Section 2 reads:
Every local authority shall provide in the functional area of such authority such pounds as the county registrar shall, with the approval of the Minister, direct either generally or in any particular case, and every local authority shall maintain in accordance with this Act every pound provided by them under this Act.
It appears from the Bill that, under certain circumstances, the county registrar can serve a ukase on the local authority that they must either establish a pound or carry out such repairs as he may think necessary on the pound and levy the expenses for doing that on the county. I can see no valid reason why a local authority should be constrained to embark on an expenditure of this kind if the county registrar happens to think it necessary. It seems to me that if the Minister feels that the country is in such a condition that the pound accommodation must be widely increased, the Minister who is responsible for the Money Resolution should provide means of doing it. The Minister would not contend that it is action on the part of the local authorities that makes this multiplicity of pounds necessary. I have been living in this country for 30 years, and I have no recollection of any pound being used in the whole time I was living in the country, except, perhaps occasionally to confine a stray donkey or an abandoned goat. We are all perfectly well aware that the sudden emergency which has arisen in connection with the pound accommodation at present available is that practically every farmer is going to be introduced to that luxurious accommodation. It is not enough for the Minister to take steps which will bring the stock of every hard-working farmer into the pounds but he would add insult to injury and ask the people whose property he is going to drive into the pounds to provide, out of the rates levied off their own land, the wherewithal to build them. There are prudent limits to which any responsible man will go in exasperating the public, but really I think it is going beyond the beyonds if you not only persecute people but ask them to pay you for persecuting them. I suggest to the Minister that this section should either be dropped or that he should indicate his intention on the Report Stage of putting down an amendment to make any charge for repairing those pounds or establishing them a charge on the Central Fund or on the Supply Services. In doing that, I ask him to remember that it was not open to me to put down such an amendment, because, I think I am right in saying, that it would have been ruled out of order as imposing a charge upon the Exchequer.