I am quite prepared to withdraw mine, seeing this has been put in its place. I think that the Article that is now being proposed by the Minister for Home Affairs disposes of my Amendments No. 21 (A and B) and No. 40 (A) further down in the Orders of the Day, which I imagine we will hardly reach to-day, although it does not deal with 40 (B) which will arise in its own place. My remarks on that will keep. Substantially the Article that is now being moved, by the Minister for Home Affairs, as will be apparent to anyone studying the three paragraphs I had put down myself, meets the case. There are two that are matters of words and one omission of substance to which I would like to draw the attention of the Minister of Home Affairs. I will take them in sequence as they arise. The first is the question of words. It occurs in the second line. There you have "all the land and water within the territory of the Irish Free State, hitherto vested in the State": now to eliminate the parentheses and to come to the rest of the sentence "vested in the State belong to the Irish Free State"—that is the sentence, and I think there is some gap there somewhere. Take this sentence, "all these things, within the territory Irish Free State, hitherto vested in the State belong to the Irish Free State." That is a sentence one can hardly stand over. I understand and appreciate the difficulty quite fully. It is a matter requiring certain change of wording. The second State referred to is the State that has hitherto prevailed. and that is the Crown of Great Britain and Ireland. I think the Minister will probably agree with me that that sentence could not be quite stood over. I think it was a very famous logician who once stated that a fallacy that would not deceive a child set down in a simple syllogism would deceive the profoundest scholar when put through the pages of a portentious tone. Here is a sentence the ineffectiveness of which is rather masked by the many parentheses with which it is beset. If you put the parentheses aside you will see that the sentence itself requires further elucidation. I would recommend the Minister to go straight at the second State, and say exactly what he means by the State, the word "State," in the second instance, being hitherto the Crown of Great Britain which is now the Irish Free State. My second criticism is rather more than a matter of wording. When one comes to examine it carefully, it is on the fourth and fifth lines, page 65. The sentence reads:—"Subject to any trusts, grants, leases or concessions then existing in respect thereof, or any valid private interest therein." Those are the words to which I would draw the attention of the Minister—"Or any valid private interest therein." I would venture to say that that is a most dangerous sentence, and that in future law courts will put a construction on that we do not imagine at the present moment, or at least they lend themselves to be put such a construction perhaps, so as to render the entire provision of this Article nugatory. When we say these things shall be "subject to any trusts, grants, leases or concessions then existing in respect thereof" that I think is quite sufficiently expansive, and we need not go further into any other matter quite so dangerously phrased as "any valid private interest." I do urge these words should be eliminated and that the provision, the intention, and the purport of this Article would be greatly strengthened if these words were deleted. My third criticism is this:—it is a question of omission. I think something should be introduced into this Article as it now stands dealing with a matter I dealt with in another one of these paragraphs that I had suggested at an earlier stage, because there is one clear omission, and it is a very important omission, because at the present moment there are certain rights that have been alienated. The Minister stated that the provisions of the Article would frustrate any future alienations, but they do not deal with the major right of this State over alienations which have already been made. Some of these alienations deal with matters of great importance we know, for example, there are many parts of our coast line where the foreshore has been alienated. I know where alienations are being sought for by foreign speculators. Foreign prospectors knowing this country is coming to a period of great development have come in and have seen places where ports of considerable magnitude may be developed, and where they have got leases of the foreshore, the most valuable territory possibly of any country, of a country certainly, that abuts on the sea, with ports and bays and creeks of great importance that they have around the shore of Ireland. I think I should like to see some form of wording suggested and accepted, by which the Irish Free State would claim an ascendant right over all these alienations that have already been made, and even compelling them to be for terms not exceeding ninety-nine years. We know, there is a man in America at the present moment, of the name of "Vanderbilt" who is reputed to be one of the richest men in the world. What made him that, not industry of his own, no but simply because right far back at the beginning of the development of the United States of America, one of the Vanderbilts happened to have a farm in the middle of what is now the City of New York; and because the citizens of the State have made New York what it is, that Vanderbilt is a rich man. If Vanderbilt had made the money himself I for the moment would say that he is entitled to the riches he has made or earned, but when other people have made that value, when other people have increased that value, then I say the State should step in and say this wealth had been created by the Nation at large to which it belongs and should be vested in the Nation at large, so I say, to any speculator—we have many now and we shall have more within the next few years,—I say to any speculator who comes over to Ireland and who sees clearly there is a port going to be developed in this part of the coast and who gets a lease on that part of the foreshore, because I should be inclined to say that some exist at the present moment, I should say that "if on that foreshore a great port is created by the energy of the Irish people the benefit of that will accrue not to you, but to the Irish people." In the third instance, the omission I think that might be provided for very simply by a form of wording. That is the only criticism I have to make on this Article in respect of which I withdraw three of the four amendments I had put forward.
