It is obvious from sub-section 1 (a) of Section 2 that the decision in the Erne fishery case is being referred to and that provision is also being made for possible, further, judicial decisions operating in like manner. On that question of possible future judicial decisions and also on the question raised in sub-section 1 (b), dealing with the abandonment of several fisheries by proprietors who, presumably, are not in a position to finance a very costly action to maintain their title, the Minister ought to let us know what his policy is. I should like to know, for instance, whether or not the Minister encourages attacks on these rights, whether the Minister and the Government are behind the attacks on this particular type of property. I must say that it looks rather like it, especially having regard to the company the Minister keeps. The Minister went up to Dundalk on Sunday, accompanied by the Minister for Defence. The Minister for Defence there gave expression to some views on spoliation of land and appropriation of land. He talked of depriving of their land farmers who, to use his own words, did not care for Fianna Fáil and who were bullock-worshippers. He said that those who disagreed with Fianna Fáil and those who farmed their lands in a certain way, rather than the way Fianna Fáil thought they should, might find their land taken from them. I wonder if this proposal is on a par with that point of view. Is it on a par with the proposal to deprive persons of property to which they have a title and for which they probably paid good, solid money? If the Minister is behind the attacks on these private rights or, at least, rights that have been asserted for a number of years, he should say so openly. Apropos of this, the thing which has chiefly made me believe and fear that the Minister is a party to these attacks is the personnel of a Commission he has set up to inquire into the question of inland fisheries as a whole. One would imagine that, in the setting up of such a Commission, the persons to constitute it would be very carefully selected by the Minister in order to secure that they would have an unbiassed mind in dealing with the matter before them. One member of that Commission has, since he became a member, in his private capacity challenged one of those rights appertaining to tidal waters. The principal proprietor of that right and his immediate ancestors have exercised it for nearly 150 years. It can be easily proved that it was exercised since about 1750. When the Minister appoints a person of the type I refer to to a commission dealing with a matter of such importance to the public and to individual owners, I am afraid he gives the impression that he is a party even to the particular act of this particular member of the Commission. Of course, if the Minister wants a certain decision from that Commission he is probably correct in selecting that type of person. If his aim is that the Commission should bring in some recommendations by way of confiscation of all these fishery rights, well then, of course, he has obviously appointed the right type of persons. I think, however, as I have said already, that he should say so openly and that he should let the public know. In fact, I think that he might go a bit further than that, because, mind you, I feel that we ought to be ashamed of clause (b) there. I think that we ought to be ashamed that proprietors of property are brought into the position that they have got to abandon their rights because of lack of money to prove their title in the courts. That is the position in my opinion.
Clause (b) really refers to the poor owners of fisheries as distinct from the rich owners. The rich owners may be able to finance a big and costly legal action, but the poor owners cannot hope to do so unless, at any rate, they have some guarantee that their own costs will be met. Usually, the persons who infringe the rights are men of straw or persons of little or no property who could not possibly pay the costs of the proprietors if the costs were given against them. I think that the Minister, if he is behind these attacks on this particular type of property, should make some provision by which persons, who contest those rights and succeed in the courts, should be paid their costs. In my opinion, there should be some provision by the State for this. I do not make any suggestion as to how that might be done. It might be a matter for a special Vote. I do not know that it necessarily could be effected by having the Attorney-General as defendant in all these cases. But, at any rate, I think it is something that, in fairness and as a demonstration of support of private property as a whole, the Government should contemplate doing. I say so because it is very easy to drift—other countries have drifted—from attacks on private property to attacks of another kind, and there is no other way in which one can contemplate that that drift will occur more easily or more rapidly. The "have nots," very naturally, always are rather envious of the "haves," and it would have a really good stabilising effect if the Government would say, in the case of any of these fishery rights which are challenged through the ordinary public going in and trespassing on them or preventing the proprietors from exercising the rights they have exercised for a great number of years, that if these proprietors succeeded in an action in the courts the Government would be prepared to meet the costs of the action.
