Before the adjournment I was dealing with the various aspects of the Lands Department. The summary of the work of the Land Commission is very shortly put here. It says that 9,920 acres is the amount acquired during the year and that an area of 14,132 acres was distributed among 808 allottees, and so on. Paragraph seven says:—
"The foregoing figures for land distribution do not include the allotments made to new allottees on land recovered from unsatisfactory allottees. The inclusion of such reallotments might also prove misleading. During the year ended 31st March, 1946, 282 acres taken up from unsatisfactory allottees were reallotted to 31 new allottees. It is regrettable that such action is necessary but it is imperative in the national interest to insist on the proper use of allotments which have been provided for the beneficiaries at considerable expense to the general taxpayer. New legislation was sponsored to make better provision for dealing with unsatisfactory allottees and the systematic inspection of allotments continued during the year under review. The enactment of the Land Act, 1946, has clarified the legal position, and we shall continue to take every action possible to ensure the proper use of allotments by all allottees."
I was in entire disagreement with that Act and I am more so to-day now that I see the Act functioning. I stated at the time that it should be the duty of the Irish Land Commission to increase uneconomic holdings to an economic size. I will speak later about the size. They have fixed the level at £10. They do their best to bring every holding up to £10 valuation. Surely there is sufficient land available to do so. Two hundred and eighty-two acres were taken from unsatisfactory allottees and given to 31 new allottees. I think that the Land Commission officials and inspectors would be far better and more gainfully occupied if instead of engaging in the work of inspecting allotments to see how they are being worked, they took steps to acquire land that is available in abundance all over the country and re-allot that.
I hold that it is not the person with the uneconomic holding who gets the additional plot of land to bring it up to an economic size—it is the original holding that gets it. Once an addition or an allotment is given to an uneconomic holding to bring it up to a certain level it is wrong under any circumstances to take that back. The reason is quite obvious. It is quite plain to anybody that there will be, as referred to here in this report, unsatisfactory allottees. There will be people who get allotments and who will not work them as we would like to see them being worked. What is the position? An unsatisfactory allottee has an allotment taken from him. Say a man with a poor law valuation of £4 gets an allotment of £6 valuation, thereby bringing his total holding up to £10. He does not work that allotment as we would like to see him working it and it is taken from him. If he is a careless or a lazy man or a good-fornothing, not alone will the allotment be taken from him, but the original holding will also go from him in time. When that holding is put up for sale it is bought by somebody else who then looks for an addition to it in the locality, but no addition is available, thereby creating a further problem in that particular case.
In nearly all the cases I know of where people were threatened with having their allotment resumed they are widows or people who are temporarily incapacitated through sickness or through some other cause beyond their control. Surely it is not the duty of a responsible Department of State to take allotments from these people. Several people of that kind all over my county have been notified this year that they must work their allotments properly. I disagree with this method of officials saying whether land is worked properly or not. Let me state clearly that they are not qualified to judge whether it is being worked properly or not. The fact that an unfortunate allottee has to let his allotment in conacre, take in grazing cattle or sell meadow or crops off it is no indication that the land is being worked badly. If it is, I should like to hear the explanation of how it is.
In many cases, you take the addition, as it is commonly known in the West, away from the person, or you threaten that if the person does not work it properly it will be taken back from him. In 99 out of 100 cases, the original holding on which the person resides is vested in him. When the Land Commission inspector says: "You are not to let the addition in conacre; you are not to let the grazing of it; you are not to take in the grazing stock; and you are not to sell the crops," these people at once transfer their activities to the addition. In order to relieve financial pressure, they let the holding which is vested in them, over which the Land Commiscatio sion have no authority, thereby exploding the whole purpose of the Act.
The Act is wrong, in any case. It is an absolute waste of time and public money to send inspectors to see if people are working their allotments. If the person is not a good farmer it is only a matter of time until he will have to sell it through his negligence or misfortune. Some person who had gone to England or America or acquired money at home will buy the holding. It is ridiculous to take the addition away from the holding and expect people to buy the original holding which needed an addition to it. Such people will immediately look for an addition of land because the holding is uneconomic without the addition. I want to emphasise that it is the holding should get the addition and not the owner of the land. The addition should go with the holding. I am equally emphatic that no sub-division of a holding under a certain size should be allowed. Otherwise we will be reverting back to the conditions that existed under the landlord system, whereby holdings were sub-divided and sub-divided until they became a lot of strips like a patchwork counterpane.
The Taoiseach recently, in Navan, stated that 25 acres of land was sufficient for a holding. That may be Fianna Fáil policy, but it is the first time I have heard it announced by any Minister or by the Taoiseach that 25 acres is sufficient. Would the Taoiseach or the Minister or any Fianna Fáil Deputy say that he can live on 25 acres with the present cost of living and the present income from such a holding? A man would require 35 statute acres of arable land at the very least, plus some other land. I know it is not possible, particularly in the case of estates that are going through the process of being subdivided by the Land Commission, to give a holding of 35 statute acres of arable land in all cases. There will be bad land on every estate and some of the bad land must go with the good. I hold that a man wants 20 Irish acres or 35 statute acres to make a decent holding at the present time. Firstly, the £10 valuation, which is taken as a basis, is too low. Secondly, it is misleading because, as I have stated before, it is quite clear that when the valuation of this country was being made by Sir Richard Griffiths almost 100 years ago the land was not valued evenly. A given acreage of land capable of giving a certain yield of crops, in one district is valued much higher than similar land in another district. We know that the valuers at that time were tampered with by the landlords for their own purposes. At a commission of inquiry on this subject, several of these valuers admitted that they were tampered with and influenced to increase the valuation on certain estates, so that the owner would be qualified for membership of the grand jury or other benefits like that. Valuation is not a proper or fair basis to take in the matter of allotting holdings. I know land comprising half a parish which was valued at about £1 2s. per statute acre. The same quality of land, or even better land, in my locality is valued at about 11/- or 12/- per statute acre. Twenty-five acres of land might mean anything. When he said that 25 acres made a good holding, did the Taoiseach mean 25 acres in Connemara or 25 acres east of the Shannon?
I say that a man wants 35 acres of good land. If there is waste land which must be attached to the holding, it should be brought up to about 40 acres at the very least. Anything less than 35 statute acres of arable land is inadequate. It is only creating a further problem for some Government in the future. Arising out of land agitation in my county, Deputies on both sides of the House have tried both in the House and outside of it to make political capital by stating that this Party are opposed to free sale and fixity of tenure. I should like to make the position clear, and I think this is a suitable opportunity to do so. I want to make it perfectly clear that, not alone are we not opposed to free sale and fixity of tenure, but that it would not be good for any person or Party or Government to propose to interfere in the slightest with either free sale or fixity of tenure. There was too high a price paid for both of these things by our forefathers to yield them up easily. Any Party or anybody who propose to interfere with either of them will meet with a very warm reception from the small farmer, the medium farmer, or the big farmer. I want everybody to understand that clearly.
There was land agitation in Mayo and there will be until the Land Commission do their work. That land agitation amounts to nothing more than that we want the legislation already passed by this House, but which has been left gathering dust in the pigeon holes, to be put into operation. The people want that. When the Party of which the Minister is a member was trying to get into power one of the main points in their programme was the settlement of the land question.
In my county there are 23,400 land-holders under £10 valuation, the class of people to whom Deputy Corry referred to as "hen-roosters"—a striking and a nice comment from a member of a Government that secured a majority in every one of the five countries of Cannaught as well as in Kerry, Clare, Donegal and other congested areas on that very subject. "Hen-roosters"! It is well to know the Fianna Fáil outlook. When two members of my Party tried to get the Land Commission to do their duty—and let it be clearly understood they tried to do this before there was a question of that land being put up for sale—the Government reply was to stuff them into gaol for a month, a thing that has not taken place in the case of any member of this House, for what I might call legitimate action, ever since the formation of the House.
It is just as well to go over the details of that case. A farm known as Cottage Farm was put up for sale on the 16th October last. In June, July and September, before it was ever mooted that the land was being put up for sale a solicitor on behalf of the surrounding tenants, together with Deputies Cafferky and Commons, requested the Land Commission to take action. All the action they took was to write saying that the matter was receiving attention. The farm was put up for sale. There were protests against the Land Commission not doing their duty—not against the sale of the land or against the right of free sale. The net result was that two Deputies were stuffed into gaol for a month.
That land has since been sold. The Land Commission know as well as I do that the moment a farm passes from a person who is not working it into the hands particularly of a married man who knows how to work it, the difficulty of acquiring that land is increased a hundredfold. They refused to take action and some time later they wrote to the solicitor saying that owing to action that had been taken they refused to proceed any further with the matter. What kind of policy is that?
We have several Land Acts on the Statute Book of this House, and what are they there for if we do not put them into operation? The Minister goes through the sham of walking in here every year and asking for money to deal with the biggest problem in the State. National drainage or other problems would not take half or quarter or one-tenth of the money that the land question would take if it were to be properly solved.
Are we to leave 23,400 people in Mayo, not to speak of people in other parts of the country, to eke out an existence on holdings with such low valuations? They are to live there, get married and rear their children for export. Is that the Government policy? So far as I can see, that is it. The population of County Mayo dropped, between 1936 and 1946, from 161,000 odd to 148,000—13,000 less in one county in ten years. Perhaps there is method in Fianna Fáil madness. If another 13,000 leave the county in the next ten years the land question there will settle itself. There will be plenty of land for everybody. Weed out the people and the land question will settle itself. Land will go a-begging, because there will be nobody to take it.
Is that the road we are treading? Are these the fine ideals that the men in 1916 and in later years went out and fought for? Is that the freedom for which we struggled? Is the export of human beings to go on because no attempt will be made to solve the land problem? Instead of asking £1,140,000 it would be far better business if the Minister asked for £7,000,000 and kept doing so for the next eight or ten years. Then an end of the problem would be in sight.
In paragraph 10 of the Report of the Irish Land Commissioners there is one very interesting sentence. The paragraph starts off by referring to the number of holdings vested, and it continues:
"As there is not nearly enough untenanted land available in the congested districts, the improvement or enlargement of these holdings can be affected only by the resumption of some of them and the migration of tenants from others, making the resumed and vacated lands available for the enlargement of adjacent uneconomic holdings. The process of resale of the remaining Congested Districts' Board estates is thus very difficult and tedious and delay in the rearrangement of `rundale' holdings is frequently caused by the unwillingness of tenants to accept the Land Commission's proposals for `striping' the scattered plots into composite holdings."
Is that a new departure in policy—that improvement or enlargement of holdings can be effected only by the resumption of some of them and the migration of tenants from others?
Two years ago I asked the Minister for Lands would he consider the acquisition in certain villages of holdings which had become derelict. When I was a schoolboy I knew villages containing 11 or 12 families and to-day there are only four or five families there. Their holdings are held by somebody in the locality and their houses are tumbled down. I admit it is not a very easy problem to solve. There will be rights claimed and a thousand and one other difficulties placed in the way of the Land Commission. I asked that question in the Dáil and the Minister refused point blank to resume holdings that had reverted or that had fallen to the ownership of people no longer resident here, people who emigrated to England or the United States and who did not intend to come back to resume the five or ten-acre holding. It would not mean a hardship to anybody to resume those holdings. The owners are away and they will scarcely come back. The acquisition of these holdings will not entail any hardship.
The Minister's reply was a very funny one. He said he would not do anything of the kind, and he seemed to be afraid of doing so because, as he stated, "Deputy Dillon would refer to that as grabbing". That would be just about two years ago and I remember the words distinctly. There is no need for me to refer to the debate; the Minister could look it up if he wishes. But what did he mean by that? If you are to settle the land question you must take land from somebody; you cannot simply reclaim hundreds of acres in the Atlantic and plant people there. If holdings are left by childless or old people who have no descendants and no relatives living nearer than England or America, I do not see what is wrong in acquiring them. If there is any reasonable explanation to the contrary I will be quite satisfied.
We must acquire land from somebody, or else we might as well abolish the Land Commission and let the Minister resign. The duty of the Land Commission is to make every uneconomic holding economic. We have people living on three or four acres with a valuation of £2 or £3. We have one Government Department paying them the dole and another Government Department looking after social welfare, while the Department of Industry and Commerce fails to provide them with suitable or gainful employment. Is that not the cause of the whole trouble?