If this Bill has served no useful purpose but the one it has amply justified its entry into this House. I am speaking of the fact that without a single exception all Deputies —Fianna Fáil and those belonging to each of the Parties supporting the Government — are unanimous in the desire that the relief of congestion should be the first and principal problem tackled by the Land Commission. I am exceedingly glad of that because, let me say here and now, while the relief of congestion was the first and foremost aim of the Land Commission since I took charge of it I had certain misgivings. I am glad that the Opposition Deputies, who had long experience in the Government and who must have known as much about the problem as I do, are backing me in this so that I can make it clear—I think it was Deputy Hilliard of Meath who raised the matter—to all concerned that the relief of congestion will be the first problem dealt with and that until that problem is settled no other project will be embarked upon by the Land Commission.
Any Land Bill, naturally enough, raises quite an amount of controversy in this House and rightly so because any Land Bill could very easily undermine and perhaps destroy the very foundation of our national wealth. Agriculture is our basic industry and the output from that industry depends on the security the farmers of the country feel in the ownership of their land. If any measure or even an inflammatory speech by any person in public life tended to undermine the security that nearly every farmer feels he holds it would be instantly reflected in a drop in agricultural output. That is the reason I am very glad that with very few exceptions most of the Deputies were careful and guarded in their statements and desired to see the Land Commission going ahead.
There have been a very few suggestions that the Land Commissioners should be abolished and that the Minister, the civil servants or inspectorial staff of the Department of Lands should take over the powers and functions that the commissioners now hold. I am referring to the excepted matters which are in Section 6 of the 1933 Act and are restated in Section 10 of the present Bill. The security of tenure of every farmer in this country depends on the fact that lay commissioners hold these powers. Being a farmer myself, not a very big farmer, I want to make it clear that I would be the very first to oppose strenuously any attempt to take away these excepted matters from the commissioners because it would undermine the security of tenure of every farmer in the Twenty-Six Counties. Realising the seriousness of such a step as that I hope that Deputies will reflect seriously before they tamper with the present system that has obtained all through the years since the 1923 Act and which was repeated in the 1933 Act. For the sake of tidying up and keeping land legislation as neat as possible I find it necessary to repeal Section 6 of the 1933 Act, but I have re-embodied the principal portion of it with only a very slight change in Section 10 of this Bill.
Thirty-three Deputies all told have spoken on the Bill and I am sorry to say that a good many of them did not seem to have read the Bill at all. It was more like a debate on the Estimate than a discussion on the Bill and there are many points in the Bill which have been dealt with only by very few Deputies. I should say that Deputies Ben Maguire, Commons, McQuillan, Captain Cowan and Ruttledge, together with Deputy Moylan, came closest to the points in the Bill. Other Deputies, I am sorry to say, wandered completely away from it. I must say that Opposition Deputies pulled quite a formidable number of ghosts out of the cupboard and galloped them round the House for the last three days, and the poor ghosts must be out of breath. They complained that the Minister was taking powers that no Minister had before. I certainly am taking powers that no Minister had before and I am glad to do it. The power referred to is that a senior inspector of the Land Commission will now have the authority to sanction a rearrangement scheme, but most of the Deputies who seemed afraid of that power were not from the West or from the congested areas.
While it would be most undesirable that the Minister should have the power to acquire or allot land—I would be the very first to oppose it—a rearrangement scheme is entirely different. A rearrangement scheme in the congested areas is the putting together and enlargement of holdings on which the tenant already resides. From the legal point of view perhaps it is really allotting land; it is getting the tenants to give up their rights for a split second and then go back into the new enlarged holding. There have been many delays and useful rearrangment schemes have fallen through during the Fianna Fáil period and since because there is no need for a rearrangement scheme to come up to the commissioners. A rearrangement scheme is not Land Commission at all. It is a scheme of the tenants who are being rearranged and a scheme cannot be put through until every single one of the tenants in an area which is being rearranged agree. It is not a scheme of the Land Commission or the Minister or the inspectors on the job down the country. It is the tenants' own scheme. As soon as the tenants have sanctioned that scheme amongst themselves and have agreed to take something from the inspector, it does not matter who sanctions it. That is the big difference between sanctioning a rearrangement scheme and the actual allotting of a person to a holding, whether he has surrendered a holding in a congested area or whether it is a new holding to a landless man. I do not propose to touch those. I would not touch them. If I were in Opposition or were a Deputy on this side, I would oppose any Minister touching them, for the reasons I set out at the beginning.
It has been suggested that the Minister now can favour some of his own supporters, if he wishes, in his own constituency and can favour the supporters of other Government members if they come to him. First, let me say that that is a very foul reflection on the inspectoral staff down the country. Short as my experience of the Land Commission staff has been, whatever else I have found, I have found them scrupulously honest and correct and I can say they can hold their own with the staff of any other Government Department in this country or in any other country. I suppose that Deputies have approached them from time to time to do things. Perhaps the Deputy did not know those things were wrong. Everyone has asked Land Commission inspectors to do things and in each case the inspector says: "No, I will not do it; first, it may not lie within my power, that is a job for the commissioners; and secondly, if it were within my power, I do not propose to do it, for certain reasons"—and he will give very sound reasons. For that reason, I say it is a foul reflection on the inspectoral staff to say they would give way even now. Suppose I did ask them to interfere in a rearrangement scheme and give John X more land, or at a cheaper rent or annuity than any of his neighbours, that scheme would be gone like a snap, because other people in the townland or area that was to be rearranged would instantly refuse to agree to the rearrangement scheme.
As a matter of fact, the best rearrangement schemes are now going through at a rapid rate, in the case of rundale townlands and intermixed holdings, because the inspector is now adopting the attitude of asking the tenants themselves to point out to him what they would like, what kind of rearrangement and how they would like a particular land striped. Many have gone through that it has failed inspectors for 30 years to rearrange. There is no foundation for any fear. I am not taking any extra power to myself. Let it be clearly understood that the power of a senior inspector to sanction a rearrangement scheme is really not worth anything, for the reason that the success of a rearrangement scheme depends on the tenants themselves.
Another point about Section 23 is the power to purchase land in the open market. Some Deputies have said that abuses will arise. First of all, many did not seem to be clear as to the intention of the Land Commission in purchasing land in the open market. In order to relieve congestion, it is desirable to have a certain type of standard holding. The present method of compulsory acquisition and resumption is a very slow process. I am quite safe in saying that, even with the best intentions and the greatest speed possible, because of the statutory safeguards and because also the lay commissioners in dealing with the people from whom they are acquiring land, have a little touch of humanity. They know they are taking land from a farmer—it does not matter whether he is a big, a middle-sized or a small farmer—and they know they are causing him serious disturbance and a certain amount of fear also. From the time that the proceedings are first instituted until a migrant can be moved in to a holding on that farm, when it is allotted, divided, fenced, and house and outoffices erected on it, a period roughly of two-and-a-half to three years elapses. I have examined the problem from every possible angle and, without endangering the whole structure of fixity of tenure in this country, it would be dangerous to introduce any legislation which would narrow that gap and reduce it to a shorter period than three years.
That has forced me to turn my attention elsewhere for land. I found that, each year in this country, approximately 200,000 acres to 250,000 acres is offered for sale. Whilst the vast bulk of that land does not interest the Land Commission for many reasons, through that stream of land are holdings— readymade holdings on which there are nice slated houses, with valuations ranging from £12 to £20 or £25, holdings which are much nicer and more desirable from the migrants' point of view than any holdings in a new farm. Let it be remembered that the holding which the Land Commission provides is a very raw, bald, cold holding, very often just one block of land, surrounded by a fence on the outside, with no internal fences. Before the farmer can work it, he must divide it into fields and erect fences. There is a nice dwelling house and nice outoffices, but not sufficient outoffice accommodation to include all the things which the most successful type of farmer likes to have. I am referring to the farmer who indulges in mixed farming—a little tillage, a little grazing and some meadow. There is no outoffice accommodation for fowl, pigs, or anything else. The usual concrete walks around the house, that one associates with a neat house and a well-kept house, are not there, nor is the spring well, or perhaps a few fruit trees in the garden.
The truth of the matter is that, even with the present high price of land, we can buy such holdings in the open market to-day from £400 to £700 cheaper than the much poorer class of holding that we supply. That is the reason I introduced Section 23. It does not mean that the Land Commission is going into the open market to buy every holding that comes up for sale. We might not buy one out of 30. Nevertheless, I hope to pick up from 50 to 100 extra migrants' holdings each year by means of Section 23, to supplement the holdings provided under the usual powers that the Land Commission have and will have, of compulsory acquisition and so on, that we are familiar with all over the country.
Many Deputies have asked about the size of the question still remaining. Deputy Cowan asked what kind of a countryside the Land Commission would leave behind it. These are very reasonable questions. The type of countryside I would like to see behind me is a countryside with an eye to the future. Deputy Cowan is the only member, out of 33 who spoke, who dealt with that. He asked whether the economic holdings provided to-day by the Land Commission would be economic or would be only regarded as dens of congestion, in 50 years' time. He was the only one with the foresight to look that far ahead and ask whether what we do now, while it may look nice and very good now and for the next ten years, might prove to be an evil in 40 or 50 years' time. We must try to establish holdings of such a size that, no matter how the wind blows, they will be fairly comfortable and secure. That is the first thing. The size that was the rule during the last Government's period of office has been increased now. I am not satisfied with the increase, however. I have set my cap at around about 20 Irish acres, that is 33 to 35 statute acres. I would much rather see around the 40 mark, if land were more plentiful or more available, as we have no business easing congestion in one place by creating almost as bad a type of congestion in another place. I am sorry to say that that is what happened in the past—to a certain extent, at least. A good deal of blame has been put on the head of the Land Commission.
Deputy Moylan, my predecessor, is in the House now. Let me say quite clearly that the Land Commission have been blamed many times when they should not have been blamed because, while it is true that the Land Commission are free to act within the scope of Section 6 of the 1933 Act and will be free to act within the scope of Section 10 of this Bill, nevertheless, the Government decides what policy the Land Commission shall put into operation. The Land Commission, being good civil servants, are the instrument by which the Government implements its policy. If the Government says "give land to every man with a red head", they must seek out the redheaded men and give them land. If the Government says "give holdings of 10 acres in size with such a dwelling-house and such outoffices", they must do that.
They have always obeyed whatever Government was in office. They obeyed the Cumann na nGaedheal Government when they were in power. They obeyed Fianna Fáil during the 16 years that they were in office and they are only too anxious and willing to implement the policy of this Government. If this Government went out and a new Government were to adopt some new policy that has not yet been thought of or heard of, the Land Commission, being good civil servants, would be the obedient servant of that new Government.
It is all very well to say that the Land Commission did this and that. It is all very well for members of the Opposition now to disclaim all responsibility for what the Land Commission did and to say that they were sheltered by Section 6 of the 1933 Act. No such thing at all. The fact remains that Fianna Fáil, when they came into power, gave, not a vast acreage, but a fairly good acreage of land to people who in some cases did not appreciate it. In some cases holdings were allotted and I am very doubtful as to whether it was not more cruelty than kindness to the allottees to expect them to live on them and work them. To make a successful farmer on a standard holding one needs to be reared on a small holding. Next, one must have had some experience in balancing the budget. If a person is accustomed to wage earning, he is sure of his wage every week and can trim his sails according to that wind. Balancing the budget on the land is quite a different thing because in every year there are perhaps two or three or four lean months and one will not get into the swing of housekeeping in respect of a holding of land in a year or two or three. For that reason it represented a complete change of life for most of these allottees, to throw up their old way of living, whether it was wage earning or anything else, and to go in and live as farmers on standard holdings. I dare say it was intended as a kindness but in many cases it was a cruelty. It should not have been done. The 1946 Act had to be brought in to dispossess many of them. That should not have arisen.
I am very glad that all sides of the House are now keen on one thing, that is, that the relief of congestion must take precedence over every other Land Commission activity. The truth of the matter is that about 5,600 Congested Districts Board holdings and the remainder of the 1933 estates holdings have yet to be rearranged, enlarged, improved and perhaps new dwelling houses, new outoffices, roads, drainage and other improvements have to be provided. In all, 35,000 to 40,000 holdings have yet to be combed out.
I think it was Deputy Beegan who spoke about the Land Commission being slow in vesting. We do not want to shirk our responsibility in vesting these holdings but we do not want to vest these holdings until the holdings are left in fairly right condition. That means getting land, either by compulsory acquisition and resumption on the one hand or through the open market on the other.
Personally, I do not see why we should not make the experiment to see if we can purchase the land that comes on the open market day after day, year after year. It has been said that if we go into the open market we can produce one or other of two evils, possibly a little of both, namely, inflation and deflation of the price of land. Section 23 empowers the Land Commission to purchase in the open market if they so desire. It does not compel them to purchase in the open market. Let me say here, so that it will go on the records of the House, if at any time any serious evil arises from the fact that the Land Commission are bidding or competing in the open market for land I will prevent them at once from continuing to purchase in the open market, and have this faith in the elected representatives of the people to believe that the Minister for Lands who will come after me and the Minister who will succeed him will be open and honest and have an eye to the interest of the people to such an extent that if he finds any evil arising from Section 23 he will not hesitate to come to the House and have it repealed, and to stop the Land Commission from purchasing land in the open market. There is no need to be afraid of it.
It has been said that there will be puffers at these auctions, and so on. I have no experience of it, but I am informed that that sort of thing is very serious at auctions all over the country to-day, so much so, I am told, that many auctions have to be abandoned and the matter fixed by private treaty. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that the Land Commission are not bereft of brains. They will find a way to overcome that difficulty. Secondly, they cannot be stampeded into giving a price greater than they think is right.
What I anticipate will happen is that an inspector in charge of any particular area, if he finds that there is a holding for sale in the open market will notify the commissioners and will probably get permission to furnish a report on the suitability and market value of the holding. The commissioners will fix a price on the information furnished to them and the inspector will either attend the auction or make arrangements to have a bidder at the auction. I cannot see any evil arising out of that. I know that the Department of Agriculture buy land whenever they want it at public auctions. I know that that Department sends inspectors to purchase purebred stock and premium stock at the Spring Show and the shows at Carrick-on-Shannon, Tralee, Limerick, Cork and other places. I have not heard of any evils arising from their presence at these auctions. They are open auctions. Deputies know that the Department of Agriculture will pay 1,000 guineas or 1,200 or 1,500 guineas for a bull. They buy other stock as well. The Department of Industry and Commerce purchase land when they want it. They also have compulsory powers of acquisition and there are no complaints when they acquire land for aerodromes or any other purpose. The Department of Local Government and county managers have similar powers of compulsory acquisition of land or of purchase. We hear of no evils there.
The whole debate centred around the fact that there were six honest men in the Land Commission, namely, the commissioners and all the rest, including the Minister, were a parcel of rogues who could not be trusted one inch. I do not hold with that at all. By this time, I think, I know both the indoor and outdoor staff of the Land Commission and I have yet to meet the first dishonest man amongst them. The number of ordinary little petty mistakes that do occur, perhaps some of them wilfully, is very slight and since I took office, has never merited dismissal in a single case. I do not see why, when we give them a bit of power, they should turn overnight into a very dangerous crowd of men.
The market value of land has raised a good deal of discussion. Deputy Moylan started off and said that at one time he was under the impression that a penalty should attach to a man who owned land and did not use it. He said that in later years he had a little bit more respect for the rights of private ownership. I agree with him fully that, even although a man does not work his land properly, it is his own property and he is entitled to a fair price just as his next door neighbour who works his land is entitled to a fair price.
The fact remains that the Land Commission want land for the relief of congestion. I do not see why the State should shirk the responsibility of facing this problem. Congestion is an evil with which we find ourselves. The Cumann na nGaedheal Government, when they came in, found it there. No living Irishman is responsible for having created it. But just as the Minister for Health had to tackle the problem of tuberculosis, we must face this problem and we will be failing in our duty if we do not eradicate the evil of congestion.
Deputy Ruttledge pointed out that we should establish the greatest number of people on the land in a fair measure of security. That should be the glorious ideal for which we should all work. While there are pockets of congestion and poverty in the congested areas, the first thing is to clear up these pockets. It is from there that there is the flight from the land. It is there that the evils of unemployment, bad housing conditions and so on, are worst.
A strange system obtained for a good while past that, in the case of unvested land resumed by the Land Commission, the amount given for it was equal to the market value. The price given for vested land was determined on the basis that it should be a price which was fair to the Land Commission and to the seller. I could never understand the wording of that clause, because I often fancied myself at a fair with a bullock or a cow and wondering how, if a buyer came to me and said he wanted to buy the beast I had at a price which was fair to me and was, at the same time, fair to him, if I expected a price of £40 and the buyer expected to get it at £30, we would find a means of bridging the gulf or dividing the difference, so to speak.
From the point of view of justice, the man who is vested and who owns his land should get the market value for it, just the same as the man who does not own it. I am referring now to the unvested tenant who does not own his land. He has only a tenancy to sell—the land is the property of the Land Commission, and hence the term "resumption." Why that man should get the market value for what he does not possess while his neighbour on the other side of the road should get a reduced price for what he does possess is beyond me. I have been reading Deputy Moylan's remarks in the Seanad when opposing a private Land Bill introduced by Senator Counihan and the then Senator Sweetman in relation to market value and I find that he very carefully avoided replying to the Bill at all. We are taking the step now and the motive impelling us to do so is the motive of giving justice to those from whom we are taking over.
The second point is that the fear caused by the knowledge up and down the country that the Land Commission were taking land at a lesser price than it was realising in the open market, or at least what was a fair market value, created endless difficulty for the Land Commission and prevented people who would otherwise have offered their land to the Land Commission from doing so. It caused them, in some cases, to take secret methods of disposing of their land, to the irritation of themselves, their neighbours, the Land Commission and all concerned. I have not the slightest doubt that the giving of market value will result in land being offered to us freely.
I hope that will take place, because, to relieve congestion we want land on a big scale and we want it badly. I am very hopeful that the giving of market value will result in land being offered to us by many people for the first time and I want it to go out from this House that, if we do acquire land, we are prepared to give a fair price. We are not prepared to give a price which is unfair to ourselves for land and for that reason I took very good care not to say in the Bill that we were giving market price but that we were giving market value, because I realise that the money of the taxpayers will be used for this purpose and I am the very last who would allow that money to be used wrongfully or badly.
When an estate, a townland or group of townlands, is about to be rearranged, when the inspector goes in, he is bound to find, as well as occupied holdings, a number of derelict or non-residential holdings, holdings from which the people have fled, as Deputy Commons said. I think it was he who said that the congestion problem was slowly but surely settling itself, because of the flight from the land. That is perfectly true. He knows it and I know it. I know that the Galway Deputies know it, as does every Deputy from an overcrowded constituency. It is slowly but surely settling itself.
I told the House earlier that there were 35,000 to 40,000 holdings in need of enlargement, rearrangement, improvement, etc. I do not want the House by any means to misunderstand me and think that all these 35,000 to 40,000 holdings are residential holdings. If a survey were taken in the morning of these holdings which we have not vested yet and which we are deliberately refraining from vesting until we can improve and enlarge them, I think I would not be far wrong in saying that the truth of the matter would be that from 15,000 to 17,000 of them only would be found to be residential. In other words, holdings have become non-residential at a terrifically rapid rate in the congested areas. Moving around the country, one sees tumbledown houses and signs that families have left, leaving some neighbour to use the holding or to purchase it and double up a number of holdings. When I say that 35,000 to 40,000 have yet to be enlarged and improved, I want it to be clearly understood that, while I have no figures to go on—it is only a suspicion—I think that only about half that number would be found to be residential, and the problem is not as great as we might think.
Deputy Derrig said that we will not see the end of congestion and that neither would those who will come after us. I do not believe that at all. I am very careful not to be overoptimistic. I want to take a hard, cold, businesslike view of the problem. I believe congestion can be settled. It will not be in three, four, five or ten years' time, but I believe that, in about 12 years' time, if the proper effort is made—and, now that I have the backing of the House, it will give me great encouragement to go ahead—and if the effort is kept up, the end of the congestion problem should be in sight. I do not at all hold the gloomy view that it is going to stretch on for the next 50 or 70 years, because if it does, there will not be any need to settle the problem—it will have settled itself. That is the truth of the matter.
The market value of land will go a long way towards easing the problem. It is going, first, to obviate the long legal tangles in which owners of land have involved the Land Commission, because of the fear that the Land Commission were taking their land for less than its market value, and it was very hard to blame them. Some Deputies might go so far as to suggest that the land should be taken from the big men anyway. If we are to have respect for the rights of private ownership, it does not matter whether a man has 1,000 acres or a 1,000 square yards— we must respect his right.
This question of price raised another ghost which was trotted around the House pretty well—the fear that the annuity fixed on the land for which an increased price would be given would be clapped on to the allottee. Let me assure the House that, while the price of land enters into the fixation of the annuity to a certain extent, or in a certain way, the cardinal principle in the matter of fixing the annuity is that the annuity should be determined on the basis of what the land would be able to pay in the bad as well as the good year. While the agricultural community are at present experiencing a wave of prosperity which they never experienced before, we would not be justified in fixing now an annuity which the farmers could bear, but which, if a depression in agricultural produce came in two, three or five years' time, they would not be able to pay, because such a procedure would be nothing short of madness from the Land Commission point of view and from the national point of view as well.
It would have one of two results— either the farmers could not pay their annuities, thereby creating a first-class problem for the Land Commission, or the Land Commission would use its full powers and come down and dispossess the annuitants, and the trouble then would be that, before you could re-allot that land, the annuity would have to be altered. There is a loss on resale, in certain cases—there is no getting away from that. It is not, I must say, serious and will not be serious, even with the increased price which will be paid for land. Nevertheless, my view is that I do not see why— and the present Government does not see why—the State should not sink a certain amount of money in the relief of congestion so that that problem can be brought to an end once and for all and will not be a recurring problem.
Deputy Moylan has spoken of the purchase of land in the open market as likely to make the Land Commission a permanent body. I think I have dealt with that already by saying that I hoped that within 12 years the problem of congestion will have been solved. If Deputy Burke had his way, the Land Commission would not alone be a permanent body but would become a Colossus which would eat up every other Government Department. He wanted us to make roads, to sink wells and to do many other things which are really the function of local authorities. There should be some finality in the work of the Land Commission. The Land Commission was established to buy out the landlords of this country and to make every tenant farmer the owner of his own land. The relief of congestion, the enlargement and improvement of holdings was a secondary matter. From the time the Land Commission was first formed down through the years a vast number of farmers were made the owners of these farms. In recent years we have had in addition the rearrangement and improvements of holdings in the congested areas. Let me say that there are over 50,000 holdings yet to be vested on 1923 Act estates. The Land Commission will be tied down for some years to the work of revesting these holdings and secondly to the work of the relief of congestion.