Vote 52—Office of the Minister for Lands (Resumed).

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

A Chinn Comhairle, ar phointe mínithe, ar eagla go mbéadh mí-thuiscint san méd adúras inné, ar cheist cigireachta i gCoimisiún na Talún, ba mhaith liom cead d'fháil uait an cheist a léiriú.

In the course of my remarks last night I made a statement which seemed an aspersion on a Land Commission official. I referred to the practice of inspectors calling on local councillors, clergymen, school teachers, etc., and may I add now, Deputies of all Parties. I referred to an inspector calling on a Fine Gael councillor in a particular area and being accompanied by that councillor to a local bog, which was subsequently divided; I referred to the fact that I did not consider that the most deserving applicants got the banks. May I say now that an inspector must call on someone for local direction and that it is right and proper that he should consult with local representatives; that in his recommendations he uses his own judgment, and, in the ultimate award, that the commissioners take all the factors and circumstances into account.

I think the Minister will find, if he has the time, that when one of his predecessors was in office I submitted a tabulated statement of the estates that I considered should be acquired or resumed in County Westmeath. With that statement I submitted a list of applicants whom I considered the most deserving in the area. Side by side with the names of the applicants I set out their circumstances, the numbers in their families, etc., and whether they were uneconomic holders. Many of these estates have now been divided, but not 10 per cent. of the people whom I recommended have got holdings. Naturally, I am dissatisfied and I want to say to new Deputies on the Government Benches that if they think they will get political kudos out of the work of the Land Commission they will find themselves running on to the rocks and shoals. No commission can satisfy all the applicants for land. I was glad to hear one Deputy on the Government side of the House state that this is a national issue and that it should be approached in a national way.

As regards migration, I have been always wholeheartedly behind the policy of migration. In my area you have a people translated from an area where the system of farming was entirely different from that in County Meath and County Kildare. Heretofore, they worked with the spade and the sickle and they have now to accustom themselves to horses, ploughs and mowing machines. As a Deputy who has represented his constituency for ten and a half years, I want to say that the migrants from Connemara and Mayo have proved an unqualified success. They work their holdings according to the best system of husbandry. In many cases they have taken conacre or land on the 11 months' system. As Davis said, they are Irish of the Irish, neither Saxon nor Italian. When the Minister is contemplating further schemes in County Meath I would ask him to take into account the claims of the married sons of the migrants who, in many cases, are now living in the houses of their parents. I would make a suggestion to the Minister that in future the Land Commission, when they are dividing land, should endeavour to group the houses in village formation and avoid the making of too many roads, thus giving the people a communal life.

Captain Cowan

That is a bit dangerous.

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

In that way they can have the benefits of rural electrification and of a common water system in addition to other amenities such as a school and a hall, or a school and hall combined, for lectures. That has been partly attempted in Rathcarn and Gibbstown, but I think that the system should be perfected. You will not have too many roads when you group the landholders together in a village. I think it has been achieved in parts of the Continent where they have grouped the landholders in villages and have avoided the boreen as much as possible.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Blowick)

Would the Deputy not think that the grouping of the houses too closely together would be undesirable?

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

I think it would be very desirable to get them as close as possible together. If you lay on a pipe water system you will want them together and if you establish a school in the new village the houses should be near the school. In addition, if the houses are too scattered the Electricity Supply Board will probably put up an objection to including them in the rural electrification scheme. We, in the Midlands, fully appreciate the benefit of land division. Cases have been put up again and again and I think the Minister for Agriculture is suspect in defending the existence of the large farm. We know to our benefit in the towns and villages of Meath and Westmeath that when an estate is divided in the vicinity of the town the trade doubles—the population is there and the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker get their slice out of it. The small economic farmer knocks more out of an acre of land than the big farmer because, taking it all in all, he lives for his land. He has no other interests and he manures and cultivates it to the last letter. He knocks more barrels of wheat or oats or barley, as the case may be, out of the acre than his neighbour on the large farm who must use mechanism and do things in a big way. Therefore, we who represent the Midlands are very anxious to see as many economic small farms established as possible.

I heard a lot of talk from all sides of the House about demesne walls. We should not let our prejudice run away with our judgment in this matter. The great menace, as I was trying to explain last night, is the chain rancher who has farms in every parish from Athlone to Drogheda. I am speaking of the man who has a 200-acre farm here; a 250-acre farm there; a 500-acre farm in East Meath and a 400-acre farm in the west part of Meath. All he has on them is a herd, a man and a dog, living perhaps in a cottage or in a house which is unfit for human habitation. Very often, on the other hand, the landlord lives on his home estate which was probably built from the point of view of scenery and not always on the best land. The estate is surrounded by woods which were planted in marshy land and bog land and, if he is resident there, he cultivates his land and gives the maximum amount of employment. Such is not the case with the gentleman I am talking about whom nobody heeds, who is slick, and who knows how to keep every Party on his side. I consider that the landlord is an asset. I am not making a defence of landlords because I would not care if they were gone in the morning but why declare war on them whilst the chain rancher operates all over the Midlands?

Several Deputies, with whom I agree, have made the observation that in their area, whilst the Land Commission in the past has been breaking up ranches and bringing people from Gaeltacht areas into places such as Rathcarn and Gibbstown, the small economic farmer is disappearing. The 30-acre, 40-acre or 50-acre man is disappearing. He is selling out and his neighbour is buying his farm in the open market. While ranches are being smashed up on the one hand they are being created on the other. I know this is a world problem. I know that it is happening in Australia, in the United States of America and, in fact, all over the world. It is, however, a matter that the people of this nation, if they want to keep the population in rural Ireland, will have to think seriously about. I myself cannot see a solution to the problem unless the sale of farms is stopped and there again you are trading on dangerous ground. I would, however, earnestly draw the attention of the Minister and of the Land Commission and of the members of this House to this problem which needs to be solved urgently.

I opened my remarks by dealing with the matter with which I am most concerned, namely, the question of the bogs that were acquired during the emergency and that have been let year after year to cottiers, workers and small farmers. Under an emergency powers Order these bogs were taken over by the local county councils and let to these people. It is vital to these people to have their own turf. It is not a very big job and I am asking the Land Commission to act this winter and begin to take over these banks and give them to the cottiers and labourers who need them so very much and who will work them to the last letter. Sin a bhfuil agam le rá.

Mr. Blowick

Before the Deputy sits down I should like to clear up a point. He mentioned "chain ranchers", as he described them——

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

That is an adjective of my own.

Mr. Blowick

I would be very thankful if the Deputy would bring to my notice any of these of whom he may know.

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

I certainly shall.

Mr. Commons

I have spent the last two days listening to this debate on lands which comes before this House every year and for the past three years I have listened to the same speeches. I must confess that when I think of the enthusiasm and the eagerness of every single Deputy who has spoken over these past three years and in particular during the past two days, and of their anxiety for the relief of congestion, I am forced to wonder that, with all the representations that must have been made over the last 25 or 26 years, anything is left now for the Land Commission to do. We must realise that, in spite of all the wishful thinking and all the pious hopes and resolutions in the wide world and all the help and encouragement that Deputies in this House can give and have given—because whatever else we may differ in politically we all agree that congestion, or the rural slum, must be cleared up and straightened out once and for all—something, over which this Dáil has no control, is wrong when the problem of congestion has not been solved many years ago.

No Deputy would safely stand up here and say that congestion should be left as it is. If a Deputy said such a thing in this Parliament, I expect there would be a dozen members from all Parties waiting to lynch him outside the doors. Where does the fault lie? It is not in the good intentions of Deputies here. It certainly lies in the Land Commission. We take up the Book of Estimates and we see that for the next year £1,395,575 will be made available to relieve congestion, that being, as we are told, the principal object of the Land Commission. Some of us who have sense enough to understand congestion thoroughly know that within the next year very little will be done to relieve it. Anybody who thinks that that amount of money from the Exchequer will relieve congestion and bring small farmers' holdings up to an economic size—anybody who imagines that that amount will be sufficient—is very wide of the mark.

If congestion is to be relieved, land must be got from somewhere. We are told that in order to bring farmers' holdings up to economic units we must take land from those who have it, and the amount of land available is what we have to decide. No Minister or commissioner could tell us what amount of land can be made available next year for the relief of congestion. In this country for the past 100 years— and it will happen in the years to come —there has always been chopping and changing of farms and holdings from one set of individuals to another. People residing on holdings will die and those places will become derelict or vacant. Will the Land Commission take that land? When we look at the situation that way, we cannot say definitely that there will be a certain amount of land available within the coming year for the purposes of the Land Commission.

I was surprised to hear the last Deputy saying that there are still some of what he calls the chain rancher element in this country. Some of us who travel from the West through the Midlands can observe the amount of land available and the amount that could be taken over, not this year or last year, but 25 years ago, and given to the congested holders of the West. It is still there, and there is no use in saying that the land pool shows any sign of running out. It does not. There is more waste land in the Midlands than would keep many families who are now hemmed in on congested, bad land, in perfect contentment and prosperity.

I have a unique experience. Without fear of contradiction, I can say that I am the only Deputy who, up to three years ago, was forced to make a living on an uneconomic holding, with less than a £10 valuation. If Deputies saw the number of people who are struggling on such holdings in the constituency from which I and, indeed, the Minister comes, they would understand how it is that on the Order Paper every day questions are put down by Deputies from the province of Connacht in an effort to get the Land Commission to bring justice to where injustice has so long been left.

We have had a statement from the Minister. I have every confidence that the Minister will use his best efforts, because he, as well as myself and other western Deputies, knows the problem that has to be tackled. I have every confidence in him, but I have none in the system under which the Land Commission is working. That body has been almost an absolute failure for the past 25 or 26 years. It cannot overnight get itself into active motion in order to put an end to this cancer that lies on the face of the country.

It is only wishful thinking to expect that congestion will be relieved under the system by which the Land Commission operates. We have had many changes in the methods adopted to relieve congestion. The old Congested Districts Board, which was given to us by an alien Government and over which Sir Henry Doran presided, did more good along the western seaboard in ten years than our own native Government with its Land Commission has done in 26 years. Whether it is the fault of the Government that has just gone out or the Government that went before it, the Land Commission seems to be bound hand and foot in red tape and legality. They take so long to arrive at decisions that in many cases people who set out years ago expecting to be relieved in regard to their small farms are dead and forgotten.

The Minister said that during the past year the Land Commission moved sometimes slowly and sometimes in an accelerated way. I think if he said that the Land Commission has described a complete circle, and a very small one at that, and failed to arrive anywhere, he would be saying something which some of us know to be true. He said that despite all the activity, congestion still remains. Plenty of congestion remains. The Land Commission made very little effort in the last year to solve the problem or satisfy the people on congested holdings. The former Minister for Lands, Deputy Moylan, told us last year that the whole purpose of the Land Commission was the relief of congestion. In his opening statement the present Minister said that the commission was there solely for the relief of congestion. Every Deputy who has spoken did not dwell so much on the other things the Land Commission have to do, such as vesting and one or other of their side-lines, as he did on their duty to solve the rural slum problem.

I believe we will not make much progress next year. The section of the community who have lived in hope so long, who have seen two Governments changing, are still waiting for the coveted two or three acres which would be so beneficial to them, yet which never seem to come within their grasp. Several Deputies may be inclined to think that the small uneconomic holders are a greedy and avaricious crowd who want to snap up all the land that is going. That is not the case. I have lived in the midst of those people and it is very little that would satisfy them and give them economic units. The average man who lives on less than £10 worth of land and who has to buy conacre, paying £8 to £10 an acre for it—who has had to pay that in some cases for ten, 15 or 20 years— will not mind at all if he can in time get that two or three acres which will satisfy him so easily. Then when we look at the value of an acre of land if it is purchased in the open market, it may be £50 or £60, while £150 or £200 worth of land, given once in a lifetime, will satisfy for all time the call and cry of the uneconomic holder. We should see that they are the most easily satisfied body of people or workers in this country compared with the increases which wage earners all over this island have been demanding—and rightly so —over the past two or three years. They have a court to go to and their claims are tried almost at once. Within a month or two months they know the decision of the court. They know that they have either got the increases or that they have been refused, but the poor uneconomic holder, as always, has no court to go to and he is appealing and pleading with his representatives and the Deputies here but those appeals and pleas have fallen on the deaf ears of the people who constitute the Irish Land Commission. They are, in my opinion, the real defaulters and delayers in this project which should have been settled long ago.

The commissioners who took over in 1933 to take political pull away from the Government of the day are what you would call a body of men who are neither of use nor an ornament to any country under the rising sun. I do not approve of political influence in regard to the distribution or acquisition of land, and the Minister at the time, or the Fianna Fáil Government, in all fairness to them, thought that if a certain number of commissioners were given absolute power in the three things which are most essential in this matter, the land to be acquired, those who are to get the land, and the price to be paid for it, they would have a better and cleaner type of land acquisition and land division. Instead of that, we find that not a single one of those commissioners has the slightest understanding of the work which he is supposed to do. They tour all over the country and sit in land courts for the past 15 or 16 years and in very many cases do much more harm than good in the localities they sit in.

An Ceann Comhairle

They are civil servants and the Deputy should realise that.

Mr. Commons

I do, Sir. I do not want to go outside the debate if I possibly can, but I can also try to point out that there must be some reason for bothering about this debate in the House at all. The blame must be left on somebody's shoulders.

An Ceann Comhairle

You had better tell the Minister all about it. It is not fair to attack civil servants here, as they have no come-back.

Mr. Commons

Very well, but the decisions and the system which have ruled the Irish Land Commission should long ago have been altered. I say this now to the Minister: unless he is prepared to introduce legislation into this House within the next 12 months he is only wasting his time telling the people all over the West of Ireland and everywhere else that congestion is going to be ended and that a settlement of the problem will be brought about in this country.

The size of the economic holding has been talked about so very often that it is very doubtful to know what really is the size of an economic holding. Everybody knows that on one side of the fence you have farmers with 15 or 20 acres of land with a valuation of £10 or £15 who will make a great success of them, while on the other side you have farms of maybe 50, 60 or 100 acres with a £100 valuation and the farmers will not be able to carry on or meet the everyday calls of life. The man who is on the land is the deciding factor as to what is the size of an economic holding. But this we do know, and some of us know it particularly, that anything less than 35 statute acres is no use to anybody to try to make a living on, absolutely none whatever. Then we are faced with the problem of whether there are 35 acres all round for uneconomic holders in the country. I doubt if there are. I am in agreement with the ex-Minister for Lands that we should not make cabbage patches of land that is to be divided. If we are to make economic holdings, let us make them economic and not create more congestion and more slums instead of relieving the slums that are already there. In Meath and Westmeath tenants and migrants who came from the West were put into holdings, and last week I travelled through one of those settlements to see for myself how well they were getting on. Like Deputy Kennedy, who spoke, I found everywhere contentment and satisfaction, except one slight complaint that the 22 or 25 statute acres which they got were not anything like sufficient, and that they should at least have got ten acres more in order to give them that sense of security that they felt they were entitled to. I would say this to the Minister, as he has the powers that are necessary to get, as he described it, "slightly accelerated" within the coming year, if he decides to bring any more migrants from the West he should take every 100 acres as a unit and divide it into three little economic holdings, each comprising 30 or maybe 35 acres, as the case may be. If one tenant happens to get better quality land, then he could do with an acre or two less. But if he divides every 100 acres into three units, he will have met with the entire approval of economic holders and migrants.

Now, to come back to County Mayo where we have a very serious problem which has caused plenty of unrest, disturbance and bad feeling in the county for a good many years. I have never denied the fact that for the past 15 years I created more disturbance, or as much disturbance as I could, in an effort to get the Land Commission to relieve the congestion and to do their duty. We have very many farms in County Mayo which should be divided and I want to point out here that I have had on the Order Paper every day for the past three years more questions in regard to land than any half a dozen Deputies in the House put together. I have never put down a question to ask the Minister or the Land Commission to acquire land from any man who is resident or making a living on the land in question, and that applies to questions I have put down asking the Minister to take over holdings from as low as five acres to as high as 750 acres which are still left in Mayo. We look over County Mayo and we find this position in it. We will start with a ranch owned by the Rt. Hon. Lord Oranmore and Browne of 1,500 acres, just outside Claremorris. We go on then and find Garret Nally of Roundfort with a farm of 650 acres which he never tilled or worked or never would work until inspectors of the Department of Agriculture were at his door night, noon and morning. We have beside him Joseph Hession who has 350 acres and who refused to till his land last year, with the result that it was taken over by the Department of Agriculture for tillage purposes and he was prosecuted. Then, within 250 yards of my own door, is a farm of 300 acres the property of John Kennedy and which was formerly the property of ex-Senator McEllin. That man purchased that land which should have been taken over for the relief of congestion and is now letting it in conacre to people in the locality and getting £8, £9 and £10 per acre for it. He has not the slightest intention of tilling it himself. Next year, when the compulsory tillage regulations are withdrawn, I can assure the House that none of these gentlemen will let a small tenant farmer inside his wall or gate, because cattle are very easy to look after and they will be much more profitable to these ranchers than letting people in on the land to till it.

Yesterday I had a question down in relation to the farm of Michael Begley, Facefield, who owns three separate farms totalling about 315 acres. Tenants in my own locality being, as they thought, as just as they could, urged the Land Commission to take the smallest of these farms, a farm of 57 acres which has a separate record number and receipt with the Land Commission. That man has fought the Land Commission for 13 years and has them now in the position that he can snap his fingers at them and say: "I defy you to take the land off me." Yesterday I got the same answer which was given to ex-Deputy Nally in this House about 13 years ago. The position is still the same or, rather, slightly more in favour of the rancher who has this land. So many Land Acts have been passed and there are so many sections which clever lawyers and able counsel can punch pot-holes in that the rancher feels that he is happy on his broad acres and can snap his fingers at the Land Commission. He can appeal so many times against resumption; he can appeal against the price offered; he can demand to be given a holding in exchange and he can keep on doing that year after year. I once thought that there was a limit of seven alternative farms which such a man could refuse before he could be migrated. I am told now that that is not the case, that he can keep on refusing holding after holding as long as he wishes. These are the snags which are holding up the Land Commission and which have left small tenant farmers on uneconomic holdings and in the same position as tenant farmers were 50 years ago.

There are some strange things happening in this country. The strangest of all is that illustrated by the film, "Captain Boycott", which was shown all over Ireland. When I tell the House that Lough Mask House with a 600-acre farm, where Captain Boycott resided and where he was boycotted, is still in the same position as it was in his time, I am sure Deputies will open their eyes in wonder and say that the children and the grandchildren of the poor people who set the headline in these times must be very disappointed that they have not got a slice of this land which their forefathers fought for so long ago.

I was very interested during the general election campaign when I came to Dublin and listened to a spokesman of a certain political Party who is now a Deputy saying that if the slum dwellers in the cities and the slum dwellers in the country formed a union they would be able to force the hands of any Government, no matter what that Government believed in. I am glad to see that there has been an awakening to the fact that something must be done in that way. On many occasions I have tried to get uneconomic holders in my constituency and county to form a union and demand their rights as a united body. But it is a very hard job, in fact it is the hardest thing in the world, because these poor unfortunate people will follow blindfold any political Party which promises them land or assistance or relief from the way in which they are at present living. Progress cannot be made by wishful thinking. It can only be made by facing up to facts.

The big trouble is in connection with the political side of this problem. I have seen it in connection with the present Government. In 1933, when the Fianna Fáil Party took over the Government of this country and were sincere and honest and determined to see that this land problem should be solved with the utmost rapidity, they had as their friends every smallholder and as their enemies every rancher in the country. Slowly and surely, however, the position changed and, in 1948, in the constituency which I represent I found that 99.9 per cent. of the ranchers of the locality were loyal and enthusiastic supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party and that 95 per cent. of the uneconomic holders were up in arms against the Fianna Fáil Party because of their failure to provide them with what they wanted. The same thing will occur again. I do not deny the fact that already I have been approached by some of these ranchers, with regard to whose lands I have put down questions in this House, who said: "Now that you are a supporter of the Government our cheque books will be available to you at the next election. Do not make any move in regard to our lands. Make as good a thing as you can out of the land question at election time and we will back you, but, when the election is over, do not say anything about our farms". This Government may find themselves in that position. Men in the Cabinet will be approached by the rancher element in an effort to stop them from taking over their land for the relief of congestion. If that happens to this Government, the present Minister, whose intentions are as good as and maybe better than my own, will find himself in the position which Deputy Flanagan spoke of yesterday. He will find himself on the same side as the ex-Minister for Lands is, with very few sympathisers and very little sympathy from this House.

We have heard it stated in debates in this House that all farms should be of equal size. That was hinted at by a Deputy yesterday. It seems to be the cry of some uneconomic holders that no man should have 50 or 60 acres while another man has only ten. We realise that that is humbug, that you will always have farms of different acreage and different valuation. The object should be to see that a farm which is not worked properly and, above all, a farm which is untenanted should be taken over as quickly as possible and made available to people who are willing to work it.

I did not hear anybody advocate legislation.

Mr. Commons

I am afraid then, Sir, you must have been out of the Chamber and that somebody else was in the Chair. They are all of the same opinion as myself, especially the younger Deputies—that the Land Commission has grown old and worthless and that it must be scrapped in favour of something new. We have only to pick up the daily papers and read what is happening on the Continent of Europe to realise the danger that threatens this country if something is not done. Already we have seen an election in Italy where there were two factions fighting for power. The faction we most like won, but the cry on both sides was the division of large estates and the establishment of the people on the land. While the faction who lost promised much quicker results than the faction who won, we now find that even the anti-Communist group who form the Government of Italy have achieved absolute wonders with regard to the amount of land they have made available for the people and the number of peasant proprietors created in that country. We do not need anything so drastic here. We have our own Government and our own system, but surely we can operate some system by which fairness will be meted out to everybody.

I desire to say a word about the duties of Land Commission inspectors. The duty of a Land Commission inspector when land is acquired in a certain area is to go into the locality and examine the claims of all the people who he thinks are entitled to land but I fail to see why that Land Commission official should be wasting his time, as I have seen a Land Commission official wasting his time for the past three weeks in my locality interviewing people who already own farms with valuations of from £15 to £25 and asking them do they want land, while in the next village there are other people with valuations ranging from 30/- to £4, £5 and £6 and he will not go near them. Have the Land Commission officials no regard for the valuations of claimants for land? Do they not know that their duty should be to pick out a district of, say, a mile radius around a farm which has been acquired and see who are the tenants to whom additions should be given or who are the most suitable to be migrated? These officials are bound up in red tape. They jog along at the same old trot which old dogs acquire and, mind you, it will be very hard to break them off the old routine unless they get a very rude awakening in the near future.

Political pull has been alleged against the Party in opposition in so far as the division of land is concerned and we were told that the best qualification a man could have was membership of a Fianna Fáil club but, in fairness, I will say that I would much prefer to see members or secretaries of Fianna Fáil clubs getting such land than that the ranchers should be allowed to have it. All I want is to see the land taken from the ranchers and divided amongst deserving applicants. These ranchers should not be allowed to keep their broad acres as they kept them for so many years. The Land Commission, however, should be free from political influence and there has been political influence used by the Fianna Fáil Party. I am perfectly aware of that and I can give anybody the name of a farm which was divided on political lines.

Mr. Killilea

Name it.

Mr. Commons

I will name the McEllin estate at Brize where three people living on uneconomic holdings were taken and shown three different holdings of land. A scheme was prepared but when the whole thing was taken over, landless men, who are sixth on the list to be considered, were brought into this congested area and given these holdings.

Mr. Killilea

Let the Minister look that up and reply to the Deputy.

Mr. Commons

Whether the Minister replies or not that is so. I live within a stone's throw of them and I know what I am talking about.

Mr. Moylan

On a point of order, Sir, you ruled that civil servants might not be attacked.

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes.

Mr. Moylan

Are not the commissioners responsible for the division of land and, therefore, is not an argument about the division of land an attack on the commissioners?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has been so informed already, but he does not seem to appreciate it. The land is divided by a commissioner, who is a civil servant, and not by the Minister.

Mr. Commons

I understand that.

If the local inspectors are left to carry out their duties their first object will be to raise anybody under a £10 valuation in a particular locality and to give those people an increased holding. That is their simple duty. It is an easy one. If there is not sufficient land in the locality then those people must be given land in some other locality where land is available. I believe that the inspectors, if left alone, will carry out their duties properly and efficiently. I want the Minister to do away with all political influence. Every Deputy will be approached to make representations on behalf of certain applicants. We all do that. We shall continue to do it. No man in this House, Minister or anybody else, can say that he has never made such a recommendation on behalf of an applicant. It is the duty of Deputies to look into the merits or demerits of applicants. Applicants will always have my support and my assistance and, should the occasion arise, my criticism. I come from the same constituency as the Minister but I want him to treat my representations on behalf of applicants in the same way as he would treat the representations of any other Deputy in this House. If he does not do that the whole problem of land division will be left in the unsatisfactory position in which it has been for the last 25 years.

I would stress on the Minister the fact that it is not good policy in a congested district to allow a man to purchase a derelict holding in the hope that he will get relief from the Land Commission at some future date. More people should not be allowed into the congested areas. It would be wrong to allow this debate on lands to pass without mentioning the famous cottage farm on the Irwin estate.

Mr. Moylan

Ballyhaunis.

Mr. Commons

There, there is a problem which could have been solved quite easily a year ago. It will now present considerable difficulty, because the owner is there. This farm has been purchased and the owner is living there. He will have to be provided with a holding in exchange. I would never advocate throwing him out on the side of the road. He must get a holding elsewhere. I do not blame the present Minister for that situation. I blame the stubbornness of his predecessor. The present Minister and the commissioners have inspected this famous farm at Ballyhaunis. The sooner they give a decision in this case the better. If a decision is not given the Minister's part will be no easy one while tenants are left there in congestion.

I want to refer now to the workmen and gangers employed by the Land Commission. I have had complaints from these that they have not received increases in wages to which they are entitled. Some men have got very big increases as compared with the last 20 years, but I find that the gangers have been rather badly treated in this matter. In nine cases out of ten these gangers are very competent men and carry out their work very efficiently. We all know that Land Commission gangers give a greater value in work done than do the gangers employed by the county councils and the local authorities. Sometimes these gangers have to remain away from home at considerable expense to themselves. They are not paid for the week's holiday which they get. They are not paid for church holidays. That seems to me rather unfair. I hope the Minister will do something to rectify that situation.

I have every confidence that the present Minister for Lands will do his utmost to bring about a solution to this problem. I am convinced, having listened to the debate here, that in his efforts to solve the problem he will have the support of every Deputy in this House. We are all interested in the relief of congestion. I maintain that the Minister will have to introduce legislation in order to change the system of land acquisition, land division, resettlement and everything else. Until he does that he will make no progress.

Mr. Killilea

It is very easy for Deputies to get up and start throwing muck across the House because they always live in the hope, as they did in the past, that some of it will stick. Several Deputies sitting on the Government Benches have made statements to the effect that the Land Commission have been dividing land in the past, or during the Fianna Fáil régime at any rate, on the basis of political influence. When we ask them to give us an instance they shelve the reply straight away because the reply we want is the name of the individual of the political Party to which they refer, the name of the individual who made the recommendation, and the name of the individual responsible for the fact that a certain man who was not entitled to a holding of land got one. I challenge the Minister to get the Land Commission to go over all the records of the Land Commission and to point out to us, at any stage, a holding of land that was ever given to any individual purely on the basis of political connections with the organisation to which I have the honour to belong. I have the honour of being a Deputy for about 21 years. During every day, week, month and year of these years I have been continually advocating the acquisition or the resumption of holdings for distribution among the uneconomic landholders of this country. I must have, during all these years, recommended hundreds and hundreds of people to the Land Commission who were deserving applicants for holdings of land. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying so and if any of these applicants succeeded in getting holdings of land it cannot be held that it was because of political influence. When a man calls to me about a holding of land I do not ask him the name of the political organisation to which he belongs, but I do ask him his valuation. I do not think the Land Commission will discover on their records any recommendation by me in any case of a valuation higher than £10 or £12.

The question the Minister must answer is whether Fianna Fáil Deputies used political influence to obtain holdings of land for their followers. Nearly every Deputy in this House has recommended the applications of people for land. Every Deputy here must have in his constituency people whom he has recommended. There must be people there who got holdings of land, perhaps not on his recommendation, but that is not to say that he did not make a recommendation for it.

Mr. Timoney

Does the Deputy not agree with Deputy Moylan?

Mr. Killilea

Deputy Moylan is able to speak for himself.

Mr. Timoney

But does the Deputy agree with him?

Mr. Killilea

I am giving my opinion, and as a Deputy of this House I am entitled to do so.

Mr. Kissane

Deputy S. Collins agrees with him.

I did it in my day, and that is what the Minister cannot say. Reference was also made at that time by the Minister to derelict holdings, left by people who went to England or America or somewhere else. He suggested that the then Minister should encourage the Land Commission to acquire these holdings for distribution. What is the Minister's policy in that direction now? Is he prepared to direct the Land Commission to take over those holdings? If he is, we can expect him to step in very soon.

There is another burning question to which the Minister then referred and that is the subdivision of the land that still remains in the hands of the Land Commission. That is something on which we all agreed then and on which we all agree to-day. I sincerely hope the Minister will take steps to see that those lands are divided in the near future.

The Minister made strong statements at that time about bad husbandry on the part of people to whom the Land Commission had let lands. Now that the Land Commission have got back their full staffs, I hope the Minister will see that these lands are immediately subdivided. I agreed with his statement at the time and I agree with it still.

At that time the Minister suggested to the then occupant of the office that if he went about his job properly he would have more land offered voluntarily. What are the Minister's thoughts now in that direction? Has he made any provision to get these lands offered voluntarily? I have time and again—and the Parliamentary Secretary over there also advocated it —suggested the taking over of certain lands in my constituency. We have advocated the taking over of land in that constituency that would be offered voluntarily if the Land Commission would give the people concerned alternative holdings anywhere. No steps have been taken so far in that direction. I hope the Minister will give us an indication that what he said previously has some meaning and was not merely from the mouth out.

A lot of us had to sit here yesterday listening to Deputy Flanagan indulging in one of his usual mud-slinging statements. He referred to lands that were bought by non-nationals during the Fianna Fáil régime. I was interested, because some such statements were made by every member of the present Government. I was anxious to hear the reply given by the Minister for Justice to a question put by Deputy Dr. Brennan the other day. Strong as were the statements that were made here, as well as during the election campaign, there was not a Deputy to ask a supplementary question. If non-nationals are to be stopped from buying land, that will require legislation and I do not want to discuss that now—as a matter of fact, I would not be allowed to. There is a way and a manner of solving that, that the Deputy who is interested can put down a motion here and have a discussion on it.

Captain Cowan

This is a lecture.

Mr. Killilea

It is not a lecture, Sir. It is just something to remind Deputies of the statements that were made about Maximoe and Eindiguer and all the rest during the recent election campaign. I remember statements made even since the election that if any of those people put foot on Irish soil they could be put into a plane, or a boat as the case might be, and packed back, bag and baggage, before they would have time to contaminate the soil of the country. In spite of all those statements—and some people made them very strongly— I notice that the Duke of Westminster a fortnight ago purchased a very large holding on the Annesley estate near Maynooth. No stop was put to him because the Minister, I suppose, realises that he has to act now in accordance with the law and that he sees that the wild statements which were made by him and his Party in the days gone by no longer hold good.

Mr. S. Collins

Is the Deputy quite accurate now? Is he sure that the estate was not purchased by the Duchess of Westminster, who is an Irish national.

Mr. Killilea

I suppose she is the wife of the Duke. It does not matter if she is his tenth wife, she must be his wife. It is very easy, of course, during elections to make wild statements such as these, particularly for a Party who at that time had not the slightest indication that they would ever be called upon to make them good.

Mr. S. Collins

That is the explanation of your 21 years in the Dáil, Mark?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is that the explanation of the interruption?

The Land Commission cannot have the excuse now that we were making in days gone by that their staff was gone and that during the emergency they could not do so and so. I hope to see them getting to work at top speed during the coming year and that when we discuss this Estimate next year we will have relief for all the old complaints which have been haunting us for years and years.

Mr. Madden

At 3 o'clock yesterday and at 3 o'clock to-day the Ceann Comhairle asked that the Holy Ghost should inspire the Dáil. If some of the speeches which have been delivered are an indication of the help of the Holy Ghost, there should be less politics and less bitterness. This great national question should be faced by the unified efforts of the whole Dáil who should try for a few hours in one day to do really constructive Parliamentary work with the sense of decency and dignity which you should expect from an Irish Parliament and not have language used akin to the kind of buffoonery which caused some of the people in the gallery yesterday to think that that was what Jimmy O'Dea would be expected to do. Was there anything to cause one of the Deputies to call out "jackasses"? My friend, Deputy Killilea, a few moments ago told us that these people were consistent for their muck slinging. Instead of having speeches like that, this most important question should enlist the most serious-minded thought and a higher standard of academic discussion.

Mr. Killilea

Were you listening to Deputy Flanagan?

Mr. Madden

I do not want to exculpate him or anybody else. In 1937, I think it was, a responsible document was handed to the then Government and the authenticity of its figures cannot be questioned, because the document came from the Registrar-General. That document called for serious reflection by this Parliament. It was pointed out in that document that rural schools were closing. That was because farmers' sons and daughters had no desire to stay on the land, as it appeared to them uneconomic and farming a life of drudgery and slavery in order to make ends meet. The document also pointed out that between 1926 and the time when the document was issued 60,000 fewer children were registered in the national schools. From then until now we hear people talking about the rapid disappearance of the population from the land.

There is no doubt that for the last quarter of a century there has been an excessive migration of the rural population to our towns and cities. That is bad enough, but the excessive migration of what is left of the rural community to Great Britain and other countries is convincing evidence of a dying civilisation in this country. That is the problem which should be discussed instead of having the hurtful epithets that we have been listening to for the last day and a half. The problem is to get people to remain on the land and to indicate, if possible, to the Minister and the Land Commission ways and means as to how that can be brought about in the shortest possible time.

If I may be permitted to use a rather common expression, I was sorry to hear the "lambasting" that the Land Commission and civil servants got here during the last few days. I wonder was it just. Are we expecting too much from human nature, even in the Land Commission, when we are so venal ourselves? I have had about 20 years' contact with various Departments as a county councillor and 10 years as a Senator, and I must say that I always received courtesy, co-operation and sympathy from them. Each and every one of them did all they could to help. In fact, I found nothing but helpfulness and co-operation. There was only once incident in my career that I was sorry to witness, because it left on my mind an impress that is not yet removed. What is the Land Commission? Who are they? Who in the Land Commission is holding up this great work to maintain our race and keep them here? When I went to the inquiry office on one occasion and said: "Will you put me in touch with somebody here whose word is final and irrevocable in this matter," I was told, "I do not think you should have come here." I said: "I am after coming 140 miles with a broken knee on a matter of public business and am I to be told as a Senator that I am not entitled to have five minutes' conversation with somebody?" You usually get a communication saying: "I have been instructed by the Minister to say that your representations will be considered in due course," and about three months afterwards you ask yourself: "What about those representations?"

I should like to know what is the specific section in the Land Commission which must be charged with lethargy in dealing with this question of land division. I shall quote a case against them. A certain farmer not far away from where I live saw that there was land to be purchased near him. Having already about 150 acres of land and being a wise and prudent man, before attempting to do anything about it he wrote to the Land Commission. He said to them: "Have you any interest in this farm which is being sold? If you want it for subdivision, I shall not interfere." He got a reply from the Land Commission, telling him to proceed and buy, as they had no interest whatever in the land.

The man then acquired the farm, employed a number of men and spent about two years cultivating the land and making it more productive than it was. He spent a considerable amount on machinery and in draining and converting the farm into an economic holding. Then about 1937—I am not going to suggest any sinister influences but there are grave doubts in the matter— a Land Commission inspector came along and said: "We are going to take this place from you." He replied: "How can you do it in face of your previous decision? There is the letter from the Land Commission telling me to go ahead and buy the farm." In spite of all his protests, that man was dispossessed. He fought the issue in the first court, whatever it was, and he won the case but the Land Commission in turn brought him to a higher court and, of course, they beat him. Was that not a nasty proceeding for the Land Commission? I do not think it can be justified on any grounds. He was a progressive, hard-working farmer who made the money to acquire his farm by using modern up-to-date methods.

There are a few other matters to which I should like to refer. There is no doubt but that there must be some section of the Land Commission infected with the dangerous bacteria called "slow motion" and the Minister will have to get some virus to counteract that so as to get the Land Commission to move more quickly. I remember a number of estates which were divided during the Cosgrave régime. It was obvious that some people who got land at that time did not work it successfully and many of them parted with it since.

The majority of the speeches which were delivered from this side of the House were reasonable and they offered co-operation in the solution of this national problem. The Land Commission is a body which has been set up by this House, and which is continued by this House, and which has been given certain statutory authority to do a certain job. They proceed to operate whatever the Government policy may be under the various Acts of Parliament which this State took over and passed through this Oireachtas to enable the Land Commission to do a particular job. People who speak of red tape, green tape or any other coloured tape must realise that the Land Commission are simply seeing that the law of this country is carried out in relation to all the aspects of Land Commission policy.

Deputies dealing with this question of policy have confined themselves mainly to the one use to which land is put by the Land Commission, and that is the taking over of certain ranches or large tracts and dividing them into what they call economic holdings and what I call standard holdings. They do not relate this land policy to general Government policy. I am not speaking now of this Government in that regard; I am speaking of the policy of all Governments prior to this Government and of the Governments that will come after this Government.

Nobody can give serious thought, or come to a serious conclusion on this question of land acquisition and division without taking into consideration our agricultural economy. That economy is not of our making. The people of this generation have not made it; it is an economy that has come down to us; it is one that may have been forced upon us by the fact that we were subject to a foreign Parliament. The fact, however, is that this country now and for years past has been, and even for years to come will mainly be, concerned with the raising of live stock. That must be taken into consideration by any Government in relation to the prosecution and following up of a land division policy.

Chain ranchers have been mentioned. They are the men who rent or buy land. Some of it they buy in the open market, while there are others who rent land on the 11 months' system for the grazing of cattle. It might be well to point out that it is not a fact that the grazing of cattle in the Midlands regulates or has anything to do with the price of live stock in the West of Ireland. There are more live stock shipped out of the West and South by three or four firms in one month than would be fed in County Meath or County Westmeath in 12. That as a factor in relation to land division should not be taken into consideration at all. The Minister apparently understands that.

The fact of the matter is that a good deal more would be thought of Deputy T.F. O'Higgins if he left that reference to political corruption in the division of land out of his speech. I will say no more about it.

Recently the Minister received a deputation in connection with the division of a certain estate. The Minister for Lands was questioned here in this House by Deputy Con Lehane with regard to those lands, and he stated, in reply to that question, that the Land Commission had not any proceedings for their acquisition and division. Subsequently a deputation visited the Minister in the hope that they could get this estate acquired and divided. According to the Meath Chronicle of Saturday, May 22nd, 1948:—

"A deputation led by Mr. So-and-so"—

Can I refer to that matter further in order to make myself plain to the Minister? As far as I am concerned, when the Minister, or any other Minister for that matter, speaks in this House on all matters of fact appertaining to his office I accept his word.

Mr. Blowick

Very well, then, but do not blame me for other things.

Mr. Hilliard

I am not blaming you.

Mr. Childers

On a point of order, is it not correct for a Deputy to suggest to a Minister that it might be advisable for him to examine closely reports of delegations regarding the Land Commission, with a view to correcting these statements if they are incorrect and protecting his own reputation in the eyes of the public?

Mr. Blowick

The Deputy did not suggest that.

Mr. Childers

I think that he was suggesting that.

Mr. Blowick

He was trying to make out that I gave one reply to a question that was asked here in the House and that I gave a different answer to a deputation that visited me in my office. If there were less family affairs in these things my job would be a lot easier.

Mr. Hilliard

——that the migrants there would put a dagger in his back after the fashion of an Italian dago will not be made to him. There is a matter in relation to the tenure of land which agitates my mind and the minds of other Deputies, and that is the temporary agreement letting. I do not know why the Land Commission adopts such a method of giving land to tenants. They may have very good reason for such a practice. I am not in a position to examine the question as I have not the experience or the knowledge of the Land Commission on such matters. But I think this matter should be considered in all its aspects by the Land Commission. Some time ago I noticed that a certain judge referred to this temporary agreement letting and expressed the opinion that it was a bad system. I have no idea of the area of land held under such lettings, but I do know that they cause a good deal of trouble and inconvenience when the people who are users of the land pass away and the land has to be transferred to somebody else.

So far as land divided under the 1923 Act is concerned, the Land Commission did not build houses on the holdings which were made. That matter has been raised here on many occasions. I know that this is not the time to advise the Minister to take up such a programme owing to the shortage of materials and other reasons. It is, however, a matter which should be considered with a long-term policy in view. I think we can get general agreement that such holdings should be provided eventually with a house and out-offices by the Land Commission.

We have listened in this debate to a discussion as to what and what is not an economic holding. In my opinion, an economic holding largely depends on the type of agricultural economy carried out on the particular holding, the person who owns the holding, and how he is equipped to work it. Some men can live where other men will die. The same thing applies to this question of an economic holding. The Land Commission in fixing what they call an economic holding will have to take into consideration the amount of land available and the number of persons whom they wish to place on new holdings.

The policy of the Land Commission may be a policy which is evolved out of a struggle within the Land Commission itself, as one portion of the commissioners try to satisfy their own natural viewpoint, and their own natural desire to create a holding of a certain size and another portion hold the viewpoint of the person trying to accommodate the greatest possible number of people from the congested districts. But when you are considering, in future land division schemes, this question of the economic holding, do not let the overriding fact of the large amount of congestion that does exist in the West of Ireland influence your views as to what size a Land Commission holding should be. Remember that persons who have come into County Meath on migratory schemes are not satisfied that they have got a sufficient amount of land upon which they can earn a comfortable income. I have constant contact with them. I have been on many of their farms day in and day out; I know them thoroughly; I know they have progressed; I know they are making a fair living and making good use of the land. I know also that a large number of persons in County Meath who obtained land from the Land Commission are doing likewise. I know that many of them are in more comfortable circumstances than before they obtained these holdings but the fact is that the holdings are small and it is not possible to carry on a certain type of agricultural economy on them and get a fair and reasonable living from that.

I do not know how many families the Land Commission intend to transfer out of Gaeltacht areas during the coming year, the year after, the year 1950 or 1951 but, in my view, it will take several years before the Land Commission have acquired the reservoir of land necessary to proceed with any further work in that direction. I cannot see that there is anything in the Estimate to indicate that the Land Commission intends during the coming year to transfer any migrants to the Midlands. Therefore, it can be assumed that persons holding land in the Midlands will not be disturbed in possession for at least three or four years. The land owners of County Meath and County Westmeath are just as much entitled as the congests of the West of Ireland to know what the land policy of the Government is. Every citizen of the State stands equal in that regard and it would be well for the Minister to make some public declaration as to what exactly the Land Commission hopes to be in a position to do in the coming year or during the next three or four years because of the fact that there are people in the Midlands who are using land for a certain purpose, a national purpose, and these people will have to make alternative arrangements for themselves if the lands are acquired for division. It would be better for the Minister to do that than to adopt the tactics which he followed when he availed of a simple question which I put down as a method of telling the people that there were two voices in the Party opposite. It should be generally understood, I think, that when the Land Commission proceeded to buy out and revest the land of this country they took on or were given an enormous job. It is a slow job, a job that will be many more years in process. Anybody who expects that the land problem of this country, a problem which is of hundreds of years' accumulation, can be solved successfully in a short period does not understand the problem as it exists.

Mr. McQuillan

To my mind, the debate on this Estimate for Lands is one of the most important that has come before the House, because land is the keystone of our economy. This debate, in so far as I have listened to it, has not been on the level on which I should like to see it. I agree with my friend, Deputy Madden, that certain Deputies lowered their own dignity in this House. With regard to the allegations of political corruption, so far as my constituency is concerned, in the very short experience I have had of the Dáil and of public life, I cannot say whether or not the Land Commission has been subjected to political influence in the past. I think that the Land Commission from the top down is comoffice posed of a body of men who are prepared to do the work for which they have been chosen provided they get an opportunity and are not interfered with. However, I remember not very long ago Deputy Boland visited the constituency which he and I represent and stated that no county did better in the way of land division than Roscommon, and that he would like his supporters to bear that in mind. I consider that statement nothing less than a deliberate invitation to every loafer and good-for-nothing in Roscommon to join the Fianna Fáil organisation in the hope of securing a soft bit of land. In my experience, which has been a short one, I have seen the secretaries of Fianna Fáil clubs throughout my constituency collecting the names of individuals on the promise that their names would be considered for farms of land. Now, I do not say for one moment that the Land Commission were influenced in any way by these little local keymen. But the result of all this campaigning was that prior to an election people joined these cumainn in the hope of obtaining land. That is political trickery; but I make no accusation against any Land Commission officials in that respect.

We all know that people anxiously await the division of a big farm in their vicinity. There are uneconomic holders in my constituency for years and years. Prior to every general election word went forth that if the local people put their names down for the Fianna Fáil cumann they would get land. People who had no affiliations of any kind with the Fianna Fáil Party or who did not approve of its policy joined the organisation in the vain hope of getting land. As regards those few who did get land, the secretary of the Fianna Fáil cumann subsequently boasted that the land was given to them through his influence. Personally, I am convinced that his influence in the matter amounted to nil.

An Ceann Comhairle

The next Vote, Deputy.

Mr. McQuillan

Some people mentioned the fact that foreigners who have bought estates in this country are entitled to do so. I do not think it is right that foreigners, and we have plenty of them, should come to this country from Britain and the Continent and be allowed to buy up land. I know of three retired gentlemen from the foreign service who have purchased fine holdings of land in North Roscommon. For years, right outside these farms of land, people were trying to exist on uneconomic holdings and were looking forward to the day when that land would be divided amongst them. Now, at the last moment, foreigners can come in and buy up the land and the unfortunate natives will have to wait a further 24, 40 or even 50 years.

As I have said, if the remedy for congestion and unemployment in the West to-day is not the emigrant ship, it is rural improvement schemes, minor relief works, or, luckily enough for the Fianna Fáil Party for a number of years past, the bogey question of the hand-won turf scheme. I should like to see this matter of land division tackled in a systematic way. Will we ever know in the near future when to expect the Land Commission's efforts in regard to the entire land that they intend to divide to bear fruition? It has been going on now for a number of years, but we never seem to be approaching a solution. To come back to the political end of it, I may say that I have been approached by numerous people to recommend them for holdings of land. My honest opinion is that no T.D. should recommend any individual for land because it has been stated by people on both sides of the House that they are satisfied that if there was any interference with the Land Commission people it bore no weight. If that is the case, if we reach from the top in the Land Commission down to the most junior inspector and are then satisfied that they are capable and experienced in this question of the selection of tenants, the matter should be left to those people. No T.D. should, therefore, use his influence or try to use his influence to get land for anybody. If these people in the Land Commission know their job, as I am assured they do, they are best qualified to see that the right people get the holdings they deserve. However, I would say this much: it is the duty and the right of every T.D. to bring to the notice of the Land Commission, and to the Minister, holdings of land, or large farms in any area, which a T.D. considers should be divided for the relief of congestion. But, after that, let him stay out of it and leave the job to the Land Commission. I do not like to see this business of misleading the people from one general election to the other by holding out the enticement of a farm of land if they support Fianna Fáil. I hope that policy is not going to be continued by the present Government.

I do not think he meant finished cattle. He mentioned there were more cattle being shipped from the West and from Limerick in one month than would be fed in 12 months in County Meath. In County Meath for the past ten or 12 years heifers were being fattened and at the moment not enough of them are being fattened for the people of Dublin to consume. Deputy Hilliard brought out his good side when he said that if you do away with this good land you will tend to starve the City of Dublin.

Some Deputies mentioned about foreigners buying land here. I do not like to see foreigners buying our land, but I do not want the law to be such that a man who wants to sell a farm on a free market cannot do so. Our fathers fought for the freedom of our lands and for free sale; they fought for the three F.s. You can tax foreigners or do something else to stop them, but if you interfere in any way with the free sale of land you will leave a farm useless to any man. He may want money and if you interfere with his free sale his security is gone.

Mr. Blowick

No one proposes to do it.

Mr. Fagan

If you want to stop the foreigners, tax the land, but do not do away with free sale. Deputy Giles referred to stud farms in Meath and he talked about the prince. I would like to see an Indian prince coming here. I remember that in my young days all these places were grand places. It was a crying shame for the past 15 or 20 years to see mansions and big houses pulled down.

Mr. C. Lehane

It is not mansions we want, but houses for our people.

Mr. Fagan

If you take that place that was mentioned in connection with the prince, I remember it 25 years ago when people named O'Reilly occupied it. They kept 20 workmen, but they went down. For ten or 12 years nobody had it and nobody was employed on it. There were two other places there which were similar: one was owned by Mr. Wilson and the other by Mr. Staunton. In that parish there was more poverty than anywhere else in Ireland.

I do not want stud farms to be run down. Deputy Giles mentioned that we do not want to have stud farms or jockeys, but they are an asset to the country. One of our greatest assets are stud farms to raise horse flesh and bloodstock in order to get dollars, because they are about the only thing that we can get dollars for in the American market. They give great employment. Anybody who stands up and runs down stud farms in his constituency is doing harm to his constituency. There are several stud farms in my constituency. Miss Dorothy Paget has a stud farm and I went round it about three months ago. There must be over 300 men employed there as there are about two men to every horse. A colossal amount of money is spent on these stud farms and we would not see a penny of it if these people were put out. It may be an unpopular thing to say but I say what I think and I say that I do not agree with this agitation about people buying farms. I say, do not interfere with the free sale of land and break up the farms in the Midlands as the previous Government did in 1935 and 1936 into 14 or 15-acre farms. That was a shame and a disgrace.

I would like to refer to another matter, the matter of the bogs. There is a crying necessity at the present time to divide bogs. There are acres upon acres of them. Deputy Flanagan mentioned a great many estates where there were bogs, some of them, I think, being in the Bog of Allen. There are bogs all over my constituency in Westmeath, while there are people wanting turf banks. On the Chapman estate at Castlepollard there must be 1,000 acres of bog with no use made of it. I myself have to go eight or ten miles in order to get my turf and a bank costs £2 or £3 per perch. There is plenty of bog and it should be divided.

There was a lot of talk about political pull. I think that is a bad principle. I think that both sides of the House ought to stop throwing mud across the House.

Captain Cowan

Hear, hear!

Mr. Fagan

One side of the House is as bad as the other. Even if the previous Government did use influence through the Fianna Fáil clubs or anything else, let us forget about it. Let us all try to live cleanly and let us get down to work. Let us not be fooling the people who think that there is a lot of land to be divided and let us not be fooling the people in the West of Ireland who think that there is a lot of land for them to get, because it is not there.

Mr. Bartley

We have many new faces in the present Dáil, but it is noticeable that we have the same sort of speech and I am glad to say that we have had very much the same sort of speech from the Minister. The policy of the Minister, as indicated in his speech, made satisfactory reading and I personally would like to congratulate him on the statement which he made. It was short. It possibly might have contained a good deal more and he might have given us more information. It was clear, however, that his policy in the main was on the same lines as the policy of his predecessor. I do not think that at any time there was any great divergence of opinion about policy. The main complaint has been the slowness in implementing it. The Minister will direct the activities of his Department to the solution of the congestion problem as far as it is possible to do it— unfortunately, the statement has always been modified by that limitation.

I am interested in the question of congestion. I suppose that in my constituency we have that problem to as bad a degree as it exists in any part of the country. I would like to appeal very specially to the Minister in regard to this question of the rearrangement of holdings and the end of the rundale system. I know that the intentions of the Land Commission have always been of the very best in regard to these bad spots. We have made repeated applications for the rearrangement of holdings. Usually we get the reply that it is not possible to rearrange holdings unless a number of the tenants can be removed. I believe that that statement is well founded on the knowledge which the Land Commission has of the number of tenants, the valuation of the townland in question and the quality of the land. I would like, however, to point out to the Minister the very serious hardship which this indefinite delay inflicts upon these people. I refer particularly to their inability to avail themselves of the public assistance which is made available by the Local Government Department and by the Minister's own Department for the provision of houses. The Minister knows that if a man's holding is to be subject to rearrangement he cannot get a housing grant and I would ask him to investigate this problem and to mitigate it in this way: he might send his inspectors round to these places where they have already made up their minds that there is to be migration and to decide definitely, if they have not already decided, the number of houses which they will permit in that particular townland. It might be possible for them to go further and to pick out those who are to remain and to provide them with houses, even though they are not able to complete the rearrangement scheme at the present time. That would in any event ease the position for some of the unfortunate people in these townlands.

I know that it is a very unusual request to make to the Land Commission and I know that they like to clean their slate entirely when they do go into any district, but if the Land Commission will only remember that the question of providing decent houses is of even more importance than the rearrangement of the land, I am sure that they will give the matter more sympathetic attention than it has received up to the present. I do not know to what extent it will be possible to solve the congestion problem by migration. Since I came into the House I have advocated it and I am pleased to say that the first group migration took place from my constituency. I am also pleased to know that those who migrated have done well and that they have justified the confidence which both the Land Commission and the Government repose in the ability of these people to make good. I do not think that the Land Commission would hold that the experiment was in any way a failure. The important thing is to get into each of the bad areas and to tell the people through the Land Commission inspectors—if you think that telling Deputies might be something in the nature of political influence—to what extent their particular problem can be relieved. As other speakers have pointed out, it is unfair to keep them in a state of suspense and expectation for long, indefinite periods. As the Minister knows, it militates against the carrying out of improvements which are possible out of their own resources. The Minister will realise that a man is not going to incur expense on his own holding or house if he thinks he is to be removed elsewhere in the course of a few years. If the Minister could get down to a definite figure in respect of the worst places in the country and indicate the extent to which the problem could be relieved by migration, we would all know what to expect. People who are told that they cannot get an exchange of holdings will set about availing themselves of the other aids available to meet their position.

One thing which has been noticeable in this debate is that, whatever divergencies there are on the question of land settlement, they do not run along Party lines. That has been noticeable for a few years, but I think it has been very noticeable under the present Government, and I take it it is a development which will be welcomed by the Minister in that it is going to make his problem easier, because it will remove this political Party stain out of these discussions about land. I think that would be welcomed.

In the light of my experience, the charges of political influence have been quite amusing to me. They will solve one problem for me in any event. One of the things which Fianna Fáil Deputies had to contend with in their constituencies was that they found an opinion embedded in the minds of those belonging to our organisation that the only influence that was of any use in Land Commission matters was an influence other than Fianna Fáil. We were told continuously that we apparently had no power, no influence, to affect any Land Commission decision, even the appointment of a ganger. Of course, when they said that they spoke the truth. Personally, I always admitted it, because it is as well to admit the truth in a matter of that sort at the beginning rather than in the end. If proof of that were wanted, it was supplied by one speaker who charged the former Minister with refusing to "kow-tow" in any way to attempts at such influence.

One of the most bitterly expressed charges against the former Minister was that, on all occasions, he refused to allow attempts of that sort to be carried out. He refused to receive deputations which had that purpose in view. That Deputy contradicted his previous statement that the Land Commission was a very easy prey for Fianna Fáil political influence. I do not think the matter requires much attention from our side of the House. I shall look up this debate when it has been printed and I intend to make a note of these charges against us and I will find them very useful in my constituency.

The suggestion was made here that we should get down to some definite systematic way of dealing with land. I am afraid that the system has been well established, and the complaint is that it has not been worked hard or fast enough. You cannot, on the one hand, make charges of political influence and, on the other, ask for a change of a system established for the purpose of preventing any such influence from being used because, as far as I know, that is the main characteristic of the Land Commission—that it has been organised in such a way as to prevent the use of influence. If people who make these charges advocate that the system should be changed, they are advocating a system which would permit of the use of influence. I do not think there is any use in their trying to deny that.

If the acquisition of land and land division are reserved matters and if the complaint is that these have not been going on fast enough, obviously the deduction is that you must establish a system which will be susceptible to influence of that sort. Whether it would be wise to do that or not, I do not know. There was a time when I, as a recruit in here, inclined very much to that opinion. The Minister is in the happy position that he has in opposition people who have had, perforce, to shed a great many of their illusions and his trouble will now come, not so much from the Opposition as from those who support him until they also have become fully coached and are made fully acquainted with the operations of our land settlement system. People who advocate the fullest and fastest remedy possible of our problem of congestion and, before the end of their speech, advocate the claims of landless men are not speaking with any sense of responsibility. The Minister knows, as the previous Minister told us, that the amount of available land is not sufficient adequately to solve our problem of congestion, and the priority for landless men is, I understand, very low indeed. If you advocate the claims of landless men to land, you are by that very fact cutting in on the ability of the Land Commission to solve the problem of congestion. It is for that reason that I made the remark that the divergencies on land settlement in the country are not now running along Party lines, because we have seen for some years back that Deputies from certain areas have practically the same views and that Deputies from other areas take a divergent view.

I am quite certain that the Minister, knowing the problem of congestion as he must know it, will carry out the policy set out by his predecessor and announced again by himself in his opening statement, and that there will be some alleviation in the near future for the people who are living in the worst conditions. It was unfortunate for Fianna Fáil that there was a blank period of seven or eight years since the beginning of the war and, I suppose, we lost support because of inactivity in the matter of land acquisition and division in that period. That fact in itself disposes of the charge that was made that we were currying favour with a land hungry people, that cumann secretaries and Fianna Fáil spokesmen were currying favour and gaining political support by offering farms. We were not in a position to offer them. We had to tell them that there was a Government standstill order and that all these activities were suspended. If we were to say anything else we would have been contradicted because the knowledge was quite common all over the country that these activities had been suspended.

I am glad that the time has now arrived when it is possible to go ahead. Like the other Deputies who have spoken, I, too, would like to see an end of that part of the Land Commission's work as soon as possible. I had sympathy with the previous speaker who wished to draw other matters into this discussion and I thought possibly the Ceann Comhairle would not pardon me for any digression in view of the fact that I have been here for a number of years. I hope he will permit me to say this much to the Minister, that in so far as he cannot solve our problems in the congested areas, that is, in the very worst of them, he will use his influence as a Minister to see that the condition of congestion, and all that goes with it, will be eased by every other method open to the Government as a whole. I am tempted to refer to one or two things but possibly, a Chinn Comhairle, it would be wiser to leave them——

An Ceann Comhairle

Until the appropriate Estimate is reached.

Mr. Bartley

However, I would appeal to the Minister's sympathy with the congests and ask him to support to the fullest possible extent efforts by other Departments to ease their condition.

Nil mórán eile le rá agam. Tá fhios agam go bhfuil croí an Aire seo san áit cheart. Níor cheart dearmad a dhéanamh ar an taobh seo den scéal, go bhfuil beagnach gach Gaeltacht sa tír seo ins na ceantair chúnga agus má éiríonn leis an Aire saol na gceantar gcúnga a leigheas, beidh sé ag déanamh leas an-mhaith do chúis na Gaeilge. B'fhearr liomsa, dá mb'fhéidir é, gach Gaeltacht dá bhfuil in Eirinn fheicéail ar na tailte bána míne i lár na hEireann. Má theastaionn aon rud thar a chéile ó mhuintir na Gaeltachta ar fud na tíre, sin é, go mbeadh siad i ndon a slí bheatha a bhaint amach as talmhaíocht. Ní dóigh liom gur ceart ná gur cóir go mbeadh na daoine bochta sin ag brath ar chúnamh seachas a saothar féin. Tá an saol amuigh ag brú isteach orthu nuair chaithfidh siad a bheith ag brath ar imirce, ar oibreacha bóthair, cúnamh díomhaointis, agus na rudaí eile sin. Ní theastaionn ó mhuintir na Gaeltachta ach go mbeidis i ndon a muiríní a chothú agus a bheathu as a saothar féin ar an talamh. Bheadh saol i bhfad níos bréatha acu agus bhéadh spioraid i bhfad níos fearr iontu dá mb'fhéidir leo é sin a dhéanamh. Is ón taobh sin den scéal a mhol mise, an chéad lá, do Rialtas Fhianna Fáil iad d'atharú as na portacha go dtí an talamh bán, áit a mbéidís i ndon saol níos fearr a bheith acu agus beatha níos fearr. Is cúis áthais dom é bheith le haithris agam agus le h-aithris ag Coimisiún na Talún, na daoine a hathraíodh as na háiteacha sin nar ligeadar síos na Coimisineiri agus an dream a mhol an scéim sin i dtosach. Cé go bhfuil na feirmeacha an-bheag agus nach bhfuil siad ar aon stad le na sean-gabhaltasai i gCo. na Midhe agus Co. na hIar-Mhidhe, cé go bhfuil siad beag agus go bhfuil daoine á rá go bhfuil siad ag clamhsán nach bhfuil siad sathach mór, is féidir a rá go bhfuil caighdeán maireachtála i bhfad níos saibhre acu, na mar a bhí acu san Iarthar. Tá nios mó talún, níos mó aráin, níos mó ime níos mó bainne agus feola aca agus tá tithe níos fearr acu ná mar a bhí acu roimhe sin. Más féidir leis an Aire cuidiú leis an imirce beidh toradh agus tairbhe as do na daoine sin agus don tír fré chéile agus muran féidir é dhéanamh tá súil agam go dtiúrfaidh sé aire do rud a mhol mé dhí i dtosach mo chainte, sé sin, go gcuirfidh se dlús a le ath-shocrú na ngabháltas atá acu cheana agus go dtiúrfaidh sé tithe maithe dóibh san áit a bhfuil siad.

Ní raibh aon uair ó tháinig mise isteach sa Teach go raibh mé chomh sásta labhairt ar an Meastachán seo. Tá an t-ualach anois ar ghualainn eile. Na daoine a dúirt anseo an fhaid is a bhíodar treasna ar an taobh seo go raibh faillí déanta ag Rialtas Fhianna Fáil, beidh fhios acu anois cé acu bhí ceart. Níl mise ag caitheamh ina n-éadan an cainnt a rinneadar nuair a bhíodar anseo. Bhí a fhios agam nár thuigeadar an scéal ina iomláine agus níl mise ag dul ag déanamh aon trioblóide as aon rud a dúradar nuair bhiodar ar an taobh seo den Tigh.

Tá mé lán chinnte dhe go mbeidh an tAire chómh dithcheallach i dtaobh socrú na gceantar cúng agus is feidir leis faoi na cumhachta atá aige. Molaim anois an óráid a rinne sé agus, maidir liom féin, níl aon eagla nach gcabhroídh mé leis san obair chruaidh atá le déanamh aige.

Seán Ó Tiománaidhe

Fé mar is cuimhin liom, is é Plato i gceann de na leabhra a scríobh sé, a rinne gearán mar gheall ar roinnt talún agus na deacrachtaí a bhí ag baint leis an obair sin. Ag éisteacht le daoine annseo inné agus inniu chomh maith, ba-dhóigh leat gur féidir leis an Aire nó leis an gCoimisiún ceist na talún a shocrú laistigh de bhlian ón lá seo. Ní gá dhom a rá nach bhfuil sé sin sodhéanta. Beidh an obair sin ann i gcónaí, fé mar a bhí, ó ghlúin go glúin —agus ag cur na ceiste seo faoi bhráid na Dála dúinn caithfimíd é sin a thuiscint.

Ach ní hionann san is a rá nach féidir leis an gCoimisiún a gcuid oibre a dhéanamh níos fearr ná mar atá sé á dhéanamh acu faoi láthair. Is féidir leis an gCoimisiún córas na hoibre d'fheabhsú. Ins an obair a bhíonn de ghnáth agamsa leis an gCoimisiún, braithim lé deanaí go bhfuil siad i bhfad níos tapaidh anois ná mar bhí. Nílim a rá gur athrú a Rialtais is cúis le sin, ach is mian liom a rádh go bhfuil an scéal amhlaidh.

One of the things that struck me, in the course of the debate, was the omission of a matter which is of some considerable importance in my constitnency, that is the condition of several of the houses built by the Land Commission on holdings allotted to tenants. I am not clear as to what the responsibility of the Land Commission is in regard to the repair of the dwelling-houses on the holdings, but I have received a number of complaints from the tenants in possession, to the effect that there was very faulty work in the construction of those houses and that when complaints were made by them to the Land Commission, they were informed that it was a matter which the tenants themselves should take up with the contractor. That did not seem to be the correct thing. What was the contractual relationship between the tenant of the holding and the contractor who built the houses? There are some cases where there are very serious defects in the houses, and I would like to ascertain from the Minister, when he is replying, if the proper repair of these houses is the responsibility of the Land Commission. If it is, I take it that he will give an assurance that any cases of the kind I mention will be dealt with by the Land Commission, and dealt with expeditiously. In some cases, groups of houses are in a bad condition and I understand that the frameworks of windows are letting in the rain. Apparently, the Land Commission will not accept responsibility for them, even in cases where they were in that condition when handed over to the tenants.

I suppose each Deputy has the conditions in his own constituency very much in the forefront of his mind. I was particularly interested in the appeal which Deputy Davern made to the Minister, to have something done about the drainage of lands in South Tipperary. Thousands of pounds' worth of damage has been caused there for many years, and particularly in recent years, and I join with Deputy Davern in his appeal to the Minister to take whatever action is possible to prevent the flooding of lands, particularly along the River Suir.

A matter which affects people all over Ireland is the necessity to hasten the vesting of holdings in the tenants. I do not know exactly why the Land Commission could not, when giving a holding to a tenant, use a form of purchase agreement which would give the tenant the assurance that the holding would be vested in him in due course. In many cases such a form of agreement is used but in many others the form is one of letting for temporary convenience and it has many bad effects. It has particularly the bad effect to which Deputy Bartley referred, inasmuch as a man who is in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not his holding will be left to him is not going to expend any money on it or take an interest in improving it. I suppose the Land Commission has the idea that, by keeping the tenant in a state of uncertainty, he may be inclined to show that he will work the land according to proper methods, but I am afraid that the means taken will defeat the purpose. If the Minister has anything to say in regard to that policy I would urge him to do so. Having selected a man for a holding, he should be given the holding and be done with it.

Yes. Is the Deputy not aware that every appointment is made either by the Civil Service Commissioners or by the Appointments Commission?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Timoney

I do not know exactly the rules under which the applicants for holdings of land are selected. I assume that there is some set of rules. It did strike me that, of course, the people who make the appointments must know something of those who get the holdings. I suggest that, instead of their relying on representations made by Deputies, it would be a good arrangement if the voice of organisations such as land settlement committees in local areas was listened to. These committees, in most of the places that I am conversant with, have on them members of all the political Parties, and I believe that such committees would be able to make recommendations which would be reasonably fair so far as the claims and merits of the applicants were concerned. That, certainly, would be a much better system than to have Deputies making representations.

I was interested in Deputy Fagan's lamentations about the division of the lands of Meath into farms on which the Irish people can find a living, and in his lamentations about the disappearance of the lovely mansions surrounded by 200, 300 or 400 acres of land. Well, I concede to the Deputy that that is his point of view; but the history associated with these mansions is still too fresh in the minds of the Irish people to cause any of us who have read our history and who have a national outlook to regret the disappearance of many of these great houses. They were the symbol of imperialism in this country; they represented the oppressing power; they were the centre of patronage about which all the tenants had to cluster for their very being. I personally—and I think I can speak for my Party and indeed, I think, for all Parties when I say this—am glad to see these broad acres replaced by many Irish families living in prosperity, a prosperity which they would never have known if the old landlord system had continued. What on earth was all the fight for Irish land about if we, in this year 1948, are to lament in Dáil Éireann the passing of the mansions and the ranches? I concede, as I have said, to Deputy Fagan that he has his right to his point of view, but simply because he is on this side of the House, I want personally to dissociate myself and my Party from his lamentations.

Mr. Kitt

In this debate so far we have heard many points of view from both sides of the House and I suppose each Deputy has spoken with particular emphasis on conditions in his own constituency. I know that, if Deputy Fagan had made his speech about the passing of the mansions down in my constituency, where people are starving for land and where there is much congestion, it would not be very well received. We can all say thanks be to God that we have seen the passing of these mansions, that the day of the teach mór is gone and that we have seen the end of the landlord system.

I am glad that the Minister comes from a congested area such as I come from and that he understands the position of people in the congested areas in the West of Ireland. Although there are many aspects about which we could speak, I intend to confine myself mainly to congestion. Reading the Land Commission's Report, it struck me that one could expect greater progress, because of the release by the Department of Agriculture of a great number of inspectors who were engaged on tillage supervision work during the war years, than was made. According to figures on page 16 of the report, the total average amount of land divided, from 1923 to 31st March, 1947, was 916,039 acres, an average of over 38,000 acres per year. This covers the war period of inactivity. Last year, up to 31st March, 1947, only 14,000 acres were divided.

According to page 21, in the Gaeltacht counties, referred to in the Act as Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Clare and Kerry, only 7,449 acres were divided last year and, from the passing of the 1923 Act up to 31st March, 1947, there was an average of 19,000 acres per year. I understand that the inspectors and other staff who were lent are back again in the Department, and I should like to know if it follows that there is a lesser number of inspectors, officials, engineers, lawyers engaged in Land Commission work and other employees now than formerly and, if so, if more should be employed to speed up the work. I notice also that the rate of vesting compares equally unfavourable with the rate in the past.

The Minister said in his opening remarks that some people looked upon the Department of Lands as not being so important but that it was one of the most important in the country. I thoroughly agree with him in that, but it is a Department which, I hold, requires thorough investigation, with a view to speeding up the acquisition and division of land. The Land Commission has never given the same satisfaction as the old Congested Districts Board in the Gaeltacht counties. That board was almost solely concerned with these counties. I understand that the absorption of this board was chiefly the work of the late Mr. Hogan and I think it was one of the greatest mistakes he made, because the circumstances in these counties are totally different from those in other parts of the country. That is why Deputies from other parts of the country give expression to a totally different point of view. The position in their constituencies is not at all the same as that in the West of Ireland which requires totally different laws and regulations.

In the absence of this old Congested Districts Board, I think—and I put this to the Minister—that some board should be set up to investigate conditions in these counties, with a view to relieving congestion, to making economic holdings and examining the possibility of acquiring land for the relief of congestion and for the relief of the thousands of landless men and children of small farmers who are flying from these areas because there is no possibility of securing a holding of land and no hope of securing employment from the big farmers who are allowed to possess the farms of several hundred acres which we have in these congested areas and which give no full-time employment and are not obliged to do so.

In those areas—and I can speak with authority on this matter because I know the practice—on farms of 300 acres and over, the practice is to keep one herd and at the most two full-time labourers and sometimes only one. To my mind, this is the one and only explanation of emigration from this country and there is no need for a Commission on Emigration to investigate the matter any further. In my opinion it is the duty of the Government to provide a living for these people—people bred, born and reared on the land and naturally called by God to earn a living on the land. They should not be excluded, as they practically are at the moment, with the exception of a few who are working on big estates when they are divided, from the benefits of the various land Acts. It was generally agreed when these land Acts were being passed that the relief of congestion and of uneconomic tenants had first claim in the division of any land that was to be made and that, after that, the claims of landless men would be considered. That was 25 years ago.

It was thought at that time, as several Deputies have stated in this debate, that half the time that has since elapsed would be sufficient to deal with all the uneconomic tenants and that by this time, 1948, the Land Commission would be mostly concerned with placing suitable landless men on the land, if land were available for them. Up to the time the war broke out the Fianna Fáil Government had succeeded in placing 45,000 families on holdings. Then we had a period of inactivity forced upon us during the war years but now, at this stage, when work has started again, the Land Commission should be in a position to state when and how far under existing legislation we shall have relieved all the uneconomic tenants.

Mr. Blowick

Where did the Deputy get the figure of 45,000?

Mr. Kitt

I understood that 45,000 families had been placed. If I am wrong I am subject to correction by the Minister.

Mr. Blowick

I am afraid it is an exaggeration.

Mr. Kitt

As I say, I speak subject to correction but I understood these figures were correct. The Land Commission should be in a position to know how much land is available for the relief of congestion and how much is required for the relief of uneconomic tenants. It should be able to inform the House as to the extent which it may be necessary to reduce large farms for the relief of congestion and also to place a reasonable number of landless men, the sons of small farmers, on economic holdings. The Government, I hold, in this purely agricultural country, should have no hesitation in introducing the necessary legislation to effect that object.

Let me quote from a broadcast made by Pope Pius XII in September, 1945, after the last war. Speaking on just economic and social reconstruction, the Holy Father said:—

"When the distribution of property is an obstacle to this end (that is, according to the designs of God's wisdom, a necessary disposition to human initiative and incentive to work to the advantage of life's purpose here and hereafter) the State may, in the public interest, intervene by regulating its use or even, if it cannot equitably meet the situation in any other way, by decreeing the expropriation of property, giving a suitable indemnity. For the same purpose small and medium holdings in agriculture, in the arts and trades, in commerce and industry, should be guaranteed and promoted. Co-operative unions should ensure for them the advantage of big business. Where big business even to-day shows itself more productive, there should be given the possibility of tempering the labour contract with a contract for co-ownership."

This, to my mind, is a matter of life and death for the agricultural population of the congested areas of Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Clare, Donegal and Kerry. It is a matter of first aid to staunch the wounds of emigrants, starving for land and flying for a living to foreign countries. In the meantime I hold that no farm of land in any congested area should be allowed to be sold to an economic tenant as long as the farm can be acquired by the Land Commission for the relief of congestion. Legislation, if it is necessary, should be introduced for this purpose. Reasonable compensation equivalent to a fair market price could be given for the land. I have known cases where the Land Commission purchased land at a higher price than the same land went in the open market. The Government should request the Land Commission to give the House some information on these lines as soon as possible. In the meantime, they should acquire all the land that it is possible to acquire under the existing legislation and proceed to divide it as an emergency measure.

I would suggest to the Minister that as long as farmers are permitted to hold 200 acres, 300 acres or upwards of land, the owners of those farms should be obliged to keep so many whole-time employees in proportion to the acreage of their holdings—let us say, that they should be obliged to keep one whole-time labourer for every 20 acres of land held. If some such plan were adopted and cottages were built for these labourers with a few acres of land attached sufficient to maintain a cow and provide a mixed vegetable garden —say, four or five acres of land—I can conceive that in a short time several thousand young people would get a decent living in rural areas which they cannot get at present. For every young man thus provided, it is almost certain that a young girl could also be induced to share such a holding with prospects of raising a family under favourable conditions in their own country. If this necessity were placed upon the large farmers it would oblige them to exert themselves in the provision of subsidiary industries, such as the growing of tomatoes and fruit, the making of cheese and butter, and vegetable gardening on a large scale. Possibly, with rural electrification, other suitable subsidiary industries might be developed in rural areas.

There is no doubt that the time has long since passed for an investigation into the working of the Land Commission. Many things were done under legislation which were never envisaged when that legislation was passing through this House. I have already said that there were people who were not paid a fair market price for their land by the Land Commission. On the other hand, I know that exorbitant sums were paid to certain land owners, sums altogether out of proportion to the value of the land.

I can give one instance in my own constituency. Thirty years ago a land owner sold a very large estate under the 1903 Act on a 21 years' purchase system to his tenants. He received a huge sum for this. He also sold some untenanted lands outside his own demesne because the tenants insisted on this for the relief of local congestion. He retained for himself the demesne of over 1,900 acres. Of these 1,900 acres 200 acres were under trees. He was paid an agreed price for these lands, becoming a tenant of the Irish Land Commission with an annuity at 3½ per cent. on the price fixed. Being a very shrewd financier, he invested this money at 8, 9 or 10 per cent. without much difficulty. In the course of time his annuities were halved. Later the Land Commission acquired a further 800 acres of his holding for £8,000, leaving him 800 acres for himself plus 200 acres of wood. Until compulsory tillage came in that gentleman never tilled as much as an acre of his holding. He kept a herd and he kept a few men employed in his gardens. He still retains that 800 acres of land in a district where at the moment there are 40 uneconomic holdings.

Mr. Blowick

Would it be any harm to ask for the name of that individual?

Mr. Kitt

He is not a farmer by profession and he resides in England.

Mr. Blowick

I would be interested in having some further details about that.

Mr. Kitt

I will give them to you if you wish. He was permitted to sell privately two portions of the holding he had left, one portion of 20 acres and a second portion of 70 acres on which the dower house had been demolished. There are other cases in my constituency where the Land Commission have refused consistently to take over holdings, even though they were offered them. There is the Potter estate. I asked the Minister a question about that recently. There is the Parker lands, Menlough, and there is the Blade estate. I think the price has been settled for it. There is also the Nolan estate and several others. I would ask the Minister to speed up the acquisition of land.

I think some Deputy mentioned cooperation between the Land Commission, the Board of Works and the county councils in relation to roads, wells and pumps. I know one particular case where a holding was divided and the Land Commission provided a well. If that well falls into disrepair the tenants would have to bear the cost of it themselves. I think that the Land Commission ought to be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of pumps and wells. In another instance in my constituency an estate was divided and the Land Commission made a road at either side of it. There is only a very small portion left which would link up with the main road if both sides were carried a little farther, thereby providing a short cut for the local people going to Mass, fairs and so forth.

There are both developed and undeveloped bogs in the constituency. Some of the undeveloped bogs were worked by the county council during the emergency. They should be taken over now and divided amongst the tenants, because some people at the present time have quite a long journey to travel in order to get turf.

I would like to refute the suggestion made of political corruption on the part of Fianna Fáil in regard to land division. In my county there are eight seats. Of those eight seats six were filled at the last election by Fianna Fáil and from that it would be difficult to understand how Fianna Fáil supporters would not be bound to get holdings in view of that proportion. Fianna Fáil made the Land Commission what it is to-day and in making the Land Commission independent they proved that they did not want interference with its working. The people who are making these charges are making them for political kudos. They are not sincere because they know perfectly well that the charges are unfounded.

Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá ar son muintir na Gaeltachta. Rinne Fianna Fáil sár-obair ar a son nuair bhíodar i gcomhacht sa tír seo mar d'aistrigh siad cuid mhaith de mhuintir na Gaeltachta go dtí na tailte breaghtha saidhbhre i gCo. na Midhe agus i lár na tíre.

Bhí dhá cuspóir leis sin, ceann amháin, cun cothrom na Féinne a thabhairt dóibh agus iad a chur arais arís go dtí na tailte as a díbríodh a sinnsear rómpa ag Cromuil agus lucht an phlándaluithe i dtreo go mbeadh siad i ndon slí beatha a bhaint amach dóibh féin agus dá gclainn.

An dara cuspóir, baineann sé le cheist na teangain. Coinnigh na daoine sin teanga na Gaeilge beo sa nGaeltacht i mease na gcairrig agus na bfhaill i talamh bocht fán gcósta i n-Iarthair na h-Éireann agus áiteacha eile. Nuair aistrigheadh iad go dtí lár na h-Éireann ag Ríaltas Fianna Fáil, leathnuí siad, agus sgaip siad agus mhúin siad an teanga do daoine eile. Na tinóntaí a aistrigheadh, tá siad go léir ag déanamh go bréagh ag baint slí beatha níos fearr ná bhí aca amach ar na feilmeacha a fuair siad, agus ag déanamh obair mhaith cun an Gaeilge d'aithbeochaint. Molaim do'n Aire agus tá súil agam go leanfaidh sé leis an deagh-obair sin a thosnuigh Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Rooney

In this debate I shall speak in the light of facts and conditions as they exist in County Dublin Constituency and in the areas of East Meath and Kildare. Many Deputies have referred to congestion and uneconomic holders in various parts of Éire but I want to make it plain that there is congestion and a great number of uneconomic holders in County Dublin needing parcels of land. The outstanding examples of uneconomic holders who proved that they needed land and were worthy of the confidence placed in them by the Land Commission are the market gardeners of Rush, Skerries, Coolock, Malahide and the various other districts in County Dublin. Persons who have prospered in these areas during the past 20 years have every reason to be grateful to the Fine Gael Government which brought the Irish Land Commission into being for the purpose of making land available to uneconomic holders and deserving persons. The process of land division has been pursued rather slowly since 1923 and now, with a more democratic Government than we have ever had before, I feel sure that the process of replacing people on the land will be speeded up. It must be realised that lands resumed by the Land Commission and made available to uneconomic holders and landless men are gifts from the State. They must be regarded in that light and treated in that light. The object in making these parcels of land available to the people is to ensure that the greatest possible number of people can get a comfortable living on the land.

The land which they get is not always suitable. One man is luckier than another. He may get a better patch of land than another, even in the same district. Therefore it is difficult to fix any particular standard which could be required from the person who becomes tenant of that land. There are County Dublin farmers in need of land at the present time and there is a small proportion of land available in County Dublin for allotment amongst those people. The Dublin vegetable market is near at hand. It is a ready market which provides splendid employment for market gardeners. The size of farms has been debated and, at this stage, I should like to point out that market gardeners in County Dublin can earn a good living on a smaller amount of land than persons who might receive holdings in other counties. They might require a larger number of acres in other counties to get the same standard of living. Therefore the position in County Dublin could be eased by giving parcels of land, not as large as those in other areas but to a greater number of deserving persons. When the possibility of dividing land is being considered I should like the Minister to ensure that the livelihood of working farmers and their families will not be interfered with. There are holdings which are not being worked and which could be made available for the purpose of placing uneconomic holders on these lands. When a holding is made available to tenants they are faced with the necessity to equip themselves to some extent. I know that in a small way the Irish Land Commission is able to help them in the matter of making some equipment available. But on a small farm—25 acres, for example—it is difficult at the present time for the farmer to provide himself with all the necessary equipment for the working of that land. Even if he wants to plough that land he must have two horses, but it would be difficult for him to feed two horses on that small holding if he works it in an intensive way. We must consider the possibility of providing some kind of light machinery to replace those two horses on that holding. That would come under the heading of providing equipment for persons becoming tenants of that land.

I should like the Minister to examine the possibility of co-operative effort amongst neighbouring allottees to ensure the maximum results. In the case where one farm cannot afford to feed a couple of horses the Land Commission might be able to make machinery available for working on several of these neighbouring parcels of land. This would ensure a greater and a more efficient output and at the present time our national economy depends upon our ability to produce goods with the minimum of effort. I should like the Minister to consider the possibility of giving that scheme a trial on some large estate with several tenants, so that, if found feasible, it might be applied elsewhere. It would seem desirable for the Minister, in distributing this land, to consider the past history of those persons who apply for land. There are examples of persons who have received parcels of land, who were never engaged in agriculture and who have never since been engaged in it, but who occupy official positions in cities and towns or are engaged daily in other classes of work while members of their family reside on the holding which has been allotted to them. It must be agreed that the land in such cases could not be used to the best advantage. Therefore, I would ask the Minister, when he is considering the allocation of land, to investigate the past history of these individuals. There is an inclination at the present time to encourage the sale of land to foreigners. We see these gentlemen coming into the country with paper money. They are able to compare it with our hard-earned money although the wage standard is lower than the wage standard where that money has come from. The purchase of this land aggravates the position at the present time, although we are trying to alleviate congestion. We cannot possibly hope to solve that problem if we continue permitting the purchase of available land by foreigners.

There has been some delay in dividing land because there was a lack of building materials. That lack of building materials still exists, but it would seem desirable for the Minister to put into effect the machinery necessary for taking over the various estates so that when the position becomes easier the building of Land Commission houses can be proceeded with.

There is a certain amount of agitation amongst tenants on Land Commission holdings to have the land vested in them. It is desirable that land should be vested at the earliest possible date in those who deserve to be owners of that land, but it would seem advisable that the Land Commission should delay for a reasonable time, so as to ensure that those who have got possession of the land should be left in possession of it. There are examples of persons who have been waiting anything up to 20 years before the land was vested in them. I think that was an unreasonable time, and the Minister concerned could have ascertained in the meantime whether that man was a good farmer and worthy of the land on which he had been placed, or whether he should be removed from that farm.

The fact that the land is not vested in these holders leaves them in the position of having no security. They cannot plan for the future. They cannot consider the possibility of effecting improvements, because they are not sure that at some future time they will become the owners. They cannot take advantage of the various housing grants and reconstruction grants which are available to persons who own their holdings. Therefore, there is much to be said in favour of vesting the land within a reasonable time in those who have become tenants. There were only 50,000 holdings vested in the past 24 years out of a total of 106,000 holdings. At that rate it will take another ten years before those 106,000 holdings will be vested in those who are now tenants.

It would appear from the debate that new methods and a "new look" are needed in the ranks of the Land Commission. It appears there is a very efficient staff there, but that they are somewhat tied down by legislation and that the method of acquiring the land is rather cumbersome and causes unreasonable delay. Then there is the question of the size of an economic holding. Some Deputies have suggested that the holding should be at least 35 acres, but I would like to say that the size of the holding depends on the area, the nearness to a market and the possibility of providing a living for the family of the holder. One man near a market can earn a good living on 15 acres, whereas another man finds it difficult to earn a reasonable living on 35 acres. I think the Minister can be guided by conditions in the area and, with that in view, he will be in a position to decide whether a holding in any particular area should be 35 or 15 acres. It would be of advantage to the country to put the greatest possible number on economic holdings and, if they are all going to be of a uniform size, whereas holdings of a smaller area could be proved economic, it would be better for the people and for the purpose of relieving congestion that smaller holdings would be made available.

It seems to me that the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Lands have not co-operated so far as they might have in the past. An example of this is that during the emergency the Land Commission owned certain lands and, by reason of the tillage Order, they were required to carry out a specified quota. That quota no doubt was tilled and the result was that the land on these estates became a dust bowl, because there was no interested person there to see that the land was properly treated in the matter of manure and fertilisers. In that way the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Lands could have co-operated. We now find the possibility that persons will be allocated parcels of land which have been worn out by continuous tillage.

The 1946 Act was, no doubt, brought in for the purpose of dispossessing allottees who shirked their duty. In view of the fact that land is a gift from the State, the State should not hesitate in carrying out its duty and dispossessing those persons who have proved unworthy of the land made available to them. I suggest a scheme for the systematic inspection of holdings with a view to ascertaining what is the output from these holdings. These farms are made available to ensure that the maximum production will be carried out. If they are allowed to go derelict and if eventually they are vested in tenants, then the purpose for which the land was given is completely defeated. Therefore, I am much in favour of periodic inspections and the preparation of statistics in some form that will enable the Minister at any time to see how a particular farm is being used.

When the Land Commission decides to resume land there appears to be considerable delay between the date of resumption and the date of allocation. Unfortunately for all concerned, this delay causes many difficulties. We find that the longer the allocation is delayed the greater the number of applicants going on the list for consideration. Not alone that, but many more deserving applicants come on those lists and there is a certain amount of confusion, whereas if a deserving applicant in the first instance got the land there would be no further difficulties arising.

The Minister should consider the possibility of purchasing land in the open market. No doubt it could be suggested that if it were known that the Minister was interested in the purchase of land there would be a tendency to puff the price, putting it beyond a figure which might have been possible for a private bidder. I want to say that the private bidder, in the ordinary course of events, must contend with the possibility of puffing, and I am quite sure that the Minister could devise a scheme of some kind which would enable him to send a representative to a land auction to bid for that land on his behalf and purchase it. There are difficulties in resuming land legally, but many of these difficulties would be obviated in the case of purchasing land at an ordinary auction. The State has a duty to the community in seeing that these gifts of land are utilised to the best advantage. In many cases, whether directly or indirectly, the taxpayer subscribes considerably to the purchase of these lands.

Along with many other Deputies who have already spoken, I would like the Minister to consider the qualifications of an applicant rather than his political affiliations. The former Minister has admitted that he would give a sympathetic hearing to representations made to him by political supporters. I do not know whether the ex-Minister spoke for himself or spoke for his Party, but it seems to me that this would be an undesirable practice. On this occasion, you have at least five Parties forming the Government, whereas there was only one Party in the previous Government, and if each of these sections make a representation on behalf of a man, with the Fianna Fáil Party making representations on behalf of someone too, a certain amount of confusion will arise. I would like, therefore, to join with the Deputies who advocated that land should be allocated on merit and in the light of the experience of the applicant in the management of land.

There has been some talk about removing persons from congested areas to the wide open spaces. Now there are many wide open spaces and we must realise that there are many deserving persons resident near the land which it is proposed to resume. On that question, I would suggest to the Minister the desirability of placing persons resident in the area upon the land with some form of proportion rather than those who must be brought from congested districts. It would be entirely unfair to bring migrants from congested areas into a district where land hunger actually exists. I would ask the Minister, therefore, when he is considering the allocation of land, to give consideration to the local applicants.

There is no scheme at the present time for the sub-division of large farms among members of the farmer's family. It has never been encouraged, but as there are so many people who are in need of land and in need of holdings, it would seem desirable for the Minister to examine the possibility of parcelling out land to farmers' sons. As to the class of person who would be most suitable for land, I personally believe that the farmer's son is the ideal type. There was a clause, I know, in the conditions stating that no land would be made available to a landless man. I think, however, that that condition has been repealed to some extent. The farmer's son, in the strict sense, is a landless man, but he has been working with his father and has seen the business from the point of view of that farmer. He knows about the management of the farm, the financing of the farm and the working of the farm. Then again you find some very efficient farm labourers and farm managers who would be capable of managing land in the light of past experience, but the tendency to give land to landless men who have not proved in any way that they could work the land efficiently should, in my opinion, be discouraged.

I would ask the Minister not to interfere with free sale. It has reactions in the banks because, if there is no fixity of tenure and if there is interference with free sale, the farmers will not have security in their banks and they will not be able to take a long view. This is a national question and is, in my opinion, quite apart from politics, and for that reason I have advocated that political considerations should be ruled out.

Previously I mentioned that allottees should be dispossessed as soon as it is found that they are not capable of managing the land that was given to them. A certain amount of hardship would be caused to these allottees if they did not get sufficient notice. I do not know what notice is given at present but I would suggest to the Minister that these persons should get at least one year's notice after he has satisfied himself that they are not capable of managing the land in a proper way.

There are in this country many derelict holdings of land owned by persons residing outside Éire. The Minister, in my opinion, should not delay one month in deciding to take that land, because there is nobody here to own it and if it is left unworked and derelict it will be of no use to anyone. This is the class of land which should be made available to people from the congested areas. Somebody must lose land if the question is to be solved and these are the people who would suffer least.

It is desirable that every uneconomic holding should become an economic unit. There are difficulties which he must consider when an addition is made to the holding of an uneconomic holder. I feel quite sure that the legal difficulties arising in that case could be solved by the Minister. A large amount of money has been spent on the Army in the past and it is unfortunate that there was not less money spent on the Army and more money on land acquisition. The amount of money provided in this Estimate is very small when we consider the magnitude of the land question.

Finally, I should like to refer the Minister to the condition of many Land Commission roads serving perhaps half a dozen farms. It appears that after these roads were constructed the Land Commission ceased to have any interest in their maintenance. Then we find that the tenants in a particular district ask the county council to take over a certain road and repair it and the county council usually objects because it is a cul-de-sac. Therefore, the tenants are the eventual sufferers.

I should like the Minister to examine the possibility of repairing Land Commission roadways wherever it is found necessary. I would also ask the Minister to proceed immediately with a survey of the lands of Ireland with a view to being in a position to say what amount of land is available for allocation amongst uneconomic holders, and persons from congested districts within the shortest possible time. All these matters are now in the capable hands of the Minister. He is a man who has studied this land problem, because it is acute in his own constituency. Having studied that problem, I feel sure that he is the best man available for the carrying out of land division in the coming years and that much of the hardship which exists will be relieved in the near future by the Minister so that the object of the Land Commission will be fulfilled, namely, to give a good living to the greatest possible number of people.

The Land Commission inspector, when he visited the place, saw the position and was taking an inventory of the stock the man had, and simply asked Dunne—that was his name, he was a smallholder and a right good man, with five sons, a man who knows how to work land—who owned the land and Dunne said it was mine. Dunne was a qualified bona fide applicant who was going to be allotted a field which came within 100 yards of my place, according to the lay-out. If I had a map, the Minister would see it more clearly, and it is worth seeing on the map. Dunne came to me the following Sunday and suggested to me that I should surrender the land which surrounded his house. As a matter of fact, regarding the entrance into the land I surrendered, the gateway was right at the end of Dunne's house; and two or three years before I allowed him to extend his house, taking up half the passway, to enable him to avail of a local government grant to build a room, because he had a large family.

I am mentioning that fact to show how close he was to the land. Mrs. Dunne could not keep her fowl off our land and we had an agreement that he had the use of the land otherwise for grazing and he did herding and fencing in return. I said I would consider it. My wife told me not to have anything to do with it. A couple of weeks afterwards, I heard a rumour going around the locality that I was juggling in land to my own advantage and I sent for Dunne and said: "That exchange between you and me, which you suggested, is not taking place, because when people can talk and put a wrong construction on things I am not going on with it." He besought me not to take that view, as the land the Land Commission was going to give him was very inconvenient for him, whilst the land I held, three or four small fields, some 16½ acres, would suit him and his family. I said I would not go any further with the matter until the inspector would have his scheme prepared, and let it stand that way.

The day that the division was taking place I was sent for. I went on the public road, where there were two Land Commission inspectors with agreements for signing. They went through the signing of the rest of the applicants, who were the successful ones to get land; and then Dunne's case which was kept to last, came on. It was not a big farm, as represented by Deputy Flanagan, but was less than 100 acres; and only people within a reasonable distance round about could be considered. There was a pocket of congestion in the district which the Land Commission, to their credit, did away with. They took over all the small holdings which were dovetailed into each other. They migrated four people out of the district, two to the O'Shea estate and two to another estate some two miles away, and did a splendid job.

When Dunne's case came on, the inspector asked me would I consent to the exchange. I said I would, on condition that the 11 or 12 people present were satisfied for Dunne and I to exchange. "On that condition," I said, "I will let the Land Commission do it, but if they are not satisfied you can take the part that is there for you that comes up to my door and I can remain as I am, and in later years we can exchange, with the consent of the Land Commission." Deputy Flanagan comes along and suggests that I "surrendered my swamp in exchange for the most arable portion of the O'Shea estate", and he makes the further charge—this is a quotation from the newspaper to-day—that "a cottier, a labouring man with a large family, applied for the same portion of land and was not successful". I ought to know better than Deputy Flanagan my native locality and I want to brand those two statements as simply untrue. If the land that Mr. Dunne got from me was a swamp, he could not produce 15 or 16 barrels to the acre of wheat, nor could he produce 12 or 13 tons of beet. That is the answer to the allegation. I know what I am talking about. I am a farmer's son and my father and grandfather before me were farmers. My ancestors can be traced back in the district for 200 years and I am not going to take lying down any slander or vilification from any man like that.

As regards this "unfortunate labourer" he represents here that I "put out of getting the land", no such person exists in the locality. There were two cottiers in the locality, but the Land Commission divided 24 statute acres between them at the back of the house, and rightly so, because they occupied the frontage on the roadside and both deserved to get the land. The Land Commission did right in giving it to them, because they are making good use of it and are not like those in other places where land is not being properly used. I am leaving it at that.

Deputy Flanagan can come to my native parish and say before my neighbours, before impartial people there, what he likes and I will defend myself there. I think it is a disgrace that a National Assembly, the Parliament of our country that men fought and died to establish, should be degraded by abuse of the privilege of this House. I am 20 years in this House and I defy any Deputy who has known me over those 20 years, or even any of the younger men, to show that I ever abused my privileges or that I ever will.

Captain Cowan

I regret that this debate, useful as it can be, should have introduced into it the unfortunate local note from Laoighis-Offaly. There is a considerable number of matters of large import to be considered, without these small petty affairs that could very well be thrashed out down in Laoighis-Offaly. The Land Commission as a body has come in for considerable criticism from Deputies here who have been associated with it in connection with land division.

The Land Commission deals with matters other than land division. I find in the Estimates that there are almost 1,200 people employed in the Land Commission. It was set up many years ago to do a particular job of work, and there is no doubt whatever that it is not a proper modern machine for the doing of the job it has to do. If I had the responsibility of the Minister and the power that he would want to have to solve the problems that face him, I would take the whole Land Commission as it stands with all its cumbersome machinery to the Bog of Allen and drop an atomic bomb on top of it, and, having done that, I would get machinery that would deal with the problems that face us at the moment. That is not a criticism of civil servants.

There is the problem of land division, and there is the problem of congestion. There is also the problem of vesting, and on that it has been the experience of any person who has had anything to do with the Land Commission that its processes are unending. If you get into its clutches you will never extricate yourself. That has been the experience of the members of my profession in connection with the Land Commission. I agree with the Deputies who have said that it is antiquated. It is out of date. To solve the problems that face us at the moment with the machinery of the Land Commission would be like fighting a modern war with the instruments they had in the Zulu war and the Boer war. I suggest to the Minister that, if he is going to solve the big problems that face him, he will have to take some time in sharpening his sword and in making it fit to do the work that it has to do.

Land is looked upon in many ways. Some people talk about the rights of the owners of land. I would ask Deputies to look at land in this way: that it is something that has been there from the beginning of time. It has been provided by the Almighty in the way that water and air have been provided. I say that no individual has an absolute right to land, and that the land of a country must be used in the interests of the people of the country; it must be used in the interests of the community. I say that, as a community, we are entitled to say, and I say that it is our duty to say it, that beyond a certain number of acres, whatever the number may be, of arable land, no individual is entitled to hold land. I say that there ought to be laid down a maximum number of acres of arable land beyond which no person would be entitled to own land. If that were done the chain ranch, about which Deputy Kennedy very properly complained to-day, could not extend its ramifications.

I am not going to say what I think is an economic holding. That is a matter entirely for people of experience. I think it depends, to a large extent, on the locality, the nature of the land and the form of agriculture or use to which the land is put; but I do say that, as a first step, there ought to be this restriction on the ownership of land. I go further and say that if land is not operated in the interests of the community as a whole, it is the right and the duty of the community to take that land and make it available for proper use.

One of the matters that has been mentioned here, and that has occasioned an amount of argument, is the selection of individuals for farms divided by the Land Commission. I can see that there can be a good deal of discussion on that, but does anybody think that the Land Commission is the best body to select the persons who are to be provided with the lands that are divided? I suggest with respect to this House that it is not. In Denmark they have a system whereby, when a farm becomes available for disposal, the farmers of the parish come together and decide on the best agricultural labourer in that parish; they vote him that particular farm and by State assistance he is enabled to purchase it fully stocked with a sufficiency of capital to enable him to make a success of it.

I think we could very well get a system here whereby the farmers in the different parishes would be the people to recommend the applicants for these new farms. If we had that system, I am satisfied that those experienced farmers would make a better job of it than the Land Commission are making of it, and there would not be those complaints about lands being divided and allotted to tenants who misuse them or do not use them at all. Under that system, whereby the farmers would have a say in the selection of the new farmers, we at least would get individuals capable of working their farms as they ought to be worked. By going somewhat further, financial help to enable them to stock the land and to provide machinery could be made available.

I was interested in one matter mentioned to-day by Deputy Kennedy, that is, his suggestion that, where lands are divided, the houses should be built together. It is a matter I have been thinking about for a number of years. It would be a modern idea and a sensible idea, which would enable these communities to have their own school, their own village hall, their own medical service, their own church, their own store available in their own little community. They could have modern amenities like electric light, water supply and sewerage schemes and a playground for the children and young people. That can very well be done and an effort ought to be made in future land division to give that system a trial.

Man was intended to live in communities. It has always been the desire of man to live in communities and the Land Commission could, by a trial of this system, see whether some of the objections to conditions in rural Ireland could be removed. I do not want to say anything further except to end as I began, by suggesting to the Minister that he must overhaul drastically, if he cannot destroy as I suggested, the Land Commission, if, within a period of five or ten years of office, he is to solve these pressing problems of congestion, land division and land settlement.

Mr. R. Walsh

It was very amusing to listen to some of the speeches made on this Estimate. Every one of the speakers seemed to forget that, whether for good or ill, we have adopted and stand by private ownership of land. I believe it is the proper system, but listening to the debate one would think the majority of the country were against it and wanted some other system, some system of public ownership, because some of the things suggested during the debate cannot be done under the present system. We hear a lot about land acquisition. I have always been in favour of land acquisition for the relief of congestion. Congestion is one of the greatest social evils in the country and has got to be solved. I said in this House before that one of the great blots, in fact, the greatest blot, on the Land Act of 1923, which was a good Act and revolutionary in its effect, was the abolishing of the Congested Districts Board.

That body was established for the purpose of solving that very question of congestion. It had got together a band of trained men who knew the problem from every aspect, from not alone the economic aspect but the psychological aspect, which is undoubtedly as important as the economic aspect. A certain sum of money was allocated to that body every year to enable it to do the best it could to improve life in these congested areas— to acquire land and to endeavour to raise the standard of the people in these areas. Not alone were they to acquire the divided land but they tried so far as possible to get little industries going. They tried to improve, and, in co-operation with the then Department of Agriculture, they succeeded in improving, the breed of cattle and live-stock generally. They tried also to improve poultry and did a considerable amount of good work, and I believe that, in order to settle the problem in the West, it will be necessary to establish some such body as that. No definite progress will be made until that is done.

One of the greatest obstacles to land acquisition that I can see is the price being paid for land. One of the things which all Deputies of whatever Party should remember is that the day of the big landlord who held all his land in fee simple, not paying rent to anybody for it, has gone, and that the people now left from whom land is acquired are in a great many cases very small landholders. Owing to the fact that the land they hold is subject to a land annuity, they are given what amounts to a confiscation price. That is due to the fact that the redemption value is kept, and the Minister knows that as well as I know it.

While that system prevails, naturally people who get notice that their land is about to be acquired will resort to every legal means to prevent its being acquired. So long as you have private ownership in land, you have got to provide means to protect that private ownership; in other words, you have got to provide the legal machinery by which these people can defend their rights. I am not a lawyer but I think anybody of common-sense knows that. I would appeal to the Minister to try to devise some means of overcoming that difficulty about the redemption value. The old Congested Districts Board met it in one way. I think I am right in saying that at the present time, in County Mayo especially—I do not know very much about the conditions in other counties—the price given by the Land Commission for land works out at 21 years' purchase and out of that is taken the redemption value of any land subject to an annuity. The Minister is aware that the vendor, therefore, does not get the full purchase price. The Congested Districts Board met that difficulty by giving a bigger price for the land but they did not ask the tenant to pay back the price they gave. They fixed an economic rent on the land regardless of the price they paid for it. My belief is that if you are going to deal with the problem you will have to devise some method of that kind, otherwise you are going to have these perpetual legal proceedings on the part of people who will adopt every means to prevent their land being acquired because they feel that they are not getting the full value of it. That is one of the vital matters to which the Minister should pay attention. I can assure the Minister, whether I am opposed to him politically or not, that I will give him every support in any steps he takes to solve the problem of congestion.

The size of an economic holding, as a number of Deputies have stated, varies according to the locality, the quality of the land and the valuation of the holding. The Minister is aware that there is very bad land in Mayo but that there is also very good land in some parts of that county. There is land in it which is valued very highly and also land which is valued at a very low figure, as it should be. Therefore you cannot really, I think, standardise the size of an economic holding.

I heard some Deputy refer to the problem of demesne walls. I do not know so much about them in County Mayo because there are very few demesnes left there. I have, however, been brushing up my memory and I seem to recall that there was some sort of agreement, at what was termed the Land Conference preceding the Land Act of 1903, that the amenities of landlords' demesnes would not be interfered with. I thought that that arrangement had ceased long ago. I was very young at the time but I remember reading that there was some sort of agreement on these lines between the representatives of the landlords and the representatives of the tenants preceding that Act. I think the Minister should look into that matter because I do not think that the agreement should be maintained now in the sense that no part of the demesne is liable to be interfered with. I think that is too much of a privilege. Labourers' cottages are being built all over the country on other people's lands. Farmers' lands are being acquired for that purpose and lands near towns that are very valuable are also being acquired, and rightly so. The provision of housing for our people must go on and I do not see why landlords or people of that kind should get a privilege which nobody else enjoys.

So far as talk about political influence in the division of land is concerned, I wish luck to any Deputy on the Government benches who tries it. He has my hearty good wishes but certainly if he has any hopes that he might do anything for his pals in that direction, he is going to get a very big drop. I wish him every success if he tries it.

I should like to draw attention to another matter which is a very pertinent question at the present time. The Minister and every Deputy is aware that the cost of building has increased to an enormous extent. A house that could be built for £300 or £400 ten years ago will cost anything up to £1,000 now and if it is proposed to acquire land and to build a house on it, certainly if the cost of that house is put on the incoming tenant he will never be able to pay it.

Mr. Blowick

If the redemption value of the land on which the house is built is clapped on top of him, he will have a very heavy load to carry.

Mr. R. Walsh

I agree, but remember if half the things which were suggested here in the debate are done—and most of these suggestions came from Deputies on the Minister's side of the House—the land is going to be very expensive on the incoming tenant. I have personal knowledge of one case at the present time into which this question of the redemption value enters. The farm consists of only 35 acres and there is an ordinary two-storey Land Commission house on the farm. The Land Commission have valued that place at £960 but the owner is actually going to get less than £300 if the deal goes through. Why should a land holder be asked to make that sacrifice of his property, any more than a shopkeeper or a person engaged in any other avocation? If a house has to be shifted, in order to create a right of way, not alone will the man who owns it get the full value of the building but he will probably also get some compensation for disturbance, loss of trade or something of that description.

I think that this question of deducting the redemption value should be gone into with a view to meeting it in some way. It is idle to expect that a man who is given a farm at the present time, when agricultural prices and building prices are at the maximum, will be able after five years when these soaring agricultural prices will probably be no longer in existence, to meet the burdens which are placed upon him under present conditions. I cannot see any reason why some effort should not be made to meet that contingency. I cannot see any reason why that should not be met. This State has gone to great expense and to a tremendous amount of trouble in its effort to solve the slum problem in the cities and towns. The State is still spending large sums of public money in an effort to eradicate this social evil of congestion. Why should not the rural slums be dealt with in the same way? It is no use telling me that it costs £800 to put a house on a holding. As far as my knowledge goes the Land Commission only contributed something in the region of £360 per house towards the cost of building houses on holdings provided for the relief of congestion. There is a big difference between £360 and £800. I suggest to the Minister that a better effort will have to be made towards solving this problem. If the Minister requires new legislation in order to solve this problem, and if he brings that legislation before this House, I will certainly give him all the support he wants.

Suggestions were made here in this House that there was political jobbery. As far as this State is concerned, I think there is very little room for corruption or patronage. In the first place, the Civil Service Commission deals with nearly all the appointments made under the State service and the Local Appointments Commission deals with others. Very little room is left for corruption. That type of argument sounds very well at a cross-roads on Sunday evening or outside the church gate on Sunday morning but it carries very little weight in Parliament.

With regard to sales of land, there has been very little evidence of corruption in my part of the country. Admittedly, the Land Commission took over large demesnes and the elaborate mansions and out-offices on them. These buildings have served their time and are no longer much use to anybody. The only thing the Land Commission could do was to sell them provided they could get people rich enough and foolish enough to buy them. During the war some of them were bought by builders' providers in order to obtain building materials. Some of them could not even be sold for that purpose. In some cases portions of the lands have been let. I know that down in Newport there are one or two English people who have bought places. I do not want too many foreigners in this country any more than anyone else does, but I do not think we should shout too loud about the foreigners who are coming in because we ourselves are in a peculiarly vulnerable position and open to a very dirty kick back if we try to incite public feeling in this matter. I do not suppose there is a country or a flag in the world which does not shelter some of our own people. A few weeks ago I met a man just home from India and he told me that out on the North-west Frontier he had met a school pal of his. Neither of these men was in the Army. Irish people have gone all over the world, so let us be careful. If we start any campaign here to keep people out we may have our own people kicked out of other countries.

Mr. Rooney

They leave this country to work.

Mr. Walsh

The Englishman will not consider for what reason they left the country. The American will not consider for what reason they left this country. That will not influence them in the very least. All they will remember is that it was the Irish who started this campaign. Unfortunately this type of thing generally emanates from the most ignorant people in the community.

Mr. S. Collins

America did not do that when we were fighting to put them out.

Mr. Walsh

I would ask the Minister to take some definite steps in regard to turbary. In some parts of the country there is too much turbary and in other parts of the country there is not enough. Where turf is scarce and where bogs have petered out, efforts should be made to supply the people in those areas with fuel.

I was glad to hear the Minister say that he was seriously going to tackle the problem of congestion. He will find no obstacle placed in his way by me if he does that. Congestion is a grave evil in County Mayo. There is a lot of talk about emigration. Recently I was told by a solicitor that long ago the problem was to which member of the family to leave the holding and many families fought bitterly over this question. He told me that now the difficulty is not who is going to get the holding but who is going to take it. In other words, who will stay at home. None of the young people nowadays want to stay at home. Something must be done to induce them to stay. They must be given more security for the future and better conditions of life.

Mr. Palmer

They should have got that security during the past 16 years.

Mr. Walsh

If the Deputy studies the reports of the Land Commission he will see the good work that was done by it despite many difficulties. I hope the Deputy will support his Minister in his efforts to tackle congestion. I hope that he will not place any obstacles in the way of solving this problem. I was glad to learn from the Minister's statement that there will be no drastic change in the policy of the Land Commission, with the exception of one or two items to which I referred particularly. I think, for instance, that the redemption value should be dealt with in some way. I know of some cases where the people would be willing to give up the land but not at a sacrifice. I congratulate the Minister on what he has said. I hope that he will fulfil his promises. I can assure him that I, for my part anyhow—and I am sure the same applies to most of us from the West—will be behind him.

Mr. Kilroy

I desire to intervene briefly in this debate for the purpose of calling attention to the disadvantages suffered by tenants in my constituency whose holdings are still divided according to the rundale system. That is one of the first problems which the Land Commission should seek to solve in the area. It applies more particularly to the Bingham and Carter estates in Erris, to the Dickens estate in Achill and to the Stanwell estate in Srahmore. In fact, the system obtains in practically the whole of the North Mayo area, but the estates which I have mentioned are about the worst. Repeated representations have been made in regard to this matter over the years but so far very little has been done to remedy the position. I know the Minister himself is familiar with the conditions in this area and I need not stress, therefore, the handicaps under which these people suffer.

Inspectors of the Land Commission have mapped the holdings on some of these estates as far back as ten years ago, but nothing has since been done to rearrange or fence the holdings or to give building grants to the tenants, although the necessary consents have been obtained in most cases from the tenants. The houses in that area are bad—some of them are probably 300 or 400 years old.

I desire also to call attention to the Boddicum farm near Bangor-Erris, the owner of which has been living out of the country for a number of years. The farm is at present occupied by a caretaker. It contains an area of at least 600 acres and it would be very useful for the relief of congestion in that area, in which there is a large number of uneconomic holders.

Despite the fact that there is in North Mayo a very large extent of bogland, there are several people who have no turbary of their own and I would appeal to the Minister to see that such people are provided with turbary allotments wherever necessary. In the Glenhest area, particularly, there are several people who have applied for bogs and who have not yet got them. I would strongly appeal to the Minister to see that these people are provided with turbary as soon as possible.

So far as migration is concerned, that is a problem which intimately concerns many in North Mayo. Congestion is acute in many areas and the problem will never be satisfactorily solved until some of the tenants are transferred to the Midlands or other districts where land is available for distribution.

Mr. Keyes

In discussing this land question I desire to reiterate the oft-expressed dissatisfaction with the activities or inactivities of the Land Commission, as they are variably described. I want to advert to the time when the Land Commission was actively engaged in the policy of land division and had the backing of all sides of this House, both Government and Opposition. I consider that, in the years before the war, the activities of the Land Commission in dividing up the vast ranches throughout the country and converting them into suitable holdings for our citizens had very good and lasting results. We were glad to see the ranch walls being lowered and the letting in of the light of day on the ranches. Smiling homesteads took the places of these blank walls along the highways and that work continued until the intervention of the war.

It was at least understandable that the activities of the Land Commission would be checked by the emergency that had been created. We are told that the Land Commission are employed whole-time in the very important work of vesting. A considerable amount of time was left on their hands, in the absence of land division work during that period of emergency. During that time they had an opportunity of making up the arrears in vesting and, while I have not a word to say against vesting—it is very good and laudable work—I do not think it is sufficient justification or excuse for the almost complete abandonment of the acquisition and division of land. I have heard people state in this House that the vesting of land is the most important function of the Land Commission. I consider, however, that those people who have their holdings should be satisfied to wait until such time as their less fortunate brethren who have not holdings are attended to.

Notwithstanding what anybody may say to the contrary, there is still land hunger in this country. The area of ranches and waste lands has not been exhausted. There is a limit to the activities of the Land Commission but I suggest that they have not gone 50 per cent. of the road towards the realisation of their policy. I should like to ask this question: Have we abandoned land division as a wise policy or is the abandonment of a temporary nature only?

The county from which I come has been closed; no land division can take place there. I do not know what the technique is. I tried, by way of Parliamentary Question and by correspondence, to indicate to the Minister and to the Land Commission what, in my opinion, were very desirable holdings calling for division. The same opinion was held by many of my constituents, that there were holdings there very desirable from the point of view of division. However, irrespective of the merits or demerits of the claims put forward by Deputies and others, that county, from the point of view of land division, remains locked, while another county not very far from ours is open, wide open.

While I have no objection to the very laudable work of vesting tenants, I think that any spare time the officials of the Land Commission have at their disposal should be devoted to the task of getting on with land division. That should be their principal aim, if nothing else is standing in the way except vesting.

Is it the policy of the Minister and the Government immediately to go back to the work of land division which was dropped by the late Government because of the war and that was not to be resumed until the war was finished? The war terminated three years ago and we are hoping that normality will soon be restored in the matter of land division. We see large holdings and ranches being taken over by people, irrespective of where they come from— I am not now talking about aliens. I object to any one individual getting control of vast tracts, while numbers of Irish citizens are still sweltering in hovels on small patches. At one time Deputy Moylan, when he was Minister, said he was not going to make cabbage patches over the country. I agreed then and I agree now. We do not want to make cabbage patches, but there is a vast difference between giving holdings as far as the country will allow and making cabbage patches.

In certain areas, where economic holdings are not possible, very good work could be done by providing accommodation plots to improve the lot of the people and enable them to find the grass of a cow where they have difficulty in getting milk to colour their tea, even on the rich lands of County Limerick, which is supposed to be flowing with milk and honey.

I suggest the Government ought to take very serious cognisance of the situation. They should go back again to the old policy of land division and carry on the good work which gave so much satisfaction in earlier days when so many of the citizens were vested in the soil, thus giving them an opportunity of bringing up their families and turning their eyes from the emigrant ship.

If we are to stop emigration, a big portion of the solution lies in the hands of the Minister through the proper utilisation of the land. Quite apart from the ranches, there are considerable areas of waste land, farms of 200, 300 and 400 acres, held by persons who are either incapable or unfitted to hold such land. It is the type of land that, during the recent emergency, notwithstanding the activities that we were supposed to expect from the tillage inspectors and, indeed, all kinds of agricultural inspectors, was not properly utilised. All that type of land could be submerged in the Atlantic for all the good it contributed to the wealth of the nation during such a critical period. I know one farm of 300 acres. There was nobody employed on it; the cows and the calves were grazing on it; the meadow was left uncut and the carcasses of beasts were taken off that land and thrown into a quarry. That has happened over the past two or three years, notwithstanding the activities of inspectors who were supposed to be engaged in trying to get the maximum wealth from the land of the country.

Our soil is a great source of wealth; indeed, all our wealth is derived from it, and it is nothing less than criminal waste if anybody allows that kind of thing to happen—and it is happening, even though we have various authorities that are supposed to be controlled by the Minister and the Land Commission. That matter is overripe for attention. I appeal to the Minister to give it his immediate consideration.

The policy of the last Government was a wise and laudable one and I regret very much that it was dropped. I realise that it was dropped, in the first instance, because of the emergency. What I deeply regret is that they did not see their way to resume their activities before going out of office. There was an opportunity afforded between 1945 and 1948 for the resumption of land division in a broad way. I appeal to the Minister to get on to that broad policy again, particularly in the western and southern counties and, in fact, wherever there are large tracts to be divided.

There are still plenty of people in this country with a knowledge of agriculture. I submit that these people are entitled to get an opportunity to work some land for themselves. There again I join issue with the last Minister, Deputy Moylan. When he was dealing with this Estimate last year I also joined issue with him. I flatly object to the practice of debarring a man from getting an agricultural holding because at the moment he is not in possession of land. Men who are without land, but who have a knowledge of agriculture and who have the will to work land, ought to be facilitated in every way. There are many men who may not have land, but they are quite prepared to work a holding for the benefit of themselves and their families. They should be facilitated. Any men in that position who may have got land got it because they were employees on the estate that was acquired and divided and because in these circumstances they lost their employment.

I challenge the Minister to say that there are failures to the extent of 5 per cent. amongst men of that type. These are the men who utilise the knowledge of agriculture that came down to them through their fathers; these are the men who are prepared to work energetically for themselves and their families and make a success of agriculture. They should not be debarred. Indeed, they should be facilitated and encouraged with financial assistance to enable them to equip their holdings.

It is an objectionable practice to have men who have been working on a holding for a number of years without capital or equipment trying to get on to the roads to do county council work in competition with the road labourers. These men, apart from getting the land, should be given an advance of money to enable them to repay their annuities and help them to stock and equip their holdings. You will find on examination that there are considerable numbers of potential farmers, men who would make a success of their holdings, who never got a dog's chance to start for themselves.

To get back to the subject of land division, I believe that it should be resumed on a considerable scale and we should have no colour bar, no untouchables. A landless man should not be treated as an untouchable. If he has all the necessary qualifications short of finance, a holding should be given to him and money should be supplied to him to enable him to work the holding. So long as he can work it successfully he should be facilitated; if he does not work it there is a remedy there. I trust the Minister will give the matters to which I have drawn attention his earnest consideration.

Mr. Keane

For the past three days I have been listening to a massed attack on the Land Commission. I was just wondering if the Land Commission was something in the nature of a Frankenstein, something that is out to destroy everything that is put before it. In the minds of some Deputies, the position would seem to be that it is just out to destroy every proposal that is put before it. I cannot subscribe to that view at all. I have had very little experience of the Land Commission but, little though it may be, I have found that the officials are doing their work to the very best of their ability, often perhaps under very adverse conditions. I was always of the opinion that the Land Commission was there to implement the Minister's policy, and if any criticism was to be made of the Land Commission responsibility should be attached to the proper quarter; otherwise the Minister is subservient to the Land Commission. One or other of those things must happen, either the Land Commission is there as a machine for the implementation of the Minister's policy or else the Minister is a rubber stamp and subservient to the Land Commission. I would have thought that if the Deputies on the other side of the House were any way sincere regarding the statements which I have heard during the last few days they would have come en bloc to the Minister. It is no excuse to say that there was a war on. The war is over for three years, and surely there could be a speeding up since the war finished, and, as one Deputy said, we should try to accelerate momentum since Deputy Joe Blowick who is now Minister for Lands took over.

Perhaps if we could implement Deputy Burke's suggestion we could create a Utopia in this country and have a land flowing with milk and honey. After all, some basis must be arrived at which would give the people who get the land an opportunity of working the land to their best advantage and to the advantage also of this State. When you hear people talking about sinking pumps in every farm, irrespective of whether there is water on that farm or not, it looks a bit ridiculous. Those views were put forward by Deputy Burke and I think he mentioned—in all fairness to him— that he was carrying on this policy for some years past. Every time the Estimates on the Land Commission came before this House Deputy Burke advanced those opinions to us. But are those opinions practical? I have some experience and I am afraid that I have to differ very substantially with some of the suggestions put up by Deputy Burke. I am just wondering whether he was trying to outdo other speakers who followed him and get in first on the racket. However, I will give him credit, while I do not consider 10 per cent. of his suggestions to be practicable, that perhaps he was sincere about them.

Deputy Davern seemed to be more or less concerned with breaking down the bastion of the old ascendancy who are holding on to the estates in Tipperary. As far as I could make out from Deputy Davern, only the demesne walls prevented the people from taking them. Some of the people on the opposite benches are well used to breaking walls. Many is the time they broke barrack walls in the old day and they should be very well able to break down demesne walls now. I wish that the Minister would get the machinery for breaking those walls and that he would get into those demesnes.

Deputy Corry, my friend from East Cork, spoke about Trabolgan. I am sure that he was actuated by the motive of focussing the Minister's attention on people who are looking for land in that area. It was a very surprising thing that this place was left vacant for a long time. Until I put down a question on the Order Paper, Trabolgan was conveniently forgotten. A luxury hotel was established there and there was an idea of establishing a private landing ground until a spanner was put in the works. Now Trabolgan is being acquired and Deputy Corry is very concerned about the landless men and uneconomic holders of the area. When the Minister is dividing Trabolgan estate I hope that he will recognise that there are a lot of landless men and uneconomic holders, a lot of people who are descendants of those who were evicted from that estate in the past, and that they will get priority. Every Irishman is entitled to a parcel of land in his own country, but when you have local men whose conditions entitle them to priority, who have a peculiar right to it, they should be established on the land without asking them what Fianna Fáil branch, what Labour, Fine Gael, Clann na Poblachta or any other branch they belong to. They should be taken on their merits. I do not intend going around with a black book taking the names of the people. Let them send in their applications through me, through Deputy Corry or through any channel they like to get to the Land Commission and I hope that every single one of them will be decided on his merits.

Several avenues have been explored during this debate. We went back to pre-historic times, we went to France, to Spain, and I have an idea that we went into the mental hospital in Cork, and, after the last couple of days, I am wondering if there are more insane in the mental hospital in Cork than there are in this Assembly. We all recognise that there is a necessity to carry on with the acquisition and division of land and with vesting. Surely we are not an irresistible force coming up against an immovable object; surely the Land Commission is not the terrible Frankenstein that it is supposed to be according to some of the speakers here; surely constant dropping will wear away a stone and they will go some little way to meet the requests and demands of this Assembly. After all, we are the people who are representing the public and the Land Commission is only a machine set up to implement our demands and requests.

One very good thing was the acquisition of cow parks by local authorities for some years past. I would ask the Minister to continue with it as they are a great acquisition to people in towns. These cow parks are very fairly administered and no one is allowed into them except people who have not any land of their own or who have not sufficient land to keep a cow. They render a very useful service in the production of milk and I hope that the Minister will continue to give cow parks to local authorities that require them.

There was an Act in 1946 which, I believe, deprived of his land any holder who did not work it properly. I am in absolute agreement with it. A man who is not sufficiently conscious of his responsibility to himself and to his family should not be allowed to carry on on a very useful parcel of land that would undoubtedly be useful to somebody else who was prepared to accept those responsibilities. But there are peculiar cases in regard to that also. I know of a man who got 40 acres on an estate in East Cork on which a house was built for him. He worked that land to the very best of his ability and got everything out of it that could be got out of it. As a result of his initiative, application and enterprise he made some money. He married a young lady who had a business house and he went to live in that house when he got married. Now he is threatened with a notice determining the tenancy of his holding. I think that is putting a bar to progress. Why should not a man who is working his land as it requires to be worked be allowed to live where he likes? Is it the house or the land with which we are concerned? If the Land Commission carry out their threat, this man will be deprived of his holding. Why should that man's tenancy be determined because he is living in a business house which he is working to the best advantage and, at the same time, working his land? There is no dereliction of duty there. The Minister may laugh, but I wonder was Section 6 of the 1946 Act intended for a man like him?

I would appeal to the Minister for Lands to keep on with the policy of the Land Commission even if it is a hand-over from Fianna Fáil. As long as it is a good policy we will support it. I ask him to proceed with the acquisition and division of land and the vesting of holdings as fast as is possible. If I am here this time 12 months, and I hope to be, I should like to be able to congratulate this Department on having done everything possible in that direction and on having removed a lot of the anomalies existing at present.

Mr. Kyne

It is with some hesitation that I intervene in this debate because I do not claim to be an expert on land. In fact, I admit having very little knowledge of the subject. I feel, however, that it is my duty to bring before the Minister the views of my constituents. We in Waterford feel that we are the Cinderella child of the Land Commission, so little has been done by them in that county for a number of years past. The land there is rich and fertile, but there is a large number of estates untenanted and almost untilled. We have many people in our county who are willing and anxious to and capable of tilling these lands in their own interest and in the interest of this nation, and I feel that the Land Commission could pay some attention to that matter with good results to the country. In my county we are anxious and willing to help the Land Commission. There is an association there which is free from politics of any kind and which embraces all Parties—the County Waterford Land Settlement Association. They are anxious to co-operate with the Minister and to indicate to him where his inspectors could find, not alone land to divide but land already in the possession of the Land Commission for over five years and not yet allotted.

During the term of the Government before the last one in the district of Ballinacourty, which rivals Rush for the early production of potatoes, some eight or ten acres of the most fertile land were given away for a golf links when there were landless men eager to develop that land. Things like that should not have been done in the name of the Land Commission in Waterford or anywhere else. Who got that done or how it was done I have no knowledge. I suggest to the Minister, however, that if such a thing could happen there must be some method by which favouritism is exercised in the Land Commission which can be used by those who are corrupt enough to use it. I ask the Minister to give to this association in County Waterford all the help that he can and I can promise him on their behalf that they will co-operate with him.

Mr. Blowick

Such a wide variety of subjects have been covered on this Estimate that I am in a quandary to know where to begin. The most notable feature of the debate was the charges of corruption made and the very positive denials of them. I do not propose to go into that, but it is refreshing to find that Deputies on the Government side of the House, who possibly in future may be accused of corruption, have made a very vigorous demand for fair play in all matters connected with the Land Commission.

There were over 80,000 acres acquired in County Mayo alone.

God knows, he did not say such a lot in the House.

Mr. Donnellan

He said nothing at all for the last ten years.

Mr. Lemass

I am glad Deputy Commons is against interruption.

Mr. Blowick

As I have said, the amount of land divided showed a steep decline. Probably, after two years of Fianna Fáil policy in land division, they realised that they had acquired a very large amount of land and had divided a very large amount of land and that they had made a very bad job of it. I only wish now that I had in hands for division the amount of land that they so badly mishandled. The mishandling of it I will deal with later because it deserves to be dealt with. I only wish I had that land now at my disposal to deal with it. I do not know who the Fianna Fáil Minister was because the Ministry of Lands was the one Ministry that seemed to have a different occupant every other year under the Fianna Fáil régime. I cannot understand that. I would say that there must have been Deputies in the Party who understood what the principal purpose of the Land Commission was and the powers that were at the head of the Party must have rejected the advice of those people. I am speaking from guesswork, but that is my reading of the situation. There must have been people from the congested areas who must have been in a position to tell the Fianna Fáil Ministry that they were making a complete hash of what they were doing and evidently the powers at the top refused to listen to such advice, if it was tendered.

Do not mind what you tried. The number of cases of bad user at present is appalling and definitely shows some interference somewhere that should not have taken place. The Irish Land Commissioners, from the secretary and the commissioners down to the humblest inspector down the country, are only a machine to operate Government policy. I want to bring that home now to the Fianna Fáil Party. To-day that machine is there to operate the policy of this Government. Knowing the experience of the commissioners and their keen judgment in choosing the right type of person for land, I fail to understand why there are so many cases of bad user—not merely hundreds; it has passed the 1,000 mark. That is a serious problem for this Government and for me to face up to at the present time. It has reached the 1,000 mark. We have only a very small staff dealing with the reports of user of land. If we were in a position to go into it fully, I am certain it would reveal a scandal of the first magnitude.

Some Deputies spoke about holdings, Deputy Flanagan spoke about evictions for non-payment of annuities, others spoke about bad user, and so on. My view of the picture is that, when the Land Commission selects a person for an average-sized holding of land properly equipped with gates, with a nice dwelling-house and out-offices, and very often a pump or a well properly built up, so as to ensure a supply of drinking water, the cost of all this to the State is about £1,460. In the case of a landless person, he is getting £1,460 worth of property that the State has taken from someone else and spent a good deal of money to set up. That is handed over to this person, who signs a binding agreement with the Land Commissioners, that he will live there and work that land according to the best methods of husbandry.

If the Land Commission has erred at all, they have erred on the side of leniency towards those who have lightly thrown the gift of £1,460—the lands, nice dwelling-house, and so on—back in the teeth of those who gave it to them. I wonder if any Deputy stands over a thing like that or suggests we should let them stay in possession of those holdings. Place yourself in the position of a wealthy person, able to make a magnificent gift to some person who looked for it or said he would appreciate it as he wanted to set himself up. If the price amounted to £1,460 and that person pitched the gift into the waste-paper basket or threw it out, what would you do? I think you would try to recover it and give it to some person who would place the proper value on it.

I do not know what the attitude of the last Government was towards recovering these holdings. We took a very big step when we took someone's property and divided it amongst other people; and it is the very least that we should see that that particular piece of Ireland should be worked to the best ability of the person who got it. That is only a reasonable demand and I want to make it perfectly clear that that is our view.

The 1946 Act provided also for recovery in the case of an addition given to a parent holding. Where you had a small uneconomic holding, that addition was intended to bring it up to an economic level. I am absolutely opposed to operating the Act against that particular type of person, because in the case of bringing up an uneconomic holding in a congested district to an economic level, I hold that the addition is given to the holding rather than to the owner, and is given to create an economic holding. If I had my way, I would vest that addition in the person on the day he received it and consolidate it with the parent holding. Then we could say: "At least, there is one holding we can write off our books; it is as good a holding as we can make it." I am not anxious that the Land Commission would recover additions made to the parent holding in that way.

I do not know what steps I will have to take yet about the number of fully-equipped holdings where the people are not living in them. I should acquaint the House of the fact that every possible attempt has been made by those people to evade the 1946 Act. Our inspectors report that in many cases the grass is growing in the doorways, the doors have never been opened and there is no sign of life. The houses were built for these people, but they go away and leave them. I have no time for such people. I am sure Deputy Walsh and others can say that, along the west coast from Donegal to Kerry, there are hundreds of thousands of people anxiously looking forward to the day when they will have a decent holding of land to live in. At present they are struggling hard to rear a family and by some miracle or other they do succeed in many cases in rearing families decently on a few miserable acres of reclaimed mountain.

On the question of evictions for non-payment of annuities, there may possibly be one eviction out of the whole number listed in the book. Even in that particular case, I am not sure that there has been an eviction. In reply to a question by Deputy Byrne to-day in the House, I explained the position in regard to failure to pay annuities. If a certain number of people fail to pay annuities in a particular county, we have to recover those annuities from the county rates. That means that the honest ratepayers of a county are faced with the burden. The ratepayers at present in every county of the Twenty-Six are pretty heavily burdened with rates, without carrying as well certain lazy people who do not work their land and consequently do not and cannot pay their annuities. The decent and honest workers and ratepayers have to pay those rates. I move to report progress.

Progress reported, the Committee to sit again on Tuesday, 8th June.

Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 3 Jun 1948

Vote 52—Office of the Minister for Lands (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 3 Jun 1948