My opinion is that, while rearrangement of those rundale holdings is of the greatest importance, the problem of congestion cannot be solved without securing large tracts of land outside the congested districts to which people from these congested areas will be transferred, thus making more land available in order to strengthen our economy generally and, apart from that, making more land available for the particular idea of better rearrangement. Deputy Moylan has explained, I think, quite clearly that there is no objection on this side of the House to spending whatever amount may be required to secure that proper rearrangement schemes are brought about. Once the Dáil passes the improvement expenditure in the annual Vote for the Land Commission, they have no control over the matter after that.
It is ludicrous to pretend that the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Committee of Public Accounts, or any other machinery that exists can satisfy the House that such expenditure is carried out in the most advantageous, economical and efficient way. That has to be left to the Administration to decide. All that the officers responsible for checking the expenditure are allowed to satisfy themselves upon is that the money has been expended in accordance with the intentions of the Oireachtas. Once it is so expended, either with or without the sanction of the Department of Finance, according as that may or may not be necessary, in fact these bodies and the Comptroller and Auditor-General have very little power, except perhaps to call attention to the size or the unusual character of some transactions.
We are spending these large sums in the western counties; we have been spending them for many years past. Deputy Commons says that he has not seen any good resulting until these young officers or inspectors came into those areas. I think the officers who were trained—there are very few of them left—under the Congested Districts Board or the inspectors who were trained by these in turn ought to have a better understanding and experience of this problem than young men who have even greater abilities or capacity, but who have not got that experience. I think the House will recognise that it is very unusual, as well as this power of determining the nature of a rearrangement scheme, to delegate to the local officer, whatever his experience may be—whether he is a senior inspector of long experience or the type of man that Deputy Commons speaks of, who comes into an area full of enthusiasm and anxious to work hard and give of his best in the service which he represents—the actual allocation of expenditure without, so far as we know, any control whatever or any limitation upon the discretion of the inspector. I presume that, as in the past, if the Minister is going to regulate these matters, he will have to issue instructions of some kind, he will have to issue some headlines. He may even have to issue definite instructions as to the lines upon which these inspectors are to carry out those duties. What is the objection, therefore, to informing the House, if the Minister is not in a position to accept the amendment, what are the lines upon which he proposes to go and what is the type of control which will be exercised over the inspectors? It has been admitted, even by those who think the amendment is going too far, that they may not be men who have long experience and that they may very well make mistakes.
The Minister emphasised very strongly that these rearrangement schemes were the schemes of the tenant. In reply to objections from this side of the House, he was very emphatic and repeated more than once that the scheme has to be agreed upon by the tenants, that they have to give their consent. It seems to me that, if the inspector is dealing with these tenants of the Land Commission and trying to secure their consent, knowing that he must get their signature to the scheme in order to make it operative or otherwise all his trouble and his many visits to the area will have gone for nought, he may be possibly inclined—it is not outside the bounds of reason—to go further than he should go. If the tenants know that he has complete discretion in this matter as the Minister's representative, that there is no control, no limit to the amount of expenditure he may make in improving the hereditaments of the rundale holders or otherwise spending money to try to improve matters for them, it is surely not going to help the solution of this problem if they feel that all they have to do is to prolong the agitation, refuse their consent, and demand better terms.
When I was in the Land Commission, one of the reasons, I was told, why more progress was not made in this matter of dealing with congested tenants was that under the old Congested Districts Board the rundale tenants knew that they had to deal with the inspector and that he was their friend. They did not always recognise that. But, in the long run, I think due to the efficacy of their work and their knowledge and experience and the bonds that grew up between them and the people, these inspectors were able to persuade the tenants very often to take the necessary jump and put their signatures to these schemes. According to the information given to me by one of these inspectors when leaving the service—I did not ask him for this information; he gave it—when an Irish Government came in they thought that by going to the T.D. over the inspector's head they would do better.
"Now," he said, "after a long period of time during which they have been trying to go to the T.D.s over the inspector's head to try to do better than they thought the inspector was doing for them, they have recognised that the inspector is as good a friend of theirs as anybody else, that he is trying to do his best for them, and I think they are reaching the position that they recognise that the inspector ought to be allowed to do what he considers right and just without having any political pressure."
Undoubtedly, once the Minister comes into all these matters of rearrangement, in spite of the assurance he has given that there will be no change, with the adjustments he has made in the matter of the powers of rearrangement he is going to have, I cannot reconcile his statements with a complete exclusion of the Minister from matters of expenditure.
I firmly believe, as I have already said, that he would be saving himself a great deal of trouble, if, whether he can accept the amendment or not, he would give the House some indication of the lines on which he proposes to work and some more substantial assurance than he seems prepared to give that there will be effective control in this matter, and that local officers will not be subjected to a species of undue pressure in order to make them inclined to accept very unreasonable demands.
