I move that the Bill be now passed. With regard to the point made by Deputy Rooney in reference to arrears, fifty per cent. of the arrears are paid already in accordance with the terms of the Bill—fifty per cent at least of the arrears. I think that is the clearest evidence as to the justice of the particular terms in the Bill in regard to arrears, that even at the present moment before the Bill is law, at least fifty per cent of arrears are paid in accordance with the terms of the Bill. With regard to the Bill itself, I want to say this, it aims at the completion of land purchase. Deputy Johnson made a point some time ago when he said that when the Bill was definitely through Ireland would be divided into two watertight compartments. On one side, we would have the owners of land and on the other the labourers and professional people, and he asked that some arrangements should be made in the Bill to enable a more fluid arrangement to be come to by which a man could be gradually made the owner of his land. That is, of course, the real danger. We know that in other countries, like France or Germany, where land is subdivided, and where you have peasant owners on the one side, each man owning his own holding, that that type of country develops an aggressive antisocial type of individual. That is the real danger in this country, as in every other country of small proprietors. I have endeavoured to meet that in the Bill as far as it could be met, and I think there are arrangements in the Bill to meet that case, provided the landless men and workmen do a little bit of hard thinking on the various methods of holding land, and the various organisations, which possibly might become the owners of land. People have been discussing what is the most revolutionary part of the Bill. In my opinion it is Section 31 sub-section (f), which says that the Land Commission may make an advance to any person or body to whom, in the opinion of the Land Commission, the advance ought to be made. When we were drafting the Bill we had to face the fact that you had to sell their holdings to tenants. They were the owners, as they practically held the fee-simple of them already. They had the habit of ownership and you could make no other arrangement. You had to sell to them their holdings. Where the holdings were uneconomic you had to make them economic for them and give them these holdings as the absolute owners. The same does not apply to the landless men. The most they are getting is a loan on State credit for the purpose of purchasing holdings. They have no particular right to State credit any more than any other class has for any other purpose, and the fact is that there is not enough of land in Ireland to deal with all the men who are expecting land. Some way will have to be found out of the difficulty. There will be no land to divide amongst landless men for the next two or three years. It will take at least two years to deal with the tenants—probably more— and as I have said there will be very little land divided among landless men for at least two years. By that time I think it will be found that you will have at least three or four applicants for every possible holding. It will be for the Land Commission, and if I might say so, for the Trades Unions to find some way out of the difficulty by that time. My suggestion, for what it is worth, unless a better suggestion is made, is that some such organisation as the National Land Bank perfected should be made use of and improved, so that advances would not be made to individual landless men, but to societies of landless men. That would get over the first and the big difficulty, namely, that you have not enough of land to go around, and it will get over the second difficulty that you will not be giving the holdings to men who merely want them to sell, and then clear out of the country. At any rate, there are immense possibilities, and it is for the Trades Unions to make use of them under that clause. I have only to thank the Dáil generally, for the way they have received the Bill, and for the helpful criticism I have received from all parties, Labour, Independent and Farmers, in the Dáil.
