tested subsequently. We have opposed this Bill in relation to the objectionable features which I have mentioned. In doing so, we were fulfilling our role not only as an Opposition but as a watchful and vigilant Opposition. Were it not for the fact that there is in this House a strong, virile and vocal Opposition, this Bill might have been passed into law without Deputies understanding what was involved. At least we have achieved the position that there is not a Fianna Fáil Deputy, except perhaps Deputy Medlar, who is in any doubt now as to what is involved in this Bill. They know it. They are going in now to vote against fixity of tenure and the right freely to dispose of one's property.

If the Bill had not been debated, they might have been able to plead ignorance to their constituents when subsequently they have to render an account. They cannot do that. They are going to walk into the Division Lobby fully conscious of the direction in which they are going. As Deputy Flanagan mentioned, that will be a matter that will have to be debated by them subsequently before their constituents. However, the discussion in the House on this subject is a good example of how this Dáil should function. We have had the experience in the past of Bills being passed by the Government without a full understanding of what is involved in them, of Bills being introduced and passed without a full discussion The fact that in this House there is an Opposition which is in a position to debate and fully examine such measures as the Land Bill and the Succession Bill is a good augury for the future. If the Land Bill passes, I have little doubt the time will come when it will be amended and the objectionable provisions repealed.

Mr. Leneghan

The present attack on the Bill is merely another Fine Gael frivolity. I have listened here this evening and I listened last week to these attacks upon foreigners buying Irish land, buying small farms. It is rather peculiar that these attacks came from a Party that in the early Twenties sold threequarters of a province to the British in one day for damn-all. Therefore, their attitude on this matter makes them the greatest crowd of hypocrites under the sun.

Does anybody today think for one moment we are living in 1864 instead of 1964? Does anybody today think that the present Minister for Lands or some future Minister for Lands will ride roughshod over the whole country? That is sheer bunkum. This concerted attempt to prevent the Bill going through is being carried out merely because a great number of people who have vested interests here in the east of Ireland and who have already given mortgages on land are afraid of their lives they will lose any money. This has nothing whatever to do with the small farmers of the west, or the small farmers of the east, the north, the south or the midlands, who would, in my opinion, be glad to see this Bill going through.

I cannot visualise the situation in which, say, a solicitor would hand over his practice to the biggest gobaloon of his family even though he never attempted to qualify as a solicitor. Yet if we are to accept what we are told here, it seems that where land, our most important asset, is concerned, the biggest fool in Europe can own it, use it, misuse it or not use it at all. What kind of a situation is that?

Down in the west of Ireland, people have abandoned their holdings and we do not have to go very far west to find that. Something must be done about that situation. Deputy Dillon came into this House last week and said that when he went to some place in Europe—I do not know where he went; he has plenty of money and he can ramble where he likes—he told the people how we dealt with our land situation and that we had evolved a system which was the last word in regard to dealing with land, that all the difficulties were resolved without any bother. That situation was resolved to some extent back in the 1920's and the problem was so well solved that we have now easily the least progressive farmers in the whole of Europe because of the methods we have for holding our land. Any gobaloon can put his name down for land; he can hold it for the rest of his life and the generations coming after him can hold it and nothing need be done on the land.

It is time that ceased. This pool of land which lies there unused and has not been used down through the years must be used. No matter what steps we have to take, we must take them in order to bring that pool of unused land into use and to make it an important factor in the development of our economy. Land is the foundation of our economy. Over the past 12 months, I have listened to unadulterated rubbish in connection with this matter and it is time somebody spoke out on it.

Deputy Dillon claims he represents the West here. He no more represents the West than I represent the East. He was elected, as far as I know, down among the ancient order of hangmen.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should not use such language.

Mr. Leneghan

I am not sure what the letters mean. Then he goes back to my part of the country and claims to represent the West. He comes in here in a frivolous mood and tries to oppose this Bill and get it opposed section by section as he has been doing. He does not represent the West. The people of the West want this Bill. I do not want to repeat that there are thousands of acres in the West untenanted and unused and, in all fairness, they should be taken over and dealt with. Roscommon itself, the county in which Deputy Dillon lives, is the best example of what obtains.

I do not want to hold up the Bill any longer. I have said little about it for the simple reason that I have upheld it from the beginning, and if the Minister has stolen a march on the Opposition, as he has on several occasions in bringing in what may or may not have been essential amendments, I want to congratulate him and to tell him there is no question of this Bill being unconstitutional. If he wants it tested out in the West, he will find the people there on his side.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I propose to speak only for two minutes and this is the last time I shall say anything about this Bill. I should like, on behalf of the people I represent, to repudiate the charge made by Deputy T. F. O'Higgins that some of us are going against our consciences and better judgment in supporting and voting for this Bill. I should like on behalf of those I represent to repudiate all the charges made by Deputy Dillon and his henchmen in regard to this Bill. I should like to repeat that this is a Fine Gael lie and nothing better, and that some of the people who have been speaking here this evening about principles know nothing about principle and live a long way from it. I am quite happy to abide by the 50 per cent increase in the Fianna Fáil vote we got in Roscommon and to undertake that as soon as the people understand what is in this Bill and cease to be misled by the false propaganda of the Opposition in regard to it, we shall have a similar 50 per cent increase in rural Ireland.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

I wish to clarify a point in which I am particularly interested. Under section 20, which has been fully discussed, I understand that anybody who had rights for boats on the foreshore, provided they were using them for a period of 12 months and provided they did not interfere with the building of a residence there, would be entitled to keep their boats there. I raise the point because, in my constituency, Dublin people have bought land and have indicated to people who have had boats there for 30 or 40 years that they will have to take away the boats. As I read section 20, I believe their rights are safeguarded against any legal or other action intended to force them to take the boats away. If they are forced to take the boats away, it will destroy the fishing industry in a great many areas in my constituency. Perhaps the Minister will indicate whether what I believe to be correct is correct and that section 20 safeguards these boat-owners.

I did not intend to say any more, but as the discussion seems to have extended to the West of Ireland, and as I am an easterner, I should like to draw the Minister's attention and that of Deputy Seán Flanagan, who has upheld the Bill to the uttermost depths so far as I can interpret the few words he said, to the fact that during the Roscommon by-election I went to the West with an open mind and I went to an area very close to the constituency which both the Minister and Deputy Flanagan represent. I was under the impression that this Bill and all its sections would be received with open arms in the West of Ireland. As a simple easterner among westerners, I spent two days in that area and I shall name the places—Clooncan and Cloonbonnet. I am sure the Deputy and the Minister know these places which are very close to the Mayo border. I was not more than two days there when I found that what was feared, dreaded and detested in that area was the Land Bill.

Great criticism has been levelled at my Party's Leader for what he said but it is true that our people had to fight for the land and had to safeguard that land. I submit, as other Deputies have done, that this Bill removes that safeguard. There is no answer to that and the tragedy is that if we wanted to amend our land legislation, we might make many improvements. Things could be brought up to date but the whole cry of the Fianna Fáil Benches and the Minister in introducing the Bill was that we were doing something to ease congestion, increase holdings and make it easier for people in poorer counties to live on the land. It is the dampest squib ever set off in Dáil Éireann because the very people it was conceived the Bill would help and among whom the Government would gain political power do not want it and it has reacted on its originators.

It must be obvious to the Minister that the Bill is not only unacceptable to the Dáil but also unacceptable to the Irish people. It would be easy to put the Bill in abeyance and not force it to a division to-night and the Minister could at least safeguard himself and his Party by amending it considerably in the Seanad. It is too late to do anything here on the Fifth Stage. We tried to do it—not I personally but Deputy Flanagan and other members of my Party: we tried to put to the Fianna Fáil Government the risks of disorder they may create in land division. They are going to remove the stability that exists under present legislation. By suitable amendments, we could have produced a Land Bill but instead what has been produced is the dampest squib yet and disaster in land legislation.

Mr. Moran

Deputy Esmonde may be assured there is power in this Bill to deal with the situation regarding what I may describe as the parking of boats to which he referred. When the Bill is passed, the Land Commission will have power to make provision for the situation the Deputy has mentioned.

The Deputy came to Roscommon, he said, with an open mind some time ago and he discovered after two days that people along the Mayo-Roscommon border were against the provisions of the Bill. I am sorry for the Deputy because quite obviously the people of the West could not possibly understand the Deputy or his colleagues without an interpreter. They speak a language the Deputy does not know, and if the Deputy came away under some misapprehension, I cannot blame him nor can I blame the people in the West. No doubt they still ask at the local firesides: "Who was that poor man with the strange accent who came down from Fine Gael? What was he talking about?"

I can well understand how Deputy Esmonde, after two days in a strange country to him, and in a strange land, did not understand what it was all about. He knows nothing about congestion, which is as little as his colleagues in the Front Bench of Fine Gael know. That is quite obvious from what he has said. It is true that the principle here is not the principle raised with the smokescreens, deliberately, to obscure the very important principle that is involved here, to which Deputy Leneghan referred. He put his finger on the principle, so far as the congested areas are concerned. The underlying principle and purpose of this Bill is to deal with land congestion slums in the five congested counties in the west of Ireland and to build up, as far as the national land pool will allow, reasonably viable units of 40 to 45 acres of family farms and to give new hope to these people in the land slums which will undo the work of Cromwell.

These are the principles which are involved in this Bill and they are the principles which are being obscured by the heavy smokescreens which have been raised by the Leader of the Opposition and his minions since this Bill was first introduced in this House. It is utterly unrealistic to speak about the position under the Land Acts of 1881 and 1901. This is the year 1964 and these people in the land slums, to which I have referred, were not given any relief when Deputy Dillon and his colleagues were in power. Indeed, the most miserable amount of money, in the whole history of the State since its foundation, was provided for the work of the Irish Land Commission by that particular Government. When the cold economic winds created by their own mismanagement put them out of office in 1956/57, the first Department that was cut off from any financial aid from the State was the Irish Land Commission. Orders were then given by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Sweetman, that the work of the Irish Land Commission would have to cease.

I shall deal with the matters raised by the Leader of the Opposition and his henchmen in a moment. Let me come back to what Deputy Medlar had to say. He raised an important point. One would think from the different arguments which have been heard here over the past one and a half years that there was not such a thing as the three F's as they were understood 150 years ago. The people had the right of free sale of their lands, fixity of tenure and fair rent. The importance surrounding the Hogan Land Act of 1923 has been mentioned during the debate. I quote subsection (3) of section 24 of the Land Act 1923 which says:

Notwithstanding anything contained in the foregoing subsections, where the Land Commission before the appointed day declare in the prescribed manner that any land wherever situated, hereinbefore excluded from the operation of this section, other than land which comes within the description in clause (f) of subsection (2) of this section, is required for the purpose of relieving congestion, then such land shall vest in the Land Commission pursuant to this section.

The meaning of subsection (3) of the 1923 Act is this. Any land which was purchased under any Land Act, not the 1923 Act or the 1881 or 1901 Acts but any Land Act before 1923, made land vulnerable under any section, no matter where it was, for the relief of congestion. That policy was continued, and somewhat extended, in the Land Act, 1923. I quote from section 32, subsection (3) which reads:

Notwithstanding anything contained in this section or in any other enactment, the Land Commission shall not acquire compulsorily for any purpose other than the relief of congestion in the same locality or the provision of sports fields, parks, pleasure-grounds, or play-grounds, for the inhabitants of villages, towns, or cities or for schools, for the provision of gardens for schools any land in respect of which the Lay Commissioners are satisfied that, having regard to the area, situation, and character of such land, the amount of congestion and unemployment existing in the district in which land is situate and the country generally, and the desirability of increasing the production of food supplies, such land is producing an adequate amount of agricultural products and is providing an adequate amount of employment, reckoning in such employment any relatives of the tenant or proprietor of such land permanently employed on such land.

The effect of that particular law is that the Land Commission, for the purposes of the relief of congestion in the immediate vicinity, can take any land, whether subject to the Land Act or not, for the relief of congestion in the immediate vicinity. They could take such land under the law I have quoted, even though the man was resident on the land and even though it was agricultural land and was his only means of livelihood. All they had to do was to give him an alternative holding. Even though he was the most efficient agricultural operator in the whole district, the Land Commission, for the relief of congestion in the vicinity of that man's land, could walk in and tell him to get out. That is the Irish Land Act operating since 1923.

The Opposition have said that nobody could cross a person's land for the purpose of relieving congestion. There is nothing further from the truth. Those who are arguing that that was the case are doing so for a particular purpose, knowing it to be untrue. They know it to be incorrect but are doing it for the purpose of frightening the people outside this House into the belief that there is some departure in the principle in this measure from the principles enshrined in our land law.

Let me get back to the real principle involved here. I am not going back to the Acts of 1881, 1882 or 1901 but to the land slum problem that we have here in the year 1964 in the congested counties, and particularly the hard core of congestion which is now in those areas. Let me repeat, for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this question, that the areas for acquisition particularly in the West of Ireland have been under the Land Acts for a number of years. Practically all the big estates in the congested areas have already been acquired, but we still have a number of these rundale estates in these shocking land slums in the congested counties which are incapable of eradication unless we build up a bigger pool, unless we get after all this land that has been lying derelict, as some Deputies have said, for a great number of years, unless we get after the lands in the midlands for the purpose of establishing in them migrants taken out of these congested areas, lands in the midlands which are not properly worked or which are held by people who are not resident and who have no intention of becoming resident in this country.

It is with these principles we are concerned here and no matter how often Deputy Dillon may die, figuratively speaking, on behalf of evicted tenants, this Bill has nothing whatsoever to do with evicted tenants. This Bill has nothing whatsoever to do with the situation in this country in which 80 per cent of our land was owned by foreign landlords. This Bill has nothing whatsoever to do with the extraordinary picture painted here in an endeavour to frighten our people into believing that, when this Bill becomes law, the Land Commission will go out and get after every widow who has to let her land because of family circumstances, after every farmer who is working his land well, and after everyone and anyone who might in some way be regarded as a political enemy of mine. I do not believe that that will be accepted. I am quite sure that when this Bill has been in operation for a short time that proposition will be laughed at. Of course, when people are short on policy, it is necessary for them to invent and create fears in the hope that people's attention will be diverted away from the vital principles involved in this Bill, a Bill designed to enable the Government to take these unfortunate people in the congested areas out of their misery.

Mr. Medlar

May I ask a question? It is for the purpose of further clarifying the position. In 1930 when this auctioneer sold the farm to six 40-acre farmers, who paid their deposits, the following week, under a Cumann na nGaedheal Government, the Land Commission came down, compulsorily acquired all the lands and forced the auctioneer to pay back the deposits. Was that not interfering with the right of free sale?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is making a second speech.

Mr. Moran

The short answer to the Deputy's question is that, since 1923, no farmer could divide and sell his farm without the consent of the Land Commission. That has been the law for over 40 years. These people, in the hope that by repeating an untruth often enough some people will believe it, are arguing on that basis in an effort only to pretend that, for the first time, the law is being changed in this regard.

I am somewhat surprised at Deputy Tully. He made a number of valuable contributions to the debate and stated his support for practically every section, I think, under which I am seeking new powers for the Land Commission, but he and his Party propose to vote against the Bill on the Final Stage because he objects to section 4, which, he maintains, will enable the Land Commission to give further additions to migrants who came from the congested areas to constituencies like his.

Mr. Tully

That is not correct.

Mr. Moran

That is what was reported to me; it will be possible to declare Gibbstown, or like areas, congested areas.

Mr. Tully

That is right.

Mr. Moran

Of course, it would be possible, and as I understand the Deputy, there is a real fear in the midlands and the east that small farmers will be priced out under some of the provisions of this Bill by Government money, and that will be unfair. I do not understand that mentality— I use mentality for want of a better word—on the part of the Labour Party. I could understand it coming from Deputy Tully. I am a long time now in this House listening to Balaclavas from men like the late Deputy Giles——

Mr. Tully

He is still alive, thank God.

Mr. Moran

——about the awful thing it was to bring migrants up to counties like Meath. On the part of Labour as a whole, this is an argument I find it difficult to accept, the more so as Deputy Tully seemed to be quite enthusiastic about other provisions in the Bill, provisions he well knows will have the effect of getting the kind of land the Land Commission requires. It is utterly unrealistic for anybody here to argue the proposition that they would like omelettes but they are not prepared to break the eggs. They pretend they are all out to help in relieving congestion but, immediately power is taken to build up a pool of land for that purpose, they will not have that at all. It is utterly unrealistic in this day and age to suggest we can make any impact on this problem, unless we give power to the Land Commission to get the land necessary to achieve the type of family farm at which I aim.

I do not propose to waste much time on Deputy Blowick except to deny officially once more, in case anybody outside the House might believe it, the allegation that this Bill prevents any man from selling a property or letting his land on the eleven-months system without the consent of the Land Commission. Time and again I have stated that is not so. Conacre or lettings for temporary convenience never came within the ambit of the Land Acts. They are what lawyers in the West call simply the right to eatage of the grass. Deputy Blowick was not, of course, sufficiently interested in this Bill to attend the Committee Stage and listen to the explanations. Having been absent for a great deal of the discussion here, he comes in now and again trots out this allegation that nobody can let land for conacre or temporary convenience without the consent of the Land Commission. That is utterly untrue and I want now to nail that untruth in case it may be swallowed by anybody outside this House.

Whatever Deputy Dillon was trying to prove in his references to section 8 is utterly beyond me. I think he was trying to suggest that because section 8 provides for the issue of witnesses' summonses to compel people to attend before the Land Court and produce documents it in some way makes the Land Commissioners judicial personages. He was careful to refrain from quoting the opening words of section 8 which are: "For the removal of doubt ...." From the year One, the Land Commission and their Court have been issuing subpoenas and summonses to compel witnesses to attend before them.

Deputy Dillon was also rather backward in coming forward and refusing —or overlooking—to quote from the last paragraph of subsection (4) of the same section which provides that, if a person is summoned to a Land Commission court, makes default in attending, or refuses to take an oath, or does anything which would be contempt of court if the Lay Commissioners were a court of law, having power to commit for contempt of court, the Lay Commissioners may certify the offence of that person under the common seal of the Land Commission to the High Court, and the High Court may, after such inquiry as it thinks proper to make, punish or take steps for the punishment of that person as if he had been guilty of contempt of the High Court.

The whole essence of the power in this section makes it quite clear that the Lay Commissioners through the stripping from them of the judicial power under the Fine Gael Land Act of 1923, cannot exercise the very smallest power to uphold the dignity of their own court, as is exercised by an ordinary district justice. If someone does not conform to a witness summons which they serve on him, or if he brings the court into contempt, or refuses to answer their questions, or refuses to produce documents, all they can do is give a certificate to that effect and send him off to the High Court, and the High Court can punish him for default. That is the clearest indication of the restricted powers they have.

I described them as independent arbitrators, and I pointed out to the House that during a whole year the matters on which they act independently of me take no more than 40 or 50 hours. They exercise their reserved powers under the Land Acts for only 40 or 50 hours in a year. They are subject to my direction, or the direction of the next Minister for Lands, as the political head of the Land Commission, just the same as every official in the Land Commission is subject to the same authority.

Deputy Dillon dragged up these two sections again which he says are a terrible breach of constitutional law. He says it is utterly wrong that the Secretary of the Department of Lands should also be a Commissioner of the Land Commission. I do not wish to weary the House by dealing with that silly argument again and again. I do not wish to weary the House by pointing out again that one man who was there for a great number of years, Commissioner Deegan, who was appointed by Deputy Dillon's Party, thought fit to leave it on record that this should be the procedure and, indeed, that it would be impossible to run the Land Commission properly without the Secretary being also a Commissioner.

I have quoted this letter from Deputy McGilligan as Minister for Finance to his colleague, the Minister for Lands, in the Coalition Government. Deputy McGilligan deliberately wrote to the Minister for Lands, following discussions about the future of the Land Commission, that it was desirable that the Secretary of the Department of Lands—and indeed the Chief Inspector or other officials—should also be a Land Commissioner. I have put names on these men. I have produced written evidence left by these men, and as against that the House and the country are invited to accept anonymous quotations by Deputy Dillon from people he refuses to name.

When he suggests he has high legal authority for the opposite view, how is it that during all these years when a Secretary of the Department and an Assistant Secretary were acting as Commissioners, constitutional principles were not raised by anyone? How is it that this matter was never questioned or challenged by these people? How is it that Deputy McGilligan, the leading constitutional shining gem of the Fine Gael Party, is on record that not only is this procedure right but it is desirable? His letter is on the records of the House.

If there were any reality in Deputy Dillon's argument—except for the purpose of raising a smokescreen and frightening the people outside—why did he not ask Deputy McGilligan to walk in here and say: "I did not mean what I wrote in that letter to the then Minister for Lands. The letter was prepared by some official in the Department. I did not mean a word of it. I was not au fait with what I was doing, and I would not have written it if it were understood that I was writing as a constitutional lawyer.” Deputy McGilligan is carefully kept out of the House every time this issue is raised, and the Leader of the Opposition suggests that this type of letter is written by every Minister for Finance every day in the week.

Indeed, I was rather taken with the procedure under the Coalition Government which Deputy Dillon has put on record. He said if he wanted two extra civil servants in the Department of Agriculture he applied to the Department of Finance for eight, got four, and found jobs for the two he did not want at all. That is a good commentary on people who talk about there being too much expenditure in Government, and not sufficient control exercised by the Government on the expenditure of public money. The Leader of the Opposition told us that when he was in the Department of Agriculture and wanted two men, he asked for eight, got four, and absorbed the other two, I presume doing nothing but twisting their fingers.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Sending out Christmas cards.

Mr. Moran

It is a fair comment on what will happen again if this country is ever misfortunate enough to have to put up with a Coalition Government.

At all events, this power in section 27 is taken for the one purpose of trying to deal with the situation I have met with since I came in as the head of the Land Commission and, indeed, meet with day in and day out in this House. I get questions every day in the House requesting me to get the Land Commission to consider, as they put it in the language of the House, the propriety of acquiring certain lands for the relief of congestion.

To use Deputy Dillon's words, is that not exercising political blackmail in the sense he cited today? If what he says is true, I have been listening to political blackmail since I became a member of the House 25 years ago. There has not been a week when we have not had questions asking to have the Land Commission inspect lands for the purpose of acquisition for the relief of congestion, and the main complaint of Deputies has been against the Land Commission's failure to secure, in sufficient time, lands badly needed for the relief of congestion.

The whole purpose of the section is to ensure that, where there have been representations in local offices about a parcel of land badly required for the relief of congestion, instead of going from Billy to Jack—through the gauntlet of Civil Service red tape, from the local inspector to the senior inspector and thence to the Land Commission— the Land Commission can decide, within the short time available, whether such lands should be acquired for the relief of congestion or not

It is to cut all that red tape and to enable a new legal machine to be set up to deal with difficulties in this respect that this section is in the Bill. Notice is served, and after the report has come in it takes two Commissioners to decide whether such land should or should not be taken up for the relief of congestion. That has been the law since 1923. It still will be the law after the passing of this Bill. All the section does is to hurry the procedure whereby the Commission can get a report on any lands that might be needed for the relief of congestion.

Anybody familiar with Land Commission problems, anybody acquainted with what happens very often—immediately there are representations made the owner of the lands concerned will unload them as quickly as possible before the Land Commission can get going—will realise the necessity for speeding the procedure. It is on that point that all this song and dance is being made, that we are doing something desperate in this against every farmer in rural Ireland. It is not with the widow or the working farmer that the Commission are concerned in this matter: it is with the people who, through bad user, who, through living abroad, have rendered their lands derelict, that our people are vulnerable. They will not be after this Bill has become law. Whatever the boys over there may say about East Galway, this Bill was also an issue when the people of Cork voted.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Cork city interested in a Land Bill?

Mr. Moran

Whether the Deputy likes it or not, this Bill was an issue when the Blueshirts of Kildare were beaten, when the Fianna Fáil Party increased their poll by 5,000 votes in Roscommon. In Galway, with the unwitting assistance of the GAA, a different verdict was recorded because those people swallowed up Clann na Talmhan.

That meal will not give them very much assistance. The people of East Galway, the people of Mayo, need this Bill. They want it and so does everyone who wants to get rid of land slums. Notwithstanding the death of the 1881 Act, notwithstanding the smoke screens that are being thrown up, this Bill will be appreciated as a charter on Irish land law that will give renewed hope to the people in the land slums, that will enable them to achieve a decent standard of living.

Question put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 65; Níl, 47.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Lorcan.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Boland, Kevin.
• Booth, Lionel.
• Boylan, Terence.
• Brady, Philip A.
• Brady, Seán.
• Brennan, Joseph.
• Brennan, Paudge.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Calleary, Phelim A.
• Carroll, Jim.
• Carter, Frank.
• Carty, Michael.
• Clohessy, Patrick.
• Colley, George.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Cotter, Edward.
• Crinion, Brendan.
• Crowley, Honor M.
• Cummins, Patrick J.
• Davern, Mick.
• de Valera, Vivion.
• Dolan, Séamus.
• Dooley, Patrick.
• Egan, Kieran P.
• Egan, Nicholas.
• Fanning, John.
• Faulkner, Padraig.
• Flanagan, Seán.
• Galvin, Sheila.
• Geoghegan, John.
• Gibbons, James M.
• Gilbride, Eugene.
• Gogan, Richard P.
• Haughey, Charles.
• Hillery, Patrick.
• Hilliard, Michael.
• Kennedy, Michael J.
• Kitt, Michael F.
• Lalor, Patrick J.
• Lemass, Noel T.
• Lemass, Seán.
• Leneghan, Joseph R.
• Lenihan, Brian.
• Lynch, Celia.
• Lynch, Jack.
• MacCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• Meaney, Con.
• Medlar, Martin.
• Millar, Anthony G.
• Moher, John W.
• Mooney, Patrick.
• Moran, Michael.
• Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
• Ó Ceallaigh, Seán.
• O'Connor, Timothy.
• Ormonde, John.
• Ryan, James.
• Sherwin, Frank.
• Timmons, Eugene.

Níl.

• Barrett, Stephen D.
• Barry, Richard.
• Belton, Paddy.
• Blowick, Joseph.
• Browne, Michael.
• Browne, Noel C.
• Burke, Joan T.
• Burton, Philip.
• Byrne, Patrick.
• Casey, Seán.
• Clinton, Mark A.
• Collins, Seán.
• Coogan, Fintan.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, Declan D.
• Costello, John A.
• Crotty, Patrick J.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry P.
• Dockrell, Maurice E.
• Donegan, Patrick S.
• Dunne, Seán.
• Dunne, Thomas.
• Esmonde, Sir Anthony C.
• Farrelly, Denis.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Governey, Desmond.
• Harte, Patrick D.
• Hogan, Patrick (South Tipperary).
• Jones, Denis F.
• Kenny, Henry.
• Lynch, Thaddeus.
• MacEoin, Seán.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McLaughlin, Joseph.
• Murphy, William.
• O'Donnell, Patrick.
• O'Donnell, Thomas G.
• O'Higgins, Michael J.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F. K.
• O'Keeffe, James.
• O'Sullivan, Denis J.
• Reynolds, Patrick J.
• Ryan, Richie.
• Sweetman, Gerard.
• Tully, James.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies J. Brennan and Geoghegan; Níl: Deputies O'Sullivan and Tully.

Question declared carried.