I move: "That the Bill do now pass."
Committee on Finance. - Land Bill, 1938—Fifth Stage.
I want to avail of this opportunity, as it will be the only one I shall have, to point out that as a result of this Bill, large tracts of land will be acquired for division in the constituency I represent. It has been the practice of the Land Commission to give consideration in the division of land to the claims of employees on estates but to my mind a scandalous practice has arisen of late years in that respect. The landlord or owner of an estate, who may have spite or a feeling of vindictiveness towards an employee, may get word that the estate is going to be acquired and he sacks that man. The man and, perhaps, his father before him has been working in the place for years but after he is dismissed someone else is put into the job. I am not going to weary the House with details but in Meath and Westmeath it has happened that men, some of them very old, have been put into positions of that kind six months prior to the division of an estate and have got portions of land and farmhouses when the estate was divided, while men who worked on the estate for years have been thrown out on the roadside. I want to avail of this opportunity to put it to the Land Commission that there should be a rule that a man should have five years' previous employment on an estate before he gets consideration in its division.
I have a good déal of sympathy with the remarks made by the last speaker.
Mr. Boland
I do not think it has anything to do with the Bill. It is not a matter for this Bill.
It is a matter of administration. At this stage, Deputies cannot discuss anything except what is actually in the Bill.
The point I want to bring before the House has reference to certain lands that have been divided already.
I am afraid the Deputy is not in order in dealing with it at this stage.
Is it not a matter of record that the Land Bill is introduced when the Minister is in the very happy position of having under his administration all the annuities purchased for a sum of £10,000,000?
The Deputy is not in order. He cannot deal at the present time with anything except what is in the Bill. This matter should have been raised on the previous stages.
On the Final Stage, surely to goodness we may draw the Minister's attention to the disabilities under which certain people are suffering.
The Deputy can only deal with matters which are in the Bill.
Surely it is a matter of concern for this House——
It is out of order.
Where the land annuities are at such a figure that they cannot be collected, is it not a matter of concern for the Minister? I bow to your ruling, Sir, and will say no more.
Mr. Broderick
Like the previous speaker I may not be in order on this question. It is a matter in which I was very much interested, but unfortunately on the Committee Stage I happened to be present at another interest of the Government. I should like, Sir, with your permission and with the permission of the Minister, to outline an amendment to the Land Act which will come before you in another place, and to give the reasons for it.
I am afraid even the Chair cannot exceed its duties, and must rule the Deputy out of order.
A previous speaker was allowed to give his objections. Surely the Chair can extend the same privilege to a distinguished speaker on this side.
Mr. Broderick
I have already made the Minister aware of the action I intend to take on this matter, and at that I will leave it.
I am not interested in anything that is outside the Bill, but I have such an objection to many things that are in the Bill that I propose to vote against it. We debated them at full length on other stages, and I do not want to worry the Minister further. I can pay him the tribute that he was very good natured during the whole debate, and if he did not give way to us, perhaps it may not have been his fault. At any rate, I, for one, and, I believe, my colleagues object to what is in the Bill, and we propose to vote against it.
In the course of the Committee Stage of this Bill, as well as on the occasion of the Second Reading, various reasons were given for the objections to this measure. It is a measure which in effect is going to give the Land Commission power to take land anywhere, at any time, for any purpose, and at any price. We have been concerned for some time past with the general economic conditions which are prevalent in this country. We will have, later on this evening, a discussion on a report which took something like four years to prepare and submit, a report which covers a wide field in connection with the general economic conditions in this country. The activities of the Land Commission have been extensive. Something like 40,000 holdings have been created during the last few years. Notwithstanding all that, our net exports—that is taking our gross exports of agricultural products and deducting from them our imports of agricultural products—are down £3,000,000, compared with 1931-1932. This particular Department is an expensive Department of State. If all this did not mean a loss in national wealth, if we could afford to carry out the proposals which the Land Commission had in view, if, in other words, there were enough land available, then our objections would not have been of the same sort as they are now.
Where men have bought out their lands, and have been Land Commission annuitants for a long period of years, it being generally conceded by the people of the country and by the Legislature that they had a right to those holdings, we consider it is unjust to take those holdings from them without giving them full and ample market price compensation, or alternatively giving them holdings somewhere else. The Bill is not perhaps as bad as when it was introduced, but it is bad enough. The ordinary courts decide the justice of nearly all disputes between persons, and the Government is no greater than any other person, and must obey the laws of justice and of right as well as any other individual in the country. It has no right to enter into possession of property belonging to other people at a price which is little short of confiscation. If, by reason of their policy, they had conferred immense benefits, if they had increased the productivity and wealth of the country, if they were a national economic proposition, there might be an excuse, possibly even an explanation, for this policy. The Minister during the course of his speech asked for examples. I have a particular objection to mentioning names in this House. I did bring one before the Minister's attention in this House, where there was what he himself subsequently admitted to be a case of injustice. All the people who have to suffer from the works and pomps of the Land Commission do not make their losses public. Does it follow from that that no cases of injustice have occurred? Is it likely, having regard to the fact that there have been injustices, that they are not going to continue in the future?
The Minister knows as well as anybody else that no matter how able an institution, no matter how efficient its personnel, or how capable its officials, mistakes occur in administration. There is no provision in this Bill as it stands for dealing with any case of injustice such as the one I mentioned to the Minister here in the House before. It remains and will remain a case for ex gratia treatment. Every Department of the State will warn the Minister of the danger of making a precedent of a case of that kind. They will point out that once you open the door it can never be closed. They will probably tell him that you cannot make a law for individual cases. This is not a Bill for individual cases. This is an all-powerful Bill. The Minister has no responsibility once it passes; it is handed over to individuals. Those individuals can justify themselves, in so far as their work under it is concerned, by saying that the law has been passed by us, and that they are merely administering it. We are opposing this measure.
Deputy Cosgrave has just stated that this Bill confers power on the Land Commission to take land anywhere, at any time, and at any price. The 1923 Act did the same thing. Unfortunately, the Acts brought in here up to the moment were not able to deal with cases—bad cases—which arose. That is why this Bill had to be introduced, and Deputy Cosgrave knows that very well. Nobody knows it better.
I should like to correct the Deputy's statement that the 1923 Act did the same thing. It made provision, where land was taken from a person by the Land Commission, that the person could claim land elsewhere, and had to get it.
Under £2,000. Let us take this a step further. I gave an instance here of the hardships that were endured by the ordinary farmers of the country owing to the manner in which this land was being left lying there—400,000 acres in my constituency —with the rates unpaid, as the chairman of the county council can tell us. It was lying there all the time. There is a sum of £1,700 due on the estate. We have trick of the loop lawyers coming along and finding loopholes for the purpose of preventing land being acquired.
What has that to do with this Bill?
The Deputy is not dealing with the Bill before the House. He must confine himself to the provisions of the Bill.
I do not want to enlarge on the subject. Deputy Cosgrave also said that it was confiscation of land. Unfortunately, under the previous Acts there was no confiscation of land, but there were five times the value paid for land, and we know what the result has been. We need only go down and see the derelict holdings all over the country.
We are not dealing with previous Land Acts, but with the Fifth Stage of this Bill, and the Deputy must confine himself to what is in this Bill.
Deputy Cosgrave says it is confiscation. Has Deputy Cosgrave no faith now in the valuers who were appointed under his Government? The same valuers value land to-day as valued it in 1931, 1929 and 1927.
Nonsense.
There was only one change made, namely, that the court to which a man can appeal is a court of three commissioners instead of one, and thank God for that. If Deputy Cosgrave has no faith in officials who are drawing salaries of from £800 to £1,200, he should put down a motion for their dismissal.
I oppose the passing of this Bill. I stated previously my main objection to this Bill—that it cuts across the entire philosophy that inspired the agrarian trouble in this country and those who carried it on, the men and women who made sacrifices in order that the tenant farmers would be the actual owners of their land. Deputy Corry trots out the case of one 400-acre farm——
1,400 acres.
That is deliberately done for the purpose of giving the impression that up and down the country there is a whole series of 400-acre farms not properly used. That is unfair and unjust. That sort of dope is not going to go down on this side of the House anyway.
I challenge the chairman of the county council to deny it.
I am in possession and I am going to hold it. This Bill will destroy all that was gained by the sacrifices of our people in the past. What about all the evictions and all the sacrifices made by our people in the past? Many of them died on the roadside when they were hurled out by the bailiffs, or, if not, they died on hulks between here and New York. Deputy Corry says that this Bill does not mean that there will be confiscation of land. On the Committee Stage, I endeavoured to have the provisions of this Bill altered, so that when the Lay Commissioners made up a certificate they would at least set forth on the face of the certificate the purpose for which they were taking the land. The Minister during the Committee Stage resisted that, but when he retired to his office he gave way and afterwards brought in an amendment. As a matter of fact, the amendment is almost worse than the original provision. That amendment says:
It is hereby declared and enacted that the Land Commission have and shall have power to resume, in whole or in part, for any one or more of the following purposes, any holding vested under the Land Purchase Acts in them or in the late Congested Districts Board for Ireland, that is to say:—
(c) for the purpose of increasing the food supply of the country;
(d) for the purpose of improving or rearranging the holding.
At any time the Minister can say that he will take a holding because he wants to increase the food supply of the country. Deputy Cosgrave has told the House the facts about the actual production. Even after the Land Commission have increased the number of farms, at a large cost to the taxpayers, the production is going down from day to day both in quantity and in value. Does not that negative this provision with regard to food supply? As a matter of fact I told the Minister already that the food question does not concern the Land Commission at all. In order to make this Bill plausible and to make it popular an amendment is put in giving the Land Commission power to take land to increase the food supply of the country when everybody knows that the land is producing less than ever it did. That is due to the Land Act which was enacted in 1933. The capital and the credit of the farmers are gone as a result of that Act. I ask every Deputy to vote against this measure.
Mr. Boland
The Deputy only read a part of the section which was inserted. It was brought in, as I pointed out at great length, to give the same protection to unvested holdings as vested holdings where they are well worked. Like some Pressmen, he did not read the full amendment. There was a report which really was not consistent with the facts at all. I admit that it is hard to blame them, because these things are very involved. But Deputy McMenamin was here when I discussed that. I was asked by one Deputy on the Committee Stage if I would give legislative effect to an assertion I had made, that any farmer who is working his land properly or, as Deputy Corry stated, putting his labour into it, was not going to be interfered with. I asserted here definitely that such a person had not been and would not be interfered with. I admit that it would be wholly undesirable to give the names of people and I did not mean it in that sense. I meant that if any Deputy came to me and let me know of any case I would have it investigated; that is where a person working land properly was interfered with in any way by the Land Commission: and I mean that his land was taken over.
Will the Minister tell us what his power is in that case?
Mr. Boland
On account of that amendment which I brought in on the Report Stage, the position is this: that where a farm is well worked, whether it is vested or unvested, it can only be taken if there is congestion in the immediate neighbourhood. Of course, it can be taken also for playgrounds and school plots, etc. In that case, where the Land Commission decide—I do not know if they ever have decided, but they have the power, and as Deputy Cosgrave said they may do it—the person whose land is taken is entitled to another holding to the value of £2,000. If his farm is of greater value he gets bonds for the balance.
The Minister has powers.
Mr. Boland
The Minister has no powers. I did what I was asked to do. I brought in the extra protection that a vested farm would have over an unvested farm. As to the case Deputy Cosgrave brought up, I do not blame the Deputy or his Government, but I think I am entitled to say that what took place was as a result of legislation passed by his administration. I refer to the Act of 1931. Those who passed that Act did not think that what did occur could happen. I have taken care to amend that section of the Act of 1931, in order to prevent any recurrence.
Supposing that occurred during my administration, was it not open to the Minister to take action? Is it not open to the Minister to take action now?
Mr. Boland
That opens up a very big point. If Deputy Cosgrave is going to be fair, as I think he means to be, I will be fair. He will admit that when we brought in the 1933 Act the Opposition insisted that the powers should not be in the individual.
The Minister can say that. It is one thing to look at the Act normally but it is another thing to operate it abnormally.
Mr. Boland
I would not care to have the power. I prefer to leave it the way it is. The Deputy has implied that it might be better the other way. Maybe not. As to his suggestion that I have the power to deal with it, I have not. I was very sorry that anything should turn out as badly as it did under the Act of 1931. I have made it impossible for a similar thing to occur. We have protected the hard-working farmers whose lands are not vested. That is a big improvement in the position. There is no question of taking land anywhere at any price. The price is fixed. There may be difficulties about the price, but that is not a matter for me.
Would the Minister give a figure?
Mr. Boland
Certainly not.
I will give one.
Mr. Boland
The Deputy may, but his Party took the question out of the power of the Minister. I have nothing to do with price. That is a matter for the Land Commission. There is also an appeal to the tribunal. What Deputy Corry said is right, that practically the same officials value land now as valued it in the past.
Would the Minister say that the value of land to-day is as good as it was eight years ago?
Mr. Boland
I am not able to answer that question. I am not an expert on land. I have no land. I do not know whether it is or not. I am sure under certain circumstances it is.
We are going outside the Bill now.
Mr. Boland
I replied to all the questions that were raised. In the two cases mentioned, this Bill would make a person who has unvested land safe. A recurrence of the unfortunate cases is made impossible. In other ways the position has been improved. We have dealt with technicalities which held up the operations of the Land Commission and prevented them doing good work. As to the Banking Commission's Report, whatever land remains to be divided would be for the relief of congestion. That is what we are doing.
It is nearly time.
Mr. Boland
We have done our share. Reference was made to a number of landless men who got holdings. It must be remembered that many got accommodation plots, and that as they got them there was no segregation of landless men and the figure was inflated. I think we have had a very full and a very useful discussion from all sides of the House.
Has land changed in value over a number of years?
Mr. Boland
Do not put that question to me.
Acquiring land when it is at rock-bottom price is really what is meant.
Nonsense.
Who is to define whether a farm is well worked or not?
Mr. Boland
We did not introduce that for the first time. It arose about the production of food. I was able to show Deputy Lynch that the phrase was in the Act of 1923, and he took it in good humour. As to land being well worked, the same people who will decide that question are still there. It was laid down in the Act of 1923, and we followed it.
Can you define it?
Mr. Boland
No.
Question put: "That the Bill do now pass."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 69; Níl, 33.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Carty, Frank.
- Corish, Richard.
- Crowley, Fred Hugh.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Davin, William.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Friel, John.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hickey, James.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Hurley, Jeremiah.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Francis.
- Lynch, James B.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- McCann, John.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- Meaney, Cornelius.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Munnelly, John.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Pattison, James P.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Bennett, George C.
- Benson, Ernest E.
- Brasier, Brooke.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William J.
- Broderick, Seán.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Coburn, James.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, John L.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Hughes, James.
- Keating, John.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Question declared carried.