I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £677,983 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1945, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Minister for Lands and of the Irish Land Commission (44 and 45 Vict., c. 49, sec. 46, and c. 71, sec. 4; 48 and 49 Vict., c. 73, secs. 17, 18 and 20; 54 and 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).
Owing to the restriction of activities which has been imposed upon the Land Commission by emergency conditions, the Estimate for Lands has become virtually stereotyped and few of the sub-heads call for particular comment. The increase of £10,854 under sub-head A for salaries, wages and allowances is due to the increased bonus granted as an emergency measure to the lower paid civil servants. The salaries and bonuses of the staff of the Land Commission on loan to other Departments are still mainly borne on the Vote. A note on page 234 of the printed Estimates explains that the Estimate for Lands includes provision for £74,773 in respect of officers on loan, of which only £1,740 is recoverable.
The sub-head of most public interest is sub-head I—Improvement of Estates, etc. This expenditure is bound to reflect the reduced rate of land division and the amount to be provided for the coming year is down by £23,052. That this Estimate is still as big as it is may be regarded as largely due to the fact that much of the improvement expenditure in a particular year arises out of sanctions made in previous years. Owing to the increased cost of labour and materials a smaller return is obtainable. During the past year a sum of £228,461 was expended and the Estimate for the present year corresponds approximately to that figure.
The sharp increase of £2,250 under sub-head N is due to exceptional provision for repair of an embankment in County Waterford. The decrease of £4,400 under sub-head P is due to the winding up of the most of the remaining proceedings under the Land Acts of 1903 and 1909. The small changes occurring under other heads scarcely require explanation, not being out of the normal. Several of the sub-heads of the Vote represent nominal amounts provided for contingencies unlikely to arise. The difficult position of the Land Commission under prevailing conditions appears to be still widely misunderstood. It is very hard to get the public fully to realise that with a greatly depleted staff, with grave difficulties of transport and shortage of materials, fresh proceedings for the acquisition or resumption of land for equipment and division into holdings are virtually precluded.
The skeleton staff remaining in the acquisition and resales division have been employed in completing the purchase of lands in respect of which commitments had been already undertaken, or in effecting exchange of holdings. It is to their credit that approximately 80,000 acres have been acquired for division during the four years from 1st April, 1940, to 31st March, 1944, despite the growing emergency difficulties. The obstacles have been even greater in the division of land, as many of the trained inspectors have had to be seconded to the Department of Agriculture for tillage inspection, while those remaining lack proper transport facilities and can cover only a very small distance daily, their operative power being diminished on that account by about 60 per cent. Building and fencing materials and machinery for pumps and so on are scarce, and their transport is also difficult and slow. It has been by great efforts only that some 79,000 acres have been divided in the four years since 1st April, 1940.
The figures for the past year have fallen to some 10,000 acres acquired and some 12,000 acres divided, and there is likely to be a progressive decrease during the continuance of present conditions. It cannot be otherwise. The policy of group migration, which offers the best hope of relieving congestion where relief is most required has also been affected by present difficulties, and in the past year it has been found possible to transfer, under the group scheme, only nine migrant families to the midlands, all coming from County Kerry.
The vesting of tenanted land in the tenant-purchasers, and all the varied work of the purchase division associated therewith, are equally hampered; and rearrangement work has had to be almost completely postponed. Only 169 holdings of tenanted land were revested in the tenants in the past year and only 492 holdings on Congested District Board estates were resold; 522 turbary rights on bogs on these estates were vested in the tenants and 332 parcels of untenanted land allotted under the 1923-39 Acts were vested in the allottees.
In spite of the difficulties which have to be contended with the Land Commission continue to be deluged with correspondence urging fresh acquisition of land all over the country, and the speeding up of the division of particular estates, with sundry complaints of delay and neglect. Such correspondence is often useless, and tends to defeat its own object by further clogging the already overloaded machinery of the Land Commission and wasting the time of the staff in futile research and investigation. It would be really helpful if Deputies would refrain from urging fresh proceedings, as some so often do, which they should know to be out of the question, and from complaining of delays which they should realise to be inevitable. The Land Commission are doing their best to cope with a great volume of accumulated work under trying conditions, and while these conditions continue there is no hope of increased progress. This may seem a pessimistic conclusion, but it is necessary to face facts. Not until the Land Commission staff is restored and conditions improve can we take up again with vigour the work of land settlement.
I would like to take this opportunity of reminding the House that a great deal of the work which the Land Commission is committed to perform, and which is still very far from completion, originated over 30 years ago, in regard to the problems that were inherited from the Congested Districts Board, and over 20 years ago, in regard to the purchase and resale of tenanted land coming within the provisions of the Land Act of 1923. The main job of the Land Commission in the west is to deal with the congestion problem. After the assimilation of the Congested Districts Board by the Land Commission in 1923 there was a general demand for concentration on the acquisition and division of untenanted land and pursuance of that policy also took from the amount of attention that could be given to the relief of western congestion. There are still on the Land Commission's hands some 15,000 holdings of land purchased 30 years ago by the Congested Districts Board for the purpose of improvement or rearrangement and enlargement before resale, and resale should, in the ordinary course, have followed without undue delay.
It is estimated that there are also about 30,000 holdings in a similar position among the tenanted land holdings on estates lodged in the Land Commission for purchase and resale under the 1923 Act. The investigation and preparation of all these holdings for resale, after improvement and rearrangement, together with the settlement of turbary rights, etc., entail work similar to, and in continuation of, the activities begun by the Congested Districts Board. Real progress in this task would result in great economic advantage to the tenants and sub-tenants, and in a corresponding increase in agricultural stability and production to the national advantage. In addition to unsold holdings and parcels, there are also on the hands of the Land Commission some 800 migrants' holdings which are being let under grazing arrangements to between 2,000 and 3,000 temporary allottees. Some of these have been on the Land Commission's hands for over 20 years. Under ideal conditions neither the Land Commission nor the Congested Districts Board would have lands on hands for indefinite periods. Their function is and was to settle other people in ownership, not to become owners or landlords themselves.
I regard it as particularly unfortunate that this work has had so many serious setbacks, and I have been advised that if the present emergency had not arisen in 1939, arrangements which had then been made by the Land Commission and were about to fructify would have resulted in substantial progress. The frequent breaks in the continuity of the task of dealing with this problem have given rise to greater difficulties and expense in its ultimate solution. Migrations have been taking place from the vicinity of a great many holdings in congested districts in the West for which rearrangement schemes were in course of preparation but work on these schemes has had to be suspended because of the transfer of inspectors to more pressing emergency duties in other Departments.
Rearrangement is tedious and difficult even under the most favourable conditions, such as if it were performed soon after the removal of the migrants. The longer the migrants' holdings are permitted to remain on the hands of the Land Commission under letting agreements the more difficult it becomes to deal with the tenants. They, naturally, come to regard the parcels as their own property, and the bargaining value of the vacated lands tends to disappear. I am satisfied that this work requires considerable experience and the exercise of sound judgment and tact on the part of the inspectors concerned, and I intend that its discharge shall have prior claim on the Land Commission inspectors when they again become available in sufficient numbers to tackle it once more.
Out of over 105,000 holdings of tenanted land coming under the provisions of the Land Acts 1923-39, about 74,000 remain to be revested in the tenants. The listing under the Land Act, 1931, of 80,000 holdings for vesting in the Land Commission had to be rushed, and considerable time has been involved since in the amendment of the lists which, owing to the furnishing of incorrect or incomplete information by landlords, contained numerous errors.
When dealing with property of this kind every possible safeguard has to be taken against error. In order to implement the policy of past years which was centred on the expedition of land division, the attention of the Purchase Branch was focussed to a great extent on the resumption of tenanted land holdings with a view to their division and a great deal of effort which might have been available for revesting had to be devoted to matters not directly connected with that process. Before revesting can be accomplished the holdings have to be surveyed so as to determine their boundaries occupancy, appurtenant rights, etc., and inspections must also be made. The loss by transfer of trained staff has caused an almost complete stoppage of revesting output since 1940, and the existing staff of the Purchase Branch are barely able to cope with the most pressing problems such as repairs to embankments, turbary, drainage, sub-divisions, release of guarantee deposits, etc., and only a small portion of their time can be devoted to replying to correspondence which continues to arise from, and on behalf of, parties interested in other Land Commission proceedings.
It has been a serious drag on the Land Commission to have to maintain a large staff in the Purchase Branch for the conduct of a large volume of correspondence and work which would come to an end with completion of revesting, and I have under consideration representations which have been made by the Department with a view to having that work accelerated as soon as possible. The Land Acts were designed to transfer all the rights and responsibilities of ownership to the tenant occupiers, and the sooner that transfer can be accomplished the better I would be pleased. In passing, I would like to remind Deputies that the Land Commission's current responsibilities and work in relation to the position of the 74,000 unvested tenant purchasers are considerable.
My predecessor called the attention of the House last year to the fact that the amount of work falling on the headquarters of the Land Commission after the division of untenanted land is considerably greater (by two to one, I am told) than that involved before or in the course of the division. That fact is again mentioned to show that the decks are by no means clear when lands are acquired and divided in parcels among allottees sanctioned by the commissioners. Indeed, the most tedious and most troublesome work arises when the allottees have been put into occupation—questions affecting boundaries, fences, rights-of-way, water supply, improvements, and general requests and complaints of a varied character. There are about 45,000 parcels of untenanted land allotted by the Land Commission awaiting revesting in the allottees. Many of these were allotted between ten and 20 years ago. Each additional year that passes renders the work of revesting more costly and difficult, while the addition of every parcel or holding to the unvested category entails additional responsibility and labour for the Land Commission in its capacity of landlord.
The general experience of the Land Commission has emphasised the conviction that the division of untenanted land is a process that has to be performed with meticulous care, especially in regard to the selection and approval of allottees. Such examination as has been possible up to the present of the use to which allotted parcels have been put has disclosed disappointing results in a great many instances. The Land Commission propose, when staff becomes available for the purpose, to exercise their powers of recovery of allotments when the conditions under which they were given are not being strictly observed. In that connection I regret that my Department is not now in a position to give greater attention to this important matter.
The one bright spot in the present situation is the continued improvement in the collection of land purchase annuities, which seems to indicate an increase in the prosperity of farmers generally. The arrears for all gales since the enactment of the Land Act of 1933 represented at 31st January last only 2.7 per cent. of the total annuities collectable. It is something of an achievement to have collected over 97 per cent. of the outstanding payments and such a result definitely enhances the financial credit of our country.
A word may also be said about turbary lettings from bogs in the hands of the Land Commission. In the past year approximately 150,000 tons of turf were cut under such lettings and a sum of £44,600 was expended on turbary development by the Land Commission. Every effort is being made to effect this year the maximum increase in production. To this end special attention is being paid to the construction of roads and drains, where necessary, to make available further areas of bogs for turf cutting and tenants are being encouraged to cut turf on their allotments for sale in addition to their own requirements.