What Deputies fail to realise in the particular cases of the individuals who are fighting, and who have successfully fought the previous Land Act on this matter of the resumption of holdings is that these are generally the particular types to which I have alluded: people who owe a large amount of arrears to the Land Commission and who owe a large amount of rates as well, and who, if and when the holding is finally resumed, have nothing to get. Those are the people who fight against it and who are the bitterest against it. In addition, you have another trouble, and that is that those are the very people whose holdings are full of pests or vermin, of which we very often hear complaints here in the Dáil. We hear loud complaints here in the Dáil from Deputies opposite about the rabbit pest and the rabbit plague; but just imagine the case of the unfortunate man with 30 or 40 acres of land alongside one of these derelict demesnes and who cannot grow any crop whatsoever on his holding because of these pests. He can clear the 30 or 40 acres of land, that he has already, of these pests, but I am hanged if he can do so if there are 500 or 600 acres alongside him derelict and over-ridden with vermin, and then, in addition to having to pay his own rates and annuities and the rates on the derelict land alongside him he also has to suffer the loss of having his crops eaten by these pests.
When Deputies opposite say that they are not against the resumption of holdings, they should look at this section which they are now opposing, and look at the manner in which their opposition here to the previous Acts succeeded in leaving loopholes for those people who were able and willing to take advantage of these loopholes. After all, I do not think there is any Deputy over there who wishes to see the man with the thousand or five hundred acres, employing, say, a man and a dog, being allowed to continue in this country. I do not think anybody in this House wants to see that system continued, but if those Deputies succeeded in carrying such an amendment —and particularly to that clause as it stands—it is only going to bring us back to the old position in which we have been placed since 1935, when the taking over of land by the Land Commission proved to be a complete washout owing to the loopholes that were, unfortunately, found in a previous Land Act. That is the position, and that is why I ask Deputies to withdraw their opposition to this section and let it go through. They are endeavouring now by their action to force us back into the position in which we have been from 1935 up to the present moment, when the Land Commission, unless a holding was actually thrown to them, had to take their hands off and let such people keep their holdings, with the result that you have these unfortunate small holders down the country having to pay through the nose. It is bad enough for a man to be looking down from the hill at the little farm he had long ago and seeing it in the hands of one of those ranchers, but it is worse still when, in addition to paying the rates and annuities for his bit of land, he must pay the rates and annuities for that fellow as well, and the Land Commission says to him that he must pay the extra rates in order to enable them to carry on. Deputies opposite should let the section go through, in my opinion. It will go through in any case, and they are only wasting time opposing it.