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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 Aug 1936

Vol. 63 No. 20

Land Bill, 1936—Fifth Stage.

I move: "That the Bill do now pass."

The details of this Land Bill, Sir, have been exhaustively discussed on the earlier stages. It, however, enshrines one principle in defence of which, I think, every Deputy of this House should be prepared to record his vote, and in defence of which this House will be divided and an opportunity afforded to those Deputies who believe in fixity of tenure on the land for the farmers of this country of going into the Lobby on its behalf. I ask Deputies who find it tedious to partake in parliamentary government to learn the lesson that, if they would open their ears and their minds and try to understand what they were doing in this House, instead of trotting like sheep after an oriental shepherd, they might not find the work of parliamentary government as tedious as they do. On this issue this House has got to make up its mind whether the Land League was right or the Land League was wrong. Now, the whole of this country, the whole of nationalist Ireland, supported the Land League, and they did so because they believed in the three F's. There were no mental reservations about that belief, and there was no trotting in silence after a leader of whom they did not know whither he was going. They knew what their leaders were out for. They understood all the implications of the three F's, and, understanding them, showed themselves to be ready to make any and every sacrifice to preserve those three things, fixity of tenure, freedom of sale, and fair rent, for all time.

The Land Bill of 1936 constitutes a demand that that fixity of tenure should be for ever abandoned by what used to be the tenant farmers of Ireland and what are now the tenant purchasers of Ireland. There may be those who, desiring to rob the farmers of what they so hardly won from the landlords of this country, will try to make the case that Michael Davitt, the father of the Land League, believed in land nationalisation. There are landlords in this country—foolish old men who carry in their hearts some of the bitterness of the land war still—who have never learned that those of us who fought them hardest for the land, value them most highly now that they have become ordinary citizens like the rest of us, claiming no lordship over the land of the people and claiming no lordship over the people themselves, and there will be found in their ranks men who will use the words of Michael Davitt in an attempt to persuade this House that we ought to take from the tenant farmer what the tenant farmer took from the landlord. We wanted to destroy the security of tenure of any man who claimed to be a lord over the land or a lord over the people's lives, and we wanted to give that fixity of tenure to men who were living on the land, by the land, and for the land. We gave it to them. Is this Parliament going to take it away? It is true that, by taking words from some of what Michael Davitt wrote in his earlier years, those words might be twisted to represent the advocacy of land nationalisation. Those who had the honour, however, to know Davitt, to work with him, and to read what he wrote, know well that when Davitt joined his colleagues in the Land League he did not bring into that great national movement a cranky mind that was sticking to some foible that attracted him in his earlier youth. He carried into it the whole-hearted enthusiasm of a man who was working with his colleagues for a common object, and that object was fixity of tenure for the small farmers of the land, unqualified by a right of the State to take that land from them if and when the State wanted to do so. I ask the House to bear that well in mind, and to remember that there is no doubt in the mind of any rational man who was brought up in the Land League and who understood that fight and all it meant, that, without mental reservation of any kind, the farmers and their leaders fought for fixity of tenure, and they got it. I want them to keep it.

The case has been made on an earlier stage of this Bill that fixity of tenure was taken from the farmers by the Land Act of 1923. Let us face that question first because it is not true. An attempt has been made to confuse the minds of the people by drawing an analogy between the procedure of resumption and the procedure of compulsory acquisition. Resumption is a procedure available to the Land Commission in respect of land that has not been vested, and there is no analogy whatever between the procedure that may be adopted by the Land Commission in the interval between the time when a man is pointed out as the ultimate owner of the land and the period when he is actually made owner of the land, and a quite new procedure which gives the Land Commission in perpetuity the right to take from a man the land of which he believed himself to be the owner. The Land Act of 1923 provided that compulsory acquisition of land vested under the previous Land Acts could be done, provided that land of equal value and equal suitability were given to the man from whom land was compulsorily acquired.

Those words "equal suitability" were interpreted by the courts of this country to mean that where a farmer came into the Land Court and said: "I admit that the alternative holding with which it is proposed to provide me is of equal market value, and I admit that the land is quality for quality just as good as the land I am on; but my father was on my farm and my grandfather was on it; we were evicted from it and we got back into it; all our family ties are with that land on which I am living." If he could satisfy the Land Court that he spoke honestly and truly when he said that, the Land Court was entitled to say: "No compensation will compensate this man for being removed from his homestead and put elsewhere; he is entitled to the benefits conferred by the land legislation of this country, fixity of tenure; no man may move him; no Land Commission may move him; and no Government can move him either." So long as that was the case, there was effective fixity of tenure in this country and all was well with the tenant purchasers on the land. The 1933 Land Act swept that away and placed no obligation on the Land Commission which took land off tenant purchasers in this country other than, if he had less than £2,000 worth of land, to offer £2,000 worth of land somewhere else.

This House is too often prone to confuse the intention of doing something with the power to do it. I do not make the case that the present Minister for Lands is a diabolical creature who longs for an opportunity of going in and persecuting the tenant farmers of the country; I do not make the case that he has the intention at present of revolutionary movings of the people from one part of the country to another; and I do not aim my remarks primarily against the present occupant of the position of Minister for Lands; but I say that no Minister for Lands, no Land Commission, should have the power, never mind the will or the intention, to take the tenant purchaser off his land and to give it to his neighbour. It is because I do not want that power placed in the hands of the present Minister, or any successor in office, that I object to the Land Bill of 1936. There are Deputies in this House who forget that the Land Bill of 1936 is not going to be operated by the present Minister for Lands for ever. Some day he is going to have a successor; some day somebody else is going to occupy his place; and I do not want either the present occupant or any successor to have that power over the land of the people.

The 1933 Land Act gave the tenant purchaser the right to claim £2,000 worth of land in some other part of the country. I put it to any representative of the County Donegal to-day: If a small farmer, a Donegal man, is going to have his land compulsorily acquired and to be told that he will be given land in exchange for it of equal market value in South County Carlow, does any rational Donegal Deputy think that that corresponds even remotely to fixity of tenure for the tenant purchasers of this country? What consolation is it to a man to know that if he is prepared to leave his neighbours, to leave the countryside he was born in, the countryside he loves, and go to another part of the country altogether, he can do so if his land is taken from him? I say that it is nothing. I say that it is less than nothing, and I say that it is a jibe in that man's face and it operates to put that man in a false position. He does not want to trail all his personal sentiments, all his family feelings, all the sentiments that all of us know, before the eyes of everybody in the country. He cannot answer the challenge: "Are you not being given land of equal value somewhere else?" And he cannot get up and say in public: "I love the parish where my father was born and the district my mother came from."

He is ashamed to say it because he does not want to be dragging his personal relations under the noses of people who have no personal interest in him to be laughed at and to have them canvassed up and down the whole county where he lives. He is obliged to sulk as the unreasonable person who was not prepared to co-operate with the Land Commission in what they wanted to do for the common good. So I say that this offer contained in the 1933 Land Act, far from being something better than no compensation at all, is worse because it operates to suggest that an evicted man is no victim of injustice, but rather a person who is sulking against a perfectly equitable and reasonable arrangement.

Some Deputies find it hard to believe that the Government they are supporting could be responsible for a proposal to abolish fixity of tenure. I ask them to apply a test. The 1936 Land Bill provides that the Minister may compulsorily acquire land vested under any previous Land Act, the 1923 Act included, but the lands of tenants vested under the 1923 Act may not be compulsorily acquired for seven years after the date of vesting. I ask Deputies to compare in their minds the position of a vested farmer in the seven years after the date of vesting with his condition in the years that follow after the seven years have elapsed. Is there not some difference between his tenure? For seven years after the land is vested, nobody can touch it. When those seven years are over, where does he stand? Is there not a difference, and is that difference not the difference between fixity of tenure and being a tenant at will of the Government in office at any given moment? Let me recall again the words quoted in this House by Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney from Arthur Young's "Tour in Ireland": "Give a man a lease of seven years of a golden garden and he will turn it into a desert; give a man a lease in perpetuity of a desert and he will turn it into a golden garden." Does not the tenure in land provided by the 1936 Land Bill for the 1923 Land Act tenants amount to a lease for seven years, and a tenancy at will thereafter? Do Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party believe that it is the will of the small farmers that such an arrangement should be made? I ask the Minister for Lands when answering to compare the position of farmers under the 1923 Land Act with tenant purchasers after the passing of the 1936 Land Bill, and to compare the position during the seven years after vesting with their position in the years that will ensue and to tell the House what is the difference between the two positions in these two relevant periods, and to explain how it is that the difference does not make manifest, that one is a period of absolute security and the other a period little better than tenancy at will.

Let us be clear on another point. An attempt has been made to confuse the mind of the people upon another question, and that is as to what is really meant by tenant purchaser. Let us see if we can get common agreement on this. A tenant purchaser is a farmer living on his land, by his land, and for his land. We see perfectly clearly, from our knowledge of the land situation during the last 70 years, that there is not enough land to provide full economic holdings for all the people living on the land, and, therefore, this community is bound to say to those of our citizens who elect to live on the land, that they must make up their minds to this fact that taking the geographical size of Ireland into account, if a citizen desires to live as a farmer he must understand that he cannot hope to attain as high a standard of living on the farm as if he pursued some other avocation in life, and must be content on a modest holding with the standard of living that such modest holding will provide, and that fixity of tenure cannot be given to individual citizens on anything greater than a holding of moderate size. When it comes to determine what the actual size of the holding will be, it must be a matter of protracted investigation and most careful consideration, because circumstances alter according to the district which one might have under review. The acreage that will provide a living in Meath will not provide a living in Connemara. The acreage which would be the minimum necessary to provide a living in Gweedore would be grossly excessive in the Golden Vein, so that to arrive at the exact nature of the holding in which the State will be prepared to give fixity of tenure will have to be a matter of inquiry. It could be and it ought to be ascertained, if the land of the country and the community are not to suffer gravely from the consequences of uncertainty.

The third and last point upon which it has been sought to create confusion in the public mind is this, that the case is made that the compulsory acquisition of land is a reserved service, that the Minister for Lands has nothing to do with it; that it is purely a matter for the Land Commission. But the compulsory acquisition of land under the existing Lands Acts, as amended by the Act of 1933 and by this Bill, provide that one of the relative considerations that the Land Commission must take into consideration, when it comes to examine the acquisition of land, is whether it is used in the interests of the public. It is the Ministry of the day which has to prepare and to certify what in their opinion is the best interest of the country. The Minister for Lands speaking recently at Enniscorthy said that if there were many people like Deputy Dillon, who would decline to adopt the agricultural theories of the Fianna Fáil Government they would seriously have to consider what measures would have to be taken against them. Are we to have a situation in this country that when there is legitimate and bona fide differences on agricultural economics between citizens and the Minister for Lands, as to what is the best thing to do in the interest of the community, that the Minister for Lands for the time being shall be entitled to take a man's land from him, and that in five years time, if that citizen becomes Minister for Lands, and if the then Minister for Lands becomes a tenant, the process can be reversed? Can the one-time citizen who has become Minister for Lands go to the one-time Minister, who is now a citizen, and take his land from him and put him out on the side of the road? If that is the theory on which land tenure is to be followed in future there is going to be chaos and pandemonium.

Remember that chaos and pandemonium do not go on for long. Something comes out of that situation. If we get chaos and pandemonium there may come out of it savage reactions to the right, or savage reactions to the left. Whatever comes, the end will be that tenant purchasers on land at the present time will cease to be tenant purchasers, and will become either the slaves of the dictatorship of the right, or the paid slaves of the dictatorship of the left. I do not want Collectivism, Sovietism, Fascism or Nazism. I do not think there are two straws difference between them. Nazism is Communism turned inside out, and Communism is Nazism turned inside out. Either may turn their coats to-morrow morning. I want to see neither system obtaining here.

I want to see the people who live on the land constituting a bulwark for freedom and democracy, and as owners of the land, having something of their own. I do not want to see them either the paid or the salaried servants of any Government in this State. I do not want to see the Fine Gael farmer ever having the right or the hope of grabbing the land of his Fianna Fáil neighbour, and I do not want to see the Fianna Fáil farmer ever having the hope that he will be able to grab the land of his Fine Gael or Republican neighbour. I want each member of the community, and the tenant purchasers who are living on the land, and by the land, to feel that for all time, whatever political views they may have, they are fixed securely there, and that they have as much right to their property as a man who holds shares in a bank, or in any other kind of tangible property. This State, in any case, has never yet attempted to challenge that. The matters I have discussed have induced me to use trenchant language. Let me here and now disown any intention whatever of implying bad faith to the members of the present Government. I think they may very well be attempting to achieve something of the same kind as we have in mind, but I feel most profoundly that they are walking dangerous paths, paths to which there may be only one end, and that is disaster which, in all human probability, I do not think we want to see coming upon us. I fully recognise what difficulties lie in the way of a satisfactory and permanent land code in this country. I fully see the urgent necessity of having machinery for ever there to prevent speculation in land and the appearance in this country of a new tribe of landlords. Nobody wants that. Anything that requires to be done will be done with the consent of all to prevent that. What I am afraid of is that, by acting precipitately and without due reflection on the evils that are long abated in this country, few people in this country with the exception of veterans in the fight, such as Deputy Tom Kelly, or those who were acquainted with the conditions before the land agitation was launched, remember—that never having seen these evils and never having understood them, they may not realise how these evils could manifest themselves again if mistakes analogous to the rotten land system here before 1881 were repeated in our generation. I think that those Deputies of our Party and of the Fianna Fáil Party who understand what immense evils were ended once the idea of fixity of tenure was got into the minds of the people, believe with me that if you destroy, in the minds of the people, that fixity of tenure on which they so greatly depend, the self-same evils may manifest themselves again. If they once do that, and if the people once learn that a Government in this country could destroy fixity of tenure, that an Oireachtas could be found to wipe out fixity of tenure, you never can give back to the people the same confidence in their title to the land that they had heretofore. It takes that fixity of tenure and that confidence of title years to produce good effects on the land. It takes years to improve the land and to build up a national savings bank in the land. Destroy it and you never can replace it. Maintain it and let the people understand that all parties in this country, no matter how we may differ on other questions, are agreed on that fundamental—that those who live on the land, for the land and by the land will be entitled to keep it as their own for all time—and this country will have a better future.

I do not want to go into a long argument about the obligations that title to property carries with it. That is more a moral than a legislative argument. Every man who believes in Christian morality knows that the blessing of property carries with it grave obligations in justice and in charity. Legislation in this House is going to make nobody good. That is a problem for quite another body. Every man who owns property, whether it be land or anything else, has obligations under the moral law to use it in accordance with the provisions of that law. That is not our business. That, in my respectful submission, belongs to another sphere. I am discussing only fixity of tenure and the right to own land, in so far as it is the function of this House to pass judgement on the matter, and I confidently ask Deputies who understand this question to help us in preserving a thing for the winning of which great sacrifices were made.

I cannot hope to discuss this Bill with anything like the emphasis or positiveness of Deputy Dillon. I approach this Land Bill as I approached the Land Bill of 1933 and as I should approach any other Land Bill introduced into this House—in a spirit of deep humility. I cannot imagine a more difficult and complex subject than the Irish land code or one in which it is more easy to fall into errors—even substantial errors.

Although I have not been able, owing to the labours of the Second-Chamber Commission, to take part in, or to be present during, the earlier proceedings on this Bill, I have read the report of these proceedings with some attention. I think that there is a better case to be made against this Bill than has yet been made in the course of these proceedings. I think that there is a serious case to be made against any Bill for speeding up the distribution of land so long as the state of things which is described as the "economic war" continues. I think that so long as land is artificially depressed in price and so long as farmers are hampered— and very severely hampered—by having to use up their capital in payment of rates, annuities and other obligations, it is not fair to them that officials should judge of their capacity as farmers and of their title to continue in their holdings on the basis of what they are able to do, with these handicaps weighing upon them. As against that, any Deputy who might be disposed to object to any land division Bill during the continuance of the so-called "economic war" has to ask himself whether, from the point of view of public order and social justice, it is possible to hold up land distribution for a period of years. On no subject have I personally had a larger mail ever since I came into the Dáil than on this subject and I imagine that the experience of other Deputies is the same. The number of people clamouring for land all over the country is enormous. One of the first letters, if not the first, I ever got from a constituent called upon me to go into the Land Commission "like an angry lion" and hasten the division of a particular piece of property. I hardly believe it is feasible to hold up land distribution for a period of years even because of the economic war.

Leaving that matter aside, I want to turn to the case made against this Bill. I have approached the subject in as impartial a spirit as I possibly could, and I have been perplexed, firstly, by the difficulty of reconciling the utterances of different members of the Opposition in connection with this Bill, and, secondly, by the difficulty of getting a clear idea of the solution advocated by any single member of the Opposition. The Opposition started badly. They voted against the Bill before a line of it was available for their information or the information of anybody else. That, of course, tends to put one on one's guard against the statements that they subsequently made in justification of their action.

Deputy Dillon seems to be living in a dream-world of his own if he imagines that security of tenure, in the sense he conceives of it, is possible. I do not think that it is possible anywhere, and I am sure that it is not possible in a country where we are committed to the principle of the compulsory acquisition of land, for, if we get down to bedrock, the policy of compulsory purchase and the policy of fixity of tenure are in the last analysis, irreconcilable. There cannot be absolute fixity of tenure where there is a policy of compulsory purchase and where all parties are agreed—as they have been agreed up to the present— in advocating the acquisition and distribution of land on a large and increasing scale year by year. In one of his more lucid moments, Deputy Dillon said that he did not believe there was really very much difference in practice between Parties in this House as to what was wanted. I do not think there is. I think that everybody in this House wants as much fixity of tenure as is compatible with the carrying out of the land purchase schemes. How are you to get that? Let us realise, in the first place, as the late Deputy Hogan realised and stated in this House, that there cannot be absolute ownership of land in the same sense that there is absolute ownership of a chattel, in the same sense that there is absolute ownership of a watch or of a radio set, or any such object. I am the son of a landlord, and I was taught, even in my boyhood, by my father that there could not be such a thing as absolute ownership of land in that sense. The community, as the late Deputy Hogan said, must have in theory the right to see that land is well used. It is a limited commodity. It is not a thing that citizens can be allowed to claim absolute ownership of.

There has always been, so far as we can remember, compulsory purchase of land for some purpose. Land could be compulsorily taken, for example, for railways, before the Land Purchase Acts were passed at all.

So could houses.

Certainly, I am not denying that. Since 1923, since the late Deputy Hogan's Land Bill of 1923, we are committed in the most definite way to large-scale compulsory purchase of land. The position of Deputy Belton, who opposed that Bill, is, of course, more easily understood and a more logical one than that of anyone who did not oppose it, but it seems to me extremely difficult for those who accepted the policy in that Bill to argue now in favour of fixity of tenure in any such sense as Deputy Dillon apparently understands it. According to him, a man should be absolutely immovable in his land. He is not even to be subject to the ordinary economic stresses to which other lines of economic activity are subject. If he does so badly on his land that he goes hopelessly into arrear in his annuity, and that he cannot pay off his arrears, Deputy Dillon actually says that what should be done is that the land, although it must indeed be taken from him, should be handed over to some relation whom he designates, thereby obviously opening opportunities of collusion and of deliberate nonpayment on the basis of some arrangement with that relative.

Does the Deputy believe in fixity of tenure, then?

I believe in as much fixity of tenure as is compatible with our general land purchase policy and as is compatible with the public interest. Let us see in reality how much fixity of tenure is threatened. We, Deputies, get a large correspondence from our constituents about all sorts of things. How many cases has any Deputy actually had in his experience of people unjustly turned out of their holdings?

It is early enough yet.

How many cases have they had of working farmers turned out of their holdings?

It is early enough yet.

There has been none cited in the course of these debates. There has been certainly unsettlement of mind created by inspections. That I admit. There has been unsettlement of mind created by the fact that the Land Commission have offered less money for a particular piece of property than it is worth. These things seem to be inevitable. I think, as a matter of fact, that the Land Commission are to blame for offering such low prices as they are in the habit of offering. I think it is a form of meanness that is against the public interest and the fact that lately on appeal the prices have been immensely increased—two or three times—suggests that the Land Commission have been following a wrong policy in these matters. These things are very annoying. It is very annoying when a man's farm is inspected that should not be inspected. It is very annoying when Fianna Fáil clubs or some other organisation send in demands to the Land Commission to interfere with a man in his holding, but I want to know to what extent have actual injustices been perpetrated. They have not been brought to my attention in my own constituency. If they have been brought to the attention of other Deputies in the House, they have not been ventilated in the House. I think they ought to be.

Yes, they have.

If they have been, I have failed to find them in the columns of the Dáil reports. My belief is that the trouble with regard to fixity of tenure is 90 per cent. mental. The speeches of members of the Government have been partly to blame for it. The speeches of members of the Opposition have been partly to blame for it. The activities of Fianna Fáil clubs have been partly to blame for it. I do not believe that, in actual fact, the Land Commission are committing injustices to any substantial extent. There may be some injustice in distribution. It may be that in dividing an estate somebody gets more than he ought and somebody else gets less than he ought but that is another point altogether. As far as fixity of tenure is concerned, I have had no adequate evidence presented to me that injustice has been committed.

Let us see what are the real safeguards at present. The first safeguard, I think the greatest safeguard, is public opinion. Public opinion in this country will not stand for wholesale upsetting of fixity of tenure. The Land Commission would be loathed and the Government of the day would be swept out of office if there was any real interference with practical, as distinct from theoretical, fixity of tenure throughout the country. People would not bear to see a man who was honestly working his farm to the best of his ability turned out of house and home and his land divided amongst other people. That could never be popular in this country. Secondly, there is this £2,000 limit, the necessity for the Government, if they acquire the holding of a man who has not more than £2,000 worth of land, to give him that amount of land somewhere else. Deputy Dillon thinks that that is of absolutely no value. He says it is of no value because it means that the Land Commission are going to be constantly whisking people away from one end of the country to another. On the contrary, I think it is of great value to these particular land-holders. I think the nuisance of finding an alternative holding elsewhere for the man who has to be disturbed is so great that it is a tremendous argument for the Land Commission not to disturb him if they can possibly avoid it. I should like Deputies to tell me how many cases they know in which there has been compulsory disturbance of men with £2,000 worth of land or less.

Deputy Dillon said that the "suitability" safeguard in the 1923 Act was absolutely swept away. That is not true. I myself put down an amendment to the section as it originally stood and that amendment was accepted by the Minister for Lands and the Attorney-General, an amendment by which the duty was imposed on the Land Commissioners to consider the suitability of the alternative holding provided as well as its value. It is true that the word "equally" was removed. It is no longer compulsory that the holding should be, in the opinion of the Land Commission, "equally suitable" but suitable it must be. Therefore, that safeguard, for what it is worth, has not been completely swept away, as Deputy Dillon suggested.

The third safeguard is one that I also claim to have provided in the Land Bill of 1933. I drafted an amendment to the Land Bill of 1933 on the lines of the sub-section actually put into the Bill in the Report Stage by the Minister for Lands. I think it is sub-section (3) of Section 32. It provided security for the man who is giving adequate employment on the land. Under that sub-section such a man's land could only be taken for the relief of congestion in his immediate locality and for certain other purposes therein specified, such as playing fields and so on. I think that in so far as fixity of tenure can be preserved by legislative provision that sort of provision is the best to preserve it, and if we want to strengthen fixity of tenure I suggest that the best way to strengthen it is by strengthening that provision and it can be strengthened. Personally, I should like to see anybody, who is giving an adequate amount of employment on his land— whether he is a large or small holder— protected from being deprived of his land for any purpose, to the extent that if he is deprived of it, he must be given, elsewhere an alternative holding of equivalent value suitable to his needs. I agree with Deputies Belton and Bennett in not liking this business of a limit at all, neither a money limit nor an acreage limit. Once again I would like to quote the late Deputy Hogan who said in this House or in the Seanad when the 1923 Land Bill was going through, that if democracy meant anything it meant equality; it meant that, as between owners in fee simple, there should not be a distinction between the large and the small holder but that they should be treated alike on one principle that applies to all of them.

These are the views that I hold with regard to fixity of tenure and the way in which it is, in fact, defended against attack at the present moment. Let us try to examine what the alternative methods for defending fixity of tenure are. I trace them from an examination of the speeches of the opponents of this Bill. Let us begin with Deputy Dillon. He wants an acreage limit which is to enable not only the small holder but the middle-sized farmer and the landlords living in their demesnes as he calls them—though the name seems obsolete now—to be absolutely immovable provided that they have not got more than a certain amount of land. What is that certain amount of land to be? The Deputy gets up to-day and is unable to make a suggestion as to what that certain amount of land should be. He says the proper amount of land can be ascertained. How can it be ascertained and on what principles can it be ascertained? He points out himself that what is adequate to give a man a good living in one part of the country is hopelessly inadequate in another part of the country. I say that you cannot fix an acreage limit that will be acceptable. If you cannot fix an acreage limit, are you to fix a money limit and if this money limit is to take in the landlords as well as the small-holders it has got to be more than £2,000. That sort of limit is open to two serious objections. It is open to the objection that the man who is near the border line knows that if he improves his farm so as to make it worth more than the limit that has been fixed he runs the risk of being thrown out of his holding. Are the Deputies who are so anxious to see a desert turned into a garden going to explain how a limit of that sort will work? Will a limit of that sort encourage a man to improve his holding, to work it to the best advantage, to put up the best buildings and introduce the most valuable innovations? It seems to me that a limit of that sort would put a premium on bad farming. It is open to the further objection that it is sure to be changed. It is not being fixed on any intelligible principle, whether it is £2,000, £4,000, £6,000 or £8,000. You may set up that limit to-day but another Dáil may upset it to-morrow and lower the limit. It does not give the owner any rock on which to anchor himself. That seems to rule out the limit as to acreage and the limit as to value.

Deputy Holohan I understood to make another proposal. I understood the Deputy to take a certain view and I am not sure that Deputy Bennett did not share the view. That was that the Land Commission should acquire all the land they needed in the open market, that there was an adequate amount of land available and that the Land Commission should touch no other land. If that were so there was no excuse for the 1923 Land Act.

Very little.

Is it a fact that there is enough land available in the open market and that such land can be got at prices that would make its financing possible?

That is another story.

Yes, that is another story, but a very important story, and if the thing is feasible it ought to be proved in this House that it is feasible. Remarks of the kind I have mentioned have been thrown out by Deputies Holohan and Bennett, but they have not found any support on the Front Opposition Bench. Therefore I cannot, up to the present, take them seriously, though I quite admit that if they establish a substantial case to consider; it is worth talking about. It would not be on the same plane as the vague language in connection with fixity of tenure that we have been hearing in this House. If it is feasible for the Land Commission to get all the land they want in the open market, that is a matter that is well worth going into.

Should the Land Commission be prevented from giving land to landless men? Should they be compelled to give the land only to congests? If there are responsible Deputies who hold that view in this House, they should say so more plainly than they have said it up to the present. It has always been a principle, and it was the principle laid down by the late Deputy Hogan, that congests should come first, evicted tenants second, and landless men third. Personally, if it were not for the question of law and order, my feelings would be all in favour of satisfying every congest in the country before I could agree to——

I hope the Deputy does not want to initiate a debate on Land Commission administration.

I appreciate that, Sir, but in considering the grounds on which this Bill has been debated, it is essential to arrive at some understanding of the principle. We want to get somewhere in this Bill. It is important that Parties should get together. It is most undesirable that the Land Commission should be a Party question at all.

Hear hear!

At bottom we all do want the same thing, and in spite of the surge and thunder of the by-elections and the speeches made in the by-elections, I cannot believe that in the long run the Opposition themselves would wish that the land question should be turned into a Party matter.

A great deal has been made of the fact that the 1923 Act tenants are to be put in the same position as purchasers under other Acts as soon as their first seven years have elapsed. There again it seems to me the Opposition are arguing in favour of a sort of class legislation. Why should there be a distinction between purchasers under that Act and under other Acts, especially when we have the particular argument in this case of the 1931 Act, for which Deputy Roddy was responsible, that it caused an enormous amount of vesting to be done holusbolus without inquiry into the desirability of each particular instance, or into the question of whether a particular bit of land was or was not needed for the relief of congestion? The fatal effect of all these proposals to protect one particular class, then another particular class, and then another particular class, is that the more you protect these people the more you leave others naked. You cannot have equity without equality in this matter. You want some principle that will apply all round, and I know of no respectable principle except the public good. I know of no respectable principle except that the land should be well used.

I am an individualist in spite of all I have said, and I do not believe it is a good thing that this Government, or any Government, or any official, should be constantly interfering in the way that a man is working his land. I believe that in 99 cases out of 100 the man knows best himself. Nevertheless, you have to have some rock-bottom principle to resort to. The rights of the State must be founded on something, and the rights of individuals must be founded on something. I maintain they can only be founded on duty—duty to do the best you can with the land that is in your possession. Deputy Dillon himself admits that in a sense. He admits it in a most curious way. He says that a man has a duty to work the land according to his own conscience, and nobody else, apparently, is to be the judge as to whether he is working it according to his own conscience or not. I am perfectly certain that Lord Clanricarde and every other holder of land in this country who used it badly since the beginning of time, or nearly every one of them, had a perfectly easy conscience all the time.

I do not believe that we can get anywhere on the lines of leaving things to a man's conscience. It is not practical politics. If we are going to have compulsory purchase we have to have some principle to go on. If we are going to secure fixity of tenure, as we all want to secure it so far as practicable, we must secure it on some principle that will commend itself to the Irish people, that will be obviously just and intelligible, and not on arbitrary clauses protecting one class, then another class, and then another class, leaving a whole lot of people naked to the winds of heaven.

Some members of the Opposition, I think in particular Deputy Dillon, have been threatening us with civil war and revolution if this Bill goes through. I wonder if Deputies remember that when the 1923 Land Purchase Bill was introduced the Dáil and the Seanad were threatened with civil war or something like it if it was not expeditiously passed. I wonder if they remember that it was actually certified, I think by ex-President Cosgrave, as being immediately necessary for the preservation of peace, so that it should go through more quickly than it would normally have gone through. It must not be forgotten that if land purchase is to be stopped there are dangers to peace that may arise from the fact of having it stopped. I quite agree that if there was to be wholesale injustice to the holders of land there would be disorder. I do not anticipate that injustice. I do not think it has taken place during the administration of the present Government. I do not believe it will take place in the future.

The 1933 Bill was bitterly opposed on Second Reading. I was one of those who opposed it. I think that, as originally introduced, it was open to very grave objections which were subsequently removed. Ex-Senator Brown, for example, said in the Seanad that he did not know of any Bill within his recollection that had been so much improved in the Committee Stage as that Bill had. We have to remember that the fears which were then entertained that the Government was asserting a supremacy over the Land Commission which no Government had asserted before were dispelled, and amendments were accepted which made the Land Commission independent of the Government in all the things that really mattered. Amendments were accepted to prevent the Land Commissioners from being removable at the will of the Government and gave them the status of judges, only removable by resolution of Parliament. As I have already mentioned, amendments were accepted with a view to guarding fixity of tenure that very greatly improved the Bill. So far from being indifferent to fixity of tenure, I glory in the fact that I had the responsibility of introducing these particular amendments into the 1933 Act.

This Bill seems to me to introduce no novel principle. It seems to me to be a Bill legitimately brought in for removing obstacles to the smooth working of the Land Commission machinery. While it is only with great reluctance that I support any Land Distribution Bill during the continuance of the economic war, yet I feel myself obliged to support the Bill.

Deputy MacDermot commenced his speech by stating that he approached this subject in a spirit of deep humility and, after listening to his speech, I can quite understand why he used those words, because it is perfectly clear that he understands very little about the practical working of the Land Acts or about the manner in which these Acts affect the owners of land away down the country. Before I proceed to deal with Deputy MacDermot's remarks in detail, I should like first of all to correct him about a remark which he made in connection with the Land Act of 1931. He stated, so far as I understood his remark, that wholesale vesting took place under the Land Act, 1931, without any inquiry or investigation whatsoever. The actual position was this: provisional vesting did take place, but the Land Commission had a perfect right to make all the inquiries that ordinarily should be made subsequent to the provisional vesting. The powers of the Land Commission in regard to investigation and inquiry were not interfered with in the least by the passing of that Act.

Not the theoretical powers; but what about its physical powers?

In any respect the Land Commission have exactly the same powers under the Land Act of 1931 of making all sorts of investigations and inquiries.

What I suggest to the Deputy is that when the enormous wholesale vesting took place there was not time or opportunity to do so.

I agree. That was the object of the Act. There was a general desire in this country to give the full benefit of the reductions which the tenant purchasers were entitled to under the Act of 1923. They got those reductions. That is all they got. The right of investigation and inquiry still remained and these investigations and enquiries are still going on, I understand, in connection with these holdings.

And the right to resumption of land remained.

Exactly. That is part of my point.

It is not, but I am pointing it out.

Deputy MacDermot also forgets that we had compulsory acquisition of land in this country before the Act of 1923.

On a very small scale.

The principle of compulsory acquisition was known in this country before the passing of the Act of 1923. It is true that the Act of 1923 did extend that principle considerably, but even though the principle did exist prior to the passing of the Act of 1923 that Act did not interfere in any way with the security of tenure which the tenant-farmers, whose holdings were vested, enjoyed. Now, it is true that you can always set a theoretical limit to security of tenure. Deputy MacDermot has surrounded the discussion on this subject of security of tenure with a tremendous lot of theory, and it is some what difficult to understand clearly what he means. I do not think there is any misunderstanding whatever in the minds of farmers down through the country as to what security of tenure actually means to them. They understand it perfectly well. Deputy MacDermot has tried to explain that the Government have undoubtedly the right to direct farmers in certain respects as to what they should do with their holdings, and as to how they should work them. The Department of Agriculture intervenes from time to time and insists on certain regulations which it makes being carried into effect. That is clearly understood, but farmers down through the country are under no misapprehension whatever as to what security of tenure means to them. The point that Deputy Dillon made was this: that this Bill and the Act of 1933 do definitely interfere with the security of tenure which farmers hitherto enjoyed, and that is a point which Deputy MacDermot did not attempt to deal with. It is true that the Deputy tried to draw a theoretical distinction between security of tenure and compulsory acquisition. The distinction was not very clear to me, and I doubt if it was clear to any other member of the House.

I come back now to the point that I was making at the outset of my speech: Deputy MacDermot's ignorance of the working of the Land Acts. The Deputy asked "In how many cases have farmers been turned out of their holdings." I answer by saying, that farmers have been turned out of their holdings in very many instances. I could quote at least half-a-dozen instances from my own knowledge, and I am quite sure that there are other Deputies in the House, whether they sit on the Opposition Benches or on the Government Benches, who could quote quite a number of similar instances from their own constituencies.

Compulsorily?

Certainly.

From residential holdings?

Would the Deputy say how many years is it since those half-dozen cases, to which he has referred, occurred?

During the last two or three years, and they are still going on. If the Minister cares to look up the files in his office he will find the particulars. I have written at least scores of letters to the Minister's Department protesting against the action of the Land Commission in acquiring certain of these farms. I would draw Deputy MacDermot's attention to this: that while you have undoubtedly in the 1933 Act the £2,000 limit the commissioners in effect ignore that £2,000 limit and proceed to acquire land as if it did not exist. I have known of at least half a dozen cases in which the owners of the lands were not asked whether they wanted an exchange or not. The question of an exchange is never mentioned. Their lands were compulsorily acquired, and the only ground on which they could appeal was on the question of price. They did appeal in every case, and I think that, in almost every case, they succeeded. That is the procedure that is going on all over the country at the present time. Surely, Deputy MacDermot does not pretend that he is ignorant of what is happening in this connection. If the Deputy were in touch with his constituents he would know that it is happening. He would know that the acquisition of land is proceeding on those lines at the present time. He should know also that small farmers all over the country have been served with notices to the effect that an inspector will call on them to report on the suitability, or otherwise, of their holdings for acquisition. These notices were broadcast throughout the State after the passing of the 1933 Act, and they are still hanging over the heads of the unfortunate tenant farmers. In some cases where notices have been served, the Land Commission have gone a stage further in the acquisition proceedings, and not one word has been said about an exchange of holdings. It rests with the lay commissioners to say whether or not the lands have been worked in accordance with proper standards of husbandry.

After all, who is to set the proper standard of husbandry? A small farmer may have two holdings. There is one holding on which he resides and another holding which he probably uses for grazing or fattening purposes. The Land Commission may decide that the holding on which he resides is quite sufficient for his purpose, and may say that the other holding is not being worked according to the proper standards of husbandry, and then proceed to acquire it as they have done in two or three instances of which I have personal knowledge myself. Deputy MacDermot made another point. He asked this question: how many cases of compulsory disturbance for the purpose of migration have taken place throughout the country? It is a well-known fact that many farmers throughout the country have been compulsorily migrated. This is not a new thing. They were compulsorily migrated under the Act of 1923, and have been compulsorily migrated for very many years past. Again, I say that shows Deputy MacDermot's ignorance of the actual working of the Land Acts. Farmers are being compulsorily migrated to-day.

I think it shows Deputy Dillon's ignorance.

Farmers, as I have said, have been compulsorily migrated for a great many years past. During the discussion on the Second Stage of this Bill, I asked the Minister if he had taken the trouble to find out what use the new allottees were making of the land distributed amongst them since the passing of the 1933 Act. Surely, before the Minister proceeds in this Bill to take the extraordinary and additional powers that he proposes to invest the lay commissioners with, he should, first of all, satisfy himself that the land which is being distributed under the 1933 Act is being properly used, and that the right class of people are getting it.

I say that land is being taken from farmers who ordinarily work their land to the best advantage, men who are a real asset to the country, and that some of it has been given to people who are not making a good use of it, to people who, under a proper system of investigation, should not get land at all. Men who were using that land for the purpose of enhancing the wealth of the country and managing it according to the very highest standards of cultivation, have had it taken from them. Some of it has undoubtedly been distributed to the proper class of people, but other portions of it have been given to people who are not making good use of it. Some of them are letting it in conacre or on the 11 months' system. That is happening throughout the country to-day.

I do not wonder that the Minister and his predecessor in office have boasted over and over again about the rapid rate at which land is being distributed. It was the ambition of the Minister's predecessor to establish a new record in land distribution. I repeat the statement that I made previously in this House that you cannot proceed with land distribution beyond a certain figure if you are going to ensure that land is to be distributed to the right class of people. If there is to be a proper distribution of the land of this country, it is the duty of the Land Commission to see that the right class of people are selected for it. It is a scandal, a disgrace, and an abuse of the authority vested in the Land Commission to take land from a farmer who is making the best use of it, who is working it in the best interests of the country and to give it to people who are not likely to use it either to the advantage of the State or of the country. But that is the kind of thing that is happening throughout the State. From my own experience, and from conversations that I have had with Deputies sitting on the Opposition Benches and on the Fianna Fáil Benches, I know that the class of people to whom I have referred are getting land all over the country, and I submit to the House that that is a scandal, a disgrace and an abuse which the Minister should see is remedied as soon as possible.

On the Committee Stage of the Bill I invited the Minister to make a statement as to the nature of the problem of congestion which he has got to deal with. On several occasions, in the course of the discussions on this Bill, the Minister has stated that he wants the additional powers set out in this measure in order to enable the Land Commission to proceed more rapidly with the acquisition of land and to remove administrative difficulties. If the Minister wants these additional powers, then I think the House is entitled to have a statement from him as to the extent of this problem of congestion which he has got to deal with. The Minister has in hands some hundreds of thousands of acres at the present time which are in various stages of acquisition. In the normal course of events it would take probably ten years or longer to distribute the whole of this land.

The Attorney-General

How is this relevant?

I fail to see how the distribution of land under previous Acts is relevant to a Bill not yet enacted.

I am only leading up to one of the sections of the Bill.

I will hear the Deputy develop his argument.

The Minister is dealing with some hundreds of thousands of acres which it would take at least ten years to distribute. If that is so, why does he want all those additional powers? If he wants those additional powers he should give the country clearly to understand why he requires them and the extent of the problem with which he has to deal. The measure of the land problem was taken by one of the Minister's predecessors in office. Since Fianna Fáil became the Government they have not attempted to measure the problem or to give the people in the country to understand the nature and extent of it, according to their standards of measure. The Minister may proceed to acquire land and he may even take in later legislation newer and more extraordinary powers for the purpose of enabling him to proceed even at a greater rate with the acquisition of land, but when he has all the available land acquired, what impression will he have made on the problem, and to what extent will he be able to deal with it? If he is able to make only a faint impression and to touch the mere fringe of the problem, why should he proceed in this fashion to upset security of tenure and make every farmer feel he is in the position that he does not know when his turn will come? Is it not due to the farmers that the Minister should make some statement so that they will be able to glean some impression as to the extent to which the Minister may proceed in his policy of land acquisition?

I do not want to go over the points made during the Second Reading debate or on the Committee Stage, when a very lengthy and exhaustive discussion took place; but I invite the Minister to give the people some indication of his intentions in regard to land legislation, to give them some indication of the problem which confronts him, so that they may be able to appreciate his motives in introducing legislation of this kind. A statement of that type may have the effect of allaying to some extent the feeling of insecurity which he has engendered by the 1933 Act and which is intensified by this Bill, which aims at removing the last vestige of security which the tenant farmers enjoy.

The Attorney-General

I must express my surprise that Deputy Roddy, who is, I suppose, one of the experts among the Party opposite on this question of land legislation, had no more effective answer to the speech of Deputy MacDermot than that to which we have just listened. He made an appeal to the Minister to make some statement as regards policy in order to allay the feeling of insecurity and the fears engendered by the 1933 Act and this Bill. I imagine that it would have been much more important that Deputy Roddy should make an appeal, even a belated one, to Deputy Dillon to do something to allay the feeling of insecurity which he has attempted to arouse by the speeches which he delivered during the recent by-elections, and which I understand he repeated in the House to-day. I did not hear the whole of his speech and, like Deputy MacDermot, I was unable to be present at the discussions on the earlier stages of this Bill, but I did read what he said throughout the country in connection with this Land Bill. It was apparently considered a strong point in his Party's programme to make an attack on it as undermining the security of tenure of the farmers.

Deputy MacDermot very modestly, in his opening speech said that he was not familiar with the intricate provisions of the land laws of this country; he said that he was not an expert and he offered his views with some diffidence. He asked to be corrected on the interpretation which he placed on this Bill and on the 1933 Act and in that connection he had no answer from Deputy Roddy.

Deputy Roddy has not questioned Deputy MacDermot's explanations of the principles underlying the 1933 Act and this Bill. Deputy Dillon left the House before Deputy MacDermot had concluded his speech. I must say that I do not think there could be a more effective or deadly answer to the rubbish we have been listening to from Deputy Dillon than the speech delivered by Deputy MacDermot. He took an active part in the discussions on the 1933 Act. I was in the House with the present Minister and on that occasion the Deputy adopted precisely the same attitude that he has adopted here to-day. A good deal of what he said to-day, he said on the 1933 Act. He particularly stressed the necessity for taking this land purchase business out of the realm of Party politics. He pointed out that he was quite certain—he repeated it here to-day and with absolute accuracy—that, taking the House all round, there is probably complete agreement as to the fundamental principles which should guide the Land Commission in the acquisition of land for distribution in this country.

I am not going to go over his arguments, but I will say this, that I agree with practically every single word he said, both as regards his attitude towards land legislation and his explanation of the effect of the 1933 Act and the likely effects of this Bill. He wound up by pointing out that this Bill merely rounds off the 1933 Act and it gets rid of some obstacles which the Land Commission found in their way when carrying through the policy in the 1933 Act, and some obstacles embodied in the 1923 Act. It is unnecessary for me to point to the various decisions as regards land policy embodied in the 1923 Act and express my agreement with Deputy MacDermot that this Bill is an attempt to do equity amongst the holders of land and put all on an equal basis. We had wild talk from Deputy Dillon throughout the country to the effect that something radical and revolutionary is being attempted. The Deputy does not seem to understand the meaning of the terms he uses. He talked about tenant purchasers and, to a man like Deputy Roddy or anyone who is acquainted with land legislation, it must have been laughable.

I did not use the words "tenant purchasers."

The Attorney-General

I do not know whether the Deputy heard Deputy Dillon's attempt to define "tenant purchasers." I am sure if he did he would have to laugh at it. A number of other persons in whom land has been vested under the Land Act were not tenant purchasers at all. They were a number of persons who were in possession and ownership of land—even landlords—and they became beneficiaries under the Land Act and had the benefit of conditions enabling advances to be made to them for the purpose of acquiring their land.

Deputy MacDermot pointed out that under the 1933 Act an inroad was made on the law as it stood at that time; that the Land Commission were given power in certain circumstances to acquire land which had been vested under earlier Acts, and that what was intended to be done under the 1933 Act was to extend that provision to purchase under the 1923 Act, but owing to difficulties having been experienced it is not clear that the intention in the 1933 Act—and which everybody in the House understood was there—was effectively embodied in the Act. This particular Bill is merely an extension of the principle which the late Deputy Hogan embodied in his 1923 Act, and I do think it is very unreasonable and unfair for a responsible Deputy of the Opposition Party to go about the country attempting to shake the confidence of the people, and to do the very thing which he protests that he wishes to avoid, that is, to weaken the feeling of security which the persons who purchased land under the Land Acts did feel, and in practice have obtained. Deputy MacDermot, with deadly force, asked why this discussion should have taken place through four stages, and no list, no names, no particulars to justify the wild charges that have been made by Deputy Dillon and others have been produced here.

Deputy Roddy apparently thinks that already security of tenure has gone. He proceeded to go into the history of the activities of the Land Commission under the 1933 Act. I am not going to accuse Deputy Roddy of drawing on his imagination. I am quite satisfied that, when he stated in this House that he has come across half a dozen cases in which he felt that hardship was imposed on certain persons by reason of the fact that the Land Commission acquired their land, he quite honestly believed that to be the case. But in the last analysis the Land Commission must be trusted in this matter, and has been trusted for years with regard to the exercise of powers which were similar to a large extent. I might differ with a particular inspector; I might have my own view as to whether it was proper that a certain man's land should be acquired, or whether it was probable that the persons that were to get it on distribution would make better use of it than he did. But one must only trust the judgment of the officers who, as Deputy MacDermot pointed out, are in an independent position, and who are entrusted with this very onerous and very difficult work. They may make mistakes; they are only human. I can quite conceive that in certain cases mistakes have been made, but mistakes, when they are made, are made along the lines of the policy laid down in this House time and time again, and enshrined in those Acts.

Deputy MacDermot has pointed out the various safeguards in the 1933 Act. I remember that when it was going through this House here, a Bill never had a smoother passage. At that time there was no by-election in the offing; there was no excited atmosphere. A lot of members on the Opposition Benches—including Deputy MacDermot —and ourselves combined to insert in that Act such safeguards as we thought were practicable, and, as he said, compatible with the achievement of land purchase, and in the public interest. There was general agreement that those provisions which he referred to to-day did so far as it was practicable—keeping in mind the already accepted policy with regard to land purchase, the already enacted provisions of the 1923 Act—achieve that object. We did achieve more or less unanimity on the terms which were to be embodied in the 1933 Act. We did, at that time in any case, keep the business of land purchase out of Party politics, and I think, if I recollect aright, all the parties who took part in the discussion thanked the Minister and myself for the attitude which we had adopted throughout the whole discussion. Now, we have it suggested that the 1933 Act and this Bill are really the forerunners of what one might style Bolshevist legislation. Deputy Dillon, if he knows anything about the Land Acts, if he has taken care to study them, if he has watched their actual operation, must know that that is an absolutely outrageous mis-statement. He must know that we feel, just as much as he does or just as much as Deputy MacDermot does, how essential it is that those farmers who work their land and are making the best use of it should feel security in possession, and that such interests as banks and others should realise that if they want to make advances to them on the security of their lands that security is there as a backing for any advance they make. I think it is the very worst form of pretended friendship for the small farmer in this country that anybody can indulge in to suggest in the wild way in which it has been suggested that this Bill undermines his security.

Deputy Dillon flung down a challenge to the Minister that if he discussed this Bill here in the House he would prove to demonstration that it conferred greater power on the Land Commission than ever Clanricarde possessed. I do not know if he repeated that challenge here in the House. I understand he did not; he did not even carry out his threat or his promise. I do suggest that you cannot compare the powers of a body like the Land Commission, charged with the more equitable distribution of land among the people of this country, with the powers of the landlord who only utilised his powers of taking up holdings in order to widen his ranches, and for the purpose of depriving people of land and owning it for his own selfish interests. It is childish nonsense to compare the powers of the Land Commission in connection with land which must be distributed amongst the people with the powers of the old landlord. I am sure it hardly impressed any of the electors to whom it was addressed in County Galway. I myself imagine that instead of its being, as Deputy Dillon thought it was, a bull point in his Party's programme, it was a very dud shell, and in fact had quite the opposite effect to that which he intended it to have.

It is a certain amount of satisfaction to those of us who foresaw for 12 or 14 years the danger of attacking the fixed principle with regard to land tenure, to find all Parties in this House now trying in varying degrees to subscribe to the principle of fixity of tenure. No purpose will be served by going back to the 1923 Land Act or to the time when that was a Bill, but I have a distinct recollection of upwards of 1,000 delegates of the unpurchased tenants meeting in the Mansion House 13 years ago, and one of their protests was against the section of the Bill which attacked fixity of tenure. I have not seen dealt with by the Minister or by the Opposition in this whole controversy here on this Bill, or for that matter on the 1933 Bill when it was before the House, what is going to be the end or what is the goal of land distribution. Where is it going to stop? Is it the idea of the Land Commission, or is it the policy of the Government or of any Party in this House, to divide the land, and when you have gone over dividing it, break it up into still smaller fragments—when you have gone over it and have the farms reduced to a certain size, that you pass over it again? Is it the intention of the Government that reasonably good holdings should be there—that they should be economic holdings? If it is, then that policy is not being carried out. What is the use of calling holdings of ten and 15 and 20 acres economic holdings?

The Attorney-General

On a point of order, Sir, if this is on administration, I suggest it is out of order.

It is on policy.

I am submitting, Sir——

The Attorney-General

I submitted a point of order.

Yes, and I am submitting my views on your point of order, as I am entitled to do.

The Attorney-General

Well, I object.

If a Deputy raises a point of order, another Deputy is quite entitled to put his view to the Chair on that point of order before the Chair rules.

Yes, and it is amazing that the Attorney-General should not know that. Surely a Deputy is entitled to give his views on a point of order before the Chair rules. The point here is that additional powers are being asked by the Land Commission to confiscate land, and I submit that the question of how they use the present powers and the amount of land concerned, and so on, is relevant to the question of whether or not they should get those powers.

In any case, I am prepared to hear Deputy Belton a little further before I rule on the matter.

The thing I have been looking for in the whole debate—and I have been watching it very carefully from both sides—is to try to get a policy; but I see no policy. The nearest approach was a vague statement on a very vague and contentious matter—the proper use of the land, and that nobody, no matter what powers were taken, who was properly using his land would be interfered with.

It is a pity that the definition of a policy was not further defined, and, of necessity, defined as to what the proper use of land is. Does the Minister suggest that wheat ranching is a better use of land than cattle ranching? We have wheat ranching to-day. Would be accept this as a principle of the proper use of land—and I challenge him to refute it when he gets up to reply—that any man who is growing corn and has more than two acres of corn for every acre of manure land is not properly using his land? I challenge the Minister to refute that on sound principles of agriculture. Wheat ranching is robbing the land, and I am quite sure, from the mentality disclosed by the Minister here, that a farmer who robs the land by wheat ranching is, in the opinion of the Minister, using the land according to the best principles of husbandry. According to my opinion, however, that man is as much a robber and a plunderer of property as the man who goes into a bank, holds up the bank manager at the point of a gun, and takes money. That, however, is the kind of wild mentality disclosed by the Minister and the Government in this Bill.

I agree generally with all that has been said about the value of fixity of tenure. I agree with Deputy MacDermot in his analysis and castigation of the principle of fixing the size of farms according to the acreage for valuation, as advocated by Deputy Dillon. The machinery of government is so intricate, particularly the machinery of taxation, that if sound principles of agriculture were being carried out here, we might not trouble about the size of a holding, because the larger the holding the dearer it was on the individual who held it. Taxation works so, with large owners of property, that a point is reached— and you have not very far to go until you reach it—in land-owning in this country at the present time, when it does not pay a man to own any more land. Those circumstances will automatically regulate the size of a holding. Now, what objection is there to buying land when it comes into the market? Generally speaking, land comes into the market when the farmer or the landowner fails.

Or when he dies.

Yes, or when he dies, and when nobody survives him who wants to work the land. However, is not the type of farmer who has failed on the land the type to eliminate? In this Bill the Land Commission is taking power to charge to the local authorities the arrears which accumulated while that man was failing and which that man should have discharged, or which the farm he held should have discharged. Are not these people the weeds among the farmers, and should not every opportunity be availed of to get rid of the weeds? There is no doubt but there is a cloud of fear over fairly-sized farmers in this country at the present time, and the value of land has gone down. Even in this Bill, land, the purchase price of which has been over £3,000, will not get the advantage of the halved annuities except for that portion that exceeds £3,000. That relates to certain types of farms—I think ordinary agricultural farms. In the case of stud farms, £5,000 is the limit on the purchase price, beyond which the annuity will not be halved. Well, I am not the owner of either of these classes of farms, or farms of that size, but the Minister should bear in mind that farms of that size used, as they ought to be, according to the proper principle of husbandry, ought to be encouraged under a proper agricultural policy. As I have said before here, and the Minister should get it into his head, the running of farms in any country properly governed is in the hands of the Minister for Agriculture, if he puts over a proper agricultural policy on the country, and he should put it over in such a way as would pay the farmer to carry on a certain type of farming, and that type of farming should be, in the opinion of the Government of the day, the best type of farming in the national interests.

Any Minister for Agriculture who does not set out to achieve that does not know his business and the success of any Minister for Agriculture who sets out to achieve that depends on his success in achieving that ideal. It is not an agricultural policy to say to a man "If you do not work your land in this way, you will lose it." You should not have to say that. Your policy should be such that the farmer will see it himself.

Is this not the administration of the Department of Agriculture?

I am dealing with the reasons, as disclosed in the debate, why compulsory acquisition of land should take place.

We shall travel very far if we go along that line.

The one safeguard for fixity of tenure which has been put forward is the use of land in the national interest. I want to show that the use of land in the national interest is not a matter for any farmer, but for the Government of the day. I do not see why there should be a limit to any holding if agriculture is administered on the lines I suggest and on the lines which are most successful in every country. No man could farm 1,000 acres without employing a large amount of agricultural labour and the more agricultural labour he employs the surer it is that he will have to pay a decent wage. If he fails in that, he has to get out or he sells. The Land Commission can come in and buy out the man who fails. I see no half-way house or no intermediate landing stage between allowing a man to own all the land he can buy and work, and division and sub-division and sub-division again until we are all down to four or five acres. Anybody who has studied agricultural economics at all knows that there is nothing as bad for agriculture as all small holdings and that there is nothing as dangerous to the national economy of a country and the stability of a country as uniformity in one main industry.

My objection to this Bill is that it is an extension of a bad principle. Fixity of tenure is gone long ago and the only fixity of tenure we have now is fixity of tenure provided we use the land in the best national interests. Again, I ask the Minister to refute, if he can, the point I make as to whether working the land in the manner I have indicated is not in the best national interest. I would go a long way to agree with him if fixity of tenure was assured to people who would work their land in the best national interest, provided they did not rob the land, and that year after year they were accumulating fertility in the land, or, at worst, maintaining the same standard of fertility which it had a year before. That, however, is a theoretical position. If the Minister could define how that theoretical position could be maintained in practice, and, as fixity of tenure in the ordinary sense is gone, if it could be re-established on the basis that every farmer who works his land within wide limits of an agricultural policy, the main feature of which from the national standpoint would be that the fertility of the land is maintained, if not improved, is protected by law, in present circumstances I would accept that as a good enough fixity of tenure.

Long before to-day, I believed that it is a national obligation on the national authority to prevent any individual or number of individuals from impoverishing the land year after year. I cannot develop that on the Final Stage of the Bill because it is more a matter of agricultural policy than land policy, but I always thought it was a disaster to have separated them, especially now when land acquisition has become such a problem, and when more and more it is dawning on those responsible for the acquisition and sub-division of land that there is need for some anchorage. They are drifting out to sea and do not know where they are going to land. They want some anchorage and the Minister is hanging on to the anchorage of using the land in the national interest. That shows that the Minister has found it necessary to have some anchorage. If fixity of tenure on any size of holding were assured, provided that the land was worked in the national interest, and if the ordinary methods of farming were good enough, provided there was no robbery of the fertility, I would vote for this Bill because it is the nearest practical approach to fixity of tenure we can get now. As it is, I see that the Minister is aiming for that, and that must be so. We know that there are many farms in this country which are not worth £2,000 to-day, but which would be worth £4,000 or £6,000 if agriculture were normal. The man who wants to cling on to his farm will lose it if agricultural conditions improve because the value of his land will go up. Agricultural conditions can hardly decline any further and land is at the lowest ebb as regards price. I suppose that for the last 40 or 50 years it was not so cheap as it is now. I want the Minister to define more clearly what the use of land in the national interest is, and particularly I want him to attack the statement I have made and on which I would go so far as to dogmatise. This is an old country. The land has been tilled for centuries. It has been burned and brought back to fertility again. It was in a good state of fertility a few year ago. I go as far as to say that no land can be farmed to produce grain crops, unless the ratio of manure is that for every two acres of grain there must be one acre of manured land in that season. Old meadows would require top dressing. If that is not done the land is not worked in the national interest because it is losing its fertility year after year, and the country is being impoverished. If the Minister's definition of "work in the national interest" is somewhat akin to that with assured fixity of tenure or approximates to that ideal in agriculture, I will support the Bill.

As the details of the Bill have been discussed at length, I do not intend to delay the House. I should like, however, to refer to the speeches of Deputy MacDermot and the Attorney-General. If there were any doubts in my mind about fixity of tenure being endangered by this amending Bill, and by the Land Act of 1933, they were enhanced by these speeches. Deputy MacDermot was at great pains to keep away as far as possible from the Bill. He did not pretend to know what was in the Bill, but said that the Land Commission would not be unjust to anyone. The Attorney-General proceeded on the same lines when he said that we must trust the officials to administer it properly; that they were not going to do anything unjust, but he admitted, as Deputy MacDermot did, that that possibility was there. They did not say that the Bill did not give power to the Land Commission to be active in the taking of land, or that there was not power to take purchased land, but that they were satisfied it would not be done. That is what I object to in this Bill. It was what I objected to in the Land Act of 1933 that the powers were given, whether they were to be exercised or not. If they were not meant to be exercised they should not be given. I do not intend to say a hard word against the Land Commission. The Land Commission is like any other body of officials who are there to operate Acts passed by this House. It is their duty to operate them, just as the Revenue authorities exercise the powers given them by this House. The Revenue Commissioners may seem hard at times, but as they are only doing their duty I do not blame them. Similarly I do not blame the Land Commission if they operate Acts under powers given them by this House. But I blame this House if it gives power to the Land Commission to operate this Bill in a manner that might be unjust to farmers. Every Deputy who has any right to speak for farmers should object to this Bill if it contains such powers. The Attorney-General referred to the question of security, and I hope the Minister in charge will also do so. He said that the banks, in view of the speeches of Deputy Dillon and other Deputies, had been induced to refrain from lending money, because there was a danger to the title of land when there was no such danger.

I said that the borrowing powers of farmers had been reduced by the Land Act of 1933 and by this amending Bill. I say so still. If the Attorney-General can assure banks and lending bodies that any money they lend on land is secure and that the borrowers will not be disturbed in possession that will go a great length to satisfy me that the Government are not going to operate the powers contained in the Bill. Is the Minister going to give the assurance that the Attorney-General hinted at, that where advances are made the land will not be taken from farmers, and that their title in it is secure? Possibly the Minister will argue, as Deputy MacDermot argued, that there never was any fear of farmers being dispossessed, and that men with land worth less than £2,000 would not be disturbed. All the Minister need say is that the owner is not working his land to the best advantage and this provision lapses. Who is to be the judge as to whether or not a man is working his land to the best advantage? The proof in the case of a farm as in a business lies in the success that is attained, and in the manner in which it is worked. The measure of success or failure is proved by the way a man fulfils his obligation in the running of the farm, the rearing and the education of a family, the amount of his savings or debts. Undoubtedly the man who misuses land must fail.

Only two classes of people can hold land if they farm improperly, the wealthy man who keeps a bit of land as a hobby, or some wealthy lunatic who has money enough to spend on land of which he makes no use. Any other type of farmer must of necessity work his land to the best advantage, if he is going to continue in occupation for any length of time. If any Minister or anyone else could come along to interfere with that man's economy it would possibly make his position worse than it was. This Bill, whatever anyone else thinks, is, in my opinion, a guillotine held over the heads of the farmers, creating in their minds the fear that any moment the button may be pressed and the knife dropped. Such a fear is harmful to agriculture generally, and will destroy any initiative or anxiety amongst farmers to improve land. It will undoubtedly create a slump in the value of land, and will lessen its worth from the borrowing point of view. If the Minister could give an assurance that none of these things could happen perhaps we might not offer opposition to this Bill or to the Land Act of 1933. Until the Minister can say, somewhat on the same lines as the Attorney-General, that any bank that lends farmers money on the security of their land can feel satisfied, and that it has his assurance that people to whom money is lent will not be disturbed, then there is no security in land in this State.

Unfortunately a couple of by-elections broke out when this Land Bill came before the Dáil and it was discussed by members of the Opposition, not on the merits, but from the point of view of the political capital they could make out of it— how far they could by means of criticism scare a number of voters into voting for them. The members of the Opposition have long since dropped any hope of inducing people to vote for them on their merits and they are relying on threats and scares and prophecies of evil. The principal prophet of evil in the Fine Gael Party is Deputy Dillon. Deputy Dillon informed the House and informed me that he was not accusing me or the Government of bad faith. That does not tally with what he has been saying down the country for the past three or four weeks. He has been going down to Galway and Wexford picturing me as a sort of ogre who was entering into a conspiracy to throw all the farmers of the country on the road and take over their land. He said in Galway that I took powers in this Bill that Lord Clanricarde never sought. Here, to-day, although he disclaimed any imputation of bad faith, he got up and said that the question was whether the Land Leaguers were right or whether the Land Leaguers were wrong, trying, thereby, to convey to the people that he stood for the rights for which the Land Leaguers stood and that we stood against those rights. He went on to say that the Bill would rob the farmers. Deputy Dillon was the protector of the farmers and we were the robbers of the farmers! He said that the Bill would destroy the fixity of tenure for which the Land Leaguers had fought and which they obtained. For what did the Land Leaguers fight? They fought to destroy the fixity of tenure which the landlords claimed. They sought to destroy the fixity of tenure and the rights claimed by 4,000 persons over the lives of the people of the country. They were successful in destroying that fixity of tenure. I have stated, and I repeat that what we tried in 1933 to do and what we are trying in this Bill to do, is to destroy the fixity of tenure of the ranchers—people who make the same claim as the old landlords made, that they have the right to do what they like with their own. That principle cannot be defended on its merits by anybody.

Does the Minister say now that what he wants to do is to destroy the fixity of tenure of any farmer who claims the right to do with his own what he wants to do?

To destroy the fixity of tenure of people who are living up to that principle.

That is what you want to do?

That is the cleavage. If you want to destroy the fixity of tenure of any farmer who claims to work his land in accordance with what he, and nobody else, thinks to be the best way to do it—that is where your way and ours part. We say that a man who is living on the land, by the land and for the land, ought to have fixity of tenure, whether he agrees with the present Minister for Lands or whether he agrees with any member of the Fine Gael Party.

That is where Deputy Dillon and I part, and that is where Deputy Dillon and practically the whole of the Fine Gael supporters in the country also part.

I do not agree.

I maintain that that is so and I warn Deputy Dillon that, if he continues on the lines on which he is going, he will be a member of no national party, and that he will be repudiated in regard to his land policy by the members of his own Party just as he has been repudiated in his Commonwealth policy in Galway by Professor Hogan. I warn Deputy Dillon that, if he continues on those lines, he will get no backing in the country, that he will never be leader of any Party and that he will not be for long vice-leader of the Party to which he at present belongs. For six or 12 months Fine Gael have been more busy repudiating Deputy Dillon than they have been in attacking us and they will have that job in front of them for some time longer. Deputy Dillon and Deputy O'Sullivan part company on the principle to which the Deputy has referred. Deputy O'Sullivan, speaking on the Committee Stage of this Bill, enunciated principles in regard to the tenure of land with which I agree. Speaking on the 28th July he said:

"Unless a very great social evil is proved, unless something threatening the whole welfare of the nation is shown to exist, there ought to be some security for the ordinary farmers as regards the holding of land."

Deputy O'Sullivan also said on the same occasion:—

"I can imagine, in a time of great crisis, political and social developments of such a character as might justify serious interference with property, even property of this kind, but it cannot be alleged that such a crisis exists."

Deputy O'Sullivan and I agree on the principles as to the tenure of land. Mentally, Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Dillon have parted company long ago on that question. I warn Deputy Dillon that he will part company physically with his Party if he does not change his tune. A couple more by-elections or general elections will make him advance much farther towards our policy than he has advanced up to the present. He has repudiated himself in the country with regard to the growing of wheat and beet. He has, by his amendment, repudiated himself in regard to the land question, and he will repudiate himself still further before he is much older, if I am not greatly mistaken. It is really stupid to search for too much simplicity in regard to life. Life is a complex matter and, when Deputy Dillon gets more intelligence in regard to it, he will find that he cannot enunciate principles that govern human action in a very simple fashion. It is impossible to do that because the matter is too complex.

It is better to have no principles at all?

It is better to have the right principles and to act on them in regard to human relationships than to have some simple catch-cries which it is easy for some stupid person to repeat ad lib. We tried in 1933 to give fixity of tenure to the ordinary farmer who works his land in the ordinary agricultural way.

Deputy MacDermot alluded to subsection (3) of Section 32 of the Act of 1933. There it is pointed out that if a man is producing an adequate amount of agricultural produce and is providing an adequate amount of employment, the Land Commission cannot remove him for any reason other than the relief of congestion in the immediate locality. If they remove him they must give him an alternative holding of £2,000 market value.

Are the grounds for removal amplified in the 1936 Bill?

The Minister would not consider extending in some future legislation the size of the £2,000 holding to make it equivalent to the holding taken from him?

One of the things we did in that section of the 1933 Act was to establish more firmly a number of men who were rendered insecure in their title by the 1923 Act. Congestion in certain parts of this country is the greatest social evil that has to be dealt with. In the 1923 Act, the late Mr. Hogan attempted to get land for the relief of congestion, and he took power to migrate even purchased tenants. Section 24 of the 1923 Act gives the lie to the allegations that Deputy Dillon has been making throughout the country. In Section 24 of the Act of 1923, the Act which was passed by the late Mr. Hogan, power was taken compulsorily to acquire the holdings of tenants who had been purchased and to migrate them.

To lands of equal value and equal suitability.

I am coming to that point.

Am I right in stating that the land to which they were to be migrated would be of equal value and equal suitability?

Then why try to suppress that?

I am not suppressing it. I can only answer one point at a time. That power was given to the Land Commission and, in order to operate it, these tenants had to give back all their land if the Land Commission wanted them to do it. The Land Commission did not desire to be moving purchased tenants around unnecessarily and we took power in the 1933 Act to take off a tenant his surplus land, the land surplus to £2,000 worth and to leave him in his own district with £2,000 worth. That is a point with which Deputy MacDermot would not agree but Deputy Dillon if he were treating this matter on its merits would agree with it. The 1933 Act had the effect of leaving a man more secure in his own district than he was left under the 1923 Act. Another point about the 1923 Act is this. Deputy Dillon said that the farmers of this country had fought for fixity of tenure and that they got it. Deputy Roddy, when Deputy Dillon was out, said that we had power over hundreds of thousands of acres of land and asked why we sought further powers. He alluded to the fact that in the 1923 Land Act there were powers for the compulsory acquisition and resumption of land. The 1923 Act gave the Land Commission power to take every sod of land, even off a small farmer—a man who had four, five, ten or 20 acres of land—if his land was to be purchased under that Act. The Land Commission had power to resume it without any obligation to give him an alternative holding even of equal suitability.

Between the time of pur chase and vesting the land you could resume, but there was no such power after vesting.

If Deputy Dillon would tell the truth to the people of this country about the 1923 Act, the 1933 Act and this Bill he would point out that under the 1923 Act the Land Commission, when taking over lands and vesting them, could resume every sod of such land if they wished. Instead of leaving the tenant in that insecure position, without any right even to retain a sod of his own soil, we vested the land in him and gave him this security: that if ever the Land Commission touched him again they would have to give him an alternative holding of a market value of £2,000.

Or the market value of the land they took from him.

Or the market value of the land we took from him. Deputy Dillon seems to realise that and yet he has been going round the country for the last four or five weeks trying to scare people into the belief that we were doing something that was never done before.

So you are.

There is no way of dealing with Deputy Dillon's impudence which only arises, in my opinion, from fundamental ignorance.

There is no need to become abusive about it.

I am not becoming abusive. If I were to become abusive to Deputy Dillon I would be more abusive to his face than behind his back, I wish he would adopt that principle. In anything I have to say about him I would be more abusive to his face than behind his back. He reverses the process.

The Minister described me as a "gombeen" man down the country.

He went down to Galway——

Leave Galway and the rest of the country out of it.

Unfortunately we cannot leave it out of it.

Let us deal with the Bill and with what Deputy Dillon said in this House. There is sufficient material in that if the Minister will deal with it.

I only wish, then, that Deputy Dillon had repeated in this House what he said down the country. He called me a conspirator, another Clanricarde and all that. The fact of the matter is that this 1933 Land Act gave to the working farmer more security, if he were purchased under the 1923 Act, than was given to him under the 1923 Act. Another feature about the 1923 Act was that whereas it gave the Land Commission complete and absolute power over the lands of a man who had only four, five, ten, 20 or 30 acres—gave them power to resume such lands—it left them without power to interfere with ranches that had been purchased under the previous Acts. We remedied that position under the 1933 Act or at least we thought we did. The courts' decision reversed what we thought was the situation. We are merely confirming in 1936 what we attempted to do in 1933. That is, that where a man is a rancher or sets himself up as a new landlord —not working his land, but just hiring it out to other people—we are taking power to take over that man's land instead of being compelled to use the powers in the 1923 Act to take over the land of small farmers when land is needed for the relief of congestion.

One of the arguments Deputy Dillon is very fond of using is that we want to encourage the people of the country to envy their neighbours and give them the power to grab, as he calls it, their neighbour's land. What is the traditional meaning attached to "land-grabber"? The worst of Deputy Dillon is that he was trained up to sit, act and talk in another assembly, and he has been forced to come in here instead. "Land-grabber" meant that the landlord encouraged some envious person to take over the land of a good farmer when the landlord wanted to kick that farmer out. The land grabbers throughout the country were taken on by the landlords to consolidate the small holdings from which people had been driven.

No, but to inhabit the evicted tenant's holding, and we put the grabber out of every such holding in the country.

Not only did the grabber take over one evicted tenant's holding but he took over several of them.

And we put them all out.

Before Deputy Dillon got his political education down in Galway, he would have secured the rancher in the grabbed holdings. The Deputy probably came across one or two cases down there in which at present there is a land grabber in control of several farms from which the tenants were evicted and under Deputy Dillon's dictum we dare not touch such a man. But Deputy Dillon, with the political education he has got in the last few weeks, has come to the point that he will only give security below £2,000 worth, market value, of land. Above that £2,000 worth he is prepared to take over the land compulsorily. These are his views here, but I do not know what he will say when he goes down the country again. He put in an amendment to that effect, the limitation of acreage or value, and, therefore, he has, to a certain extent, committed himself to that policy.

The Minister did not accept that amendment.

The amendment was ruled out of order.

It would not be ruled out of order if the Minister put it down.

That is true. I would not put it down because I do not stand for that principle. I stand for what is written into the 1923 Land Act, and I stand for what is written into this Bill. Whenever there is a social evil arising out of the use of land, I maintain that the people have a right to interfere in order to destroy that social evil. In that I am sure I am supported by everybody who ever taught or wrote about the rights of public property.

Hear, hear.

I will quote for Deputy Dillon a document I have here. I do so because I wish to refer him to that document which was written by His Holiness the Pope. In that document His Holiness uses these words:—

"However, when civil authority adjusts the ownership to meet the needs of the public good, it acts not as the enemy but as the friend of private owners; for thus it effectively prevents the possession of private property, intended by nature's Author in His wisdom for the sustaining of human life, from creating intolerable burdens, and so rush to its own destruction. It does not, therefore, abolish, but protects private ownership; and far from weakening the right of private property, it gives it new strength."

Again in another passage His Holiness says:—

"It follows from the twofold character of ownership which We have termed individual and social, that men must take into account in this matter, not only their own advantage, but also the common good. To define in detail these duties, when the need occurs and when the natural law does not do so, is the function of Government."

We have tried in the Land Act of 1933 to help to put private property in a secure position here in this country. I refer, of course, to private property in land. The worst defender of any cause is the man who takes up an absolutely impossible position. The worst defender of security of tenure in the land of Ireland is the man who takes up a position that can never be admitted—for there is no moral justification for the principle that a man's land is his own to do what he likes with it. That was the principle that the land leaguers destroyed in this country. The reverse is a principle which I hope will always remain in this country. Deputy Dillon speaks of our policy bringing about a state of chaos and pandemonium that would either lead to savage reaction to the right or savage reaction to the left. You have here in this country, and particularly in the West of Ireland, tens of thousands of small holders living on uneconomic holdings. At the same time there exists a small number of large land-holders with over £100 to £200 poor law valuation, there exists a certain volume of unemployment in the country. There are 30,000 people added to the population of this country every year. If we cannot get a livelihood for them here, they must emigrate or they must disappear in some way or another.

Would the Minister describe a farmer with a valuation of £100 as a rancher?

There are some farmers with a £5 valuation who are ranchers, and there are farmers with £300 to £500 valuation who are working their land properly.

These £5 men will have the land taken off them if they continue to work the land as they are doing now.

I say this much: if a man works his land and the Land Commission are satisfied that in the working of his land he is producing an adequate amount of agricultural produce and is providing an adequate amount of employment, they cannot put him out except for the relief of congestion in the immediate locality.

And if they are not satisfied, be he big or small, off he goes.

If they are not satisfied, if he is not living on the holding, if he is setting that land, not working it in the national interests, they can take it. Deputy Dillon can go down to Wexford and make what he likes of that. Deputy Belton alluded to wheat ranching, and asked me to define what was working land in the national interests, and so on. In Section 32 of the 1933 Act we gave a definition of that, and I cannot do any better than that. I no more look upon wheat ranching as the proper use of land than I look upon cattle ranching.

What has Deputy Gibbons to think of that, I wonder? The Minister says that if Deputy Gibbons puts all his land in wheat, he is a rancher and off he goes.

Deputy Dillon need not think that he is at some corner down in Wexford where we will not hear of it. I said no such thing. I said if a man was a wheat rancher——

What is a wheat rancher?

He is a man who grows nothing but wheat on his land for several years following one another.

You will want to be mighty careful what you do with your land in future or you will find yourself on the side of the road.

Most of the people in this country have a more intelligent appreciation of how to use land than Deputy Dillon.

He would not know a spade from a shovel except to sell it over the counter.

The unfortunate thing about Deputy Dillon is that most people do not know as much about him as we do, and seeing that he is the son of his father, think he should know something of what he is talking about, particularly about land. We have to educate them into the fact that all he is concerned with is how much political propaganda he can make out of any issue and not about getting at the truth of the matter. When it is all boiled down this present Land Bill of 1936 is largely intended to dot the i's and cross the t's of what was attempted to be done in 1933. The extensions of these powers are by way of giving increased facilities to a certain class of tenants who were outside land purchase. Perhaps the biggest number of these cases are the tenants created since 1923. No matter how high the rent was which they undertook to pay back in those days they had no way of getting their land purchased. We have taken powers in this Bill to fix a fair rent in regard to these lands and give the tenants the right to purchase, so that their annual payment instead of being a rent for ever will help to make them owners of the land. Several other sections will make it easier for people who have long leases of land or fee farm grantees to come within the provisions of land purchase. Apart from the provisions making it easier for people to purchase land, the other sections of the Bill are, as I say, largely designed to make the law what we intended it to be in 1933.

The Land Act of 1933 was in operation for two or three years before the courts stopped the Land Commission's activities under the sections of that Bill which were most criticised at the time and have been most criticised since. Deputy Roddy and others, who were trying to create a scare about the operation of the 1933 Act and about this Bill, were challenged several times to mention any case where an injustice was done. I agree with Deputy MacDermot in one thing, particularly, and that is, that public opinion will always govern the land laws of this country in regard to land. Even if public opinion does not happen to be written into the land laws, it will be the effective law. If the law does less than public opinion wants to do, public opinion will soon secure that the law will be changed and enlarged. If the law does more than public opinion wants to be done, the people will prevent any Government or any Department from carrying out an unpopular law, a law that is altogether against the interests of the community.

I think, however, that in the present Bill and in the 1933 Act what we have done is, written in effective legal language, the opinion of 99.9 per cent. of the people of the country. They want to see as large a number of people as possible established on the land. They want to see land purchase completed. They do not want to see a number of people crowded into slum holdings, either in the West or in the East, while the best lands in this country are given over to ranching. The late Deputy Hogan started out to complete land purchase and to acquire land for the relief of congestion. He went as far as he could in those days. He left some things undone, which I think should have been done, and which we are doing now. As I say, I think that the Bill, as it stands, represents the opinion of 99.9 per cent. of the people of the country and, when their opinion changes in regard to the land laws, the land laws will be changed also.

I asked the Minister when he was speaking if he would be good enough to compare the tenure of the 1923 tenants under the 1936 Land Bill, during the first seven years after vesting, with the period that will ensue thereon. There is a difference.

A tenant purchaser under the 1923 Act will be in the same position seven years after vesting as any other tenant in the country. At the moment he is in a worse position before the land is vested in him. He is in the position that the Land Commission can take every sod of his land without giving him an acre in return.

Perhaps the Minister, having answered two questions which I did not ask him, will now answer the question which I did put to him. It was this: What is the position of a 1923 purchaser under the 1936 Land Act in the first seven years of his tenancy, as compared with his position in the years that will ensue thereon? There is a difference, is there not?

And the fact is that he has absolute fixity of tenure in the first seven years, but a different kind of tenure for ever afterwards?

At the moment the Land Commission can resume every sod of even a small holder with five or ten acres.

If it is unvested.

If it is unvested under the 1923 Act.

But, if it is vested, they cannot.

We believe that after the Land Commission have examined a man's position, and after they have vested his land in him, they should not come again to examine it for at least seven years.

He has absolute fixity of tenure for seven years?

At the moment he has no fixity of tenure. At the end of seven years he will have the same fixity of tenure as the rest of the people of the country.

But that will be different from the fixity of tenure that he enjoys for the first seven years?

Question put.
The Dail divided: Tá, 33; Níl, 22.

Aiken, Frank.Blaney, Neal.Boland, Gerald.Brady, Brian.Brady, Seán.Briscoe, Robert.Concannon, Helena.Corkery, Daniel.Davin, William.Derrig, Thomas.Doherty, Hugh.Flynn, John.Flynn, Stephen.Fogarty, Andrew.Gibbons, Seán.Kelly, Thomas.Lynch, James B.

MacDermot. Frank.McEllistrim, Thomas.MacEntee, Seán.Maguire, Ben.Maguire, Conor Alexander.Norton, William.O Ceallaigh, Seán T.O'Grady, Seán.O'Reilly, Matthew.Pearse, Margaret Mary.Rice, Edward.Ryan, Martin.Ryan, Robert.Sheridan, Michael.Traynor, Oscar.Victory, James.

Níl

Anthony, Richard.Beckett, James Walker.Bennett, George Cecil.Burke, Séamus.Curran, Richard.Desmond, William.Dillon, James M.Dockrell, Henry Morgan.Fagan, Charles.Finlay, John.Holohan, Richard.

McFadden, Michael Og.McGilligan, Patrick.Murphy, James Edward.O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.O'Reilly, John Joseph.O'Sullivan, Gearóid.O'Sullivan, John Marcus.Rice, Vincent.Roddy, Martin.Rogers. Patrick James.Wall, Nicholas.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies M. O'Reilly an d S. Brady; Níl: Deputies Bennett and G. O'Sullivan.
Question declared carried.
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