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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 19 May 1943

Vol. 90 No. 3

Committee on Finance. - Vote 52—Lands.

Tairgim:—

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £741,067 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1944, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí Oifig an Aire Tailte agus Oifig Choimisiún Talmhan na hEireann (44 & 45 Vict. c. 49, a. 46 agus c. 71, a. 4; 48 & 49 Vict. c. 73, a. 17, 18 agus 20; 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48; 3 Edw. 7, c. 37; 7 Edw. 7 c. 38 agus c. 56; 9 Edw. 7, c. 42; Uimh. 27 agus Uimh. 42 de 1923; Uimh. 25 de 1925; Uimh. 11 de 1926; Uimh. 19 de 1927; Uimh. 31 de 1929; Uimh. 11 de 1931; Uimh. 33 agus Uimh. 38 de 1933; Uimh. 11 de 1934; Uimh. 41 de 1936; agus Uimh. 26 de 1939).

That a sum, not exceeding £741,067, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1944, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Minister for Lands and of the Irish Land Commission (44 & 45 Vict., c. 49, sec. 46, and c. 71, sec. 4; 48 & 49 Vict., c. 73, secs. 17, 18 and 20; 54 & 55 Vict., c. 48; 3 Edw. 7, c. 37; 7 Edw. 7, c. 38, and c. 56; 9 Edw. 7, c. 42; Nos. 27 and 42 of 1923; No. 25 of 1925; No. 11 of 1926; No. 19 of 1927; No. 31 of 1929; No. 11 of 1931; Nos. 33 and 38 of 1933; No. 11 of 1934; No. 41 of 1936; and No. 26 of 1939).

I gcomórtas leis an mbliain seo thart, tá laghdú glan de £64,077 ar an Meastachán le haghaidh Tailte. Gidh gur cosúil nach dtuigeann an pobal an scéal mar ba cheart, níor bh'fhéidir don éigeandáil gan bac trom do chur ar obair Choimisiún na Talmhan. Is mór agus is líonmhar na deacrachta bhaineas le feidhmiú na Roinne fá láthair. Táthar in easba oifigeach oilte do tugadh ar iasacht do Ranna eile le haghaidh na héigeandála; agus, ina theannta sin, táthar in easba na ngléas iompair agus na ndamhna do bhéadh ag teastáil le mórscéimeanna ar bith do chur i gcrích. Ó thárla mar sin an scéal, ní riachtanach liom mórán do rádh faoi'n Meastachán seo. Tá sé ar aon dul le Meastachán na bliana seo caithte, cé's moite de mhion-mhéadú, nó mionlaghdú, faoi chuid de na Fomhírchinn.

I bhFo-mhírcheann A tá £5,418 de mhéadú le haghaidh Tuarastal, agus tá a leath sin, beagnach, ag teastáil le haghaidh na fóirne do bhíodh in Oifig an Chíosa Chúitigh—oifig atá tógtha isteach i Roinn na dTailte anois. An chuid eile den mhéadú, isé an fáth a bhfuil sí ag teastáil leis na gnáthbhreiseanna bliantúla de thuarastail d'íoc. Ina thaobh seo, ba chóir a thuigsint gur as Vóta na dTailte atáthar ag baint tuarastal na n-oifigeach do fuair Ranna eile o Choimisiún na Talmhan le haghaidh na héigeandála.

Ó thárla roinnt na talmhan do bheith dhá moilliú ag an éigeandáil, chífear i bhFo-mhírcheann I go bhfuil £75,000 de laghdú san airgead ar son Feabhsuithe Eastát. Mar an gcéanna, ó thárla gan oiread de thalamh nea-thionóntuithe do bheith dhá thógaint ag an Roinn, tá £400 de laghdú i bhFo-mhírcheann J.

I bhFo-mhírcheann P tá £4,500 de mhéadú mar gheall ar iarracht speisealta chun lán-réiteach do dhéanamh sa mbeagán de chásanna nea-chríochnuithe atá fágtha faoi na hAchtanna Talmhan, 1903-09. Ar an mbealach céanna, tá iarracht dá déanamh chun deireadh do chur le riaráiste áitithe mar gheall ar ús no íocaíocht in ionad cíosa, agus is lena haghaidh sin atá na méaduithe i bhFo-mhírchinn Q1 agus Q2.

Maidir leis an méid talmhan do roinneadh, an bhliain seo thart, níl figiúracha cruinne ar fáil go fóill; ach meastar gur roinneadh suas le 20,000 acra ar fá thuairim 2,000 de leithrannaithe, agus níor bh'fhéidir níos mó ná sin a dhéanamh sa chruadháil atá ann fá láthair. Timpeall £250,000 do caitheadh ar Fheabhsuithe Eastát, an bhliain seo caithte. Faoi Scéim na nGrúp-Imirceach do tugadh 21 de theaghlaigh o cheanntair chumhanga Mhuigeo agus Chiarraighe agus do cuireadh a chomhnaidhe i gCondae na Midhe iad i Mí an Mhárta seo a chuaidh thart. Is géar a theastuíos sé leigheas do dhéanamh ar phlódú na gceanntar cumhang seo, no Agricultural Slums mar tugadh ortha; agus is maith go bhfuil ag éirghe go breágh le plean na nGrúp-Imirceach, óir níl plean infheadhma ar bith eile ann le haghaidh na hócáide. Tá Coimisiún na Talmhan ag tabhairt aire do obair na móna, i rith na haimsire, agus, an bhliain seo chuaidh thart, do baineadh fá thuairim 150,000 tonna móna do phortaigh atá faoi sheilbh ag an gCoimisiún féin.

Dá ndéantaí an obair do mheas do réir figiúracha, b'fhéidir go gceapfaí nach bhfuil mórán dá dhéanamh ag Coimisiun na Talmhan fá láthair. Acht níor bh'fhíor sin. An fhuireann atá fágtha ag an gCoimisiún, tá siad an-ghnóthach ag gabháil d'obair "iarroinnte" bhaineas le Talamh Nea-thionóntuithe agus ag gabháil do "eagrú eastát" bhaineas le Talamh Tionóntuithe. Maidir le roinnt Talamh Nea-thionóntuithe ar leithrannaithe, is mór an earráid a cheapadh go mbíonn deireadh le hobair an Choimisiúin chó luath agus socruítear an roinnt. Ina dhiaidh sin féin, ní féidir na píosaí talmhan do dhílsiú go críochnuithe sna leithrannaithe gan an-chuid cléireachais agus riaracháin, agus bíonn an iomad leitreach le scríobhadh agus le freagairt maidir le casaoideacha, le teóranna, le cearta bealaigh, le comhgair uisce agus le feabhsuithe. I láthair na huaire seo, tá 45,000 gabháltaidhe ina dtionóntaí ag Coimisiún na Talmhan mar gheall ar Thalamh Nea-Thionóntuithe do roinneadh ortha faoi Achtanna 1923-39, agus beidh siad ina dtionóntaí ag an gCoimisiún go dtí go bhfuighfear na píosaí talmhan do dhílsiú ionta go críochnuithe.

Maidir leis an uimhir mhór Eastát do Thalamh Tionóntuithe do dílsíodh i gCoimisiún na Talmhan faoi Acht 1931, tá go fóill ann fá thuairim 70,000 gabháltas le haithdhílsiú sna tionóntaí, agus ina dtaobh sin bíonn aniomad sórt fadhb le réiteach, rud a chuireas obair ar an bhfuirinn agus a chuireas an t-aithdhílsiú ar gcúl. Idir cheisteanna dlighe, cheisteanna teicniceacha agus cheisteanna riaracháin, bíonn lear mór nithe le réiteach sul ar féidir Talamh Tionóntuithe do dhílsiú go críochnuithe sna tionóntaí cheannuíos é—agus féadtar seo do rádh, freisin, i dtaobh iarmhar na nEastát do bhíodh faoi Bhord na gCeanntar Cumhang, óir tá fadhbanna speisialta ag baint leo-san. Mórán de na daoine lochtuíos Coimisiún na Talmhan mar gheall ar mhoill, is léir gur bocht an tuigse atá aca do líonmhaireacht agus do dheacracht na gceist bhaineas leis an obair.

Maidir le Bailiú na mBlianacht Talamh-cheannaigh, tá feabhas áirithe tar éis teacht ar an scéal. An 31adh de Mhí Eeanair, 1943, isé an riaráiste do bhí ann den méid gála do bhí iníoctha roimh an ladh de Mhí na Nodlag, 1942, tuairim is £878,000—rud is ionann agus 4 per cent. den iomlán do bhí ionbhailithe. Ach, an 31adh de Mhí Eanair, 1942, do bhí £1,121,000 de riaráiste ann—rud is ionann agus 5.7 per cent. den méid do bhí ionbhailithe.

This Estimate has, of course, lost a great deal of its interest through the Emergency Order preventing the operations of the Land Commission in recent years. With regard to that, I would like to raise one point. There are some cases which, at least, on the face of them, if the old proceedings before the court were now allowed, would, I am almost certain, be admitted to the benefit of the Land Acts. I specially refer to cases which would come under, I think it is Section 40 of the 1903 Act, that is the section which admitted those cases which originated nominally as temporary or grazing lettings, but which were in fact not grazing lettings at all and in which there was no temporary convenience or temporary necessity involved. Such cases were admitted to the benefit of the Land Acts.

Since the closing down of the hearing of these applications, cases have come to my notice where the owners of land have, for the first time perhaps for 20, 30 or 40 years, come along to their tenants and submitted grazing agreements to them, obviously 11 months agreements. I know at least one case where the person concerned was in possession of the land for about 40 years, tilling it and meadowing it as he desired. He never signed an agreement during that period. Now, for the first time, grazing agreements have been submitted to the tenants since the closing down of the operations by the Land Commission in this respect. I suggest to the Minister that some instructions be issued to the Land Commission whereby they would acknowledge the applications from tenants in that position, and have them filed for hearing when the present ban on their hearing is withdrawn after the emergency. If the tenants had an acknowledgment of that kind from the Land Commission in their hands: a statement to the effect that the application had been filed, and that the hearing would probably take place subsequently to the emergency, it would be of considerable advantage to them if, for instance, ejectment proceedings were taken by the owners of the lands in the court. While, of course, it would not be an answer to such ejectment proceedings, I think very few district justices or circuit judges would hear a case if such a document were produced. They would adjourn the case until the proceedings had been dealt with by the Land Commission. At least, there is the chance that that would happen. I suggest to the Minister that he might take the matter up with the Land Commission and see if something of that nature could not be done. I do not think there is any other matter I want to raise on the Estimate.

This is a substantial Estimate for £1,200,000. I note there is a decrease of £64,000. That may be regarded as satisfactory although, when one examines some of the detailed transactions, one finds that the Department has apparently done some things that it ought not to have done, and left other things undone. I was interested in a small transaction relating to the Forbes' estate at Santry which, I think, was acquired over seven years ago. I was anxious that it should be vested. I think there is only some trifling ceremony to be performed to push this transaction through. When I suggested that a person could go out on one bus and come back on another, having completed the transaction, the Minister repudiated my statement.

He did not correct me by telling me how much longer it would really take. As a plea for the delay that has taken place, I suggest that it is inexcusable. The Minister mentioned that members of the staff of the Department had been transferred to other Departments for the emergency. I suggest to him that there is nothing more important than keeping people at the job they understand, and of letting them finish up the transactions they are engaged upon in the Land Commission. If, having done that, they are found to be redundant, then they can be transferred elsewhere. If, as I imagine, they were transferred to the Department of Supplies, the first thing they had to do was to learn the technique of the work to be done there, and so were really not any more efficient than people brought in from outside. I think it is false economy to be transferring people from one Department to another and putting them on work that they probably do not understand, while leaving undone the work in their own Department that they do understand.

I now want to refer to another estate at Rathfarnham. I am one of the representatives for the County Dublin, and one would think that you would not come across many instances of Land Commission work in that county. On the 17th of February last I had the following question on the Order Paper.

"Mr. Dockrell asked the Minister for Lands whether he is aware that a holding on the Massey estate at Kilakee, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, has been allotted to Mr. Robert Lambert, while local people, some of whom were formerly tenants on the estate, or the children or grandchildren of tenants, applied unsuccessfully for holdings; and whether he will state where Mr. Lambert resided, and what was his occupation during the last 20 years; and if the holding allotted to Mr. Lambert has since been let by him to a Mr. Brady.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Derrig):

The Smyth estate, on which Mr. Robert Lambert was allotted a holding, contains 37a. 3r. 13p., in the townlands of Cruagh and Jamestown, and was purchased chiefly to provide watering facilities for allottees on the adjoining Massey estate. After providing for these allottees, it was found possible to provide a holding for Mr. Lambert, who is engaged in the dairying business at Raheny, County Dublin. The claims of all local applicants were carefully considered. The Land Commission are not aware that Mr. Lambert has let the holding, but are making inquiries in the matter.

Mr. McMenamin: Will the Minister state where Mr. Lambert is carrying on the dairying industry?

Mr. Derrig: At Raheny, County Dublin.

Mr. McMenamin: That is a rather big place. Has the Minister any specific information as to where the dairying industry is being carried on?

Mr. Derrig: Fairfield, Raheny, County Dublin, is the actual place."

The Minister cannot say that in asking him about these estates I am taking him by surprise. I am sure he is prepared for my questions, and if I should happen to make any statements relating to them that are incorrect he can correct me. I understand that there were only 37 acres allotted, as the Minister says. There was a number of tenants there and they all trotted into the Department with their little conacre agreements. They showed them to the Department and told how many sheep, goats or cattle they had, and answered various questions like that; and were all told that their applications would be carefully considered.

As I understand it, this person, Mr. Lambert, was allotted the lot. When one wonders why he should be allotted this entire holding, we are told that it was purchased in order to give watering facilities for the tenants on the adjoining estate. Am I right in saying that there is no Vartry supply, no accommodation for cattle and no drainage net, and that this tenant— who comes from Raheny and is a dairy farmer—is allotted 37 acres out in Rathfarnham? I do not know how one could carry on part of a dairy farm out at Rathfarnham on 37 acres, with no accommodation, no house or anything like that.

I would like to ask the Minister also whether this Mr. Lambert is in receipt of a pension of nearly £300 a year and whether his wife has also got a pension. Is that the type of people for whom the tenants who conacre and who were in possession of the holding are to be outlawed and dispossessed— that is what it amounts to—and somebody else brought in from Raheny? I suppose the Minister is right in saying that he has a dairy farm: he thought so highly of this holding, from which the local people were hunted, that he proceeded to sub-let it to a Mr. Brady. I would like to ask the Minister what profit rent this pensioner and his pensioned wife derive from this. Is this the type of people among whom the Land Commission intends to divide the lands of this country? If that is the case, the sky is the limit, and I do not know why deserving Deputies might not get holdings and have other people put off in order to accommodate them.

The Minister has had ample notice of this question, and I would suggest to him that it amounts to a public scandal. Is this what we are spending £1,200,000 a year on? It may be said that I am here in County Dublin, but I ask if this is a sample of what goes on in other counties. If so, we are getting very poor value for £1,200,000.

Any criticisms of mine or any suggestions I make on this Estimate will not be as unfair to the Land Commission as the fact that the payment for the officers who have gone to other Departments is still put down against the Land Commission. That is placing the Department in an unfair light, as far as the general public is concerned. Of course, finally, it is the same thing, as it all comes out of the Central Fund, but it tends to increase the Estimate unduly.

The taking away of the officers from the Land Commission for other Departments, for the duration of the emergency, can be easily understood up to the present. No one could find fault in regard to those who were transferred to the Department of Agriculture, to ensure that the compulsory tillage Orders would be complied with. They were the men best suited for the work and knew the geography of the country and of their own districts better than any inspectors who could be put on that work. Now, however, that they have carried out the work of that Department, it should be capable to have it carried on by junior inspectors or temporary inspectors who might be taken on. It would be advisable to take the officers back again to the Land Commission, where there still remains some very important work for them to do.

As far as the acquisition and resumption of land are concerned, it was natural to expect that it would be slowed up and restricted considerably as a result of the emergency, but the time has come now when that policy should be modified, as far as possible. At the present time, a number of large landowners all over the country are anxious to avail of the inflation in the price of land to dispose of it to private individuals. I am sure the Land Commission will answer that by saying that that will not prevent them, at a later stage, from taking over the land. It may make it much more difficult for them, however, particularly if the estates are allowed to be sub-divided and apportioned amongst a number of individuals. In cases of that kind, the Land Commission should step in now, where such land is needed for the relief of congestion. They should take over the land, even if they have not sufficient staff to divide it. The Land Commission would be quite capable of carrying on, as the old Congested Districts Board carried on some years ago, when they took over estates which they could not divide for a number of years. They set the land in conacre or made grazing lettings through stockmasters who had knowledge and experience of what to charge for grazing land. The Land Commission should set the land to the people around and also let it on a conacre tillage basis, where possible for three years, providing, of course, that there would be at least one manured crop on it during that time. That would satisfy the people who need land at present. There may be some difficulty in doing that but, when the Congested Districts Board was able to do it, it should not be impossible for the Land Commission to do it now. As regards improvements on estates, there is a decrease of £75,000. That, of course, has been explained in the statement of the Minister.

So far as improvements on estates in recent times are concerned, they leave very little to be desired. But land purchase has been going on in this country since 1903. We had what was known as the Estates Commission and the Congested Districts Board, and when they took over estates they also took over bogs. There are numerous bogs all over the country which were allotted by the inspectors at that time and promises were made that improvement works would be carried out which would enable the people to whom they were given to cut turf and produce fuel for their own domestic purposes. I am sorry to say that they either underestimated the work at the time or that they had not any serious intention of carrying it out, because that work still remains undone. The result is that there are large tracts of bog which were allotted as far back as 35 years ago where only a small attempt was made at drainage and roads were not made at all, so that the bogs are now unworkable. You will even find numerous cases where people who got allotments of turbary on such estates have also got allotments of turbary from the Land Commission in recent years, because of the fact that they could not utilise the allotments they got previously owing to the improvements not being carried out.

I know that there are big difficulties in regard to the drainage of bogs. But some dissatisfaction has been caused in some cases where bogs have been drained in recent years, as the water from the bogs has been allowed to flow on to the adjoining lands because the rivers which should take the water have not been cleaned up to enable the flooding to get away. Therefore, in remedying one thing another hardship has been caused, because of the fact that the Land Commission did not go far enough with the work. I know a few cases in County Galway where the drainage of the bogs has caused hardship and where the people are nearly flooded out of their homes in winter as a result of the huge amount of water released from the bogs. In carrying out the drainage of bogs, that is a matter which should be taken into consideration, as it is not impossible to remedy it. I believe that it would be well worth while sending the inspectors back in order to carry out these improvement works which are long overdue.

There is another matter in connection with land which has been divided during the last few years and that is that the building grant remains the same while the cost of material has increased very much, thus rendering it almost impossible for the allottees who are given such a grant to erect houses.

Although it might cost more, I suggest to the Land Commission that they should revert to the old Congested Districts Board's system of erecting houses by direct labour. There were many fine houses erected all over the country, particularly in the county I come from, by the C.D.B. by the direct labour system. Gangers were put in charge of the work, and houses were built which compare very favourably with any of the houses built by what we might term up-to-date or modern contractors. As I say, that might require more money, but it would be better to have the houses erected, and if necessary increase the annuity in order to meet the additional charge. Very few people will refuse a holding when they are offered it, although they may see the difficulty facing them. But, when they get it, they find it impossible to erect the buildings, and the holding is left without suitable accommodation in the way of a dwelling-house and out-offices.

I wish again to emphasise the fact that the holding up of the acquisition and resumption of land should be modified in all cases where large tracts of land have been offered for sale which the Land Commission had originally intended to take over, and would perhaps have taken over by now were it not for the emergency. As I say, the Land Commission are to be complimented on the work which has been carried out for a number of years past. They have done very fine and useful work, and there is very little room for criticism of any kind. As regards the question raised by Deputy Dockrell about a man who was given a holding in Co. Dublin—the Deputy mentioned that the man had a pension and that his wife also had a pension. The Deputy did not say what he was getting the pension for. If it is an I.R.A. pension, I believe that Deputies on all sides of the House are agreed that a man who has an I.R.A. pension for services rendered to this country, provided he has the other qualifications, is well entitled to preference so far as the division of land is concerned. After all, it is people such as he and those with the same outlook who went before him, who are responsible for the big improvement we have in this country during the last 40 years.

Last year when this Estimate was under discussion I suggested to the Minister that he should take advantage of the fact of the slowing down in the activities of the Land Commission to investigate the progress which has been made during the past 20 years in land division, and to formulate a definite policy for the future.

I am afraid that the Department of Lands have reached a stage at present in which they do not know in what direction they are going. Deputy Dockrell referred to the case of a man of considerable means who had been allotted a portion of land. That is a criticism which has been directed against the Department very frequently. There is also another criticism in the opposite direction, which has been very frequently directed against the Department, and that is the allotment of land to people who have no capital and no experience in the working of land, and who are, therefore, very unsuitable tenants. Between these types of applicants, the Land Commission inspectors have an extremely difficult task to perform. I believe that to a great extent the delays which have taken place in the dividing of land and allotment of holdings have been due to the fact that the Land Commission inspectors find it impossible to decide definitely as to who is or is not a suitable applicant. I believe that a considerable number of new holdings which were established— and by new holdings I mean holdings allotted to landless men—have proved unsatisfactory by reason of the fact that the allottees had not the necessary capital or necessary experience and, in many cases, not the necessary inclination to make these lands their homes, to live on them, and work them economically.

In order to avoid making similar mistakes in the future, I understand that the Land Commission have now adopted the policy of not allotting holdings to any unmarried applicants. That, of course, raises another very difficult question, because if an unmarried farmer's son or small holder's son is refused a holding, what hope or prospect has he of ever being able to marry? If there are two or three boys in a family, it is impossible for the second or third to marry, unless he can acquire a holding of his own. If it is a definite rule now, as I understand it is, not to allot holdings to unmarried men, it seems to me that a very grave injustice will be inflicted upon perhaps the best type of applicant—the energetic, hardworking young man, who, by work on his father's farm, or on some other holding, has acquired a little capital and a little stock, but who has not sufficient means to purchase a holding of his own. If he is now to be debarred from obtaining a holding where land is divided, I do not think there can be anybody, so far as landless men are concerned, who is entitled to a holding. I quite agree that preference should be given to uneconomic holders where they reside near land which is being divided.

We give them a little time to get married, but we want them to get married soon after they get their allotment, if they are otherwise suitable.

I am very interested to hear that statement, because I was under the impression that the policy now is to refuse land altogether to unmarried men. If some form of undertaking is required from single men on obtaining holdings that they will marry within a reasonable time, I think there will be no objection to adopting that course, but I understood that it was the policy to refuse land absolutely to unmarried men.

The question of means is another very thorny question, because if it is the policy of the Land Commission— and I think it should be—to require that an applicant for a holding should possess certain means, the question naturally arises as to where the line is to be drawn. For example, a landless man, an applicant for a holding, might be the son of a very well-to-do farmer. He might have a very considerable amount of capital and his family might possess a very considerable amount of capital. It is a very difficult question to decide whether such a man should be entitled to a holding, because undoubtedly if that type of man—the man who has sufficient money to purchase a holding of his own—is to be allotted a holding, it can be asked why any citizen should go out to purchase a holding of his own.

I think the Land Commission, in dealing with this question of the allotment of land, are up against very many difficulties. I believe that one of the methods they adopt in trying to get over these difficulties is to transfer small holders from one district to another. That, of course, again raises a host of other difficulties, because there is always the question of finding a suitable means of allotting the holding from which they are migrated. In view of the fact that those difficulties hold up the work of the Land Commission and take up a tremendous amount of the time of inspectors and higher officials of the Department, it is about time that a specific policy was formulated and that some definite qualifications were required from each applicant which would guide the inspectors in making their selections. A number of suggestions might be made in regard to the qualifications which applicants should possess, but it is a matter which should get very careful investigation. To proceed as we are proceeding at present is simply to get the officials of the Department into a complete muddle.

So far as the West of Ireland is concerned, these difficulties may not arise, but I know that they do arise in the Leinster counties. They have arisen in my constituency and I had occasion to call the attention of the Minister recently to the fact that, in respect of one particular estate, the delay in allotting a holding was so long and the difficulties so great that four or five years elapsed before any decision could be come to, although there was urgent need for portion of the land for uneconomic holders. As a result of this delay, the plight of these uneconomic holders is still the same and the lands were not cultivated during the present year until late in March. That is a very undesirable example for a Government Department to set the rest of the community.

Deputy Beegan has referred to the sub-letting of land and has suggested that where it is necessary for the Land Commission to sub-let land, they should at least sub-let it for three years. I think that is very desirable because I am aware of a considerable number of cases in which the Land Commission have been setting land yearly on the 11-months system for cereal crops without any manuring whatever. That is a deplorable position because eventually the land will reach such a stage of deterioration that it will be worthless and it will be impossible to find tenants for it. I do not see any reason why the Minister should not set up a Departmental committee or some kind of commission to go into the whole question and find out definitely the views not only of his Department but of impartial people outside who are prepared to come forward and assist, so that when it is possible to resume land division, it will be done on the best and most efficient basis and there will be no room for the dissatisfaction or the serious grievances which will always exist when a Department has no guiding rule in regard to distinguishing between one landless man and another.

I agree that, so far as uneconomic holders are concerned, the position is fairly clear and definite. The lands are divided amongst the uneconomic holders residing near the estate and no very serious difficulty arises. It is only in dealing with landless applicants that the position becomes very complicated.

I had occasion to note, in one particular case, where an inspector came on a farm, not a very big one, that was to be divided, that he found several hundreds of applicants. He had to inform them that there would not be sufficient land on the estate to provide even for a small section of the number applying. There is no doubt that competition will be keen, particularly when agriculture is in a sound and prosperous condition, as we hope it will be, with good government, after the war. Whatever land may be in the hands of the Land Commission, ready for division, it will be subject to very severe competition.

I do not think that the Land Commission are very optimistic in regard to the future of this country after the emergency, because I understand that, so far as the collection section is concerned, there is a drastic drive being carried on to collect outstanding arrears. In some cases the drive has been so drastic as to interfere with the efforts farmers are making to increase production during the emergency. I think arrears are coming in steadily and in a satisfactory measure and that no undue pressure should be put upon any applicant who is making a reasonable effort to meet his commitments. For example, if an annuitant has been paying one and a half year's annuities each year, I think that should be regarded as quite satisfactory. If he is paying off at least half a year's annuities each year he is making a reasonable effort to clear his arrears and there is no doubt that, given a few years, whatever arrears there may be will be completely wiped out. I think that should be accepted as quite satisfactory, but I understand that in cases where that amount is being paid, pressure is being brought to bear on the annuitants to clear off the arrears more rapidly. That pressure is undesirable now, and every effort should be made to assist the farmer to get the maximum production out of his land. No farmer can carry on tillage extensively without incurring considerable expense, and for that reason I think the Land Commission should be satisfied when a reasonable effort is being made by the farmers to pay off their arrears.

I do not think the Land Commission should view this problem on the basis that in a year or two agriculture will be again in the condition in which it was two or three years ago. If that is the attitude of the Department of Lands, the sooner that Department is scrapped the better because, if this country is to have any future, it must be based on an assurance that agriculture is going to be remunerative. If the Land Commission, one of the most important Departments of State, the Department dealing with the country's most important asset, has no confidence in the future, then I think that Department serves no useful purpose.

Where the Land Commission hold turbary, in some cases the management of that turbary is placed in the hands of trustees and, so far as I know, those trustees are left to manage the turbary in any way they like. I know of cases where trustees were appointed under the Land Commission to look after certain lands and they have not done anything to develop those lands, although there is a certain income to be derived from the letting of the turbary. I think that where the Land Commission hold lands of that kind they should insist upon their proper development; that is, so far as drainage and roadways are concerned. I am aware that that has not been done, and that is a matter that requires to be investigated.

I do not want to be taken as being entirely critical of the work which has been done by the Department of Lands, but I am aware that a considerable amount of the work that they have done, not alone during the past 20 years but perhaps during the 20 years preceding that period, has been merely ploughing the sands, as it were. I know of holdings which were allotted 30 or 40 years ago, where estates were divided into economic holdings, and those economic holdings have been merged again into one large holding and the houses and out-offices which were provided by the Land Commission were left derelict and they are practically in ruins. That is a condition of things which should not be allowed, and I suggest that advantage be taken of the lull in the division of land to investigate the work which has been done and to lay plans for future improvement.

In reply to a question which I put in the Dáil a few months ago in regard to the distribution of land, the acquisition of land, and the quantity of land in the hands of the Land Commission in the County Mayo, the Minister mentioned that there were 13,000 acres, undivided, in the hands of the Land Commission in that county. I should like to know why that land has not been divided. What are the Land Commission doing with it? Are they letting it in conacre at a profit, or are they having it cultivated in any way? Is the Minister not aware of the fact that acute congestion exists in various parts of Mayo, and most particularly in those parts where that land has been acquired? What is the use in taking migrants from parts of County Mayo and putting them on holdings in Meath, Westmeath and Kildare, when there is such a large area of land in their own county still undivided? If the lands of County Mayo, now in possession of the Land Commission, were divided, there is no doubt there would be plenty of room for those uneconomic holders who might not care to be migrated to the midland counties.

The Minister is aware that for the last ten years or more petitions, memorials and letters of every description were sent up by the public bodies and various people in the County of Mayo requesting that the lands held by Lord Oranmore and Browne in Castlemagarret which contain, I understand, about 1,600 acres, should be taken over by the Land Commission. Every time such resolutions are sent up, inspectors are sent down, who go through the usual procedure of hiring motor cars and making inspections. People there expect that very shortly afterwards something will be done. There is acute congestion in the various areas around Castlemagarret, particularly in the electoral divisions of Ballindine, Kilvine, Caraun and Crossboyne. There is a very large number of tenants there—over 200— whose valuations are under £3. These lands should be taken over and divided amongst those tenants. There is another very large farm in the district containing 400 acres, which was taken over by the Land Commission in 1923 for the purpose of relieving congestion in the area. It was one of the reserved estates and was particularly marked out in 1924 for the relief of congestion in the townland of Kilscoghagh. It is on the Ward estate. There are 12 tenants there with valuations under £3. That land is still held by the Land Commission. It has been let to a grazier during all that period while the poor unfortunate tenants are living on their £3 or £2 worth of land. That is no way for the Land Commission to treat the people in South Mayo.

There is also in the Ballindine area a very large tract of land that the Land Commission has been asked time and time again to acquire. It contains over 300 acres. It is held by Mr. Ryan. Nothing has been done towards the acquisition of that land with the exception of sending down the usual inspectors to make the usual inspections. Adjacent to this farm there are over 16 tenants, in the townlands of Meelick and Carraghmore, whose valuations are under £5. They have been expecting to get these lands for some time, but it appears that when the acquisition of these lands goes a certain distance something mysterious occurs and nothing further is heard about it.

In the parish of Bekan there is a very large amount of land in the hands of the Land Commission which was held there for a number of years. In fact, I know two holdings there from which the tenants were migrated 20 years ago. That land is still in the hands of the Land Commission, and they will not divide it, although there is acute congestion all round there. There is a townland called Kilknock, where there are certain tenants, each of whom has about nine or ten divisions of land, and the valuation of all the divisions would not be more than about £2. Of course, the Land Commission could very easily have stepped in there and have the townland properly divided amongst the people. In the parish of Aghamore there is a very large acreage of land. There is one holding of about 300 acres. There is acute congestion in the vicinity.

Promises were given that the land would be acquired and divided but nothing has been done. In Crossard, which is part of the parish of Aghamore, there are about nine or 10 unoccupied holdings. The Land Commission have been asked to take them over but nothing has been done. In Westport, on Lord Sligo's estate, there are 700 acres. Petitions have been sent by the people in the vicinity of Westport to have that land taken over and divided. As usual, the inspector is sent down, a motor car sent out from Castlebar, the tenants are hopeful that something will be done, but nothing is done.

That is the position with regard to the acquisition of land, as far as I see it. I want to know why the lands which they have on hands there—about 13,000 or 14,000 acres—are not divided up. It is all humbug to tell us that the Land Commission's officials are on loan to the Department of Supplies. We all know there is something different from that. As far as the present Government is concerned and as far as the people behind the present Government are concerned, they do not believe that it is the best policy to relieve congestion. They believe it is better to keep the people in this country in a state of hopeful expectancy that they will get these holdings, until the elections are over. As long as they keep them in that state, they expect they will probably support them at the coming election but I may tell them that the tenants in the county of Mayo especially and probably all over Ireland, have seen through that camouflage long ago. I am not at all surprised that the Fianna Fáil Party and the Government themselves are shaking in their skin lest the farmer is going to wipe them out completely, lock, stock and barrel at the next election. If the farmers do not do it, our Party will.

Will the Deputy confine his criticism to the Minister responsible for the Vote?

I must say a word about the Chair. I must say the Chair may also be shaking in his boots; he may not be very long in the Chair.

To bring the Chair into the discussion is neither proper nor orderly. The occupant of the Chair, as the Deputy is well aware, has no opportunity of replying.

I apologise. I want to refer to the mearings between estates that were acquired by the Congested Districts Board in South Mayo and, I suppose, all over the congested districts. Prior to the acquisition by the Land Commission, those mearings were always kept by the old landlords but since the Land Commission took over these estates they have done absolutely nothing with regard to them. I would like the Land Commission to look into the matter because in some places the mearings between estates are sometimes substantial drains running through bogs. These drains, naturally, in the course of time get flooded and water-logged with the result that the lands in their vicinity get water-logged. I think the Land Commission should look into the matter particularly in regard to the mearings between the estates of Sir Henry Lynch-Blosse and Ormsby's of Ballinamore. There is some drain there in a very bad condition and the result of the flooding and so forth is, first, that no turf can be cut in the bogs where turf is available and, secondly, the land is flooded and unfit for tillage.

I would like the Land Commission to look into another matter. A great deal has been said with regard to migration from the West of Ireland. I understand that so far as South Mayo is concerned, nobody migrated from there with the exception of nine or 10 families.

The records which I have here show that as far as Connaught is concerned, only about 72 families have been taken to the counties of Westmeath and Kildare. Will the Minister see if there is any possibility of getting the Land Commission to make roads through the various bogs which they have been developing in the County Mayo? He understands that the grants for minor relief schemes can only be availed of by those districts which have a certain number on the unemployment register. The County Surveyor has notified the Commissioners of Public Works that in some parts of North Mayo, no more useful work could be carried out than the making of these roads. The grants for the relief of distress are of practically no use to those areas. In the districts where the valuations of the farms are high nothing has been done in the way of carrying out minor relief schemes. I would ask in particular, that the Minister should look into the position in South Mayo. The valuation of the Claremorris union is £45,000, while that of Killala union is only £11,000. That is to say the valuation of Claremorris union is four times greater than that of Killala union. Yet Killala gets six times the amount of relief grants that Claremorris gets. The valuation of Ballinrobe union is £66,000, or six times more than that of Killala union. I will not keep you much longer.

The Chair has no desire to curtail the Deputy's speech.

Yet, Killala Union gets in minor relief grants exactly eight times the amount that Ballinrobe gets.

That is a matter for the Office of Public Works.

That is why I am urging the Land Commission to do something in this matter, because the Office of Public Works will not do it unless there are a certain number of persons on the unemployment register. As I have said, the county surveyor has stated that no more useful work could be done than the making of these bog roads. They should be carried out either by the Land Commission or the Commissioners of Public Works in certain parts of North Mayo and in certain parts of South Mayo where it has not been possible in the last nine or ten years to avail of minor relief grants. It is a very important matter because the roads, in a great many districts in South Mayo, are in an absolutely impassable condition at the present time, due to the Land Commission. When the Land Commission made these roads it should have made some provision for their maintenance. I hope the Minister will look into these matters. I have mentioned that there are certain estates in the County Mayo, as well as certain large grazing ranches, which have been taken over for the relief of congestion. One way to relieve congestion in South Mayo especially would be to proceed with the immediate division of the 13,000 acres of land which the Land Commission have on their hands. When that has been done, those who are left unprovided for can be sent to Meath or Westmeath. They will all be very glad to go. Many of those congests have their applications in with the Land Commission asking to be migrated. That, however, is no reason why the lands which are in the hands of the Land Commission should not be divided at the present time.

Is iondual liom an t-am seo de'n bhliadhan impidhe a dhéanamh ar an Aire is ar an Roinn ar son na ndaoine bochta sna ceanntrachaibh cumhanga. Nílim ag dul ag tabhairt liosta fada de chúiseanna clamhsáin mar a rinne an Teachta Mac an Fhailigh. Budh mhaith liom dá mbeadh an scéal chomh maith againn thiar is atá sé ag an Teachta Cogan nuair deireann sé nach mbíonn a ndóthain de iarrathoirí feileamhnacha ag Coimisiún na Talmhan i Oirthear Eireann. Spaineann sé sin chomh mhí-chothromach is tá muinntir na tuaithe sgaipthe ar fud na hEireann. Dá dhonacht dá bhfuil an talamh is amhlaidh is mó atá daoine air sa tír seo. Is ró-mhór ar fad an deifríocht san gcaighdeán maireachtála atá ag lucht na dtailte bána agus ag muinntir an tsléibhe. Nuair a bhí an plúr gann anuraidh agus na daoine ag imtheacht rompa gá iarraidh, 'spáineadh go géar dóibh chomh bocht is a bhíonn a gcás in aimsir anróigh is ghanntain. Níl aon leigheas ar an gceist ach gabhaltaisí a thabhairt dóibh sna h-aiteachaibh a bhfuil talamh maith le fágháil. Nuair a chuimhnigheann duine ar an méad clamhsáin a rinne na feilméaraí móra ó thosuigh an cogadh faoi ghanntan maisíní, congnaimh, agus leasuighthe agus an chaoi ar chuir an ganntan seo isteach ar sholáthairt bidh, nach léir dúinn uilig go mbeadh na ceisteanna seo i bhfad níos fuiriste ar a réidhtiughadh dá mbeadh pobal níos fairsinge ar na tailte sin. Bhí áthas orm a fheiceál le gairid sgata imirceoirí eile ag teacht aniar. Tá súil agam go bféadfaidh Coimisiún na Talmhan leanacht de'n obair mhaith agus nach gádh fanacht go deireadh an chogaidh. Bhí iongnadh orm an lá faoi dheireadh a léigheadh gur dhubhairt an t-Athair O h-Aodha go bhfuil an iomarca daoine ar an talamh. Dá mbeadh sé thiar i gConamara agus an chainnt sin 'gá dhéanamh aige bheadh sé fíor agus ceart; ach istigh i lár Thiobrad Árann b'aisteach agus b'iongantach é. Tá súil agam gurb amhlaidh nár cuireadh a chuid cainnte síos i gceart agus nach é tuairim Mhuinntir na Tíre í.

It is not my intention to give a list of individual grievances or of places in my constituency from which complaints have come. I do, however, wish to make reference to the general question of migration because as it applies in my constituency it is a matter of great interest there. Migration is, I think, the only way in which the difficulty that prevails in West Galway can be solved.

I was very pleased to see, recently, that the Land Commission had begun again the work of bringing small holders and congested tenants from the West to the good lands. I do not know to what extent the Land Commission has devised plans for the continuance of this work in the near future. I hope they will find it possible to continue it and not have to leave it until the emergency is over. Last year, the people of those districts got a very bad fright when flour was scarce. If they had land that would produce corn or wheat, they would have grown it and no compulsion would have been necessary. They would have grown it for their own benefit, without any exhortation. Since the war began, they have been pointing out to me in Connemara that the Government should grow wheat on the good land, as they cannot grow it in those districts. The alternative, which they would prefer, is that they would be given the opportunity to grow it for themselves by being given the land.

We have heard a good deal about the shortage of labour and machinery on the good lands for the prosecution of the tillage campaign. That brings to mind, inevitably, the very poor distribution of the rural population of the country. The worse the land is, unfortunately, the more people you find on it. If a good portion of the rural labour that we have available in the West of Ireland could be made available on the good lands, it would have a very material effect on the tillage campaign for the provision of our-essential food supplies. I was amazed to hear Deputy Nally say that this Party and this Government did not intend to do anything in regard to land division, that it was the intention to keep the people in a state of expectancy and, in that way, to keep a better grip on them. When we remember the Bills that were introduced since this Government came into office, and which were very vigorously opposed by his Party, and when we remember that his Party did not do anything in the way of migrating small holders from congested areas, his statement is, to say the least of it, very audacious. It presupposes that our memories and the memories of the people in those districts are very short.

Since Fianna Fáil came into power, the people in the congested areas have had great hope—the only hope they ever had—of getting out of the agricultural slums and getting on to the good lands. They know that the possibilities of emigration to America and other countries are diminishing as time goes on, and that they will have to fend for themselves in the only way open. I wish to urge very strongly on the Government that they should not wait until the war is over to go ahead with this work. I make due allowance for the shortage in personnel since the war began, owing to the transfer to other Departments, in connection with the carrying on of the tillage policy and other matters. We accept the statements in that respect that were made at the time, but we think, in the West, now that the tillage campaign is well under way, that the same supervision will not be necessary to keep it going ahead at full steam. We think that as large a portion as possible of the staff necessary for land acquisition and division work should be recalled to the Land Commission. The people in the congested districts, despite all the criticisms that were raised in regard to their lack of knowledge of farming, as it is understood up the country, have made good, and have turned out so well on their new holdings that there should be sufficient encouragement to the Government to go ahead with this policy. It is the one hope we have of raising the standard of living to something approaching a civilised standard in these bad areas. During the war, of course, there are certain things, like prices for fish and marine products and for turf, which make a good deal of difference; but I anticipate that there will be a slump after this war, as there was after the last war, and their position will be just as bad as it was then.

The only solution we can see is to reduce the total number of holdings there. In this connection, I was very surprised and amazed to read a statement recently by the President of Muintir na Tíre, to the effect that there are too many people on the land. He said that it was their policy to reduce, or certainly not to increase, the numbers of people on the land. He was speaking in Tipperary then. It would have been a proper or correct statement if he made it in Carraroe, or some part of Connemara, where it would be painfully obvious, but for a person, speaking on the rich lands of Tipperary, to say that there are too many people on the land is, when read in the west of Ireland, an amazing statement. I hope that it does not represent any of the expert opinions on this question, and I hope it will not influence the Land Commission or the Government. I have the greatest respect for the aims and objects of Muintir na Tire, and I am satisfied that the Reverend President is a very good Irishman, whose intentions are of the very best; but I would like him to alter or explain that statement.

If this work of the Land Commission in the matter of migration is to go ahead and be a success, the help of an organisation like Muintir na Tire, and of public persons in places where good land is available, will be very necessary. The people in those counties require a good deal of enlightenment as to the conditions that exist in other parts of the country with which they are not familiar. The amount of ignorance that exists in a great many places, regarding the conditions in poorer parts of the country, is appalling; and if an organisation such as that would spread the light and help the Government and the Land Commission to apply the only solution possible, it would be doing a very good day's work for its own organisation and for the general welfare of the country, by bringing about a proper scheme of national land settlement.

It is the one thing nearest to my heart, and in my constituency I try to bring about as much as I can to case the condition of the people in those slums. I believe the Government can do it, and I think that if they do not do it soon—I mean, if the next 20 years are allowed to pass by without their doing anything in a big way in this matter—the reserve of land will be reduced very much, and the time will come when it will be impossible to do anything. All the other aids which those districts have got will still be necessary as the land there is very poor, and the sources of employment are very few and not very remunerative. I, therefore, hope that the Minister will press on the Government the question of resuming migration as soon as possible.

I am more or less glad that a stay has been put on the division of land so that there can be a general review of the position over the last 20 or 25 years. To my mind, land division instead of being a great benefit is absolutely the reverse, at least so far as my constituency is concerned. In order to be properly carried out, land division would want to be very well studied, not alone by the Land Commission, but by the Government. The position in my county, as I see it, is that Meath is a reservoir for the relief of congestion in the South and West. That would be all right, if it were properly carried out. To my mind, congestion is being created in Meath by bringing congests from the West and the South. I can prove that by the statements of migrants who have come to Meath within the last eight or ten years. They have been brought there at great expense. When that is so, I think it is only right that they should be made economic units. I do not know what the Government think of the position, but in Meath a man living on anything from 22 to 28 acres of land is an uneconomic entity. He may manage to exist in good times like the present when prices are good, but when the war is over and the slump comes, it is my belief that a large number of the migrants who have been placed on the rich lands of Meath will sell out and go back, or go somewhere else, because there will not be work for them on their own land or on the roads or in the pits. Most of these migrants have large families; some of them have as many as 14 in family. How does the Minister expect that such a family can live on anything from 22 to 28 acres of land? Sometimes the land is bad, and in all cases it is very dear. I believe that the scheme has been an absolute failure.

Now that there is a lull in the division of land I think there should be a review of the situation, because if we go on as we are going at present, it is my belief that when these lands are vested you will have the old vicious circle again. The rich men in the neighbourhood will buy up the small holdings and we will be back to the ranching system again. To be properly carried out, land division should be well thought out. People living in Dublin or in the South or West have not the foggiest idea of what it is to live on the land in County Meath. They seem to think that if you can get some of the land in County Meath you will get rich. But, living in Meath, as I do, I can say that there are far more poor and destitute farmers in Meath, for its population, than in any other county. There is plenty of wealth there, but it is confined to the very few who have large tracts of good ranch land.

In order to deal with the problem properly, the Government will have to review the situation and not keep on bringing in migrants there and placing them on uneconomic holdings, thus creating a problem for future generations. If it is to be done, let it be done well. I have no objection to the Government policy of bringing in a certain number of migrants there, but I have a strong objection to the treatment accorded to farmers' sons and workers in Meath in connection with land division. The treatment they receive is an absolute disgrace. When a large estate is divided, ten or 20 houses are built and out-offices, piers and gates, and everything else provided for migrants, while farmers' sons, who have the means and the ability to make good, are denied the right to any land at all. In a few cases a cottier in the vicinity may get five acres of land, but it will be the worst of land. It is thrown to him more or less like a bone to a dog—"Take it or leave it; what do we care?" Men from the south and west get all the attention the Land Commission can give them. I have no objection to that, but I want to see equal treatment for the people amongst whom I live and for the migrants. There is no reason why a farmer's son with £200 or £300, who may be one of a family of eight or ten, should be passed over. He may be the son of a small struggling farmer.

If the present policy is continued, I warn the Minister that he will regret what he is doing in County Meath. County Meath is one of the most important counties in Ireland as regards land division and should be dealt with very carefully. If you divide up the large farms in Meath into uneconomic holdings you may destroy the livestock trade. Meath used to be called the gateway to the British market. The live stock fattened on the land of Meath found their way to the British market. If you break up the land there into uneconomic holdings, you will create a problem not only for County Meath, County Westmeath, and County Kildare, but also for County Mayo, County Sligo, County Waterford, and other counties where the live stock trade is practically kept alive by the Meath farmers who go to these counties to buy store cattle which are needed for our economy. I think the Minister ought to look into that aspect of the situation. When you are finished with the division of the land in County Meath what have you left? You will have a rural slum in County Meath. You will destroy the Dublin cattle market and the British market.

Where will our live stock trade be if you divide County Meath into uneconomic patches, as you are doing at present? It would be far better if you never had land division. It would be far better even if the ranches were left, because somebody would get something out of them. But, as things are going, nobody will get anything.

I know the Minister will speak about the fine work he has done by bringing these migrants there and will say that they are happy and prosperous. I hope they will prosper, because they are hard-working people. But I tell the Minister without fear of contradiction that the migrants in County Meath at present are not making money on the land. They are living fairly well at present, but any money they are getting comes from England or from work on the roads and in the bogs and pits. They are living more or less by taking work from the people of Meath who had it formerly. They may be doing fairly well at the present time, but when the slump comes along and those who went to Great Britain and other places return, then you will see whether the farms are economic. Then you will find them selling out. The Minister may laugh at that, but I have lived in County Meath for 35 or 40 years, and I know what I am talking about. If you want to make the land in Meath of any use to these people in the south and west you must make the farms economic ones. I say that 40 Irish acres are necessary to make an economic farm in County Meath. A farmer there should have two or three cows and some horses to do his own work on the farm. If he has not these, he will be absolutely an economic failure. He will be floundering all his life, asking his neighbour to take the grass land on the 11-months system, as it is no use to him. Large farmers often advance two or three years' rent for the land they take from these people.

I, therefore, ask the Minister to have a general review of the position. At present houses are put up almost in every field. If there were two houses where there are three at present, there might be some hope of making the division of land a satisfactory proposition. But, as it is at present, I hold that one house in every three will have to be turned into a labourer's cottage, because these people will not make good on their present holdings.

There is no migrant or Meathman making good on any of these holdings, except the man with an income, or the man who came from the West or the South with a fairly good nest egg. Those who came with very little money, and perhaps with none at all, are in a bad position and will be in a far worse position when the war is over.

That is a fact which cannot be contradicted, and I am speaking not only for the Meath people but for the vast majority of the migrants brought from different counties. They come to me at fairs and at my own house and ask me to press their claims. They cannot live on these holdings, and they ask me to put the position before the Minister, because he must not realise what is going on at all. They say that if they cannot be given more land, the Land Commission will have to take over a couple of hundred acres in the vicinity and give it to them as common grazing. They have no other means of rearing live stock, and it is out of live stock that they pay their rent, rates and taxes. At present they are all carrying on intensive tillage, which is only right, but when their tillage is completed, they have no grass land left on which to graze their live stock, with the result that they are in a very bad position. They have no hope in the world of getting land on the 11-months system, because everybody is eager to get land on that basis in Meath. In fact, the man who has land on the 11-months system is lucky if he can hold it and if somebody does not step in and undercut him two months before the time comes for setting it. They have to sell their store cattle in very thin condition and have nothing to carry on the land in the summer. Some of the migrants are making good —those of them who had money and who were able to take grass land— but the men who have not money and who have large families are in a bad way and will be in a far worse way. At present they are approaching every Deputy to see whether they can get over to England to earn money, and it is only by means of money sent from Britain that they are keeping their little holdings together.

I raised last year the case of one of these migrants—a man named O'Sullivan who came from County Cork. I made a fairly strong case for that man and I think it was mean, low and despicable on the part of the Land Commission to treat him as they did. I do not say he was faultless, but I say that the Land Commission were not faultless, and their treatment of him was mean and despicable. That man was brought up from County Cork and placed on land in Meath, and within 12 months, he had been hounded out of his house and farm by the sheriff, driven in a van to the county home and left in the poorhouse with his wife, six children and old mother. That happened nearly two years ago, and at present that unfortunate old woman of 80 years of age is still an inmate of the poorhouse. It was all due to the blundering of the Land Commission. Having brought that man up to Meath, they found some technical flaw in the title deeds of his house, and they vented all their grievance upon him. Having made the mistake, it was their duty to leave him on the farm and let him make good. He was making good, and would have made good, but for the bitterness and meanness of the Land Commission officials. They hounded him out, and his farm in Cork was never given back to him. It still belongs to him, but the windows are broken and the doors are gone and the land is lying idle. In addition, all the crops that man had sown on his farm in Meath, including oats, wheat and potatoes, were taken and he never got a penny compensation. They were taken and sold, and the seed which was got from a merchant in Drogheda has not been paid for yet. The Land Commission are too mean to pay for it. I know that there is prejudice against this man because he is a Corkman and a fighter who knows his rights and stands for them. If he were a creeping, crawling, mollycoddle, he would have got the benediction of the Land Commission and the Minister, but he never bowed or scraped to anybody and will not do so. His rights are there and he holds, as do the large majority of people who know him, that in the courts to which he was brought perjury was committed against him and mean and rotten underhand work went on. Expense after expense was piled on him in order that he would be hounded out of Meath, but he is there still and will be there in spite of the Land Commission.

I ask the Minister to give that man his rights. The treatment he got is common gossip all over the county. I may add that he is no supporter of mine and never was, nor did I ever ask him, but I say that he is entitled to fight, with the assistance of Deputies or any man who will help him. Having been brought up from Cork with fanfares of trumpets, he found himself hounded into the county home and, after all this time, the key of his own old home in Cork will not be given back to him. The Land Commission, I suppose, expect him to bow and scrape for that key, but he will not do it. He will starve rather than do it and he is quite right. I ask the Minister to inquire who were the officials who treated that man so unfairly, what their evidence was and whether it was true. The eyes of many people will be opened.

Did they put him out of the house?

They did, and he was hounded into the poor house with his wife and children and mother of 80 years of age—and all because of some blunder the Land Commission made in connection with the title deeds. There was something incomplete in connection with the title of the old holding, but, having brought him up and having found something wrong, they said he had no right to be in Meath and that out of it he must get. His mother has been for the past two years in the county home while he is living in some little lodging house belonging to a farmer in the vicinity. It is really cruel and mean treatment.

Was he not trying to hold on to two holdings?

He cannot because he has neither.

But did he not try to do so?

He was quite prepared to give up the holding in Cork and get a new holding in Meath, but the Land Commission kept piling expenses on him. Every visit by the sheriff meant £20 or £30 until the expenses amounted to a couple of hundred pounds. They asked him to pay, but he was unable to do so. It is nonsense to say that he was trying to hold on to two holdings. The holding in Cork is still there, although the farm is derelict. The holding in Rathcarne, Gibbstown, is idle and the house locked up. Some man was shoved in to see that the grass land was eaten down, but he is half in and half out, with the result that the land is nearly derelict.

I urge the Minister to see to it that the Land Commission is a little more human. It is an instance of the system on which the high officials work in this country. They do not think at all of the human side. They think merely of red tape and the observance of regulations. That will have to stop. If there was a little human sympathy, the case of this man could be easily settled. It is not that he is a hard tyrant to deal with, but he is a spirited man, and I suppose that, because he is, he has to suffer. He will suffer it, but I ask the Land Commission to be fair and to give the man a chance, so that there will not be the blot on our reputation that, after 25 years of liberty, we hounded a man out of his farm and lodged him in the poorhouse. It is a poor return to men who suffered and fought for freedom.

I am not at all satisfied with the action of the Land Commission in connection with the taking over of some estates. I know an estate not a 100 miles from my own door which the Land Commission are taking over in spite of the unfortunate owner and at their own price. It is being done, of course, more or less at the bidding of the banks. The banks have nothing to do but to get the Land Commission to step in, pay their bill and let the man go to hell. There is an unfortunate man beside me, who may or may not have owed money to the bank, from whom the Land Commission are taking land and for which he will get nothing. Perhaps the bank will get their money, but it is a very unfair action. In the same vicinity, not far from my own place, there are 600, 1,000 and 2,000 acres of land in the hands of one or two people who spend most of their time in Britain having a good time and who have no interest in this country, but the Land Commission will not take an acre of that land. No, because there is a pull behind the scenes there, but decent, honest Meath men who have land which they got from their fathers are to be hounded out and their land taken from them for the purpose of extending the new colony. They are putting up 20 or 30 more houses on that estate, setting up uneconomic holdings and making another eyesore on the grand lands of Meath.

I want the Minister to stop all this nonsense, to stop bringing up migrants. What he should do is review the whole position in County Meath, go back over the past ten years and examine into the conditions there. There was a time when Deputies got up here to tell us how well off the people in Meath, the migrants, were. There were Deputies who told us about their visit to Gibbstown, about the smiling faces of the people there and how those people thanked God that they were occupying such nice holdings. I found out later that the few T.D.s who went down there went only among the moneyed people, the big men, and the new holders did not know that they were speaking for them. The fact of the matter is that many of the new holders had not had a breakfast and, although they were supposed to be living in comfort and luxury, they were actually, most of them, living in despair and misery. If they had not the good luck to get some work from the people in Meath, they would have to go back to Mayo.

The same sort of thing will happen again when the slump comes after the war. Those unfortunate people will not be able to exist there, and then the big men in County Meath will buy back all this land. The Government's policy should be to give a man a holding on which he can live and rear his family in comfort. The least that any man should get is 40 Irish acres. I have always advocated the proper division of land, but I am really horrified to observe what is going ahead in this grand rich County of Meath. They go out on the larger estates and construct ditches right across the estate in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable. A man might as well go out into the wilderness and try to make a holding out of it. I would much rather see the Land Commission following the lines of the old ditches and hedges, the marks that have been there for so many years, and arrange holdings in a more reasonable fashion, instead of running the new ditch along by the old ditch. They are adopting methods so as to get every farm to balance at 22 acres or 25 acres. It would be far better and more economical if they followed the old mearings and not be throwing up ditches and wire fences all over the county. You would think it was a zoo in many parts of the county at the present time when you see the way these new holdings are set out. In some areas you see nothing but wire and ditches. The cattle are tearing down the fences and no one seems anxious to do anything about it.

There are many complaints of lack of water. When the land was being divided the Land Commission apparently did not worry about providing water for each holding. The people are crying out for water and there are places where there is not a drop to be had, summer or winter. In these places the farmers have to carry the water long distances. They asked the Land Commission inspectors, before they divided the land, if there was any hope of getting water or having pumps sunk. They were told that the pumps would be sunk, but after the agreements were signed there was not one word more about the pumps. That is one of the blots on the scheme of land division. The people in County Meath have been treated very indifferently. It is absolutely essential to have a supply of good water on every holding. There is no provision in this respect for half the land that has been divided in County Meath. The unfortunate people have to carry the water in tubs and barrels over long distances when they should be engaged tilling the land.

I speak for all the people of County Meath, big and small. There are Deputies here who should talk as I am talking, but they are too cowardly to do so. They will say it in their little clubs, but they will not say it where they should say it. They should let the Land Commission know that things are not well in Meath. The Land Commission are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds foolishly. We want to see economic farms springing up on the huge confiscated ranches, on the lands that were formerly confiscated for Cromwell's settlers and planters. In my time I saw some of those people living in pride and luxury. Even to-day we have our large, wealthy land holders, but there is no Land Commission coming in to disturb them. On the other hand, there are decent, honest men who have had their lands torn from them and divided.

I would like to see the land acquired and divided, but there should be a decent price given for it. Under the present system you are robbing some people in order to give their lands to others. The Land Commission will not pay the market value for the land that they acquire. In some cases they will give only £5 an acre when the land is well worth £30 or £40 an acre. The Government can rob just the same as the robber on the highway, and the Government are robbing people in my county. I think it is high time that the Land Commission was placed under a new system of management. They are doing far more harm in Meath through their system of land division than if they were to leave the land in ranches.

I should like the Minister to visit the county and to inquire whether I am not stating the facts. If he does go to Meath, I would advise him not to go altogether among the big fellows. I have noticed some of the Minister's officials in the county and I have observed that they usually go to the fellows who live in luxury, the fellows with the wads in their pockets. Why not go out to visit some of the unfortunates who have to eke out a living on the rushy and marshy land? It would be well worth while hearing what they have to say. If the Minister wants to ease the situation in Meath, he should give the Meath people an equal say with the migrants. If he does that, we will have no growl over the migrants. But if he continues to force the migrants in there, leaving them a burden on the community, he will have a flame in County Meath that he will not easily forget, and I will be in the flame.

We are all anxious for land division, but, when we observe how things are being slipped across us, we cannot but be dissatisfied. The sons of decent Meath farmers have to go to Dublin and England to seek a livelihood. Give the people who were bred, born and reared on the lands of Meath a fair opportunity. Most of those people are the descendants of the men who refused to go to hell or Connaught to make room for Cromwell's planters. These people are as much entitled to the lands of Meath as are those whose forefathers fled to Connaught at the behest of Cromwell. If the Government are not prepared to give us justice, we will seek it in our own way.

I am amazed at the change in the tactics of Deputy Giles over the past 12 months. He is to-day more or less in favour of migrants—at least he was in one part of his speech.

I am not against them at all.

Now he brings up the case of some individual, this Mr. O'Sullivan, whoever he is. He has the greatest sympathy for him and he makes a strong plea to have whatever sort of grievance this man has, rectified. I think that if there is only one failure out of all the migrants dealt with by the Land Commission, it is a tribute to their work.

He is not a failure; he is a victim.

I have my own grievances against the Land Commission, but I honestly and sincerely believe they took nobody up with a view to putting him in the most hostile county, where every man of Deputy Giles' type and character would execute him in ten minutes if he got the chance. They do not bring them up to inflict any hardships on them. They bring them up in order to put them on land that they can live on. That is my belief and I am not going to believe anything else. You will have, of course, an occasional failure here and there, but there is no reason in the world why migration should be dropped. It is all very fine for Deputy Giles. He does not understand.

Nobody wants migration dropped.

The people who have come up there from the West of Ireland do not understand the mentality of the people of Meath. When Deputy Giles talked about their not being able to make a living on 25 acres of land, I agree with him that the holdings should be bigger but, at the same time, I will say—and I think every western Deputy will agree with me—that the majority of farmers in the West of Ireland have not 25 acres of land of the type of land they have in Meath; they have less than half of that and the greater portion of it is bog. If the inspectors who are at the present time examining land under the Compulsory Tillage Act were to compare the land in Connaught with that taken over in Meath one acre out of every 700 or 800 in the West would be deemed arable land. Coming from the West of Ireland and living in a congested area, I know the type of people who are in these congested districts. They are not the type that Deputy Giles thinks they are. He has got an idea in the back of his head because he has not tried to find out for himself. He has a narrow-minded Meath outlook. He thinks those people never saw an acre of land. These people have been living on farms one-third or one-fifth the size of the land they got in Meath, and they made a living on it.

In England.

It does not matter where they made it; they lived anyhow. If they went up to Meath and showed the people there they were prepared to do a day's work, on the road or anywhere else, they are entitled to do that. They will live anyhow, in spite of all the Deputy Giles' type that will hang around Meath and try to execute them as quickly as they can.

There is none of them gone yet.

And you and a whole lot more like you will not put them out.

Nobody wants to.

If the Deputy points out to me that any man on a 40-acre holding of land in Meath who has reared seven or eight sons up to 25, 30 and 35 years of age, who can live there all the time, without going somewhere to make a living. I say it is a miracle. It cannot be done and there is no use in being silly about it. As far as I understand, the average in family of the migrants was 11. If 11 children are reared up to 15, 30 or 35 years of age, are they all to live all the time on the 30, 35 or 45 acres of land? Even the farmers living in Meath who have 1,000 acres of land, what have they in the house with them to provide for?

That is what I want to know.

To my own knowledge, there is a husband, a wife and a dog. Deputies should not be talking that sort of silly drivel. The land of this country is for the people of the country and the people of Connaught are as much entitled to the land of Meath as are the people of Meath, because, although Deputy Giles may say the only people who were left behind are those who refused to go to hell or to Connaught, I am sure that if it were possible to go into that matter, it would be found that a lot of them were suckers of Cromwell and company. However, that is beside the question.

It is not what you did in 1916; it is what you did in Cromwell's time.

There is one thing I regret in the Land Commission policy, that they divided their staff and did not continue the work. I believe when Land Commission activities ceased the Land Commission were just getting on to the position where we could see that some really effective work was being done. It is rather unfortunate that that policy had to be dropped.

I sincerely hope the Minister will make an effort to get back his staff and to get on with the work. I have noticed that since the Land Commission activities ceased, a number of large farms—I think we brought a lot of them to the Minister's notice—have been put up for auction and are being sold. I believe these people are deliberately getting out while the going is good. If they make an attempt to put up their land for auction at a later stage, there is a possibility that pressure may be brought on the Land Commission to step in.

God be with free sale.

Deputy Dillon might have a policy of free sale in the back of his mind, but as far as I am concerned, if a man has a holding of land in the midst of a congested area for sale, if it contains 60, 80 or more acres, the Land Commission should step in and fix a price. The price can be fixed. You are not going to do away with the fixity of tenure. Anyhow, fixity of tenure had to be knocked on the head, not alone by this Government. The last man who did it—and rightly so, and it was one of the reasons why I respected him so much—was the late Mr. Hogan. He dropped it and if he had not, it would have been an unfortunate day for the small farmers of this country.

God be good to Michael Davitt.

God be good to the people who did not practise what he preached but adopted what they thought was the same type of policy but which, of course, led to the other end. I think the Land Commission should step in. I could give many instances of lands that have been put up for sale. Recently there was a farm that I brought to the Minister's notice at Clonshee. That was allowed to be sold but, luckily enough, they made up their minds at a later stage to step in. It is a very useful farm for division there. The same was done with Smith's of Loughrea. I have mentioned before a farm of Waldron's at Massmore. I have been trotting in and out to the Land Commission about it. It is outside Tuam, and contains 320 acres. The Land Commission allowed that to be sold. Within a mile and a half radius of that farm there are 25 people living on valuations of £2 15s. and under. I think it is disgraceful to allow that type of thing to happen. Beside where I am living at the moment, recently there was a farm in the midst of a congested area sold to a doctor.

If doctors and solicitors are going to acquire all the lands in this country in that way, Deputy Giles's fixity of tenure will arrive at a nice stage. We have seen enough of the fixity of tenure people since compulsory tillage was introduced. We find that every case that we have to report to the Minister for Agriculture in connection with tillage not being done, was not that of a small farm, but large farms which contained the best land in the County Galway. Last year I pressed on the Minister that it would be useful if the Land Commission did nothing but earmark those people who were not prepared to do their tillage so that as soon as the emergency was over we could proceed at once to take over these lands and have them divided amongst the people, so that if ever we have a crisis similar to the one that exists at present, we will not have to go down on our knees, begging and craving of people to grow the necessary food for the people of the country. The Deputy Giles's outlook of regarding Meath as a jumping-off ground for British and continental markets, as he said himself, is an outlook that must be destroyed.

With the market, I suppose?

We are lucky to have it to-day.

We are unlucky to have it to-day. If we had not that type of thing to-day, we would not be forcing the people to grow the necessary wheat for the people at home, and we would not have the few ships we have left bringing in wheat, when they could be bringing in more essential food. These are the mean people that you have living on the best land in Ireland. One meets them day after day travelling on the trains. They are full of criticism of the Minister for Agriculture, because he has a number of inspectors out for the purpose of seeing that they till their land. They call him all sorts of names. I heard a man describe last week how he went down to the west of Ireland and paid £19 10s. each for bullocks in September, and sold them in the following November for £42 each. He complained that he was obliged to till the land on which those cattle had been fed. That is the type of mentality you have in the County Meath. The land, I say, should be utilised for the production of food for the people. If we were to depend on the paper money that we get from Britain, it would not be of much use for the feeding of the people.

Who will buy your store cattle?

There are thousands of other things that we produce as well as store cattle. I have 50 per cent. of my land producing food at the present time, and I do not believe that I could do anything more profitable with it.

What is the Deputy doing with the other 50 per cent.?

If the Deputy is a farmer he must know very well that I have to keep a couple of horses and a couple of cows.

I am sure it is not rabbits you keep.

I may have a share of them, too. I cannot take Deputy Dillon and Deputy Giles and yoke them to a plough or even to a donkey's car.

Unfortunately, I was yoked to a plough in a foreign prison.

I have said many times behind Deputy Dillon's back that I only wish he could, for half an hour, direct his mind to be as constructive as it is destructive in so far as tillage is concerned. We have been listening to him for years denouncing wheat growing.

He was not far wrong.

Deputy Giles, I suppose, will back him up in that. That is the type of stuff that has left us to deal with the position we are faced with at the moment. I would ask the Minister, in spite of all the remarks that have been made by Deputies who favour a policy of grazing ranches in this country, to remember those who are worth anything to the country at the moment—the small farmers of Ireland who are producing food for the people. The unfortunate thing is that they have not got more land. If they had, they would have it under tillage producing more food. There is no use in Deputy Dillon thinking that the man with 20 acres of land can till the whole of it. He has to keep a few cows and a few horses. Of course, the Deputy brought that in as a sort of red herring. He is now shedding crocodile tears and lamenting statements that he made here in the past. Occasionally, he shows his true form. He does not often have to do that because we know his mind very well from our experience of him here in the past.

I have been trying to teach you for a long time.

Like the vast majority of the people of the country, I have a sufficient amount of intelligence not to take heed of what you tell me. In conclusion, I would ask the Minister that where there are farms for sale, large or small, the Land Commission should step in. The price can always be fixed. There is no confiscation of property in doing that. Where you have those large farms in the west of Ireland for sale, the Land Commission should step in and take them over. A worse thing than that is happening where farms are being divided up into two or three allotments in order to make the division a nice-looking job. The people who sell the land get a nice price for it, but the people getting a share of it are left in poor circumstances.

I make no apologies for asking Deputies to put this question to themselves. Why did their fathers go to jail and die in jail for the three F's? Public memory cannot be so fearfully short that the members of the Fianna Fáil Party have not heard of the three F's. Do they think that Parnell, Davitt, William O'Brien and the other leaders of the Land League were all fools? Why do they think they fought for the three F's? They fought for them because, by their knowledge of the country, they knew that without these things—fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale—the land would deteriorate, that the people living on it would be reduced to poverty and robbed of their independence, and, therefore, made incapable of defending the integrity of this State. Why do Deputies forget that?

What was the population of this country in 1843?

What has that to do with it? Does the Deputy take the view that the leaders of the Land League were wrong?

He thinks they were right. There is no need for us to get into a long argument as to the policy of Parnell, Davitt, William O'Brien and the other leaders and their fight for the three F's. There was some reason for it. I know the reason very well.

They did not fight for fixity of tenure for the landlord.

No. If a man owned land and proceeded to set it, if he put a tenant on it, and if the tenant worked the land well while the landlord drew the profits, the landlord should be dispossessed of the land, and the land should be vested in the man who was working on it. That was their whole concept of fixity of tenure. They said that a man's homestead was his castle, and that no one might take it from him if he was working the land.

Now you are coming to the point.

Their position was that if a man was living out of the land on which he resided he should have fixity of tenure, free sale and a fair rent. The Land Acts got for us fair rent in the form of the annuities under the various purchase agreements. The very essence of fixity of tenure and free sale is this: that the man who puts his sweat into the soil upon which he lives will be satisfied that, so long as he wants to retain the wealth thereby created, he will be protected against all comers. That is number one. The second point is that if his family circumstances demand that he should cash the sweat that he has put into the soil: if he has to leave the land because he has become delicate or that his family has grown up and he wants to bring them to Dublin to be educated, or if, for some other reason, he wants to get off the land, he may know that the land that he has watered in his own perspiration will be freely saleable at its market value, so that he will be able to get full value for all he put into it if he changes his mode of life.

Will the Deputy now state in this House how many cases of the kind he is now referring to have been deprived of their right to the land?

Deputy Walsh is hopping up and down like a jack-in-the-box. He has as much right to speak in Dáil Eireann as I have. Would it not be fairer of him to wait until I have finished and then make his speech in answer? Deputy Walsh wants to know what I mean by saying that a man's land is being taken from him, when he worked the land.

On a point of explanation, I did not ask any such question. I asked Deputy Dillon to state here in this House the number of specific cases where men have been deprived of their right to the land for the reason that he stated. That is my question.

I do not know what the Deputy means.

That is for the Deputy to follow.

What I am inveighing against is the abolition of free sale. Deputy Killilea comes in to-day and says: "I know a man with a big holding of land who has just sold it, although there are a number of farms around him which are small uneconomic holdings," and he says: "I do not think he should be let sell; I think that the minute he went to sell it the Land Commission should walk in and take it and fix the price by arbitration." Let us examine that, because, to my mind, we are all going mad on this matter. Take two farmers living side by side in County Galway. One fellow is a perfectly worthless individual, who never improves his land but keeps cropping and taking the good out of it year after year.

We are all agreed such a man is not entitled to continue that.

That man spends all the gross profit of his land every year in going around town and living on a scale far above that which he could properly afford. His next door neighbour is living on a farm of exactly similar acreage and lives to a very modest standard. He is seldom seen in town on a Saturday night, and every penny he can scrape together is spent on manures to improve the land. He is out from dawn to dusk, digging, harrowing, ploughing, ditching, hedging, weeding, and so forth, and is doing everything possible by his own labour to improve the quality of his land. Let us say there is a third fellow, living in a third farm, who takes all the profit out of his land and puts it in the bank on deposit. He saves £50 a year out of the proceeds of his land, for 20 years, until he has £1,000 lodged in the bank. One farmer is on an impoverished farm and is nothing but a pauper, as he has spent all his resources; the middle man who has the outward and external appearance of a poor man, has rich, good land producing the very maximum output which can be produced for the community in which he lives; and the third has £1,000 in the bank and a rotten farm, as he never put back anything into the land but put all his savings into the bank. These three men go to sell their holdings. They are all of the same valuation and acreage, and the Land Commission is to step in, according to the Deputy, and take the holdings of any one of these men who offers one for sale.

He did not say that.

He is asking that. All the men have large farms in the middle of a congested area. All the men worked the land: one worked it well, another worked it badly and spent the proceeds, and the third worked it badly and banked the savings. One of these men has a splendid farm but no money in the bank, as he put all the earnings back into the land. The three farms are of the same valuation and acreage and are similarly circumstanced in the eyes of the law. If these men sold on the open market, the thriftless fellow would get a very poor price, the fellow who took all the good out of the land and put the cash in the bank might get only £4 an acre, because the land was exhausted and spent, and the man in between, who looked the poorest, would have people coming from ten miles away to buy his farm, as it was reputed to be the best bit of land in the whole barony, and he might get £8 or £10 an acre for it. It is the knowledge that he could get that money, if the time ever came, that induces him to put the money back into it; it is the knowledge that he has free sale, that, when the day comes when he wants cash in hand, he can put his land up and get a good price for his labour, his sweat, his industry and his savings over 20 or 30 years, that induces him to put his savings back into the soil. If it is the Fianna Fáil doctrine that, when that man wishes to put his land up for sale, the Land Commission will intervene and forbid him to sell, saying: "We will take it over and the price will be fixed by the Land Court"——

That is what I want the Deputy to point out— specific cases of that kind.

Is this to be the new doctrine, when that man puts his land up for sale? I am not saying that the Land Commission is going in, in this case, to take over his land, but if this man goes to put his land up for sale and publishes the fact that he is going to give up his farm, that he wants to sell it and that he is putting it on the auctioneer's list and the whole townland knows it, the Land Commission comes in and says, in such a case: "This is a good farm, which we would never dream of taking over if this man intended to remain on it, but he has announced his intention to leave the land and, as that is the case, we are now going to take it over for division and the price will be fixed." Do we not all know perfectly well that the man who has spent the best years of his life piling up wealth in the soil is not going to get the full value from the Land Commission, whereas the rascal who took out of the land all that he could is hoping that the Land Commission will take it over, if it comes up for sale, as he knows he will get a better price from the Land Court than at an auction attended by his neighbours, who know the true condition of the soil?

If you destroy free sale, every farmer will do what the bad farmer does: he will take his money out of the land and will put it into the bank, as he knows not the day nor the hour when he may be constrained to put his land on the market, in which event the Land Commission would come in and take it over. Most of the Deputies in that Party are older men than I, and must have come closely in contact with this question, through their fathers and grandfathers in the Land League. I was taught as a child, and did not require illustration or argument, that if you destroy fixity of tenure or free sale, you proceed to place all the land of the country in a state of progressive deterioration. In the old days, no man whose land was not subject to the Ulster custom dare to improve it, because, as soon as his land began to stand out as the best land, the landlord would take it over or give it to the bailiff's son. As a result, in order to be left where they were, our people were forced down into dirt and degradation as, if they dared to rise, they would be kicked out by the landlord, and the fruits of their labour would be handed to the bailiff, or else it would be made impossible for them to live. Why does not the Fianna Fáil Party recognise that they are converting the Land Commission into the same instrument?

That is not so.

Is it not true, if you say that, the moment a man with a good farm of land, in the middle of a congested area, puts up the land for sale, the Land Commission ought to come in and take it from the auctioneer and say: "We are going to take it over, and the price will be fixed by the Land Court"? Do you not know that the man who has made his land of exceptional quality through his superior industry, while he may get a fair price from the Land Commission, will certainly not get the price that he would get from his neighbours?

He cannot get the market.

That man would get a premium on the price, owing to the exceptional quality. If that is to be the rule from this time forward, there will be no land improvement.

What about the 1923 Land Act?

I am talking about what I know. I was not brought up on the 1923 Land Act, but on the 1881, 1885 and 1903 Land Acts. That was the war we were fighting. I was not reared on the Acts of 1923, 1931, or 1932. The people that reared me had a tougher job to do and a tougher battle to fight, but they knew what they were fighting for—to make the people secure on the land. The Land Acts were got as a result of the poor people rising up and gaining independence and strength. They did it then, but this is an attempt to undo it. At least, we fitted the people to do it. When the Land War was finished, the people had dignity, strength and independence. Whether what we thought was right or what they thought was right, at least they had the independence to stand for what they believed. It was the three F.'s which gave it to them. What Fianna Fáil Deputies are doing is eating away all that bastion of the people's independence. If they continue to do it, they will find that by appealing consistently to the natural jealousy of man they will succeed in destroying fixity of tenure and fair rent, and the day they do that I warn them that the quality of the land will proceed to deteriorate—not overnight, it will take a generation. But at the end of that generation we will have one of the poorest agricultural communities in Europe. It will take many generations to get back again. None of these Deputies seems to be aware of that.

What shocks me is that the language I hear is the language that I was led to believe was on the lips of emergency men. That was the way emergency men talked. Why does not Deputy Walsh join with me in protesting against this?

Because the things have not happened that you claim are happening.

In the old days when a man clamoured to grab his neighbour's farm he was marked; they knew him for what he was; he was a grabber, and his children were grabber's children. But, in the day and in the generation in which we live now, the grabber is a respected citizen, the emergency man is a public benefactor, and the poor tenant farmer has become a kind of public enemy because he dares to keep a firm grip on his holding. Do I exaggerate when I say that the man with a holding in this country who announces to all comers that he wants to keep a firm grip on his holding is looked upon with suspicion and is dubbed a rancher or a public enemy? It is a queer turn of the wheel of fortune. I often think that the late Arthur Balfour would have laughed heartily at it, because he often prophesied that if these "creatures" were given control of the land in Ireland in time they would be tearing the throats out of one another. Balfour's prophecy always was that if the landlord went, the "dirty Irish" would soon start on one another. What appals me is that I should see the small farmer turn against the big farmer, that the things we fought to achieve are being turned against our own people; that the Land Commission inspectors who used to be looked upon by our people as their protectors, friends and helpers in all their trials and tribulations, have now come to be looked upon with almost the same horror, when they appear on the horizon, as the officers of the Department of Supplies. In the old days, if a Land Commission inspector called on you, he was a welcome guest. When the late Sir Henry Doran of the Congested Districts Board was going around, his arrival was received with rejoicing, as there were benefits left to the people. Now, any man who sees a Land Commission inspector coming on his land feels very much as his grandfathers felt when they saw the landlord's bailiffs smelling about. This is largely the result of the activities of the Fianna Fáil Party since they got control of the Land Commission. To me it is horrifying.

I know that there are more small farmers than there are large farmers. I know it may be a short-sighted vote-catching policy to go on urging the small men, with their own trials and difficulties, into impassioned jealousy against their comparatively well-off neighbour. There may be 25 of them to one of the others, and that means you can get 25 votes and therefore it is good policy. But, if you have any interest in the country, in the people, in the land from which our people must ultimately derive their entire subsistence, dignity, and independence, then I urge on the Fianna Fáil Party, whether in Government or Opposition, to consider the policy they have been pursuing for the last ten years, and their whole attitude towards fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale. I ask them to realise that if they take away any of these it will mean the utter ruin of Irish agriculture and the ultimate ruin of our people.

I want to say this—and it is a very vital distinction—that there are cases of people at present who have signified their willingness that the Land Commission should take their land and have been met in that situation by an intimation that the Land Commission will not take their land. I know of one case, to which I directed the attention of the Minister recently, of two absentee ladies who owned a small amount of land. These two absentee ladies, with the best of goodwill, signified they would be very glad if the Land Commission took the land off their hands. The Land Commission's reply was that during the emergency they cannot undertake new acquisition proceedings. These ladies, who are living out of the country, wanted to get money to carry on. They did not want to set the land in conacre and therefore they sold it to a person who wanted a homestead. In three or four years, it will be a very great hardship to this young man, who has recently married and who may have a young family, if the land is taken from him and he is put out on the side of the road. If the Land Commission take the land now, that young man will go and get a holding somewhere else, and the land could be parcelled out amongst the persons who have been taking it in conacre for some years. If the Land Commission do not wish to engage in division operations at present, let them continue the conacre system until after the emergency and have a division scheme post-war.

If Deputy Killilea had gone only this distance I would agree with him. Where you have an absentee landlord who has been letting land conacre for a long time and who is anxious to get rid of it and is willing to sell the land, the Land Commission should acquire it. Mind you, in the case of the absentee landlord with conacre, I would take the land from him, whether he was willing or not. Land set to other men as a permanent arrangement should be acquired by the Land Commission and vested in the men to whom it is set. There may be a case of a widow with a boy of 11 or 12 at school who has to set land until the boy grows up, but that woman is constructively working her own homestead and should not be touched. But where you have the petty landlord, the growing landlord, the speculative landlord or the developing landlord—that is what the Land Commission is for. Clean him out and put on the land the resident working tenant, large or small, but whatever size he is, if he is living on the land, it is his homestead.

All over this country tens of thousands of pounds are spent by the Land Commission on making roads. A very large number of these roads are vanishing for want of maintenance. Surely there ought to be some arrangement arrived at with the local authority or the Board of Works that out of some fund roads constructed by the Land Commission will be maintained. It may be that, on reconsideration, certain roads will be deliberately abandoned as now unnecessary. That is all right. Let them be abandoned, the fences thrown and the land under the road let into the adjoining land, but where the road still is, where it is required, where it serves the purpose for which it was originally made, the local authority, the Board of Works or the Land Commission should have a provision for the maintenance of that road, and not simply let it vanish for want of maintenance.

There are two other matters, one fairly important and the other fundamental, with which I want to deal. When the Congested Districts Board were dividing estates, in a great many cases there were annexed to these estates very large areas of turbary. It was the practice in many areas for the Congested Districts Board, instead of dividing up the turbary and allotting it with the parcel of land, to choose two or three responsible tenants on the estate, with perhaps the parish priest, or some such prominent local person, and to constitute them trustees of the turbary for distribution amongst the tenants. They would then transfer the whole turbary to these trustees and the understanding was that they, knowing local conditions, would stripe out the turbary and make an equitable distribution. What happened was that, when the trustees went to divide the bog amongst their own neighbours, blue hell broke out and the trustees took the easiest course and simply did nothing. Gradually some bold warrior went in on the bog, opened a bank and started cutting, and the parish priest and the neighbours were not going to put him off. One fellow started and then another started and ultimately the whole turbary reached a chaotic condition. As soon as that happened, family disputes began. One man would claim this bank and another man that bank. One man would be pouring the water from his drain down on the next man's bank, and there would be murder. Very often there was serious trouble, but what is worse than an angry quarrel on a bog, as all of us who live in the West of Ireland know, born of such a quarrel there would often start a family feud which would be carried on for years and be a chronic nuisance to the neighbourhood.

I suggest to the Minister that all these cases in which turbary has been vested in trustees under Congested District Board schemes ought to be reviewed and that where the trustees have not carried out their work, they ought to be reacquired by the Land Commission and that some of the inspectors should be sent down to restripe the bog and allocate it to the tenants who got land under the original land purchase scheme, and so make an end of all the pandemonium and chaos which operate on these bogs. I know one bog, and no respectable man who has a house on the estate will go into it because there are four or five warriors on it who will lift a sleán to anybody who goes in there.

A very large number of decent, respectable people are afraid to go on their own bogs and are going six and seven miles to bring turf home. It is all because the Department have so far been unable to see their way to reacquire that bog and stripe it. I hope they will be able to do it in that particular case and to adopt a similar course in regard to all these trustee bogs where the trustees have not been able to carry out their functions.

The last matter I want to refer to is fundamental. Do Deputies realise that, since the 1932 Land Act, we have been buying land all over the country, improving it, spending very large sums of public money on it, and then selling it to the people who acquired it for one-half of what we paid for it? I do not suppose it is a very popular thing to suggest that that should be stopped, but it is the greatest codology. Is there any reason in justice, equity or social science why the community should purchase land, improve it at a cost of £20 per acre and sell it to an eager, willing buyer at £10 an acre? Nothing but political blackmail could perpetuate so grotesque a situation in any community. Is there any Deputy who will justify a plan under which we should purchase land, improve it to the tune of £20 an acre and then sell it to the allottees for £10? If there is I should like to hear the case he will make for it. Is there any reason why we should not embark on a plan for acquiring public houses and selling them to the community at 50 per cent. of what they cost and then a plan for acquiring residential houses and selling them for 50 per cent. of what they cost? There is no reason why we should not. The members of the licensed trade are a very respectable body of men and could just as well do with a scheme of that kind as the farming community who are also very respectable men. The labourers of the country, a very respectable body of men, would, I am sure, be glad of a scheme based on that principle and when we have provided for these, I am sure there is a variety of other classes of whom Deputy Hickey could think to whom we should apply similar schemes. If they all get their property for 50 per cent. of what it cost, there will be nobody in the country who will not be wearing a silk hat.

And we will feed all the dogs with their own tails.

I do not mind if you feed all the dogs with their own tails. What I am complaining of is that you are feeding half the dogs with everybody else's tail and you can go on doing that so long as one half of the dogs have any tails left. When they have disappeared, will you start feeding the farmers on their own tails then? Has Deputy O'Grady examined the equity, justice or expediency of indefinitely continuing to purchase land and improving it at a cost of £20 an acre and then selling it to the allottee at £10? If he has, and if he considers it a desirable thing to do, would he tell me why we should not initiate a scheme to buy public houses and resell them to allottees at 50 per cent. of what they cost and why we should not start a system of buying residences and selling them at 50 per cent. of what they cost? Perhaps Deputy Hickey would help me in this dilemma.

As a financial expert.

I always look for inspiration to Deputy Hickey because he is a man with a very fertile mind, but it would require a man with a very fertile mind to understand the logic of this arrangement. Perhaps the Minister will explain to us the policy of the Government with regard to this matter. Is it proposed for ever to go on acquiring land at £20 an acre and selling it at £10? Remember what is going to happen ultimately. A great deal of this land may pass through the hands of the Land Commission more than once, and every time it passes through their hands, we are going to cut the price in two again. It is a very odd arrangement, and I think it is a matter which has to be considered, bearing in mind the basis of your original scheme. The original scheme was that we were going to "gyp" the British out of the land annuities, and, having got them for ourselves, to give half to the tenants and keep half for the Treasury.

That was the scheme, but that applied only to those holdings purchased under the British Land Acts. Now in respect of land which has been purchased under our Land Acts, every farm has been paid for, not in British securities, but in securities issued by the Irish Government. The state of the law requires that we shall ascertain what the land costs. That done, we fix the annuity and then we halve that annuity. Strictly speaking the annuity, of course, cannot be fixed in excess of the land's capacity to earn and leave a margin for the tenant, but generally it works out that what the land costs is the basis on which the annuity is fixed and we then halve the annuity. In those circumstances the tenant acquires the land for half of its true value.

I should like to hear some explanation as to the equity of that and whether we are to understand that that system is going to be maintained in perpetuity. If it is, then ultimately our national debt will reach proportions which will simply stagger creation. If we are going to continue piling on to the national debt half the amount involved in land purchase, then surely the national debt will be a most beautiful structure in our grandchildren's day. We are not acquiring any land at the moment. As the law stands, we are going to begin buying land again when the currency has been stabilised with a view to maintaining its value for a protracted period and we are going to place on the dead-weight debt of the State one-half the purchase price of every acre of land we buy, in perpetuity.

This is a problem that the House will have to consider some time. I know perfectly well that nobody particularly wants to bell the cat. Everything in the garden is lovely. Every allottee is getting the land for half its cost and there is a long time to pay. We have a terrible lot of tenant purchasers, and there are lots more who hope one day to be tenant purchasers. There are people who will get nervous if there is any talk about restoring the land annuity. I know well that if a Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party dared to mention a matter of this kind, he would be torn asunder next Thursday morning at the Party meeting for putting his foot in it. It would take a Deputy like Deputy Corry to say something like this, and they have run him out of the House; the poor man cannot put his nose inside the door.

Warmly as I esteem my erstwhile colleagues on the Fine Gael Party, I know that if somebody there ventured to raise this hare he would be chastened with advice—to put it mildly— the next time there would be a Party meeting. I am not in the least apprehensive that Deputy Hickey will ever raise this question, because what he would probably say is "Print the money and to hell with all this borrowing and everything else; it is the short way round and let us get it over." I think that if and when the Deputy does say that, he will probably be the most honest of them all.

Did the Deputy ever hear me say any such thing?

I heard the Deputy say things that sounded so like it that there was very little difference.

The Chair finds it difficult to connect the printing of money with the Land Commission Vote.

If the Ceann Comhairle were here when I was dealing with the cost of land acquisition, he would probably know what I was getting at. This much is certain, that unless we resort to printing, or something of that kind, the present system of land purchase must be altered. The wealth of the British Empire would not be able to stand land purchase in this country on the present basis. We cannot buy all the land at £20 an acre and sell it at £10 an acre. All the wealth that ever came out of the Orient would not finance anything on that scale. Sooner or later some poor man will have to shoulder the problem. I do not envy the Party leader who undertakes it, but somebody will have to. That buck will be passed on down the line for as long as it is practicable to pass it down. The longer it is so passed down, the more formidable will the problem become. Somebody will have to face it some day and I mention it here while I am a free agent so that those who have Party responsibility and national responsibility may start brooding upon it.

I trust the Minister will give attention to these remarks. I challenge the Minister for Lands now to state what is the Government policy on this question of maintaining land purchase at half the price it costs the State. Will it be the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government, in the event of their being returned to power, to perpetuate a system in which the community pays £20 an acre for land and sells it to the allottee for £10? Is that the policy of Fianna Fáil? I invite Deputy MacEoin, who usually speaks on behalf of the Fine Gael Party on matters affecting the Land Commission, to tell us where the members of his Party stand on that question. Perhaps he will expound fully what the attitude of his Party is in relation to it.

Nobody is bothering about that question at all.

It is time they began to think about it. I would simply love to hear Deputy Hickey on it; I would love to hear him tell us, if we go on selling land for 50 per cent. of what it costs, would he be in favour of starting a housing scheme on that basis, and, if he is going to start a housing scheme on that plan, would he think of setting them up in small shops on that plan?

He will not be allowed to tell the House on this Vote.

I suppose he would, if he did not go too deeply into it—just by way of passing reference and analogy—no more. It is an interesting field for speculation.

I hope that I am not being drawn by Deputy Dillon's remarks, but I think it is a pity that he should spoil a very excellent speech by certain references he has made.

To what?

Let me tell the Chair. Deputy Dillon's speech on the question of free sale is, I think, one of the most important matters for the whole agricultural community of this country. The loss of free sale has lowered the credit of the agricultural community to such an extent that even a John Rockefeller with a farm of land going into the bank can hardly get twopence on it, because of the fact that if he borrows money on it and if there is an attempt to realise the security, something happens. It is no longer security for any sum. I was struck by the case Deputy Dillon made of the three farmers and the man who had put the sweat and toil of himself, his sons and daughters into his farm. Deputy Dillon missed one very important point in that, namely, that if the other two fellows put up their farms for sale, nobody objects, because their farms are wasted, but the very moment the successful farmer, who has his farm in good heart, puts his farm up for sale, unfortunately the demand is created there and then for the acquisition of that farm. That is a farm that appeals to the congests around it. Who blames them? What is the use in their looking for a bad farm? I want to point out that, in my opinion, the Land Commission should make it a condition that the putting up for sale of a farm of land by a farmer precludes any attempt at acquisition of that holding for a certain number of years, so that a fair price, that is, the market price, may be established. According to the Land Act, you have the market price as being the fair price, but it is almost impossible when there is no free sale to establish the market price and, therefore, a very grave injustice is imposed upon the farmers.

As one who has advocated and will continue to advocate the acquisition of holdings for the relief of congestion but who, on the other hand, asserts that a just price should be paid to the owner for the holding, I think that is where Deputy Dillon spoiled his case. He told us that he remembered all about the 1903 Land Act. He forgets that the British Government issued an excess stock to cover certain costs in the purchase of the land then, and there is a very small difference between the amount of loss they suffered in the effort to settle the land question then and the amount of money the State now loses in the halving of the land annuities so as to enable the tenant farmer to be put on a farm at an economic price, at a reasonable rate. I am not going to defend the question for the Minister. I am sure he will deal with the matter himself. I do not pretend, like Deputy Dillon, to speak for the Fine Gael Party on the matter, but I for one am prepared to advocate that for the acquisition of land for the relief of congestion a just price should be paid and the State should suffer the loss between that price paid and the rent that the tenant farmer to whom it was allotted could pay, for this reason, that I think it is a fundamental need in this country to put the people back on the land but, in doing that, we must be just to the man from whom we take the land and we must be just to the person to whom we allot it.

Does not the man on the land belong to the people too?

There is a type of farm that has not yet been taken over, that is where the owner is non-resident, where there is a large area of land being set year after year on the 11 months system. To take these farms we must have very great power. I have seen, on a few occasions, when a good farm, which a man has been working well, is put up for sale, immediately there is a resolution passed—I will not say by a Fianna Fáil club, but I would say by a mixumgatherum of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour—for the acquisition of that farm. I do not pretend that the blame is all on one side of the House, but I say the very moment we take that step we have lowered the value of the land in the country.

You have done more; you have destroyed the security of the country.

Yes, and it is a bad day's work. That is why I prefaced my remarks by saying that if the Land Commission did not proceed to acquire it before he put it up for sale, they certainly should not proceed to acquire it then, that that is not a justification. Several times the case has been made that when a farm is put up for sale, that is the acceptable time to acquire it. In that sense it is not exactly justice.

I am not saying the blame is all on one Party. I think there is a fair amount of guilt upon every person, whatever his politics, who has what you might call a greed for land and who will try to make use of that "acceptable" time. Therefore, I think the Land Commission should be very careful. Until a reasonable and equitable distribution of the land has been made, the State and the Land Commission must be prepared to have a substantial loss on the transaction. I am prepared to justify and defend that expenditure at any cross-roads as well as in the Dáil because I believe that we must get the people back on the land and we must provide for them the best of housing on the land. I notice, from this White Paper, that the provision of houses has practically ceased, but I believe that when building houses for them, a good type of house should be provided, with modern sanitary and toilet accommodation. While good work has been done, it is not adequate. For the purpose of establishing homes in the country fit for young men and women to live in and to rear their families as they should be reared, I think it is well spent money to "waste" 50 per cent. on them. That is the answer to Deputy Dillon from these benches.

I might mention, Sir, that in your absence reference was made by a Deputy on the Government Benches to a certain organisation. I think it was very unfair to name an organisation that is not represented in this House, that has no political views but that has a Christian philosophy.

Nothing derogatory was said in my hearing.

I want to protest against it. I want to have it recorded that in my view a Deputy should not make an oblique attack in this House on an organisation that has no opportunity of replying to it.

In regard to the question of trusteeships on bogs, the Land Commission, I think, should make an immediate revision of all of them. For goodness' sake, let them map the plots out to the individual tenants. In the County Longford at the moment there are three petty wars being waged over these trusteeships. In one case new trustees have been appointed. I do not know how they are discharging their duties. All that I do know is that there is a dispute there. In another case, in which the trustees are not functioning at all, diplomatic relations have been broken off. War may not have been declared, but the position is strained. In another case, the trustees have been reduced to one, and this person is the lord high dictator of the whole concern. As Deputy Dillon has said, he has been strong enough to seize executive and administrative power over the whole bog and nobody wishes to interfere with him. These trustees are not being paid. They are a voluntary body. The trusteeships go all right for a time but then, I suppose, like the rest of us they slacken off after a year or two. The result is that nobody's rights are being respected and people entitled to get turbary are being left without it.

I want to suggest to the Government that they should withdraw their Emergency Powers Order and that where lands are being offered to the Land Commission for acquisition they should proceed with their acquisition. I say further, that where the Land Commission have served notice of intention to acquire, they should proceed to do so or else withdraw their notice. It is unfair to an owner of lands to leave him suspended in midair. The Minister has argued that the serving of a notice of intention to acquire is not the initiation of proceedings. There is no doubt, I think, but that it is. It is provided in the statute that the power to acquire is there, and the serving of the notice is really a threat to an owner to prevent him from doing something else with his land. Where that threat is made it should either be carried out or the notice should be withdrawn.

I do not know the Government's reason for reducing the amount of the improvement Vote. That work could still go on. It may be argued that the Department of Agriculture have undertaken a certain amount of land improvement, but that it is only on acquired estates they do it. I think it would be in the interests of the community to have land improvement work carried out especially in the case of estates which have been acquired for a considerable time. Otherwise, these farms will deteriorate. The fertility of the soil will be reduced to such an extent that the land will be practically useless when the tenants get it. I think the Land Commission should be directed by the Government to proceed with this land improvement work.

In conclusion, I would suggest to the Government that they should not wait until the emergency is over to proceed with the building of houses. They should build houses and provide them with the normal amenities demanded by the public health authorities for towns and villages. To do so will not cost very much extra. If that is done, I think the Government will find that the people who get those houses will rise to the standard set them. If the Government set a low standard, they cannot complain if people revert to a lower one. I would, therefore, urge on the Government to withdraw their Emergency Powers Order and proceed with the acquisition of land in a steady way, and without any great violence of action. I would ask them, for goodness' sake, not to send down an inspector or a Fianna Fáil organiser, posing as a Land Commission inspector, promising fellows around a district at the forthcoming election that if they do a certain work they will get a new farm of land. That may be good politics, but I do not think it is sound administration.

I was not present when Deputy Dillon was speaking on this Estimate. I heard Deputy MacEoin's speech, and I hope that the policy preached by him is not the policy of the Fine Gael Party.

It is not a very revolutionary one.

He advocated that where farm land was acquired compulsorily it should be split up at any cost, that you should build good houses on it, and hand it over to a man for nothing. I wonder whether before advocating a scheme like that, the Deputy considered the resources of this country. We have just condemned a Budget of £40,000,000 as being too much for this country. If a policy of land acquisition, or, if you like, land confiscation is started as advocated by Deputy MacEoin, I wonder what sort of a Budget we would want every year?

I will put up a specific case, and I want Deputies on both sides of the House to back it. I know the case of a hard-working man who bought a farm for £4,000. He had it for the accommodation of his business as a victualler in my constituency. He and his family worked hard to make a living. He put in £1,000 of his own money and borrowed £3,000. The Land Commission sent down an inspector, acquired that land and handed over to him £1,400 for it. Why is that? The moment that was done the bank where he had an overdraft told him he could get no more credit, and he was frozen up. These terrible banking institutions——

Did the Deputy not hear me protesting against that?

Did I not hear you also extending the other side of the account—to spend money? To build good houses and hand them over for nothing? Will the citizens of Dublin or Cork get good houses built for nothing?

Everyone got a grant of £40 for a house.

The man to whom you have to give a grant is no good for anything.

How many did the Deputy build on the grants?

I sold them correspondingly cheap, in the market where every house got a grant, and I had to compete on equal terms with the other grant houses. But this idea, if extended—and I have advocated it in this House before——

Do not change now.

I am not changing now. I would apply to this land that is divided the principle of the Small Dwellings Act. It should be given to a man at what it cost the State, provided he puts down 20 per cent. of his own money and agrees to pay the balance in instalments.

And if he has not got the money, through no fault of his own?

If he has not got the money? Any man who wants to settle down seriously on land can get 20 per cent. of the price of a holding, and if Deputy Hickey thinks he can exploit the resources of this or any other country to make nice little farms for people and hand them over for nothing, he is going to waste his time.

The Deputy gave a good idea as to who is exploiting the resources of this country.

I am dealing with the matter before the House—land division—and also the question, which is inseparable from land acquisition and land division, the security and credit of the country. Where there are laws that, at any moment, the Land Commission can send down an inspector to any farmer to take over a farm, there is no security in the development of agriculture. If there is anything that has contributed to the impoverishment of agriculture in this country, and to the scarcity of loans to help farmers, it is the insecurity in land at present. We have passed the time when there were thousands of acres of untenanted land in many counties. I remember the cattle drives in the Midlands 45 years ago when thousands of acres of land in the Midlands were known as untenanted lands—land which had never left the landlord's hands and was not leased to tenant farmers nor on which a judicial tenancy had been fixed under which it passed on to peasant proprietorship. There is no such land available for division now. Is there any limit to be put to this acquisition of land for so-called landless men?

I could take the Minister or any Deputy over farms that were acquired 30 or 40 years ago, in my constituency, where houses were built at the expense of the State and which have been sold and where the lands have passed back into ranches again. The whole credit position is stultified in order to leave power in the hands of the Land Commission to acquire land anywhere, at any price and for any purpose. That might be applicable with some equity—I will not say with entire equity—30 or 40 years ago, but it is not applicable to-day. How is the Land Commission to acquire land to-day? By taking it from an ordinary farmer, splitting it up at a high cost and handing it to people who may be only political camp followers?

Does the Deputy suggest that the Land Commission are paying less for land than it would fetch in the open market?

I have given a specific case and will give the details to any Deputy interested and to the Minister. In January last that man, whose land had been confiscated by the Land Commission, found that the bank confiscated his house, his insurance policies and his butcher's shops.

If he had sold out, would he have got more than he got from the Land Commission?

He paid £4,000.

But if he put it up for auction?

He bought it at an auction for £4,000.

At a different time.

If times get bad, is that a reason why his property should be confiscated? The banks that we hear so much criticism of remitted £2,600 that the Land Commission had confiscated. The bank directors, who are supposed to be the enemies of this country, made good or remitted the £2,600 that the representatives of the people had confiscated. Does Deputy Hickey stand behind that?

I know cases of a similar kind. The Land Commission pays as much, or more, than would be got in the open market.

The Land Commission paid £1,400 for what this man paid £4,000.

I know similar cases.

Do not be hedging. I am giving a specific case.

I am not hedging.

Of course you are. I would like the Minister to say whether he stands behind that policy of confiscating land. I was at a meeting of hungry wolves looking for land recently. They told us there were 15,000 acres in Munster and 15,000 acres in Leinster, and they wanted it all for the men of the West. I come from Leinster, and know it fairly well, but do not know where that land is. I hope to hear the representative of the big ranches, or alleged ranches, of Meath—Deputy Giles—tell us how many thousand acres they have to offer to the Land Commission, for a song, for the men of the West. I want to know where this comprehensive land division, or land confiscation, will be made and will be glad to hear Deputy Hickey dealing with the matter.

My view is that we should proceed very cautiously if we are to have any regard whatever for the agricultural industry. That industry is under-capitalised, and land as such will not be accepted as security for a loan to any farmer. I challenge contradiction on that. That is all due to the activities of the Land Commission. The first victory of the Land League was the securing of the three F's—fixity of tenure, freedom of sale, and fair rent. The British honoured them. It took our own Governments to abolish them. I did not hear a voice raised here against the abolition of the fixity of tenure. On the other hand, there was an urge to go on splitting up the land. It is great political stuff, of course, because there are thousands who are gulled by the notion that if their particular Party gets into power they will get a farm. How will they get it? I suppose by confiscating the land of political opponents. But look at the terrible price we have to pay for that—the price of our national credit. In any other industry a man can put down the deeds of his business premises in any bank and get a substantial loan. Will a farmer get loan accommodation by putting down the deeds of his farm? I have gone round the general managers of the leading banks in this city and put that question to them. They will not give the accommodation. Why should they, when an inspector can be sent down by the Land Commission at any time and take over that land for any price he offers? I have referred to the case of a £4,000 farm bought by a butcher who wanted to use the land for the accommodation of his business. He paid £4,000 of his hard-earned money for that farm and, when it was confiscated by the Land Commission, he only got £1,400 for it.

The Deputy should not repeat himself.

I want to emphasise the detriment to the country of a continuation of that policy. We hear Deputies on other Votes saying that credit must be given to agriculture. If we had fixity of tenure we would not want any credit for agriculture. The banks would give us all the credit we want— certainly all the credit that is good for us.

At 6 or 7 per cent.

No, 5 per cent. It is not their fault. It is the fault of the Government, and the same thing would apply to Deputy Hickey's Party if it became the Government. I stood alone in this House when I voted against the Currency Bill of 1927, when the leader of Deputy Hickey's Party at that time, Mr. Thomas Johnson, welcomed the Currency Bill.

Questions of currency are quite outside this Estimate.

Yes, but Deputy Hickey made the interruption.

Deputies need not follow up every irrelevant interruption.

I was just dealing with it and then passing on. Those of us who have had considerable experience of housing large numbers of people found that the principle of the Small Dwellings Act, by which a percentage of the market value of a house must be put up by a purchaser, was the soundest method of housing people. It was no trouble to any young couple who were contemplating matrimony, if the man was in constant employment, to find the £50 or £60 which it was necessary to deposit under the Small Dwellings Act. I urged before, and I again urge, that that principle should be adopted in the allocation of farms by the Land Commission. Every Deputy who comes from a rural district knows of young fellows who buy a strip of land which is not even fenced. They put up the fences and they build a house on that land by their own labour and settle down and raise a family on it. That is the type of man who is an asset to the State. Deputy MacEoin suggests that we must have modern houses built in the open country and hand them over to young fellows and say: "This is the reward for your services at the last election." Is not that what it amounts to? It is all very well to say that you must control any agitation set on foot when a man proposes to sell a farm. When that farm is put up an agitation is started. How can you get the market value of it then? Deputy MacEoin urged that there should be some method of ascertaining the market value. There is only one way to ascertain the market value of any farm and that is a willing seller offering his farm to a willing purchaser in a free market.

I will not bother about how the Land Commission is to get the land, but, in distributing it, why should there be any loss? If that land is worth so much in the market buy it at that price in the market. When the whole cost is ascertained, that is the cost to the State. If the State is not able to acquire and allocate land, on the principle of the Small Dwellings Act, at a price which will enable the people who get it to live out of it, it is not an economic proposition and should not be proceeded with. If it is not economic, there may be many reasons for that. The Land Commission may be incompetent. I am not sure whether it is very competent. I spent a few years in the service of that great institution and, within their limits, I am satisfied that the officials there are competent. But there is a looseness about this. It is taken for granted that money can be poured out in connection with land division and grants given here and there. How will that encourage thrift in any farmer's son or any labourer who has the ambition to acquire a bit of land?

I am quite satisfied that if the Land Commission acquired land—I am not advocating the acquisition of land; they have it and I do not propose to go into how they got it—if they put all the costings on the parcels of land they have and then said: "We will give those to young men who are prepared to put down 20 per cent. of the cost of acquisition and division and of putting up certain buildings", there would not be a farm left on their hands.

There is no justification at this time of day for acquiring land and distributing it to people at a loss. How are people to be expected to buy land and make a living on it? Is there not something wrong with the whole land system if you have to give people land for nothing and build houses on it, when others are able to buy land, build houses on it and make a living? The time for spoon-feeding is past. When this war is over, how is land to be made to pay its way? If Europe were not plunged into war, Irish agriculture would be bankrupt. The war has saved Irish agriculture, but the war will not last for ever, and there will be a terrible reaction later on. Yet, we are going to proceed with an uneconomic scheme of land division— taking it from one fellow and giving it to another, at a big cost to the State and thereby increasing taxation. We urge the Government to do more of it, and when the Government present us with the bill in the shape of a Budget, we "let fly" at them for doing so. The time to criticise, the time to pare down and economise, is when dealing with expenditure and not with taxation, because, as surely as you spend, as surely you will have to tax.

I advocate caution at this time in the acquisition and distribution of land, and I strongly advise my colleague, Deputy Hickey, to urge one quality in our people, that is, the quality of work and to see that they get remuneration from that work. It is time the Irish people stopped living on charity or the hope of charity.

They have no choice, of course.

They are anxious for work if they could get it.

They would take it if they got it but they cannot get it because the credit of the country has been destroyed, mainly by the Land Commission. This war has proved to the thickest head in the country that the only wealth we have is what is in the fields and the Land Commission has destroyed credit and borrowing power in respect of that wealth. Who is going to lend money on land when an inspector can take it over any day at any price for any purpose?

Surely I have heard that question now for the fourth time?

I think that principle was brought home by the Banking Commission Report. I would criticise the Government for its big Budget, but I am certainly not going to criticise it for its big Budget while advocating wasteful uneconomic expenditure. If land can be acquired without doing an injustice to anybody, at a fair market price from a willing seller by a willing purchaser, good luck to the Land Commission; but when the Land Commission divides that land and allocates it, let it see to it that the State does not lose. If it can carry on on that basis, it can do so for the good of the country and it will not injure credit and especially the credit of agriculture; but if it cannot do that, it should cry halt, especially at present, and concentrate on food production during the war, waiting to see what the post-war period will have in store for the country when the position may be that we shall have something to sell but nobody to buy it. We are neutral at present, but we do not know whether after the war we shall be able to carry on the country at all or whether we shall have a friend. I strongly advise that there should be no wasteful expenditure and that the Land Commission should adopt a slow-motion policy.

Unlike Deputy Belton, I agree with the policy of the Land Commission in so far as the migration schemes are concerned. I submit that money advanced for the purpose of settling on the land people who will work, who will be industrious and who will pay their way is money well spent. There is nothing wrong with the policy of the Land Commission in purchasing land and making it possible for migrants to settle on it at a lower rent and funding certain arrears over a period of years in order to give them a chance of making good, as they are making good. I put it to Deputy Giles that men transferred from Kerry and the West of Ireland under these schemes are certainly doing well and will be a credit to themselves and to the State. I believe that the money spent on their transfer and housing and on the development of their holdings is money well spent, and that there will eventually be no financial loss so far as these schemes are concerned.

The policy of the Land Commission, so far as County Kerry is concerned, has been a dismal failure. I referred to this matter about five years ago, pointing out that in the years from 1932 up to that date, of the amount spent by the Land Commission on reclamation schemes, rearrangement schemes and whatever other schemes they carried out, Kerry received only one-ninth of the amount spent in Mayo and one-seventh of the amount spent in Galway. During that period, in respect of all work carried out by the Land Commission, Donegal received £114,000 odd, Galway £660,000 odd, Mayo £868,000 odd, Clare £121,000 odd, and Kerry £95,000. So far as Kerry is concerned, that shows dismal failure. The Land Commission, in reply to my query of four or five years ago, when I gave details somewhat similar to these, simply informed me that they had land division to carry out in Galway and other places and none in Kerry.

My submission—and I made it on that occasion—is that there is turbary to be divided, embankments to be repaired and other types of important work for which some allocation could have been made by the Land Commission. Nothing, however, has been done, and at the moment the Land Commission does not exist so far as we are concerned. There is practically no work at all being done by the Land Commission in our county. I ask the Minister whether at this last moment it is possible for him to make good the amounts we have been deprived of by carrying out large schemes of turbary division. We have hundreds and thousands of acres of undeveloped turbary in Kerry and I welcome the statement by Deputy Dillon in respect of turbary trustees appointed by the old Congested Districts Board. Great work was done in our county by the Congested Districts Board, but, as Deputy Dillon said, they appointed trustees in relation to the turbary on certain estates who did not function as provided for by the Congested Districts Board arrangements. There are several glaring instances where hundreds of people applied for turbary and they could not get it because these trustees have become the owners of the turbary. They have now obtained a proprietary interest in these reservations and the Land Commission have refused to interfere.

I tabled a question about one particular place on the Blennerhassett estate in County Kerry, where 13 people are in possession of 800 acres of turbary, but nothing can be done, apparently. The Land Commission informed me that what they call a grazing trust was established under the Congested Districts Board and they cannot interfere. There are hundreds of farmers, large and small, in the area, who are trying to get turbary, but these 13 people, described as a grazing trust by the Land Commission —I have seen the agreement, the official records connected with the matter—have a complete monopoly. As a matter of fact, some local people contested their claim. The case was brought to the District Court and from there it was referred to the Circuit Court and the Circuit Court judge had no option but to give a decision in favour of the trust. In justice to the people concerned, and to the community at large, I think, as Deputy Dillon has already indicated, that it is time for the Government to introduce legislation to deal with matters of that sort. I believe it will be necessary to do something in that connection very soon. Legislation in order to bring about a remedy is long overdue.

But it may not be advocated on the Estimate.

Perhaps this is not the proper place to refer to it, but it is such a glaring case that I thought it well to mention it. That is not the only case in the county and I simply felt compelled to refer to this matter. It is not because we are on the eve of a general election that I mention it; as a matter of fact, I mentioned it four years ago and I repeated it again and again by way of Parliamentary Question. Seeing that money has been allocated for somewhat similar work in other counties, I think in bare justice to the people of my county something should be done. I am suggesting a type of development that will have far-reaching effects and be of great benefit to the people, without in any way interfering with rights such as are contained in agreements. These people will still have sufficient turbary and sufficient land to develop and no hardships will be inflicted upon them. On the contrary, their interests will not be affected, while a great service will be rendered to hundreds of people. Any money devoted to this purpose will be money well spent.

I earnestly hope that the Minister will favourably consider my appeal. I know he is anxious to co-operate with us, but these old agreements are there, these legal difficulties are there. On the other hand, we are the legislators and surely it is within our power to effect some remedy, particularly at a time when there is an outery for turf development, for a greater production of native fuel, not alone in our county, but in other counties. In these circumstances, why should we not regard this as an urgent matter and, if we consider it desirable to do so, deal with it under an emergency powers Order?

Mr. Brennan

I listened with interest to the very vigorous speech delivered by Deputy Belton. I am inclined to think that the horse is being over-flogged, that the question of confiscation and of credit is being overdone. I think that if Deputy Belton and other people who feel so keenly on this matter would rivet their attention more on the remedying of defects in the existing system rather than start off condemning it in a wholesale way, we might get somewhere. With regard to bank credits, Deputy Belton stated that, were it not for the fact that fixity of tenure was destroyed, there would be little difficulty in getting credit for agricultural requirements. I am not aware of banks refusing credit to any man because of that.

Because of what?

Mr. Brennan

Because, as the Deputy has stated, fixity of tenure has been destroyed. I am aware that banks have been refusing credit because they will not trust the people who apply for it and Deputy Belton is, I am sure, aware that it would be a damn good job if people did not get so much credit some years ago from the banks on the security of land. Is that not true? The comparison drawn between the confiscation of land, the destruction of the three F's, and what the people of Ireland fought for in the past is not, in my opinion, a fair comparison. If we are looking for security of tenure to-day we are not looking for it as against landlords or private individuals, but as against ourselves. We are the Government and we are the only people who have the authority to interfere in that way.

I agree entirely that there have been grave injustices on the part of the Land Commission and these injustices ought to be remedied. Steps should be taken to see that these injustices do not recur. Deputy Belton cited a case which, I am sure, is 100 per cent, correct. There have been quite a few cases where lands have been taken in that way, but I do not think that you should condemn the whole system because of those few cases. At the same time, I agree that any injustices should be rectified. The question of economics in the matter of land division is really a relative one. If we spend money, and we pay what Deputy Belton thinks is an exorbitant price for land——

I did not say an exorbitant price.

Mr. Brennan

Very well—an uneconomic price, and that is exorbitant, if you like; at least, the price is such that we will not be enabled at a later stage to dispose of the land economically. Consequently, it is all the same whether you call it an exorbitant or an uneconomic price. We pay too much for the land, and that is that.

The market value was not paid for that land.

Mr. Brennan

The case made was that we were paying certain money for land and the State was not able to recover that money on the distribution of the land. The position is that we did not recover, but if the State has recovered in kind by way of holdings on which to rear families and bring them up in this country, we have recovered possibly ten times over. We may not have recovered our own money, but the State eventually will recover. I wished to speak to that simply because I think that horse has been over-flogged.

That is good enough for a cross-roads speech.

I understand that the Deputy has already spoken on this matter, and he should not interrupt.

Mr. Brennan

I am not talking at the cross-roads, or making a cross-roads speech. If I were, I would go on the Deputy's line. I am making what possibly may be the unpopular speech, but that is neither here nor there. I think there is a grave injustice being done by the Land Commission to certain allottees all over the country, and I wish to draw the Minister's attention to it. As a matter of fact, I think the position of the Land Commission is entirely untenable. They have made allocations of land in various places, and they have agreed to make an advance for the building and provision of houses. That advance has been added to the rent by way of certain repayments each half-year which are added to the half-yearly instalments. Owing to the war—or for some other reason— the houses have not been built and cannot be built, and the advance that is put down on paper has never really been made. Nevertheless, those people are being charged the repayments. They are not able to bear them. They do not know where they are. On a few occasions I have gone to the Land Commission with cases of this sort. I must say that after some time I have been fairly met, but there are umpteen of these cases, and the people do not know what to do about it. When a gale day comes to pay their rent, some of them do not know what they should do. I think the Land Commission should make some kind of general order during the present emergency. It is not fair to have a man paying at the rate of £6 a year for an advance he never got. That is what is happening.

On various estates which the Land Commission have divided they have taken down buildings, some very good old mansions, and they have a lot of building materials stored on the estates —timber, slates, etc., sufficient for three to ten houses. There are people on the estates who want to build houses and cannot build them because they cannot get the materials. They are paying for advances that have not in fact been made by the Land Commission, yet the Land Commission will not release the building material they have without about two or three years' haggling. Some junior inspector must go and value the material; then a senior inspector must value it, and then the case must come to Dublin, and go through I do not know how many channels before it comes back with further inquiries and notes.

I know one case in point. A man who was a gardener on a big estate got a holding of land on the estate a couple of years ago. He is living in a little lodge on the estate which has not been allotted to him by the Land Commission, and which is not his at all. An advance has been made towards building a house. He is repaying that advance but it has never been operated. He has asked on several occasions for the material to build his house. The material is lying there in a shed and, because the Land Commission cannot get the imprimatur of somebody in the chief office—or something of that sort—with regard to the value of the thing, it cannot be released. That is the kind of thing that has called forth dictators all over the world. If that is the best we can do in a democratic country, it is no wonder people are crying out for some other type of government. I would ask the Minister to look into this matter, to see that people are not charged for money that has not been advanced to them. If it has been advanced and if the material for the houses is on the ground, it should be released to them.

There is a matter which has been referred to by other speakers and which I wish to stress as far as I possibly can, as Deputy MacEoin and other speakers did. It is with regard to trustee lands and bogs. They are the cause of a lot of discontent and quarrels. The Land Commission during the emergency could have gone in and taken over the whole thing and redistributed these bogs and could have seen that the whole thing was put right.

There is not very much in the Vote that is new, but I would like that now, in the fourth year of the war, the House should get a departmental analysis as to how the allottees are working under war conditions, whether or not, considering the quality of the land they have received, they have been able to make them a success under war conditions. As the House is aware I have been contending for years, and I still contend, and will continue to do so, that the Land Commission are making a serious mistake with regard to the size of the parcels of land they are allocating. As a result, they are creating a new congested problem in the country. I would like the Minister boldly to face that and to give us an analysis as to how these people are faring under war conditions. It is not a political question; it is a national question that involves the entire community, and I would like to see it calmly and dispassionately discussed so that we might learn the policy of the Department for the future. There is not a word about that in the Minister's statement. In the fourth year of the war, nothing could be more important than to get a rough idea as to how these people are operating.

A number of Deputies stated that the land allocated has reverted to ranches. I do not know whether they are referring to allocations in recent years or to allocations made under the original scheme. Do they mean that these people have fallen down on the job; that the area they received was so uneconomic in relation to overhead charges that they could not make it a success and walked away and left it? I would like to hear from the Minister as to the extent to which that obtains and I would like him to give us a fairly accurate summary of the reasons for that. If that is the case, it goes to confirm the contention I have been submitting in this House all these years, that the size of the farms makes them uneconomic.

Last year there were 20,000 acres allocated to some 1,400 allottees. I would like to know how that land was allocated. Was it mainly in accommodation plots or were there some settlements on farms and, if so, how many? I am glad to observe that the amount of arrears is being reduced. In my view, it is still too high in relation to the amount involved. Of course, I will always be told that while this thing is collected out of the guarantee fund and while that position is imposed on county councils, the county councils are reimbursed when the money is collected. It is always forgotten, of course, that the local ratepayers are being punished under that system, that the local ratepayers have to pay the interest on their overdraft to pay the debt to the Land Commission. Why should the Land Commission make this imposition on the local ratepayers? Why should not the Land Commission collect its own tax—because that is what it is now?

That was an obligation that was imposed upon the ratepayers of Ireland because of the charge that was made in the British House of Commons and in the House of Lords by the opponents of land purchase, the charge that the Irish tenant farmers would never meet their liabilities. I think it is about time that this system which we have in operation here was put an end to. The Land Commission have their own machinery, just as the county councils have, for the collection of these arrears, and in the case of non-collection the Land Commission should shoulder the responsibility and not be asking the county councils to do it. The arrears outstanding amount to practically £900,000, all of which has accumulated on the halved annuities since the passing of the Land Act of 1933. That is a very big sum when one remembers that there is only £1,500,000 involved altogether.

I put it to the House that it is a grossly unfair obligation to impose on the county councils, and that it should be put an end to. Why should the county councils be made cadgers and debt collectors for the Land Commission since the collection of these annuities is the responsibility of the latter body? Why should the baby be passed on to the county councils who are being obliged to strike a rate to pay interest on this big sum of money that is still outstanding. I do not want to deal with this question from the political aspect at all, but I want to remind the House that when this Government entered on office the annuities represented about £3,000,000, and the arrears amounted, I think, to less than £500,000. As I have said, they now amount to practically £900,000 on the halved annuities, and all of that has accumulated since the November gale of 1933. As a result of this, I imagine that some day there will be a furore for another Land Act to wipe out the arrears.

Deputy Dockrell raised a question about the case of a man named Lambert who has got a farm at Rathfarnham. I wonder if the facts, as stated by Deputy Dockrell, are correct. If they are they require some explanation. It is surely an outrageous performance that a dairy farmer at Raheny, where there is some of the best land in this country, should have got this farm. It was stated that this man and his wife were in receipt of pensions. We were not told what class of land was given to him, whether it was tillage land or otherwise. It is very remarkable, however, that while poor men from the congested areas in Donegal, Galway and Mayo only get 20 or 22 acres, a dairy farmer from Raheny should be allocated 37 acres at Rathfarnham. The statements made about this case should not, I suggest, be allowed to go unchallenged, and I should like to hear the Minister's explanation. If some answer be not made to them, a case of this kind is bound to create a feeling of injustice in the district: that is if the facts are as stated by Deputy Dockrell.

The debate on this Estimate has turned mainly on the manner in which land is being acquired and given to allottees. I have already protested against that. Deputy Belton referred to the case of a man who paid £4,000 for a farm. It was subsequently acquired by the Land Commission, and all that the owner got for it was £1,400. I take it, of course, that the redemption price was deducted from the gross amount paid by the Land Commission, and that the net payment was £1,400. I do not think that the redemption price should be deducted. Governments, no more than individuals, should not commit grossly immoral acts. Shocking cases of this kind have taken place simply because individuals find themselves pitted against the State.

How can the Government defend what was done in this case? I agree with the suggestion that was made by Deputy Belton that if land is taken by the Government from an individual he should be paid the full market value of it and there should be no deduction in respect of the redemption price. That is the least that a man is entitled to, the full market price for his holding. If the Government undertake a policy of that kind, to take land to give it to allottees, then they should pay the full price for it and should not rob an individual. No Government and no individual has a right to do that, and as long as I am here I will continue to protest against a policy of that kind. If the opportunity ever comes my way I will put an end to it. I have been shocked and shamed for years past to find that these things were being perpetrated by an institution to which I belong.

Great complaint was made by Deputy Belton about land as a security for obtaining credit. I think there is a substantial amount of truth in what he said. I think the remedy for that is quite simple. If the farmers are given the full market value for the land taken from them, and if there is no deduction made in respect of the redemption price—because that is the snag and that is what is doing the harm—they will have no difficulty in getting credit from financial institutions. It is that particular procedure that is doing the injury to farmers. Even after the passing of the original Land Act in the British House of Commons, the Irish farmer was able to get all the credit he wanted from the banks. The method of financing farming at that time was quite simple. The farmer went to the local bank manager and if his family and himself were people of high character he was able to get all the accommodation he wanted. The great majority of Irish farmers were worthy of getting credit and never failed to repay it. The banks, however, have got some bad raps on the knuckles since this machinery for the deduction of the redemption price was put into operation. It works in this way: that the security which the farmer has to offer for the credit he needs is not at all as substantial as it used to be. That, I submit, is what has destroyed the financing of Irish agriculture. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; the Committee to sit again to-morrow.
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