I move: "That this Bill be now read a Second Time." The principle underlying it is one which, I believe, will commend itself to all Parties in the House. The advantages of allotments for town-dwellers, whether employed or unemployed, are I think fairly obvious and need hardly be gone into by me. When an allotment holder works directly for his own benefit and that of his family he has a special incentive to do his best in the cultivation of the allotment. In the case of an employed person, the working of his allotment does not as a rule interfere with his everyday avocation, whatever it may be. The working of these allotments is, in fact, regarded by many holders as an agreeable form of recreation. In the case of an unemployed person it does not prevent him from looking for work. He is able to carry on the cultivation of his allotment and at the same time his quest for work. It also has the advantage of maintaining an unemployed person in good physical condition. He is able to take on work when it is offered to him and does not suffer from the effects of idleness, as other people living in a city may. Benefits of that sort were in the minds of the Government as much as the direct benefits that the allotment holder will receive from the working of his plot when it decided to introduce this Bill. In the Principal Act of 1926 a local authority is defined as "the council of a county borough or other borough or an urban district or the commissioners of a town to which the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act, 1854, or any part of that Act applies." This definition covers all towns possessed of municipal government. An allotment is defined in the same Act as meaning "a piece of land containing not more than one-quarter of a statute acre let or intended to be let for cultivation by an individual for the production of vegetables mainly for consumption by himself and his family." An allotment of one-eighth of an acre is sufficient for the production of vegetables, including potatoes, for an ordinary family in a town if it is well cultivated.
The Principal Act, as it is at present, contains certain provisions which make it practically impossible to give any benefit to the unemployed. For instance, a local authority in taking over land for the provision of allotments must be satisfied that the amount expended on the land will be recouped by the rents which the allottees will pay; and, secondly, local authorities are not in a position to offer any assistance by way of the provision of seeds and manures or towards the cost of implements. In the case of employed persons, of course, it has been possible in the past to carry out this provision of the Principal Act. Allotments taken over in Dublin and in some of the other towns in the Free State have in fact been let to people at rents varying from 12/6 to £1 per plot. In recent years this movement for the provision of allotments has been declining. The Act of 1926 has not been availed of to any great extent. Outside of Dublin very little land has been provided under the Act for allotments. Land in or near towns is fairly expensive to lease. It is felt that a person taking an allotment has very little chance of getting any great value from it apart from what may be regarded as pastime or amusement. In the case of the unemployed, whom it is intended that this Bill should benefit, they cannot afford such luxuries as amusement and recreation.
As well as that, the unemployed cannot afford to purchase the seeds or manures. To cover those two points this Bill has been introduced. The Principal Act is being amended, in the first place, to give the local authority power to take land even though it is quite satisfied that it will not get back the expenditure in the way of rent from the allottees. In the second place, the Act is being amended to enable the Minister for Local Government and Public Health to recoup the local authorities for anything they may lose on the allotments when let to the unemployed. There is a further amendment which enables the Minister for Agriculture to supply those unemployed people with seeds, manures and implements. It is felt that the local authorities themselves would not undertake this burden of bridging the gap between what the land would cost and the receipts from the nominal rent the unemployed people would be able to pay. I should say that there will be a nominal rent of about 1/- a year charged.
We have some little experience of this work. Last year—1933—we provided a sum out of the Relief Grant to the United Irish Plotholders' Union in Dublin. The amount provided was £360 and 130 allotments were given to the unemployed of Dublin at the nominal rent of 1/- each. Free seeds and manures were provided and the allottees were given the use of implements. There was one other instance—a grant of £40 made to the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Cootehill, County Cavan. In that case the land was provided by some benefactor of the Society. The Department of Agriculture supplemented that with a £40 grant and unemployed people got allotments. The total amount spent under the scheme was £400. The Department of Agriculture, in both of these cases, undertook the necessary instruction and supervision of the plotholders. The report which I received from the inspector who visited the plots was very satisfactory. Out of the total number, only one allotment was regarded as neglected. These experiments, carried out in Dublin and Cootehill last year, are regarded as a hopeful augury of the results that may accrue from the scheme embodied in the present Bill.