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.