To-day I addressed a question to the Minister for Lands asking him "if he is aware that a private individual took advantage of the curtailment of Land Commission operations to purchase a number of large estates in the County of Leix including Brockley Park, Stradbally, and to sub-divide and sell such estates at war prices to the detriment of uneconomic holders and landless men and if he will state what he proposes to do to deal with this departure from well-established national policy." There were two questions asked there, (1) was he aware that an individual was frolicking about in this manner, and (2) what he proposed to do. The Minister's reply was that "the Land Commission have no power or intention to prevent private sales of land by the owners. Such sales do not prevent the possible exercise in future of the powers to acquire lands for division accorded to the Land Commission under the Land Acts. At present the exercise of these powers is necessarily limited by the existing emergency conditions."
That answer, I think, in the opinion of everybody was a miserable evasion of the question asked. The Minister was asked was he aware that a number of very large estates in a certain county had been purchased by one wealthy individual and the second question was what he proposed to do to deal with that situation. Neither one nor the other has been answered. The fact of the matter is that a fabulously wealthy man who has made enormous sums of money at the expense of the people of this country through the tariff régime, monopolies and quotas, is using these vast sums of money to take bread out of the mouths of poor and humble Irish people. Surely there is a time, the Minister will agree, when such financiers and speculators should be satisfied with the immense fortunes made without utilising these fortunes to do irreparable damage to unfortunate, obscure people down the country.
The Minister says that there is nothing to prevent the Land Commission eventually functioning and rectifying the wanton damage that he is allowing to be done at the moment. That answer must have been given without any serious attention to the situation, as it exists. These vast ranches are being bought up by an individual while the Land Commission is inactive. The mansions are torn down and sold to the highest bidder. The timber is cut and sold. The land is sub-divided into 50-acre holdings and sold by public auction to the highest bidder, to the wealthiest man who wants land, so that the Land Commission, when it wakes from its slumber, will be presented with a situation in which there is not an estate of 500 or 1,000 acres but in which there are so many farms of 40 acres or 50 acres. Will anybody consider it reasonable that the Land Commission should weigh in on a 40-acre farm and dispossess the owner with a view to sub-division? The situation will have been completely changed as a result of the triumphal march of the profiteers up and down the land, and the big estates that would be all legitimate marks for attention by the Land Commission will have been converted into small, compact holdings.
Cromwell, in his march through this country, took bread out of the mouths of the people, dispossessed them and left the mansions of the land in ruins, either for loot or for vengeance. The modern fashion is to do the same for profit. It was suggested to the Minister by a deputation that there was no objection to the ordinary sale of land, that there was no objection to one man selling to another so that the other man might work that land and the original owner get out at a profit. The objection was to the exploitation of, and speculation in, land; to wealthy men, not even belonging to our race, wading in with their wads and buying land over the heads of the people, not to work, not to hold, not to farm, but to make a further profit and leave black despair behind them amongst those who would be rightfully entitled to a share of this land if it were ever offered for sub-division. It was suggested to the Minister that he should introduce an Emergency Order, not prohibiting the first sale of land, during the emergency, but prohibiting the subsequent sub-division and re-sale of that land for profit. I do not believe that there is a Deputy on any side of the House who does not abhor what is going on in every county.
In my own native county five of the largest estates have been bought up by one man, subdivided and sold at a profit, so that the uneconomic holders and landless men in the neighbourhood have no hope in the future, whatever hope they had in the past, of becoming either economic holders or farmers. The little town I come from, the place specially mentioned in the question— Stradbally—is bounded on three sides by demesne land—entailed land. There was opportunity for expansion only in one direction and, in that direction a huge estate was privately bought by the financier in question and is about to be sub-divided and re-sold to the highest bidders. Do Deputies think that, after five years of war prices and profits, the ordinary, uneconomic holder or landless man can compete in such a market? Therefore, the only possible avenue for expansion is completely blocked under the benevolent eye of a home Government. An Adjournment debate is necessarily brief and I want to allow the Minister ten minutes in which to reply, while affording colleagues an opportunity of representing the views of their constituents in this matter. So I must end with that.
