——with an opportunity of being fair to the owner afforded by the words written into the legislation in 1923, there is no reason why he might not have indicated that policy to the Land Commission and increased the price. The suggestion that "market value" is a more clear and definite indication of what the Land Commission proposes to do seems to me to be without any adequate foundation. Having, shall I say, pestered him with demands to tell us what exactly he considers "market value" and to say why he differentiated it from "market price", I have no further wish to argue with him on the subject. I believe he wishes to pay a better price and while he might be satisfied with "fair to the Land Commission and fair to the owner" he has chosen a new expression, that means now, I suppose, that the owner will be paid more for the land. But there is included in this piece of legislation proposals that are not quite strange in Land Commission transactions, that is, that compensation for damage and compensation for disturbance will be paid to the owner. If that has not been the general practice in the Land Commission, it is going to add further to the cost of the land. There is, however, a further proposal in relation to price which is much more important and much more significant. In future when the landowner, is paid market value, when he is paid compensation for disturbance and compensation for any consequential damage, he is not to be asked to repay to the State the advance which the State made to him for the purchase of the land.
Responsibility for commitments, the sanctity of contracts, the payment of debts—these are moral concepts without which there cannot be any successful commercial intercourse between individuals, or between an individual and a Government. The position is that as regards the greater portion of the land with which the Land Commission will be dealing under this Bill, all that land has been purchased as a result of the State making an advance of the price on very generous terms and over a long period of years. There is a contract, definite and implicit, between the owner of the land and the man who got the advance, for the repayment of the annuity.
Some people have said that, because of this country's refusal to transmit the annuities to England, the farmer is no longer liable for payment to the State. The change of the payee does not seem to me to lessen the responsibility of the payer or to break his contract. There has been only one case in Irish history where a payment was refused and that was as a result of the Act of Attainder of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, when his tenants refused to pay their rents to the British Government, and nobody can, in my opinion, under all the circumstances, make that a precedent for a farmer's refusal to pay the Government.
I could talk a good deal on the question of Britain's attitude towards these annuities, but I do not propose to take up the time of the House in so doing. Maybe some time I could be invited to County Mayo to lecture on that particular matter; it might be very interesting for the landholders and congests down there in Michael Davitt's country.
It may be possible to waive a moral concept like sanctity of contract, payment of debts and responsibility of commitments in politics; in the green wood of politics we might bend the sapling without damage, but in the dry wood of commercial intercourse such a bending would be attended by an irreparable fracture. The pursuit of abstract justice is rather a fruitless one and, while this proposal of the Minister is not commercially or economically laudable—and it is even morally bad—nevertheless, politics being the science of the second best, we have to accept a lesser evil in the hope that, as a result of our acceptance of it, the Minister will be able to remove a much greater social evil.
I want to point out that in paying market value—and I must assume the Minister conceives what market value is, payment of compensation for damage, payment of compensation for disturbance and the cesser of the payment of land annuities due and repayable—the price of transactions in land by the Land Commission will be far heavier than it has been heretofore. Furthermore, every cent of this money will now have to be borne by the taxpayer; John Citizen carries the burden. Therefore, it is not unfair to ask the Minister what his proposals are in regard to land administration in the future.
The Minister for Agriculture has proposed a scheme of land rehabilitation and he has intimated definitely to the Dáil what the cost of that scheme will be — £40,000,000. The Minister for Social Welfare proposes to introduce a new scheme of Social Welfare. He has indicated the amount that will be spent annually by the State in putting this scheme into operation. Now, when there is no longer a question of a State advance repayable by the farmer in the case of land that is to be acquired—I assume, purchased in the open market —we must understand the taxpayer has to assume a very heavy burden of taxation. It is reasonable to ask, therefore, what the amount of that taxation will be, roughly, over the years.
We can only secure some view of that by having a statement from the Minister as to the amount of land possible of resumption, acquisition or purchase for his purposes in the country. How much land does he want for his purpose? How far does he think that amount of land that he nominates will go towards the solution of congestion? For how many years are we to continue the acquisition, resumption and purchase of land in order to solve the problem which is nearest the Minister's heart? This is a grave problem involving a tremendous amount of money. It is a great social problem that we all desire to solve.
We would like to know now what is the Minister's estimate of the cost of it. In view of the fact that John Citizen has to find the money, the only basis on which we can tax people is that, as a result of the taxation, we are directly and solely concerned with the abolition of a great social evil, and so every care must be taken by the Minister in future administration— more than ever before in view of the changed circumstances—to see that the one particular evil with which we are concerned is the one which he will tackle.
Another change made by the Minister in existing legislation was the cause of a good deal of discussion here, discussion which the Minister called obstruction. But the Minister came in without really considering what exactly he wanted, and what the real limit of his needs was, irrespective of its justification or otherwise. As a result of what he called obstruction, he moderated his view very definitely, and, if only to secure that amount of moderation, the debate on the Land Bill was well worth while. In a democratic country public representatives must always meet the pressure of public opinion—call it influence or pull if you like. They must not merely serve the country and the Dáil, but they are expected to serve their constituents, too. Of course, when I do that—that is corruption. However, all Deputies have been approached by a constituent at some period or another with a demand, possibly a legitimate demand and possibly otherwise, but with a demand that is urgent and pressing.
Everyone knows that. The Minister is a Deputy. In his own constituency, he is not the big brass hat that we all revere and look up to here, but just a man dependent on the votes of the people, and thus a man to whom demands may be made by the people. In order to obviate the pressure of that demand, it was decided in 1933 by this obviously corrupt Fianna Fáil Party to remove from the Minister—that the Minister would divest himself of—certain powers which, if he had, he might be tempted, by the pressure and the demand in his own constituency or by his own colleagues, to give way to, and so these excepted matters were, to my mind, very wisely excepted. The Minister proposes to change that, to change the legislation so radically as to make these excepted matters in the 1933 Act partly valueless. We did protest, and eventually, the Minister saw a little bit of light, and while he does retain to himself certain powers, powers which he will regret, nevertheless we have gone a long way to change his mind, and when he has as much experience in the Department as some of his predecessors he probably will change his mind again a good deal. Of course, I know that Deputy Commons tried to reverse it the other way.
There is a great desire on the part of Deputies for speed in the Land Commission. Deputy Hickey is afflicted with that bug. Now, Talleyrand was really a great minister and he deprecated zeal in making decisions as very often unwise. I would not urge the Minister to speed. Of course, looking at the amount of work done under the Minister in the Land Commission last year, I do not suppose I need deprecate the idea that the should be speedy.
The Minister, in speaking of the Appeal Tribunal, suggested that he was going to make a change on the plea that there was no longer any work for the Appeal Tribunal. I would like the Minister some time, when he takes a stand, that he would stand just there where he is, not for the purpose of letting me hit him quickly but so that I would know exactly where he is. He changed his mind several times as to the reason why he was changing the Appeal Tribunal. Now, I take the view that when a Government selects a man for a high office that, except he has shown a lack of probity in that office, the Government that succeeds the Government which appointed him should respect him in his office. That is my view. I think the Minister was very wrong in reversing the decision that was made by the previous Government in creating the Appeal Tribunal.
I want to repeat the suggestion that I made in relation to men employed on acquired or resumed estates. It has been the practice of the Land Commission that such men are given pieces of land, sometimes adequate and sometimes inadequate, for the purpose of compensating them for the loss of their employment. That system has not worked well, and it is now proposed to adopt a system of a gratuity. I think the Minister has not gone far enough in relation to that matter. I want to press on him again the idea that, when an estate is taken over and a number of men lose their employment, the gratuity be decided on which is to be paid to each of these men, and that if afterwards any of them gets land and proves unsatisfactory, he shall not be permitted to sell the land but will be dispossessed and given his gratuity. I can see a good deal of difficulty in solving congestion if we propose to give small patches of land to various unemployed men on which they cannot make a satisfactory living, or to men who are of themselves personally useless as landowners or farmers.
The Minister has another idea in regard to land acquisition, that is, the purchase of land offered for sale in the open market. Whatever reason the Minister had for defining exactly what the price was he intended to pay in relation to resumed or acquired land, I do not think he could have any argument in relation to the question of the value and price of land offered in the open market. The market value of a farm sold in the open market is the price paid for it and no other. Market value must, in that particular case, be market price. When the Minister introduced this proposal for the purchase of land in the open market, his idea, he told us, was to purchase farms of £12, £16 and £20 valuation, farms with houses, fences, pumps—all the amenities of a going concern—and these were to be purchased for migrants. Afterwards he changed his mind and now, apparently, if I understand him correctly, he proposes in a great measure to change the present system of land acquisition and resumption for a system of purchase of every piece of land in the country. When I heard him say that he proposed to divide these farms I was exceptionally worried because it seems to me that when he proposed to purchase a farm as a going concern, if he proposed to divide it, he would merely destroy the farm as a going concern.
I think the Minister should be more courageous about the price of this land. Deputy Sweetman was most complimentary about the courage of the Minister in regard to this particular Bill. I think he should have more courage and decide to pay the market price for these holdings he is purchasing because I can visualise that his proposed transactions are bound to be a failure. If the Land Commissioners will get into a huddle in Merrion Street and decide what the price is to be paid for a farm —and, as Deputy Commons knows, they are conservative gentlemen—when their agent goes down to the country to purchase that farm, he is bound hand and foot and there will be no success in the acquisition of these farms.
Much as I am interested in congestion, I do not think that we can consider congestion solely and neglect consideration of ordinary agricultural economics. We must be very careful in our transactions in regard to land that we do not create a situation which will be a replacement of the evil which we seek to destroy. The Minister, I think, knows exactly what I mean. But, there is one difficulty about the relief of congestion—one great difficulty —and I think the Minister has only to be told what it is to take action in regard to it, because it is an evil thing, that is, consolidation. There have been, during the war years, known to me, the purchase of farm after farm throughout the country by one individual. I know single individuals who bought ten, 12 and 15 farms. That is eviction. It is the removal of farming families from the land. It is as evil a thing, almost, as the evictions of the Land League days. The Minister has power to step in and take over any one of these multiplied farms and divide it for his purpose and we on this side of the House will give him full support when he is doing so. I do think it is very wrong to permit any man, because he has made a tremendous amount of money, legally or illegally, in other fields, to evict the farmers of Ireland from their land by the use of that money. That should be stopped.
Anyhow, I hope that the Minister will tell us how much land he wants, how much money he wants, how long he will take for the job. Any ordinary building contractor will give a full estimate of all these things for any building you ask him to put up. The Minister, with all the resources of his Department, all his native intelligence, all the information that is behind him in the Department, can surely be able to make a very shrewd estimate now as to what exactly he needs in money and time to complete the work, as far as it can be completed, that he wants to do.
Finally, the Minister said on a few occasions during this debate, explaining certain sections in the Bill, certain omissions in the Bill, "I did this for the purpose of tidying up legislation." It is about time that we should try to get rid of the network of legislation that chokes a good deal of activity in regard to land. Any lawyer dealing with this Bill—many of them are not too competent—has, first of all, to examine the Interpretation Act, 1937. Then he has to go on to the Public Works Act; then to the Land Clauses Act. Then he has to deal with a complexity of Acts—the Land Purchase Acts, 1881 to 1891. He goes from there and trips over the Local Loan Funds Act, 1935. Then he has the Forestry Act, 1946, the Settled Land Acts, 1882 to 1890, the Registration of Title Acts, 1891 and 1942, the Land Reclamation Act, 1949, the Emergency Powers Orders and 26 sections of seven Land Acts. How in the name of God is any layman or any legal mind capable of interpreting this particular Land Act? I studied the Land Bill carefully; I confess I did not understand one-tenth of it. I know and I am convinced that the Minister is in the same position even though he came here to explain it. I do not blame him. I can see the muddlement of Deputy Flanagan when he prepares after to-day's 30 questions to open up fire in Offaly and Leix. Thirty questions on land acquisition.
I do not like the Bill and as far as I am concerned, having said all that, the Minister can have it now.
