Deputy Donnellan with his ten moral cocks and Deputy O'Donnell with his infinite capacity for jest are both folklorists. I have been wondering if it was not the example of that inspired publicist, my friend Deputy Phil Mahony, that has enthused Deputy Blowick and even Deputy O'Higgins with a desire for sanitation, but there is one thing about Deputy Cogan's speech and his mythological references. He has got something, I agree in great measure, that might be worth consideration, the question of fusing the Land Commission and the Department of Agriculture. Their work is so much interrelated that it might be worth the consideration of the Government to revert to the system that obtained in the beginning when the Land Commission and Department of Agriculture were one.
I have a completely open mind on that. Even if Deputy Cogan could not provide for what would happen if a Minister were lost in the process. I listened to other Deputies speaking on the land question but I was more impressed by what Deputy Fionan Lynch said than by any of the others. I remembered that Deputy Lynch was of the same political vintage years as myself and felt like a certain Kerryman, ni bheidh ár leitheidí arís ann. Deputy Lynch said the purpose of the Land Acts was to place the farmer as the owner in fee simple of his land. I think it is a good definition but it is not quite wide enough, because the placing of the farmer as the owner in fee simple of his land presupposes his occupation of those lands. Many estates had no tenants.
Many estates were excluded in the operation of the various Land Acts, and I would like to be careful in trying to say what I think is the ideal policy in regard to land to-day. I think that the farmer ought to be placed in the utmost security on his land. All this talk about the farmer having no security is disproved by the fact that, at the present moment, according to the speeches of everyone who spoke and to general knowledge, there is a tremendous demand for land. That tremendous demand and that tremendous price would not be there if the people who purchased the land did not believe they were secure in their holdings. I believe there is no bottom at all to the argument that security has been destroyed, but beside that security the policy is, I take it, to have as many agriculturists on the land as is consistent with maximum production. Some people believe that all Government policy should be economic policy. Other people believe that it should be social policy. I believe that it should be a social economic policy. I believe that those who consider Government policy merely from the point of view of hard cash, and forget the social implications are wrong, and that those who merely want a social policy and are prepared to ignore hard economic facts are also wrong. In land as in everything else, there is the question of saturation and of diminishing returns, and again I have an open mind in regard to the size of the farm that should be allotted by the Land Commission.
Deputy Cogan mentioned a farm of 1,000 acres which was, to his mind, of tremendous value to the country. It is quite possible that a farm of 1,000 acres may be of tremendous value, but a farm of 1,000 acres requires an enormous capital and calls for control by men of special training and great capacity. Many of these large undertakings I have seen throughout the country have rather a habit of becoming unstuck. I do say that there is a limit to the length to which the Land Commission policy or any Government policy should go in the acquisition and division of land. It would be a very bad policy if we reduced the farms in this country to one dull level of dead uniformity. I think there ought to be farms of varying and different sizes, and as Deputy Cogan says, there is a place for the good large farmer and a place for the good small farmer.
When Deputy Dillon comes along with the story that the gold of Midas would not be of any use to us if we pursue the policy of land division, I am reminded that something like 15,000,000 acres have passed to the farmers through the operations of the Land Acts. The amount of land available now, considering mountain, bog and waste, is not of any great extent, comparatively speaking. The amount of money to be expended has no relation to Deputy Dillon's example. I think you might as well let the tail go with the hide and finish the job. But there can be no progress without security. If men are not secure in their holdings, we will have disruption and discontent, and it has never been the policy of the present Government to dispossess any particular individual, no matter how much land he holds, if he has been working that land satisfactorily and for the benefit of the nation.
Some Deputies praised the Land Commission. Deputy O'Higgins said, I think, that it is an excellent Department. Deputy Murphy rightly pointed out that the tolerant, wise way in which the Land Commission are collecting the land annuities has been responsible for the success of the collection, and I think that after what Deputy Murphy said the other night, Deputies generally should give up the habit of knocking the collection branch of the Land Commission when they have done their job in a wise, tolerant and effective fashion.
Certain things were said, particularly in relation to Fianna Fáil clubs, about grabbers and emergency men. While Deputy O'Higgins held that the Land Commission was a magnificent Department, Deputy Dillon informed us that it was now regarded as the friend of the grabber and the emergency man. The grabber was possibly the meanest type ever bred in this country. He took advantage of a law passed, not for the benefit of this country, to despoil his neighbour, and the emergency man was as low a type as the grabber. Both of them were the particular instruments and tools of those of 30, 40 or 50 years ago who were fighting for security of tenure.
Deputy Donnellan raised the question of the Ashtown Estate in Galway. I was not aware that there was an Ashtown Estate in Galway, but my memory of an Ashtown Estate was concerned with Waterford, a place called Glenaheira Lodge, and when I heard of the grievance from Galway, I remembered "Grievances from Ireland" which emanated from Glenaheira Lodge. The man who was bombed out of Glenaheira Lodge, if Deputy Heskin will remember it—whoever bombed him out—was one of those who was associated with emergency men and grabbers in trying to retain security of tenure for certain people in this country. Fianna Fáil was not bred from that type.
Deputy Blowick was not here when I was talking about the mythology of the Farmers' Party. He is rather a visionary. Mind you, I am one myself. The thing Deputy Blowick visualises and hopes for will, I trust, come true but I am afraid I cannot apply any immediate ointment to his soul. Like Deputy Blowick, I think that the women folk who work on farms are the last of the serfs. I feel the conditions under which they work are vile, and the Land Commission, the Government and the Deputies here should take every step to try to improve the conditions under which women have to work on the farms. But expert medical evidence is often very contradictery. When I heard Deputy O'Higgins speaking about sanitary conditions in the country as if the whole countryside was a foul and dark latrine, I was rather amazed. There is no immediate prospect, and Deputy Blowick must know it, of installing hot and cold water in farm houses throughout the countryside. A prominent English politician, speaking in the House of Lords the other day, deprecated the constant use of the bath and pointed out that there was no necessity in the world for the installation of pipes for sewerage or plumbing in the country. I live in the country among the people——
Deputy O'Donnell rose.
