I beg to move: That the Land Bill be received for final consideration.
LAND BILL, 1923.—REPORT STAGE.
This Bill has been considered in Committee and on Second Reading, and it had a number of amendments inserted in it. The reception in the Dáil has been somewhat mixed, but at least it has gone through to this Stage, and I presume there will not be very much delay in the passing of this Stage, judging by the absence of those most interested. I would like to say with regard to this Bill, that when it came on for Second Reading, there was some hesitation as to whether I should support the Second Reading, in view of the principle that was involved, that the landlords were entitled to the purchase by the State of their interests in the way it was proposed to do. The Minister's speech in introducing the Bill helped me to make up my mind, and I concluded after hearing his speech, particularly, that in view of the precedent that was being set in this Bill, in view of the arguments that were put forward by the Minister, that it was desirable to support the Second Reading. The principle that I referred to was the principle that the landlords having a certain legal right to draw rents for an unlimited number of years back, that legal right having been acquired under this Bill by the State through the issue of bonds bearing interest at 4½ per cent, the enunciation of that principle and its embodiment in the Bill led me to think that the same principle might well be adaptable to every section of the community. I remembered that there is by virtue of long practice, custom as well as law, a right on the part of the individual citizen where he is hard-pressed and needy, to come upon the public funds for sustenance and maintenance, that when the alternative is starvation or sustenance, he must not choose starvation, because the public funds are available to maintain him. I realise that the precedent set by this Bill might well be applied to the people who are at present entitled to call upon the public purse for maintenance in time of need. I thought, perhaps, that the same idea that is embodied in this Land Bill might be applied, and that those citizens who were duly entitled by the law to come upon the State for a certain maintenance, could come to a new Dáil and claim the same kind of treatment as the landlords were claiming and were receiving. They could sell their rights to the State on the same terms. They could calculate that, for themselves and their families the maintenance costs would run to about twenty to thirty shillings per week, and that those rights to maintenance could be sold to the State, at the same price at which the landlords' rights to draw rental are being sold under this Land Bill, and Bonds could be issued to them entitling them to draw four and a half per cent. interest for ever, as compensation for the sale of their right to maintenance. Then it would be quite a useful method of treating the cases of so many thousands of people who are really needy, and people could, as a matter of fact, save up for a time of need the interest charges on those Bonds which they would receive in return for the sale of their right to draw sustenance from the public Exchequer. I think the parallel is a fairly good one.
In view of the adoption by the Dáil in the case of landlords' rights and as a possible headline for another Dáil which the Land Bill would set, it is well worth supporting. I can imagine people asking whether the Ministry would be good enough to introduce a similar Bill to purchase their rights on the same terms as the landlords are being entitled to sell theirs. The cost no doubt would be heavy, but I venture to think that it would be well worth the experiment. No doubt people would be selling something that is valuable, but they would be getting for it an immediate return, a guaranteed return for ever. The landlords are, undoubtedly, being put in a position to draw upon the public for maintenance in exchange for the sale of their rights to draw rents. If the idea can be embodied in future legislation and the example that is set by this Bill can be quoted, and Deputies of this Dáil or succeeding Dáils will be consistent in their view of the way one section or another of the public should be treated, then I think it would be a very good bargain for the community as a whole, and on those grounds I have no compunction in supporting the final stage of this Bill.
I do not intend to start a controversy on the particular point which has been raised by Deputy Johnson, partly because I do not know what he is driving at. I do not think he developed his point, or made it quite clear.
I will try again.
I am not going to suggest that he should try again. That was rather a mistake of mine, if my words pointed towards such a suggestion, and I hasten to withdraw them. Seriously, I do not know what point he wished to make. I do not see the parallel. I am anxious to see it, but I do not see the parallel. There is a certain amount in what the Deputy says, but only a certain amount, and we will never get anywhere unless we get right down next to the facts of the case and see how far they take us. One of the facts of the case is that we are taking over what has been regarded as property. It is no use if Deputy Johnson shuts his eyes to the facts. Up to the present, and at the present, the rights of property are recognised and regarded in the country. Before we can get much farther along the lines that the Deputy developed we must make up our minds that we recognise the rights of property.
This Parliament recognises them. It is paying for the landlords' interest in the land, and it is from that point of view that the Dáil is approaching the question. It is for those reasons the Dáil is paying a certain amount for the property that is being taken. That is the fact. It is open to the Deputy, or to any other Deputy to persuade the Dáil that the rights of property should be abrogated in the country; but that has not been done yet. I think the Deputy's suggestion was that we were really taking away certain moneys which these landlords employed to support themselves and their families, and that on those lines we should give certain moneys to workmen to support their wives and families. I am not clear as to what his point was. If there is any parallel that is the only parallel that I can see. Of course, there is all the difference in the world, quite apart from the point of view of property. In the one case you are taking away rights recognised by law— the rights of the landlord to get rent out of the land every year. He parted with the land without compensation, and he gave it to a man who considered he was taking it as a good bargain, and he provided a certain consideration for the handing over of the land—namely, the right to get rent yearly. You are taking that from him. On the other hand you would be handing over rents to people whom the State does not recognise as being entitled to annuities. I want to understand the Deputy's point, and that is the only parallel I can see. However, this is not the time to discuss that matter. We will never get any further in this direction, or nearer a solution of any of the problems which the Deputy raised now, if he does not face the facts and come down to business, and if he does not meet the real difficulties that are there, and not be attempting to meet the difficulties that are not there.
I would like to say a few words on the Final Stage of this Bill. Deputy Johnson remarked that those most interested in the Bill were badly represented. That may be quite true, but neither is the Labour Party, nor any other Party in the Dáil, well represented. As we of the Farmers' Party mentioned on the First and subsequent Readings of the Bill, we give the Government credit for making an honest effort towards settling this question. We realise that the Government had great difficulties, and that they are making an honest effort to overcome those difficulties. The amendments that have been accepted, and passed by the Dáil, have certainly improved the Bill. There is, however, one point that is not satisfactory, and that is in connection with arrears. All over the country resolutions are being passed, letters and telegrams sent, and every form of protest being made, in regard to those arrears. We have received our full share of those. Except the Seanad can improve the Bill in respect of the arrears clause, I take it nothing can be done, as I suppose it has passed from our jurisdiction. On this, the Final Stage of the Bill, I would like to register, on behalf of the Farmers' Party, a protest. We are not satisfied with the arrears Clause.
I notice that Deputies have not altogether lost the memory of the Christmas pantomimes that they attended in their earlier days. It was the fashion at the end of the performance for those who had taken the principal roles to line up before the footlights, and each of them repeated some small little tag of what had been in the main portion of the stuff allotted to him. No doubt, the Bill has been considerably improved in minor regards since its first introduction, but the Bill was so admirable a Bill in its conception and in the spirit and practical character of it, that there was very little room for improvement. I think the Farmers' Party who represent those most interested, but not those who alone are interested, are willing to admit that. The final protest against the Bill was merely with regard to arrears. I notice that there is a proposal in some of the papers that as an act of gratitude towards the Labour Party for the support it gave to the Farmers' Union representatives in the Dáil on this Bill, a new party shall arise. a coalition or combination of Labour and Farmers. I presume the first item in that new party's programme would be the settlement of the dispute in Waterford. On this question of arrears, it might be heartless to remind Deputy Rooney of the famous sentence in the play of Richard III., "After sentence, plaining comes too late." The point at which the attack should have been delivered was the stage at which powers were being taken to empower under-sheriffs to deal very severely with those in arrears. Now, Deputy Rooney has forgotten one thing—namely, that this protest, though belated, was met very amicably by the Ministry, for an undertaking was given that those arrears that have not been collected, though steps were being taken rapidly to collect them. should be stayed. A further concession was made, and that was to take off portion of the arrears where these amounted to three years, and spread that over the annuities, in part. Another feature of the Bill which surely should commend itself to the Deputy, was the alteration that was made in favour of leaseholders. A very new thing, and a thing for which many people in the country were desirous, was the relief of leaseholders, who, because of the terms of the original instrument, were regarded as mill-owners, or as in possession of residential holdings.
By the amendment which the Minister for Agriculture has inserted, it does not matter what the character of these legal instruments may be. The point is simply—what is the character of the holding? Is it mainly an agricultural holding, for example, at the time of the passing of the Bill? This has brought relief, not to a very large number, but still to a number whose omission from the operations of preceding Acts left a considerable sense of grievance. The finance side of the scheme, somehow, has escaped admiration and praise. Very few stopped to eulogise the genius with which what was once considered by the British Government, because of the British Treasury, an insoluble problem, has been solved with practically no expenditure of money, but merely by the judicious use of bookkeeping entries on opposite pages of a ledger, assisted by the issue of bonds. If there was nothing else in this Bill than its ingenious finances it would require praise at this stage, and when I say it is ingenious I do not use the word in its modern sense, which is somewhat opprobrious, but in the earlier, 18th century sense, of exhibiting genius and ability of an exceptional sort. What amazes me is that the people at large, and, of course, the country Press is somewhat to blame for this, are so greatly unaware of what a great revolution this Dáil has created in land tenure, so quietly and so effectually. The people are not aware of it. It is a curious thing with regard to historical matters generally. The people are not aware, when the thing is happening under their eyes, that something very exceptional is occurring. They take up a history of past events, and they read about transformations of the social order and the setting up of absolutely new relations between man and man, say, in the 15th or in the 17th century, and they marvel at these. But here is a revolution. There is no application more appropriate for the term "revolution" than this, by which the land of the country is transferred to the people of the country and all the landless men and labourers who had lost employment through the operations of previous Acts and all the tenants with uneconomic holdings and men deprived of access to turbary are all relieved. Why, there are, in the operation of this Bill, so many reforms that touch upon the future of Irish progress in so many different points that, in fact, without exaggeration one might almost say that it is because of the extraordinary number of reformatory items that the people are not aware of the Bill's importance. The outside critic, if he were told of one of these things, if he received one at a time, would probably make it a subject of conversation for at least the nine days over which proverbial wonders extend, but when a full dish, in the classical sense, is presented it would look as if the imagination were staggered by the multiplicity of good things. I must say that I have been quite surprised at the small amount of attention with which so great a Bill was received through the country. When it was promised one might have said, "it is too good to be true," but now that it is leaving the Dáil, so far as this Chamber is concerned with it, completed, and now that this extraordinary progress has been made with it in so short a time, the listlessness and lethargy of the people in regard to it are amazing. I am old enough to remember the passing of the first Purchase Act, and I recollect the ferment of discussion and the enthusiasm that the prospect of its introduction into Westminster occasioned. Either we have become deadened in these later years by so many sensations of another kind, or we have so increased the scope of our aspirations and demands that a great measure like this seems little to us. At any rate, I think it my duty, as one independent Deputy, to say just this much in praise of the enterprise of the Minister who introduced the measure and the extraordinary capacity that he displayed, the minute knowledge of every detail in it and the masterly attention he gave throughout the long days of the most fatiguing discussion. He kept his mind clear and his statements equally clear in the discussions, and carried this thing through successfully. It seems to me, if I may pose now as one of the older members, older, I mean, in point of years, as a very happy augury for the future of Ireland when one of the youngest of the Ministers in this young Parliament was able to undertake and carry through such a great achievement.
I am sorry to mar in any sense the pantomime illustration that Deputy Magennis just gave to the Dáil. I think he was the last, although I think it will be in general agreement that he was certainly not the least of the figures who had contributed to certain portions of a very profitable entertainment during the course of the passing of this Bill through the Dáil. I had not taken any part in this Bill except, with commendable restraint, to exercise a vote in its favour whenever it went to a vote. I am only moved now to participate because of certain comments made by Deputy Johnson. I think that the chief virtue of this Bill has been an element that, I believe, will be of very great virtue to us in the future if we remember it rightly, and that it signalises in a statesmanlike achievement a very happy compromise profitable alike to both parties that participated in the compromise. I know that there is much to be said at all times against the spirit of compromise, that there are doctrines to be ridden, and sometimes ridden to the death, but this Bill has certainly proved to the Dáil, and, I believe, in spite of apparent agitation, has proved to the country that that spirit of compromise is an excellent spirit, and that it has been very finely exemplified in the provisions of this Bill. What one may refer to, perhaps, as the mitigated praise that it has received from both sides is a proof of the nearness and justice of that compromise. Claims have been made by those who possess land, and claims have been made by those who desired to be the possessors of land. It is a recognised principle in Ireland, and it has been accepted, and it is not the least virtue of this Bill that it should have been accepted during the course of the Bill, by all parties in the Dáil, that it was desirable to set up no national doctrine, but a nation of peasant proprietors. I remember Deputy Johnson's statement to that effect, and I think it was a statesmanlike statement on his part that the country will remember in the future. But in accepting that essential principle, in spite of the acuteness with which certain phases of it have been addressed and attacked, that claims made by one side, or claims made by the other, might or might not be very excellent outside as a doctrine, this Bill sealed a settlement in respect of a very vexed question by a compromise that was as near justice as it was possible to achieve, if one estimates the justice by the fact that each side have had their criticisms to make, and each side have accepted the general principles of the Bill.
I speak in this matter with very sincere feeling. I believe a very great achievement has been done in this Bill, and a very great landmark has been passed in the passage of this Bill through all its stages. Since the occasion has been the moment for adorning what Deputy Johnson imagines to be the doctrine of the Bill by emphasing certain features of it that he regards to be the most important, I have merely risen on this occasion to emphasise what I regard to be the most important feature of this Bill, and that is when two sides in a national dispute, a dispute of many generations, have been put forward with a great deal of emphasis from each side that it is the nation's business to seal that settlement as far as it is possible in what is a just compromise. It is because that compromise has been so just and has been defended with a great deal of critical ability and acumen by the Minister that I would like to join my voice, speaking now for the first time on the Bill, in praising the achievement that has been made by the Minister and amended by the Dáil, and which when passed into law, I believe, will be for the very considerable benefit of the country.
Question put: "That the Bill be received for final consideration."
Agreed.