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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Apr 1950

Vol. 120 No. 9

Committee on Finance. - Vote 47—Lands (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration.—(Deputy Moylan.)

The Minister moved a Vote yesterday for £800,000. The Book of Estimates states that the net amount he requires is £1,500,000. I was puzzled about the figure the Minister mentioned in moving the Vote yesterday. I suppose there is an explanation for it. It cannot possibly be Appropriations-in-Aid because that is taken into account in the net figure of £1,500,000 that I have mentioned.

The rest of the sum has already been passed in the Vote on Account some weeks ago. That is the normal financial procedure.

It is news to me. I thought it was usual to move the full amount on the Estimate.

It is a minor matter. I support Deputy Killilea's statement that we are handicapped through lack of information on important matters with which the Estimate deals. Mistakes have arisen here through quotations from reports which are a year late. Deputies cannot be blamed for quoting from these reports since there is no up-to-date report available.

Deputy Moylan referred to the work of a year and a half ago.

I am aware of that but the Minister might have supplied the deficiency in his opening statement. It is inevitable that the Land Commission cannot have an up-to-date report but the Minister could have given us the main facts. One point on which he could have given information was the amount of land acquired and distributed. Deputy Moylan cannot be blamed for having made the mistake he did because the information he had at his disposal is contained in the report for the year ending 31st March, 1949.

Statements have been made here, and the reports bear them out, that the Minister has not succeeded in appreciably increasing the amount of land distributed. It is the Land Commission that is responsible and not the Minister personally. During his predecessor's period in office—that is during the war years particularly— 20,000 acres were distributed. A great deal of ballyhoo has been talked about what the present Minister would do. Last year the total area distributed was 22,000 acres. In the year 1949/50 there was a slight increase on that, namely, 28,000 acres.

Is that small?

The distribution of 20,000 acres during the war years compares very favourably with that figure. I would have thought there would have been a considerable increase with all the enthusiasm and the new brooms which have come to the aid of the Land Commission in the meantime.

There were not 20,000 acres every year. One year it was only half that amount.

Deputy Davin stated that the Minister had no land on hands to divide when he came into office and that the pool was completely empty. In the year ending 31st March, 1949, the Land Commission acquired 7,732 acres. In that same year they divided 22,574 acres. There is a difference there of 15,000 acres. It was not acquired in that year and it must, therefore, have been in the pool when the Minister came into office.

A good number of old holdings that should have been divided were lying there before I took office.

Mr. de Valera

You cannot have it both ways.

The fact is there were 15,000 acres there. What I deplore most in connection with land distribution is the "constituency" outlook. I think Parliament should look upon this from a national point of view and come to the aid of those people who have no other means of getting their conditions alleviated except with the assistance of Parliament. The Land Commission is an independent body subject to direction and control only in relation to policy. We know that policy cannot be implemented except with the co-operation of Parliament. Yet we hear Deputies state publicly here that the law will be broken unless we pander to the needs of a particular area or county. I cannot see how the Land Commission can carry out its policy if that is the attitude adopted by the representatives of the people. There are conflicting opinions on both sides of the House. I do not say that is peculiar to a particular Party. I think it is largely geographical. We all know that there is local pressure in certain areas. This country has been described by outsiders as an empty country. Surely it should be possible to divert some of the population into the empty parts of it, thereby helping to rationalise agriculture.

I want now to refer to Section 23 of the Land Bill. Under that, the Land Commission will be empowered to acquire holdings at public auctions.

Section 26.

In that section there is no reference to migrants. The Land Commission reports tell us that under the group migration scheme 336 families were transferred to good holdings from the congested areas. I want to remind the Minister that, since he became Minister, only one family was removed and his failure to make any reference to group migration is, in my opinion, a very bad fault in his statement. He elaborated on how rearrangement was carried out and he dealt with revesting and things of that sort which are not nearly as important as the major work of resettlement. What I am inclined to take as the meaning of the avoidance of any reference to migration and the new powers which the Minister has taken to acquire farms put up for auction, is that he is going to substitute one for the other.

I do not get that.

I mean that for the future whatever hopes people have in the congested areas of having their problems settled, the necessary land for that purpose can only be got, according to present pointers, from land that will be put on the market for auction.

That is not so.

And the Land Commission is not going to be encouraged to use its compulsory powers for the purposes of group migration.

I never said that.

I know the Minister did not say it. He avoided very carefully any reference to migration, good, bad or indifferent.

The reason being that the figures are not complete. The same applied largely to the acreage acquired and resumed. Unless I have accurate figures I do not like to stand over them. I like to have accurate figures.

The reports are complete up to the 31st March, 1949, and they tell us on the authority of the Land Commission that 336 families were migrated since group migration was initiated but since the Minister took over only one family under that scheme has been migrated. The Minister cannot deny that. If the number migrated during the past 12 months were considerable, I am sure he would not have omitted to refer to it in his opening statement. For the benefit of people who are in the habit of decrying migration and telling the country that it has cost an enormous amount of money by way of special assistance, I may say that if anybody examines the report of the Land Commission he will find that special assistance per family amounted only to about £190— the exact figure, I think, is £194. I do not think that is an enormous figure in view of the amount of work entailed in transferring families. The public were given to understand that the figure runs into £700 or £800 by way of special financial assistance. I hope that will get as much attention as the misleading figures that have been published from time to time. While I do not say that exact figures were mentioned, reference was made to "huge amounts." I do not think that for work of this kind, £190 per family could be looked upon as a "huge amount." These people gave up over 7,000 acres and they got in return 9,000 acres so that it was not 100 per cent. free gift.

I deplore also the comparisons made between migrants and landless men or between any two categories of people who have been given land. Deputy Giles' remarks in this House on this question of migrants have been very offensive from time to time. He used words like "wasters". I want to point out, if comparisons must be made, that in one parish in County Meath to one half of which migrants from the West were brought and in the other part of which landless men from Meath were accommodated with the same size of holding and given the same sort of accommodation, in five or six years the land of the County Meath men was let out in conacre to the men from the West who had their own holdings tilled up to the limit. They were able to take in addition the landless men's holdings in conacre at a rent. I do not think any migrant's holding was let in that way. Every migrant family brought up, with the exception of one or two, who left quickly, justified the confidence placed in them. Figures were given to us before the war of the production of food by these families and the comparative production, if it could be called such, of holdings which they left. The picture was one to gladden the heart of anyone interested in this question. There was a huge increase in the amount of butter, eggs, potatoes and various other agricultural commodities produced and the standard of living of the people was raised 1,000 per cent.

I have said before in this House that when the Land Commission does a job of work they do it well. I know that in certain cases it is costly and, of necessity, must be. Therefore, I am not going to support those who attack the Land Commission right, left and centre. I have criticised them very severely myself when I was behind the Government but it was always for dilatoriness and the snail-like pace they followed but I must certainly say the work they did was first-class.

I made reference to this constituency outlook and I do not think the Minister himself is free from blame. Again let me refer to the reports of the Land Commission. I have only the reports up to March, 1949. There was in the whole of Connaught for the years ended March, 1948 and March, 1949, an increase of 2,600 acres in the amount of land distributed.

What year was that?

For the year ended March, 1948, the total number of acres distributed was 5,802 in 613 allotments. In the year ended 31-3-1949 the number of acres distributed in the province of Connaught was 8,487, in 794 allotments. That gives an increase for the year of 2,678 acres. I want to point out to the Minister that practically the whole of that increase was in his county. If other Deputies have been stressing the importance of their own constituencies, I want to say that the Minister has not been behind either. So far as the county of Mayo is concerned it did well. Ní mór liom aon cheo do mhúintir Mhuigheo. Tuilleann siad gach abhfaighinn siad. I do not begrudge what the people of Mayo got. I know it is well coming to them but I hope the Minister will not concentrate on Mayo alone, that he will look across the border into places that also require attention. In fact I hope that he will divide his attention over the whole of the congested counties.

Has the Deputy the figures for the year ending March, 1947?

I have not.

Mind you, they would be interesting.

To give two years is not too bad. When I am saying this to the Minister about the increase in County Mayo, I want to congratulate the people there who have got this extra benefit. I trust the Minister will share his benevolence, if it is the Minister's benevolence that is responsible for it.

The Minister was not in charge of the Land Commission in 1946-47.

He was not Minister either in the year ended March, 1948.

In March, 1949, there was an increase shown of 2,600 acres. The Minister will say that it was his first year as Minister and it brought about a certain change.

I think this question of the availability of land for the Minister's purpose is going to be affected very seriously by the new dispensation in agriculture. Under the 1946 Land Act, the question of the user of land was to be examined more closely and it is possible that under the former policy with regard to agricultural production a great deal more land would become available to the Minister through improper use than will now be the case under the changed policy in agriculture.

With regard to agricultural production, when the Meath Deputies tell us the West of Ireland men would simply starve if they did not have the Meath farmers to buy their yearlings, I say that in the economic war it was not the Meath farmers, but the primary producers in the West, who got the first blow and who continued to bear the brunt until the economic war was settled. In England live stock is the only thing they are prepared to buy. Apparently, we cannot come to terms with them on anything else. It seems to me that if the whole country is going to have stock-raising as a major activity, then if that particular market disappears we will have nothing. For that reason, the Minister's policy of relieving congestion and putting people on the land who will work it and produce all sorts of crops is much better in the long run for the nation than any policy having live stock as the overwhelming and overriding consideration.

That is why the Minister's policy of dividing land is the soundest one and I do not think that the question of cost ought to be made the bugbear that people have made of it. It seems to me from the operations of Land Commission officials in recent times that for the purpose of saving money on the building of houses they are allowing their decisions in the rearrangement of holdings to be affected. If the land on which a man's house is situated is to be transferred to a neighbour in a rearrangement scheme, then the owner of the house is provided by the Land Commission with a house and it does not cost him anything.

That is, a new house, a fairly modern house.

A completely new house and the cost is fully borne by the Land Commission. To avoid having to do that, if the land on which the house is situated is not taken from the ownership of the person who now has it, he will not get a full cost grant. It is not so much the difference between the lesser grant and the full cost of the house that I am concerned with. I am concerned with this desire to economise, because it may produce bad rearrangement. I hope no such instruction has been issued to the Land Commission officials and that they will not allow the question of the cost of the house to interfere with their judgment in the matter of the rearrangement of holdings.

In the case of a rearrangement we always supply a new house to every single tenant.

If you take from the owner of the house the piece of land on which his house is situated, but not otherwise.

I do not quite follow the Deputy there.

I see in the Land Commission report that since the inception of the scheme for the fixation of sand £37,000 has been spent, and since the Minister came in £1,500 has been spent in Donegal, Mayo and Kerry. We have drifting sand problems in County Galway as well, and I will direct the Minister's attention to the Aran Islands. I hope the Land Commission officials will do what they can to tackle the problem in my constituency. I know places where beaches have been blown away almost down to the rock, places where formerly there was good rough grazing. It is too bad that that was allowed to happen.

I wish the Land Commission, through its officials, would convey to the tenants on congested estates what they propose to do for them or what it is possible to do for them. For instance, if an estate can be rearranged without migration, the rearrangement should be tackled straight away. Some of them have been rearranged since the end of the war in my constituency. Where rearrangement cannot satisfactorily be done without migration, it ought not to be beyond the competence of the local Land Commission officials to tell the tenants how many of them must go. That would help to get the tenants talking about the rearrangement plan and deciding on which of them should go. It is bad enough to be held in suspense over the years and not have anything done, but it is still worse when the effect is that you cannot get housing grants or improvement grants of various kinds. These grants are not available and that is the great harm that is being done to those people whose holdings are not rearranged.

The Minister should impress on the Land Commission the necessity of conveying to the tenants on congested estates how many of them will have to move and, if it is possible, they should be told within a year or 18 months of the time when the rearrangement will be undertaken. In that way, you will ease the clamour and the pressure a great deal and you will get far more co-operation from the people than has been the case heretofore.

If there is one Estimate which should be considered soberly and with a proper sense of responsibility, it is the Estimate for the Department of Lands. The whole question of the ownership of land is one of such farreaching importance that, under no circumstances, should it be approached in a Party political way or in a narrow parochial way. The whole question of the size of agricultural holdings, and how the land is to be distributed amongst our people and how it is to be held by them, is one that vitally concerns the nation right down to its very foundations. That is not true of this country alone, but it is true of every nation. Therefore, there should be no attempt made, on the part of any political Party, to seek to capture votes out of the administration of the Department of Lands or the Land Commission.

Hear, hear!

The policy of every Party should be to get behind whatever Government is in power, and behind the Land Commission and urge them to go ahead and solve this problem, not on the lines of political expediency or Party advantage, but on the grounds of equity and national advantage. If we do that I think that, within a reasonable time, we will reach a solution of this difficult problem. I think we should clear our minds as to the nature of the problem and as to its extent.

In this debate there has been a good deal of confused thinking. First of all, we have had the comments made that the Land Commission is too slow, and that it is hopelessly inefficient in its working. That complaint is accompanied by the suggestion that the Minister should take into his own hands the main powers and functions of the Land Commission and administer them himself. Now, I think that is the most dangerous suggestion that could be made. The law courts are slow and cumbersome and sometimes they are not altogether efficient, but I think it would be a deplorable thing if the interpretation of the law in our courts was transferred directly to whatever political Party happened to be in power. I think that the same applies to a certain extent to the Land Commission.

The question of the ownership of land is one of such importance and delicacy that it must be administered by an impartial body that cannot be dragged or pulled, to any great extent at any rate, by political influence or by Party pressure. Now, I feel that if the majority of Deputies think that there is something unduly slow and cumbersome about the operations of the Land Commission or its method of dealing with the work it has to do, it would be a good thing if the Minister were to go into the whole matter of its administration to see if its work could be speeded up, to see if the best results were being got from all those employed in the Department, and to see if there was overlapping, or if there was loss and a waste of time in any particular direction. In that way he might meet the argument of inefficiency and slackness, but I think we must adhere to the principle that the big question of land acquisition and of land allocation should be in the hands of a body that is independent of political Party direction and control.

Now, there is another matter—it also is a big one—in regard to the land question on which we have a very great amount of confusion. The main functions of the Land Commission are, as I have said, land acquisition and land allocation. In other words, they have to decide from whom they will acquire land, and who are the persons to whom it is to be given. These are two very knotty problems for an administrative, or a judicial, body to decide. In every debate that we have here we have arguments put up as to the type of men who should get land and as to the type of men from whom land should be taken. I do not think that the Minister, and his predecessors, have ever laid before the House the principles that guide the Land Commission either in regard to the type of person from whom land is to be acquired or the type of person to whom it will be given.

I shall deal first with the acquisition of land. We have various statements made that land should be taken from those people who own big estates. Deputy Davin drew a distinction between farmers and estate owners. I should like to have that distinction more clearly defined. Questions have been asked in this House, not by Deputy Davin but by other Deputies, in regard to the acquisition of estates of ten, 20, or 30 acres. I do not know whether Deputy Davin would class these as estates or not, but, surely, we ought to get down to the question of the size of the holding which is regarded as excessive. There ought to be some figure in the mind of the Land Commission in regard to this particular matter. I do not say that the figure should be a rigid one, but, at any rate, the Land Commission, or the Minister on their behalf, might state publicly what is the size of holding which the Land Commission would consider to be excessively large, having regard to our agricultural economy and the problem that we have to deal with. If that figure is stated people will know exactly where they stand.

We then come to the question of usage. Almost every Deputy who has spoken has proclaimed it as an article of faith that land should be taken from those who are not using it properly. Here, again, the question arises—who is to decide that? There is a very delicate issue to be decided there. Let us suppose that there are two very large farmers side by side, and that the Land Commission require land. How are they to decide which of the two is the better farmer? It is not a question, I think, which the Land Commission are competent to decide.

Suppose one of them is subletting his land?

I shall deal with subletting later, but at the moment I am speaking of the manner in which a farmer uses his land. There are complaints about very large farmers using their land in such a way that they give very little employment. That is an issue that would have to be considered. There is also the question of a large farmer, or indeed any type of farmer, using his land in such a way that he has very little tillage on it—that it is practically all in grass. There, again, we want to know is it the policy of the Land Commission to decide on the acquisition of a holding by reason of the number of employees engaged on it, or by reason of the percentage of tillage on it. Now, if the Land Commission, or if the Minister on their behalf, states that "we will acquire any holding on which there is not a percentage of tillage", we will know where we are; or if he states that "we will acquire any holding on which there is not a certain number of persons employed per 100 acres or per 50 acres", then the owners will know exactly where they stand and the Land Commission will have some guide or rule to direct them in deciding whether to acquire a holding or not. So far, the whole question has been left in a vague and unsettled condition and there are, apparently, no regulations or guiding rules.

We come to the question of subletting. The Minister for Agriculture, in one of his wilder moments, said that all the land that was sublet should be compulsorily acquired by the Land Commission. I think that that statement would need some qualification or modification. I have known many a farmer to die young, leaving a wife and children, and immediately the farm is let to keep the family together and to enable the children to be brought up to inherit that farm. Again the position arises where a farmer purchases land and has not sufficient capital to stock and work it all. For a time he may have to sublet portion of that land until he is in a position to work it fully. As I have often pointed out in this House, there are no credit facilities worth talking about for the agricultural industry. Subject to those qualifications. I think most people will agree that where a large farm and, in fact, a small farm, too, is sublet from year to year over a long period there is a case for the Land Commission acquiring it, because a person who sublets his land consistently for a number of years makes himself in actual fact a landlord. He is in exactly the same position as the landlord inasmuch as he has year-to-year tenants on his holding.

I know one case of a farm of less than 50 acres which has been sublet for over 50 years by a man who, while he does not reside outside the country, does reside 100 miles from where that farm is situated. That is the type of holding in which the Land Commission should be interested. We should not, however, allow ourselves to direct governmental policy in this respect towards inflicting a grave injustice on people who for some temporary or unavoidable reason are forced to sublet all or a portion of their lands for a time. Government policy should be against the re-establishment of the landlord system by a permanent system of subletting. That I think would be generally agreed.

The question of usership is a more difficult one because there is really no guiding principle for the Land Commission in regard to the compulsory acquisition of land. It must be remembered that the person from whom land is acquired has ordinary citizen's rights if he is a citizen of this country. He has rights which must be respected. He may have invested a large amount of savings in the purchase of the holding or it may have been in his family for a considerable number of years. The law now provides for a fair price and that is a desirable thing, but nevertheless if a person is working his land well, giving considerable employment and producing from that land the utmost possible, it would certainly appear to me to be a hardship to take that land from him.

In my opinion there should be a clear cut definite rule as to the size of a holding which the Land Commission would regard as being excessive and which they might consider acquiring completely or in part. Some standard should also be laid down regarding usership and I admit that that is more difficult. There should also be a clear, definite statement of policy where subletting is continued, except in the case of the death of a farmer or of temporary financial difficulty.

If a clear statement of policy is given under these three headings every citizen of the country will know exactly where he stands and there will be no more political influence to secure or prevent the acquisition of a holding. We know that political influence can be worked, or that an attempt can be made to work political influence, in both directions, on behalf of those who want land and on behalf of those who want to hold on to what they have already. We want to avoid that and we want to see justice done. We want to see land division administered fairly and we want to see progress towards a happier condition of affairs throughout the country. I think that everybody realises that a large number of independent agricultural holdings is desirable as the foundation of the nation and it is even more essential that each of those farmers should own his holding with a very strong sense of security. We should not allow ourselves to drift into the position where owners of land might begin to feel, or be forced to feel, that they were tenants at will of whatever political Party happened to be in power. That is a condition of affairs that would arise if we were to sweep away the Land Commission completely and make the distribution of land a direct administrative function.

With regard to the compulsory acquisition of land I think an unwelcome and undesirable reference was made to what is known as the "planter class". I think we should recognise now that anybody who is accepted as a citizen of this country should enjoy ordinary citizen's rights. The man who fought the landlords and beat them and established the system of land tenure we have in this country, Charles Stewart Parnell, belonged to the planter class and I think the same might also be said of Thomas Davis and Robert Emmet. Those men became good and worthy citizens of this country and I do not think that anybody holds anything against them with regard to their ancestry or heritage. We should not go into that question but should decide it, as I have intimated, by a fixed guiding principle governing every citizen regardless of whether he is a descendant of Brian Boru or a descendant of Cromwell.

If we are agreed upon these fundamental principles, if we are agreed that the small uneconomic holdings constitute a national evil which ought to be remedied, if possible, and that the remedying of that evil ought to be carried out on equitable lines, I think we can make progress. I can see difficulty arising by reason of the views which many Deputies hold on this question in regard to both its scope and the manner in which it is to be solved. If we confine the scope of this problem to the uneconomic holding, to what they call in the West of Ireland the congests —we do not so style them in the Leinster counties, but I refer to holdings which are below a level sufficient to maintain a family in decency and comfort—I think we then have a problem that we might be able to solve; but if we enlarge it to include the provision of land to cottage tenants and landless men, as Deputy Davin has suggested, we are widening the problem so much that I do not think there would ever be enough land to solve it. The number of cottage tenants is rapidly increasing every day, and I think it is a good thing. We are going forward with the building of houses and providing for more and more cottage tenants. The number is almost unlimited.

I said, with conacre lettings.

The Deputy referred to cottage tenants who are taking out land. Even in that respect, there would be a very large and indefinite number, but when you come to landless men the number becomes even still greater. The second, third and fourth son of every farmer is a landless man and so, too, are the sons of agricultural labourers, so that Deputy Davin, on reflection, will realise that he is making the problem much more difficult than it would be if we confined ourselves to the enlargement of uneconomic holdings.

Then, again, we have the prohibition against persons coming from any distance into a district. It is laid down that land should be distributed only to the people in the immediate vicinity. I know that it is a popular thing for every Deputy to advocate, but it does add to the Land Commission's difficulties, and I think we, therefore, should try, in considering the problem, to divorce ourselves from questions of Party advantage and face it broadly as a national problem which has to be solved and ought to be solved, no matter what Party is in power or what becomes of us as individual Deputies. If we do that and if we give the Land Commission that amount of support, if we give them an assurance that we are not going to interfere in any way or to criticise them merely for the sake of gaining Party advantage, we have a right to expect from the Land Commission efficiency and speed in the carrying out of the policy within the programme I have tried to outline.

I want to say definitely that there must be for the guidance of the Land Commission clear-cut, definite principles. Otherwise, they will find themselves in a bog and always in that bog, travelling around and around in circles. There must be clear-cut, definite principles to guide them, first, as to the type of person from whom land ought to be taken and, secondly, as to the type of person to whom it ought to be given. The people within these two categories should be very definitely outlined, so that we will not have endless discussions as to why so-and-so got land and why such-and-such a person was refused, and so that we will not have discussions about why land was taken from one holder, the holder being sent packing, while another person, with the same acreage and working it on the same conditions, was passed over.

One Deputy referred to the fact that a bribe had been offered to him by a land holder to secure his support in allowing him to be left in possession of his land. That is a condition of affairs we have to fight against and prevent. In the same way, Deputies should not go around promising land to their supporters and using the land of the country as a means of securing political support. If we advance on that line, we will reach a condition of affairs in which the whole system of land ownership will be reduced to chaos, and, once we reach that position, the whole system of ownership of private property will also be reduced to chaos. If, on the other hand, we advance along the lines I have indicated, I think we can solve this problem within a reasonable time and in a manner which the nation, as a Christian nation, will be proud of.

Mr. de Valera

I had hoped that the Minister, in introducing this Estimate, would try to indicate to the House his view of the task on which he is engaged, its magnitude and its effect on our whole social economy, and would have given us also an idea of the means he proposed to adopt to solve it, the rate at which he hoped to proceed and so on. If he had done that, I think we would have a more profitable debate than the debate we usually have, in which each individual Deputy uses the occasion to point out that there are estates in his area that ought to be divided, that there are people in his area who ought to get land and so on.

This is a fundamental, national, social and economic question. So fundamental is it that, in setting out the directives of social policy in the Constitution, we embodied a paragraph declaring that the policy of the State should be directed towards "establishing on the land in economic security as many families as in the circumstances may be practicable.""As many families as in the circumstances may be practicable"—I take it that that is a policy which is agreed on by all Parties.

When we set out to find how many families it is practicable, in the circumstances of the present or the immediate future, to provide for, the first question we have to ask ourselves is, what is the size of a farm on which a family can be expected to live in reasonable economic security? It is a fundamental question. If we try by statistics to find the magnitude of our problem and we are not able to get some average for the size of farm which will be sufficiently accurate to enable us to work with it on the statistics available, we cannot get a real conception of the problem before us. Apart altogether from the quality of the land, the size of a farm will depend largely upon the conditions of the neighbourhood. I had the idea at one time, and I still retain it, that so far as it is possible we should try, when we are, as I called it, making a present of a considerable amount to an individual in the general interest, to keep it down and to make the present only of the size that will achieve national economic purposes.

I have to confess that when we came into office in 1932 I did my utmost to have that principle carried out. When the matter was under discussion, I went to different parts of the country and spoke to people who, I thought, would be able to give me information, who would know enough about the circumstances and would be honest enough to tell me, and I found that the number of acres of reasonably good arable land which should be given to constitute an economic holding varied considerably. When I was in Meath, which I had looked upon as having the richest land in the country and therefore the land which should produce most and the land on which I thought it would be easiest for a person who worked his farm well to make a living, I was surprised that the acreage given me was considerably higher than I had heard, for instance, in Connaught. The acreage suggested was considerably higher than the acreage which I was told in certain parts of Connaught would constitute an economic holding. The reasons were given to me, but I need not go into them now.

I then tried to form an estimate on the basis of valuation, and again I found that that varied. But we had to strike some sort of a general average. Speaking to a large number of people, certainly people in the provinces of Munster and Leinster, I got the impression that a farm with a poor law valuation of about £20 was regarded as the minimum that was practicable. If I mentioned that figure to a man from the West of Ireland, he would say: "That is altogether too high." With regard to the West, the figure that I have heard from people who would be considering that question in the sort of general way in which I was considering it—always making allowance for the fact that when you come to a particular area and a particular farm you will have to consider the circumstances there and you may have to go considerably above or below your average, not below very much, I admit —was somewhere about £15 valuation. If you take it that the average valuation of land in the country as a whole is about 10/5 or 10/6 per acre, you will be able in that way to convert the poor law valuation into acres. I am now talking of averages, because when we are talking of statistics of this sort the only way we can get an idea of our work is by trying to get some sort of average on which we can work.

As I have said, you have to try to get some idea of the magnitude of your task. I would have imagined that the Minister would have done that with his Department. I regret that, with the assistance that he has at his disposal, he did not give to the Dáil what were the difficulties that he anticipated and the nature and the magnitude of his task. Once you have a rough average of the size to which you want to bring a holding to make it economic, the next question you have to ask is, how many holdings in the country are below that figure? We have in this country about 380,000 holdings. Of these, about 60,000 or so are under one acre, and I think we might regard them as not being agricultural holdings at all. Perhaps some people would exclude holdings a bit above that. In that way we may take it that we have about 320,000 holdings that can be regarded as agricultural holdings. We have some 10,000,000 acres of arable land. Of course, there has always been a question as to exactly how much of our land is arable land. If you take crops and pasture, which as everybody knows, cannot be equated to arable land, there are nearly 11,500,000 acres. I know land, for instance, which is excellent pasture but which could not be ploughed and tilled.

Mr. de Valera

No, we never denied that. I know places, for instance, which are so rocky—the Minister I know does not mind ploughing the Rocks O' Bawn——

Or creating pasture.

Mr. de Valera

You can create some pasture. I defy you to plough them. There is excellent pasture land of that sort. Therefore, it would not be right to say that the acreage under crops and pasture is the amount of land that is capable of being divided into these holdings of economic size. They would have to be treated apart and separate. The point I want to make is that, if there are 320,000 holdings that have to be made economic and if we were to divide them all up into equal holdings we would only get an average farm of a little over 30 acres. That proves quite conclusively that you cannot give every single person who has an agricultural holding at present an economic holding, because an average of 30 acres would not do it.

Therefore, the first thing we must get clearly into our heads is that, if you set out with the idea of giving every person who has an agricultural holding an economic holding, you cannot do it. The first thing is to go as far as we can in doing it. Nobody in the House will say that we would have an ideal agricultural distribution if every farm were of the same size, namely, 30 acres. Everybody knows that, within a certain limit, the diversity of the size of our farms helps our general economy. Therefore, if we decide on lifting up the smaller farms to the greatest extent we can, we must be very careful not to upset our whole economy by doing it. We must, therefore, be very cautious about interference with farms which are of a reasonable size and are being well managed in accordance with the accepted methods of husbandry. I am still on the question of getting an idea of the size of our problem. I have tried to show in general that you cannot give to each holder of land at present an economic holding. Do what you may, a certain number cannot get it.

That is excluding the 60,000 of one acre and under?

Mr. de Valera

Yes, excluding the 60,000. I am talking, of course, all the time about the Twenty-Six Counties. There is not enough land in this part of Ireland for the people who have got holdings. Certainly there is enough land to "relieve" congestion but there is not enough land to solve congestion if, by congestion, you mean having a portion of land which is lower than the economic size. It cannot be done.

I do not agree.

Mr. de Valera

If the Minister does not agree then it shows me that the Minister has not yet got down to the fundamentals of his problem.

I think I have.

Mr. de Valera

Are we going, then, to give every one of the 320,000 people 30 acres apiece?

I would point out to the Deputy that not half of the 320,000 need an enlargement.

Mr. de Valera

But if you have 320,000 people, present holders, who must have the land of this country between them and if there are available only about 10,000,000 acres, you can only give to each one, when it is divided, up to 30 acres on the average.

I am of the opinion that that is a theoretical and mathematical approach and that it is unreal.

Mr. de Valera

It is not unreal.

It is, indeed.

Mr. de Valera

The person who denies that is trying to pretend that he can solve a problem which he cannot solve. Let us have a realistic approach to our problem. Take it in another way. When I was interested in postwar plans for our Government, I asked for certain reports from the Land Commission. I wanted to know how much land was available. I wanted to know what land was available for division, as far as they could see, that might be taken over.

Did they tell you?

Mr. de Valera

They did. Surely they were the best authority in the country to be able to tell what land was likely to be available to be taken over for distribution?

Indeed they were not.

Mr. de Valera

They were, of course. Is Deputy Commons going to deny the truth of what I say just because he is familiar with a particular area?

Is it not a fact that the Land Commission refused to take over farms which the local congests considered were quite suitable?

Mr. de Valera

The point is that they know what land is available to be taken over for reasonable economy in this country.

They would not tell you.

Mr. de Valera

They did.

Not at all.

Mr. de Valera

I will tell you the figure I got. They said that in so far as they were able to see from the statistics and the knowledge they had, there was a pool of land which could be taken over for division to bring up these farms—because we put that as our policy—which are under the economic level to an economic level. They told us definitely that the amount, as far as they could see and with their knowledge, was 500,000 acres. I say again that there is no body in the country better fitted to give us a figure, if we want a figure. What other expert authority could give it? Who else has got the information which would enable them to give it? It is true that some members of the commission thought there was more than that and that the figure would be higher. Some would go so far as to make it double that figure. But that higher figure was violently contested, if I might use the word, by the others and therefore we had to ask ourselves the question of how much land is available to bring up these uneconomic holdings to the proper level. Take the 500,000 acres to start with. I think it will be agreed that you would want at least ten acres on the average to bring up one of the uneconomic holdings to an economic level. We can go back and see what has been done in the past and we can have a fair idea. The cream, so to speak, has been taken off but we can make allowances and arrive at a fair estimate. Suppose you take ten acres to each, you could satisfy only 50,000 congests. Only 50,000 people with an acreage under the economic level could be satisfied.

Again, let us look at the figures and try to find out the position—as the Minister should have tried to find it out and as the Minister should have given us these details. It is not I who should have the task of talking to the House in this way and of trying to get these figures. The Minister should have done that. It is the duty of all of us to endeavour to solve this problem. It is a common duty and we ought to approach it as people who want to know its magnitude, as people who want to see how far it can be solved and as people who want to do whatever part of it can be done and to do it in the best possible manner. You take, for instance, the figures in the Statistical Abstract or anywhere else and you try to find out how many holdings in the country are lower than the economic level. You will find that there are probably three times that number of 50,000. So, in fact, you are only able to solve one-third of your problem. Only roughly one-third of the people who have uneconomic holdings at the present time can hope that, with the land available for disposal, their holdings can be brought up to an economic level—even on the basis on which I was speaking.

One of the Deputies, very rightly, spoke of conditions in the future. He spoke of our agricultural policy and of its relationship to this problem. In what direction are we going? Is it likely that in the future the size of the economic holding that will have to maintain a family will be lowered? I am taking an economic holding to be one that will maintain the family without the owner having to go out and supplement his income from the holding by other work—in other words, a holding with the farmer living on that land and bringing up his family on that land. I believe, as I have said, that there are 150,000 and not 50,000 who need to have their holdings—of the present 320,000 holders—raised to an economic level. I would point out that these standards are low. I have been constantly reproached for keeping too low the standard as to the size of the economic farm. Probably there is a certain amount of truth in that. For the reasons I have indicated—for the social reason and from the point of view of not giving an individual of the community more than is absolutely necessary—I was inclined to keep it down as much as possible. But, looking into the future, is it likely that the size of the farm is going to be less than it has been up to the present? The only hope, if that were to happen, would be if there were tremendous industrial development here which would result in the land being made so profitable that a small holding would be capable of being made economic. But that also would bring quite new reactions. We would have the conflict, then, that the industrial population would try to get food at an economic price and the question is whether the farm would be of sufficient size to give it. Looking at the size of the farm likely to be economic, it does not seem that it would be less than I have indicated. The probability, then, is that we can have "one-third solution" of congestion and not "the whole solution" that the Minister and some who speak with him pretend can be obtained. It can be done. That does not mean we ought not to do our best and go as far as we can, but then there must be picking and choosing. You have to pick the land to be used and the people to whom you will give it. You cannot do it generally.

For that reason, we on this side insisted that a proper judicial body was necessary to determine from whom the land is to be acquired, to what individuals it is to be given, the price to be paid in the individual case and the annuity to be fixed. These are of such vital importance that they should be entrusted to a body which cannot be influenced politically.

Such as the Land Commissioners.

Mr. de Valera

Yes.

And blame the Minister for their policy.

Mr. de Valera

If anyone has been blaming Ministers in the past, it is the Deputy. The only just way is to leave it to men independent of political pressure, who have the security of tenure that the Land Commissioners had.

That the Land Commissioners have.

Mr. de Valera

Had. The moment the Minister, by an excuse of rearrangement, takes over some of this into his own hands, he has destroyed the whole position.

Nonsense.

Mr. de Valera

The Minister need not try to fool me. On the excuse of rearrangement, he can give to individuals outside whatever land he chooses.

That shows the Deputy knows nothing about it.

Mr. de Valera

I know it so well that the Minister cannot bluff me.

I am astonished that the Deputy has made such a statement.

Mr. de Valera

The Minister can pretend to have a rearrangement if there is even one case. The Minister should not have done it.

The Minister should, and would do it again in the morning if it were undone.

Mr. de Valera

I say deliberately that the Minister should not have done it and the House should not have let him do it.

Mr. de Valera

It is opening the gate wide to all sorts of wrong things.

Would the Deputy allow me to ask him a question, in all seriousness? Would he help us by envisaging a situation in which the power to which he has referred could be used? Would he give us an example?

Mr. de Valera

I will leave it to the Minister's imagination. It is active enough.

I can assure the Deputy it has not struck me.

Mr. de Valera

There are none so blind as those who do not want to see. If he were on this side, we would hear about it and no one would speak more eloquently from this side on that question than the Minister.

We must look at the location of those whose holdings are below the economic level. Where do they most abound? In the congested areas. And where in those areas do they most abound? In the Minister for Land's own area.

Mr. de Valera

Mayo and Galway have a preponderance, relatively, of those areas. The problem cannot be solved without migration. We recognised that long ago. In 1946, it was clearly indicated that all the land there would be made available to raise uneconomic holdings to the economic level. We felt that the Gaeltacht counties should get their share. We realised also that there was a practical human problem, when Deputies from one constituency after another in the areas where there is land available could stand up and say they would not have any migrants. We had to face that problem with our own colleagues in the case of Meath. It is very serious. If people are asked to leave their locality in the West or in Donegal, to take a holding in the Midlands in exchange for some holding in their own area, they want to feel that they will be received in their new locality as members of the community there. They want to be happy there. We tried to face that problem. We brought them up into a colony, because we felt they would be happier with some of the people with whom they had lived before. We also tried to satisfy the local demands by giving to those smallholders in County Meath additions of land to make their holdings economic so that these people, occupying holdings surrounding this Gaeltacht colony, would themselves be satisfied and would not look upon the migrants as intruders.

Where are the migrants to-day?

Mr. de Valera

They are there still, the most prosperous in that area.

A lot of them are in England.

Mr. de Valera

These are the people you are told are cultivating the land well. Not merely are they able to cultivate their own land and make a living on it, but they have been able to take over as conacre some of the land given to the local people. So far as we have seen, these people have been most thrifty and most hardworking. They have not followed the idea of putting cattle out on land and getting the dividends in, without doing anything further to the land itself. They were men who were willing to work and who knew how to work. I think that these ought to get fair play in getting at least their fair share of the land that is available.

And spoonfeed them.

Mr. de Valera

There is no need of spoonfeeding—none. All that is asked for them is fair play. If we are doing this in a national way, as was suggested, we ought to look at it from that point of view. I am not asking for, and would not suggest that they should get, anything more than is their due. But I realise that there is a difficult problem there to solve and that the only way to solve it is by methods such as we adopted, that is, to do your best to satisfy the immediate people and, naturally, to go for the areas that would make that possible. I do not know if we have very many of such areas left. I am afraid we have not as many as I would like to see, that you have not such a pool available as would enable you to satisfy the local people, to put them in a ring, and bring in people and put them in the centre. That is a problem that must be faced. We have to do the best we can with it. It is most unfair for Deputies to be threatening, as they have done here, that if any such attempt is made, these people will be met with hostility.

There was no threat, if people get fair play. That is all we said.

Mr. de Valera

We will all agree on that. As long as it is fair play nothing else can be looked for.

I was dealing with the magnitude of the task. What is the acreage? The Minister should be telling us what he has got from his staff. I should not be telling the House what I was told in 1946. He should be telling us what he was told in 1949 or 1950. Then we would know exactly where we were. Suppose we had this 500,000 acres, at what rate can we distribute it? The Minister does not tell us at what rate he thinks he can distribute it. What target are we setting ourselves? When I got the 500,000 acres, I got some figures to find out what had been done in the past, both in the time of the previous Government and in our time, before the war, to get an idea of what would be the average figures that we could expect.

Before I come to these figures, I want to say that, if there are 500,000 acres to be distributed, unless we increase our machine many fold, we cannot do that at once. It has to be done over a period of time. You will have people from various constituencies shouting, why is not their part of the work done. Suppose you distribute 100,000 acres in a year and you have 500,000 to distribute, there would be at least 400,000 acres left after the first year. The people who saw that land would shout: "There are 400,000 acres not distributed." It would not be distributed for four or five years. I asked myself, in what time is it reasonable that this thing should be done? First of all, I was not happy in my own mind about the figure of 500,000. I felt it ought to be somewhat higher, that it was a conservative estimate, that it might go a bit higher and, probably, would lie somewhere in between the extreme on one side of 1,000,000 and the 500,000 on the other.

As far as the rate of distribution was concerned, I knew that we had gone into office with the idea of finishing this thing quickly because we did not want this to be a continuing task; we did not want to see this very big establishment continue on indefinitely. We went into office with the idea that we wanted to finish this thing as quickly as we could. The figures of our predecessors showed that in their time, in the nine years between 1923 and 1932, they had distributed 452,300 acres, that is, an average distribution, roughly, of 50,000 a year. Fifty thousand a year was done, on the average, by our predecessors in their time and I believe that they too wanted to do it fairly quickly.

We felt that the machine was not sufficient to do it more quickly without getting extra staff. We were warned that if we did get extra staff, the training of that staff—because they must be experts—would take time and that the very training at the start would slow down the operations. We faced that. We got the extra staff and, in the seven years from 1932 to 1939 there were distributed 470,000 acres of land. That gives you an average, I think you will find, of something like 67,000 acres a year. But, I want to point out, when I was urging more rapid progress, that in those years we did reach 102,000 acres. The actual figure for the year 1934-35 was, we distributed 101,800 acres of land. It was distributed to 6,244 allottees.

How many uneconomic holdings would be relieved on that?

Mr. de Valera

I cannot answer every question that the Minister asks but these were intended to give economic holdings on the level that was made at that time and 101,800 acres were distributed to 6,244 allottees in a year.

And we got the 1946 Act.

Mr. de Valera

I am giving the facts as to the amount distributed.

And we got the 1946 Act.

Mr. de Valera

I do not care what we got. I am giving the figures of distribution, which is the thing I am dealing with at the moment. The point I am dealing with is, at what rate can you reasonably expect that you can distribute land?

Some of them are in the poorhouse now.

Mr. de Valera

I am pointing out that in the years in which the previous Government—Cumann na nGaedheal— were in office they distributed at the rate of 50,000 acres per year and that we, in the seven years before the war had distributed at the rate of 67,000 acres a year and I have given the figure of 101,800 acres as indicating a peak of what could be done with energy under favourable circumstances, I will have to admit—because it will depend on the amount of land you have in the pool available and a number of other things. I am not setting any standards. I am trying to arrive at some figure which would be reasonable.

And you have to take power to take the land back.

Mr. de Valera

If the Minister will just have a bit of patience, I will deal with all that question. Let him wait. I am dealing at present with one point, that is, what rate of annual distribution is reasonable. He ought to wait to see what point I am making before he talks. I am giving that figure of 101,800 acres as the amount that was distributed in one year. That was distributed in that year to 6,244 allottees. The amount for the year 1935-36 was 103,872 acres. That was distributed amongst 7,712 allottees. As I have said, the average was 67,000. When I noticed that the figure had dropped, I asked why it had dropped. I wanted to know why it was that in the following year we had not distributed as much land as in 1935-36 or 1934-35. We had gone steadily up to 101,000 acres and then to 103,000 acres. The extra staff that had been recruited was evidently working effectively at the particular time. The question then was as to why the figure could not be kept at the high level. There were two answers given in the main. One was that these figures were possible in the particular year because of the extra amount of land available which had been acquired. I naturally asked why, if there was land available, the pool was not kept filled so that we could continue at the higher rate. I was then told that the distribution work done was not a perfect job. Perhaps the Deputy will appreciate now that I intended coming along to that in due course; it was not a perfect job. It was held very strongly that one could not do a good job while progressing at that rate. Now there is not much use in distributing land unless one can make the best possible job of it.

Hear, hear!

Mr. de Valera

The Minister will find that I am not unreasonable in this matter. I am anxious to face the problem in a realistic way. I want to try to get a proper understanding of it and to discover how far it is possible for us to approach it as a national task and how best can we solve it in a national way.

From many directions during the course of our lives we are confronted with this difficulty. If one spends a lot of time over a particular job, one can do that job well; but life is limited and we cannot always allow ourselves sufficient time to try to achieve perfection. We have, therefore, to strike a reasonable mean. My anxiety was to discover where that mean lay. What could we reasonably expect? When the war was coming to a close, we were naturally trying to discover what we could do as soon as the war finished. I was told then that there were 500,000 acres to distribute. I asked how long the distribution would take. Would it take five years at the 100,000 figure? Would it take ten years at the 50,000 figure? At what figure could we reasonably aim? At the back of my own mind I had an idea it would take us six to eight years. I took eight years as a fair average.

I know that the task that remains becomes increasingly difficult year by year. Land is not available and it cannot be so easily acquired. The particular holdings may be more complicated. The rundale problem has to be dealt with. Despite all the difficulties, I feel that we should not be satisfied with less than 50,000 acres a year. If I were on the other side to-night and mentioned that figure, those who would be most violent in their opposition would be the Minister and some of his supporters. He and his colleagues would say it was ridiculous. They would say that this should be done in two years or, perhaps, five years. But we are not unreasonable in this. We want to see reasonably good work done. We do not want to see this problem remaining a problem for generations yet to come. Will the Minister tell us at what target he is aiming?

I am afraid the Deputy would not understand it in view of the speech he is making.

Mr. de Valera

The Deputy would not understand it—do not think you can try to bluff us.

I will not try either to bluff or educate you because it would cost too much.

Mr. de Valera

I am sure the Deputy's education in this matter has not yet been completed.

Has it not? I could teach you on the subject anyhow judging by what you are saying now.

Mr. de Valera

We can have our own opinions of each other and leave it at that. You are the Minister. You should tell us what the target is. The Minister should tell the House what the job is that lies before him; he should tell us at what rate he expects to do the job; he should tell us what the magnitude of the task is; he should tell us how much he expects to do per year. Will he reach the 50,000 figure? Will he ask his officials if they think that is a fair figure? We were given a much smaller figure. We were given a figure of 25,000. I was not satisfied with that figure. I believed it was altogether too small and that such a figure would mean that we would spend another 20 years trying to solve the problem. I would certainly not be satisfied with 25,000 a year.

It is all very fine for people who do not understand the magnitude of the task and the difficulties inherent in it to say they want a much greater figure. It reminds me of a story I once heard of Richelieu. A certain castle had to be taken. The man who was given the particular task objected and said that it was too difficult and the reply he got was: "You take that castle or I take your head." We cannot approach our problem in that way. We must be reasonable. If we want to do the job we must get the proper machinery. I believe that the machinery is there. I believe that all that is required is to give the proper directions and the organisation that exists will carry out the work. After all, it was able to deal with 102,000 and 104,000 acres.

It is only natural that there will be complaints. Certain things may have to be rectified later. The work may be done so rapidly that mistakes will be unavoidable. But in life we must try to find the mean between perfection and a reasonably good job of work done at a reasonably rapid pace. Will the Minister be satisfied with 25,000 acres? He might tell us.

One of the reasons I was given for some further delay in this matter was that there was a good deal of unvested land which had to be vested. Speaking of the year 1946, the period for which I was given the figures, I was told there were some 73,000 holdings of tenanted land that had not been vested and some 15,000 Congested District Board holdings which likewise had not been vested. I think there were 45,000 allottees of "untenanted" land whose holdings had not been vested in them. Now I realise that was a big task. At the time I asked if it was not possible to speed up the work. There was some machinery there. I asked what one had to do before one could vest. I was told that before vesting could take place inspections had to be carried out and other things more than formalities had to be complied with. I may say that I was not altogether convinced about that. I felt that it was a task that could be handled quickly and that the period could be shortened to a considerable extent.

The war upset our original programme and our progress. For a variety of reasons, the acquisition of land during the war was not advisable since we were trying to get from the land all the food we needed. The disturbance of ownership at a time like that would have been serious. There was also the fact that we wanted inspectors for the compulsory tillage programme and the only staff in the Government service who could be turned readily to that work was the staff of the Land Commission. Personally I was disappointed that the staff was kept so long at that work, and I did my utmost to try to get them brought back to their proper work as quickly as possible.

The Deputy never congratulated me on getting that done.

Mr. de Valera

I think we had it done before the Minister came into office. It was practically finished by that time. However the figures I have given are simply aimed at one purpose—to try to get a reasonable target by which we can judge whether proper progress is being made. It is in that way you will do it; it will not be done by a Deputy from one particular area such as Deputy Davin who may see a certain farm which has not been distributed coming forward and saying: "Here is a farm of so many acres which has not been distributed." If we see that the work is being done in a systematic way and in such a way that we can hope to terminate it within a reasonable time, then we can judge whether progress is being made. The Minister has not helped us. He has the same sort of information that I had. He could have taken the House into his confidence and made us all interested in trying to get this problem solved in so far as it can be solved. I want to repeat that the amount of land available is not sufficient to give existing holders each an economic holding even at present standards, not to talk of looking to the future when standards are likely to be raised in regard to the amount of land required for an economic farm.

We ought therefore to approach this question in a constructive, reasonable way. We know the extravagant things the Minister and some of his colleagues said when in opposition but we want to see the work done and done well. We also want to see it done rapidly. If we are to do that and the Minister is to get the support necessary to have it done, he will have to put his cards on the table and he must not pretend that he can do things which it can be proved he cannot do. He should not try to get away with the idea that those who speak as I am speaking, know nothing about it, that we are simply innocents, that we never saw an acre of land in our lives or knew what a farmer had to do. We are not just such fools.

I want to say that as far as I and this Party are concerned we regard this question as one of fundamental national importance, the importance of which as I said at the outset is indicated by its being put as one of the directives for the social policy of the State in the Constitution. The Minister in so far as he does this work, does it honestly and does not try to put the dalla-mullóg on us, will get support from us here. We do not believe that he has improved the position from the point of view of justice and right or from the point of view of speeding up things by the Bill which he has just put through. We have shown that by our opposition. Not that we are against land division or against migration from those areas where congestion is worst into more suitable holdings or against speed but because we genuinely want to see the thing done. We are not going to be fooled. The Minister has been talking about the increased speed with which we can get things done under the new instrument. When he was talking in that strain, he reminded me of a mower who was shirking his work and pretending as an excuse that he was sharpening his scythe.

The education of Deputy de Valera is a costly business. He has acquired an education in more than one field of thought at the expense of our people. He referred, himself, to the process of education that he undertook in the distribution of land while he was Taoiseach. With the academic approach, which is by no means alien to his nature, he tells us that he summoned the Land Commission and desired to know, if they had 500,000 acres, what digit they proposed to divide into that and the resultant sum. Being given a very tentative calculation, he deplored their lack of precision, and said he did not want to talk in "ifs" and "buts". He asked, if they had 50,000 acres, did they propose to divide ten or five into it, and said that when they divided five or ten into it, that that was their target. That was a very satisfactory procedure to a mathematical mind and the full resources of the Civil Service of this country, which devotes itself to carrying out the decisions of the Government of the day, whether they agree with it or whether they do not, applied themselves, albeit with the warning that the job would be far from perfect but would be done to the best of their ability, to making a division, as directed by the head of the Government, of five into 50,000 or five into 500,000 and, behold, a miracle was wrought. As a result of this mathematical operation, the division of land rose from the 50,000 acres per annum, which had been the rule in the prevous decade, in 1934 to 101,000 odd, and in 1935-36 to 103,000 odd, and the votaries of the god proclaimed a miracle again. Behold, what was declared to be impossible was now possible; that which no one else could do, a Daniel come to judgment had done. But, with becoming modesty, he disclaimed all credit for having done it.

The story did not finish in the halcyon days of 1934, 1935 and 1936. The story was not finished until his own Minister for Lands, Deputy Moylan, came to this House in 1946 and said that he must ask the House to enact an Eviction Bill of a character that no Minister had ever dared to lay before this House before. For what purpose? Was it to control landlords? Was it to extinguish the Ascendancy? No. It was to evict the allottees of 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937.

How many were there?

What was the percentage?

Turn up Deputy Moylan's speech when he spoke as Minister for Lands from this place and you will get the facts and figures there. I rest entirely on the version of the story told by Deputy Moylan when he was Minister for Lands, standing where I am standing now.

You might have been seeing things.

Yes, he was seeing things; he was seeing stars born of the mathematical acrobatics of his leader ten years before.

Will the Minister give us the figures so that we can debate them—the percentage of holdings given to unsatisfactory tenants?

Perhaps the Deputy will oblige me by studying them at leisure in the printed form in the Official Report—in the speech of Deputy Moylan when, as Minister for Lands, he introduced the Land Act of 1946. It was part of another branch of Deputy de Valera's education. Remember, that Bill was never brought before Dáil Éireann without the imprimatur of the whole Government, over which Deputy de Valera presided. It was not Deputy Moylan's Bill, it was the Bill of Taoiseach de Valera's Government, submitted to this House by a member of that Government, the Minister for Lands.

There were very few evicted under it.

That does not surprise me. There were many declarations of pious intentions by Fianna Fáil, but very few performances. They did not accept the dictum of handsome is as handsome does. Their philosophy of life was exquisite is as exquisite says.

We are not dealing with digits. The Land Commission is not dealing with figures and calculations. It is not even dealing exclusively with acres. It is dealing with homes and people, and anyone who imagines that you can deal with the land of Ireland as you would deal with lumps of coal is mad. People who become obsessed with the glories of industry and commerce fall into the common error of identifying the circumstances of the farmer with those of the manufacturer or the shopkeeper. They overlook this fundamental difference, that for the manufacturer or the shopkeeper his workshop is the place whence he goes home. For the farmer his workshop is the place whither he goes home. Every perch is part of his home.

It is a matter of relative indifference to a manufacturer or shopkeeper if his place of business or his workshop is moved from one locale to another, provided the opportunity of earning is the same. But it means the difference between happiness, virtue and despair to many people in rural Ireland to be told overnight—they are not asked to go, but told—to go, not from their place of business, but from their homes because a mathematician has divided five into 500,000 and has insisted that the result must be 100,000, come hell or high water. That is the mathematician who has laid down the doctrine that you cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs—a very seductive doctrine, so long as you are not the egg.

I listened to Deputy de Valera growing melancholy about the inadequacy of the land, the struggle to supply land and the impossibility of finding economic holdings of 30 acres for those at present resident on the land. How does he tally that gloom, that wellnigh despair, with the thunderous eloquence of his colleague who will not rest until there are 8,000,000 on the land of Ireland? If he has not room for 3,000,000, where is he going to put the 8,000,000? Exquisite is as exquisite says, but it is not very solid material for a political philosophy.

I think Deputy de Valera rightly says that when one comes to deal with Land Commission administration it is of fundamental importance to turn one's mind to elementary principles. What is the principle justifying the continued existence of the Irish Land Commission once the landlords were finally dismissed? Surely, it must be to make certain that the landlords will never come back. We took a decision in this country 70 years ago that the abuses of a system whereunder men owned large tracts of land and those who worked the land and made it produce were mere tenants at will, were so banished that, whether the land was worked by individuals well or ill, the possibility of abuse was so great we would not tolerate it any more, and that we would compensate the landholders and clear them out and we did.

When one visits certain Continental countries to-day one may be very proud of the wisdom of our fathers. I recently visited a country on the Continent to see vast estates owned by wealthy landowners and the farmers who worked that land living in large tenement houses of eight and ten families to a house, dotted about those wide demesnes. Those very landholders marched with the small farmers living in those circumstances and voted Communist at the general election. That experience reinforced my conviction that the retention of the Irish Land Commission in being in this country was justified in order to ensure that the detestable system of renting land would never raise its ugly head in this country again. Mind you, there is a continuing danger that it may. I wonder would the Leader of the Opposition accept this fundamental doctrine in respect to land: that here in Ireland we recognise the absolute right to own land unqualified; that we recognise that the duties of the landholder are of a solemn kind, and that, without any qualification of the right to own land, we declare that a man may do with his land anything except rent it, but that if a man acquires wide acres and then proceeds to derive an income from it by setting it to those who work it, the State will step in and purchase the land from the landholder and transfer its ownership to those who are working it.

I think that is a sound principle. I want to repeat here what I said to the Meath County Committee of Agriculture, that every acre of land in Meath, Westmeath or in any other county in Ireland which is the subject of permanent setting on the 11-months' system, I think, is ripe for compulsory acquisition with subsequent vesting in the farmers who work it.

Deputies

Hear, hear!

Of course, there are exceptions. You may have a widow woman whose children are growing up and, until they are grown up and fit to take over the land and operate it for her, such a person may have to set the land until her family reaches maturity or you may have a delicate man waiting for his sons to grow to an age when they can work the farm, who does not want to part with his home pending the realisation of that event and who may have to set his land. I am talking of people who can invest their wealth, from at home or abroad, in land with the intention of deriving their income from it by setting it to tenants. If this country ever permits that evil to grow up in our midst again we will pay dearly for our error. But, if we lay down that principle, let us be as scrupulous to defend and maintain fixity of tenure for every farmer who gets his living from the land.

Is that your Government's policy?

Fixity of tenure, yes, Sir, and it was the policy of people who were, in a sense, my colleagues long before this Government or its predecessor were ever heard of, because the Land League of this country always recognised that the landlord's demesne wall must be held sacrosanct if the farmer's fence was to be sacrosanct, too. If you were to establish the right of a man to own his own homestead, then that right must be valid for rich and poor, for great and humble. You could not have it for one man and not for his neighbour; you could not have it for the man you liked but not for the man you did not like; you must have it for everybody. That is the doctrine which, I think, our predecessors allowed the administration of the Land Commission in their day grievously to infringe upon.

I am happy to think that the administration of the Land Commission to-day recognises the right of every man, great and humble, rich and poor, to fixity of tenure in his home, and I welcome the resolve of my colleague, the Minister for Lands, and his energy in pursuing it to make manifest to everybody inside and outside this country that in Ireland there is one thing no one may do with land and that is set it. We are finished with landlords in this country once and for all. Whether their name is O'Shaughnessy or Joel, we will clean them out if they ever try to hook themselves into the soil of this country again.

I know there are two views about the doctrine of migration. I was reared in the province of Connacht and, perhaps, I am too much inclined to think of the problems relating to land exclusively in terms of my own neighbours, the farmers in the congested areas. I try to correct that natural tendency as best I may, but I think I am right in saying—I believe it in any case—that if you want to relieve congestion the wisest way to go about it is not to tear the people up from their roots in Connemara and transplant them to Meath and Kildare, but rather to go to the verge of the Breac-Ghaeltacht and there find if you can fairly large farmers who will be prepared with an inducement to change their homesteads from East Galway, West Longford or West Roscommon to Meath or Westmeath. The change in their mode of life by that transfer is not radical or fundamental and they are usually of a temperament to whom such changes are not revolutionary or disruptive of their life. Then go to the verge of the Fíor-Ghaeltacht and here you will find greater trouble to get willing migrants, but your trouble will be minimised if the migration is to leave from Ballinrobe to Gort rather than from Ballinrobe to Lucan. True, if you want them willingly to move from Ballinrobe to Gort or to Athenry they will want larger holdings, they will want an inducement, they will want some persuasion that they will be able to live better and be happier there and they will have a guarantee that they are not cut off irrevocably from their neighbours and friends. Then with the land you acquire in and about the Breac-Ghaeltacht where most of the congested areas really are you would set about restoring to economic size the wretched holdings which Deputy Dick Walsh and myself who know County Mayo have watched for so many years impatient for the time when their limitations might be rectified.

Every Deputy in this House from West Mayo, Kerry and Galway knows the problem and the difficulty of rearranging rundale. Now I am shocked at the Leader of the Opposition when he stoops to representing to this House that Section 11, sub-section (1), paragraphs (d) and (e) constituted a withdrawal from the Land Commissioner's exclusive jurisdiction in the business of acquiring and allotting land because that is what he referred to when he spoke of the dangers inherent in the Bill which this House has recently passed. That is the principle which he said the Minister should not have sponsored and the House should not have adopted. Here it is:

"The determination (other than any determination arising in or being part of a rearrangement scheme) of the persons to be selected as allottees of any land."

That is a reserved service—the determination of the persons to be selected as the allottees of any land unless it relates to a question arising in or being part of a rearrangement scheme.

Every experienced member of this House, and I think every lawyer, knows that the rule of interpretation imposes on the court the obligation of interpreting that qualification of the general proviso as strictly as the rules of interpretation will allow on the grounds that if it is not meant to be interpreted narrowly and strictly it would not be put in as an exception to the general rule. I think that the Leader of the Opposition knows the recurrent administrative difficulty that arises year after year, not last year, not during the past ten years but during the past 40 years, of striving with 20 rundale tenants maybe for 18 months to get them to agree to a rearrangement; at last to get them all to say yes about the same proposal on the same day and the heartbreak of starting that up through the hierarchy of the local inspector, the senior inspector, and the district inspector until it eventually finds its way to the Land Commission; then it must find its way down back to the man who spent the ten days or three weeks before the approval comes back being chased out of the village, every one of the participants in the rundale having changed his mind in the interim. The proviso was put in to ensure that at the end of the interminable negotiations the senior inspectors of the Land Commission who, as every Deputy in this House knows, are a body of men chosen from the most experienced servants of the Land Commission, can on the spot countersign the rearrangement of the land before anyone can change his mind and start the rearrangement over again. Is there any Deputy who knows rundale and the conditions in which rundale operates who does not realise that these ten tenants taken on the hop of agreement and of taking the plunge of consent to have rundale rearranged will be ten times happier for the rest of their lives and that the same applies to their children and to their children's children? Like many of us however, at the moment of taking the plunge, out of any ten rundale farmers in this country you will find at least one and probably half who having looked at the cold water make up their minds that the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know and they will endure all the sufferings their fathers and mothers knew rather than embark on a whole series of new sufferings which, had they but the wisdom to realise it, are merely figments of their imagination.

If the section means more than that I would vote against it. If the section proves to mean more than that I will ask my colleague to amend it. The Leader of the Oppostion was perfectly right when he says that the acquisition of land and its allotment is no proper function for the political head of any Department of State in this country and the day it is committed to the political head of any Department on that day fixity of tenure is dead and potential anarchy will reign throughout the length and breadth of this country on every holding where a tenant farmer lives. Farmers may rail to-day against the Land Commission; they may protest that they are capricious and unreasonable, but in the bottom of their hearts they know that so far as it is humanly possible—and human fallibility limits us all—the Land Commission does its job objectively and with no other purpose than to make the best job they can of the situation they are called upon to deal with. I received representations from my constituency a couple of days ago that out of eight allottees of land seven were prominent members of the Fianna Fáil Cumann all of whom acted as impersonation agents at the last election. I do not know whether they are or not, but if they are I am as certain as I am standing here that the Land Commission gave the land to the men they thought should get the land as farmers. If the choice should happen to fall on seven prominent Fianna Fáil men, I am as certain as I am as certain of anything that, if it fell there by the merest chance, these men's adhesion to one particular Party or another never influenced the judgment of any Land Commissioner by a featherweight. I hope my colleagues on the far side of the Houses, in like embarrassing circumstances, will be prepared to make the same disclaimer with regard to the Minister for Lands.

I sometimes smile when I hear my colleagues on the Opposition benches protesting that the Minister for Lands is richly endowing his friends and neighbours with wide and fertile acres of land, knowing well that the Minister for Lands has no more to do with the allotment of land than Jack Johnson the pugilist. Every one of my colleagues sitting on the Opposition side knows perfectly well that the Minister's colleagues are lambasted and assailed every day of the week that it was a bad day when So-and-so voted for this Government, because nobody but Fianna Fáil supporters got an acre of land in the district since they got into office. That case is certainly true. I got a letter to-day from one of my constituents stating that, of eight allottees of land, seven were personating agents for the Fianna Fáil candidate in South Mongahan at the last election. Whether that is true or not I do not know, but if it is, then the testimony I have given I desire to repeat.

Deputy de Valera described his ramblings when he first undertook his own education in the matter of the land law. I think it is an extraordinarily typical picture of this detached but interesting figure, the Prime Minister of Ireland for the time being, determining that he was going to inform himself about the land question. The first week he goes to Meath and asks the people of Meath: "How much land do you think a man ought to have?" Then, to be perfectly fair and to be open-minded, he went next week to Mayo. Then he went to Kerry and afterwards paid a visit to Waterford, and he knew everything. He came back from his wanderings with this astonishing information, that the average poor law valuation of a farm all over Ireland should be £20. I wonder did he ever advert to the fact that in some parts of Ireland that poor law valuation might represent 15 acres and in other parts of Ireland it might represent 40 or 45 acres? That must not have occurred to his mind, because he was told in Meath that you could not sod a lark on less than 30 acres. I forget what his experience in Mayo was. I do not think he ever went into acreages in Mayo.

Armed with this information, he returned to his citadel in Upper Merrion Street and then began a mathematical calculation which ended in the Land Act of 1946, which ended in the 30-acre holding in Meath, plus a new house, in which the allottee never set his foot since he was led into it by the Land Commission inspector; the 30-acre holdings in the County Meath where "minute-men" are employed to sound the toscin. When it is thought that Land Commission spies are on the land, it is the duty of these men to rush up to the bird's nest and set fire to it on the hearth, because the Land Commission inspector will not look in through the window if he sees smoke coming out of the chimney. If there was not smoke coming out of the chimney, the Land Commission inspector would have the right to look in at the window to see if there was anyone inside. But, so long as there is a bird's nest smoking on the hearth and you keep it burning until the Land Commission inspector has to go home, you may be certain that his duty will not permit him to come that way again. It is the practitioner of the bird's nest and the street-corner lounger who got the allotment of land for running messages for Fianna Fáil, and his idea of farming is to burn a bird's nest about once a fortnight. He is a very good farmer if he remembers to dampen the bird's nest, as it then gives off smoke longer and in larger quantity. These were the fruits of the ramblings of the Leader of the Opposition. That was the result of the miracle of the 500,000. It is a record which was written not by him, but by Deputy Moylan.

I think I know the target of the present Minister for Lands for every year he is in office now and hereafter, and that is to divide the greatest quantity of land that it is possible to divide well amongst the people who want it in the sense that they need it in order to have a minimum standard of dignity and peace in their own homes. Knowing his county and my county and Deputy Dick Walsh's county somewhat better than other people, he knows it is not a problem of figures or of time, but that it is a problem of having patience with men, trying to get them to see what is best for themselves and always remembering that the poorest family in this country is entitled to the same respect and deference as the most learned pundit or the richest landlord and that it is just as unpleasant for a little man to have his home swept away as it is for a learned mathematician. I venture to swear that the present Minister will never accept the philosophy that you cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs, because, in that context, I hope that he and I will always feel that that doctrine is acceptable only if you are not the egg.

I think there is a solution to this problem of inadequate land acreage and I am proud to be afforded the opportunity of applying that solution, in collaboration with my colleague, the Minister for Lands. The Leader of the Opposition has spoken trenchantly of the 350,000 farmers and 10,000,000 acres of land and who will challenge the founder of the School of Higher Studies and Cosmic Physics when he propounds the proposition that ten into 300 goes 30 times? From that rule of mathematics, the most enterprising Deputy of Fianna Fáil will not, I think, seek to escape. What the Leader of the Opposition forgets is that life and people and the land are not exclusively ruled by mathematics. If we cannot give everybody 35 acres of land and if many of them have to do with 25, is there no escape from that dilemma? I think there is, because, if we can make every individual acre of that land produce twice as much as it used to produce, do we not go part of the way towards repairing the shortage? Is the man who has 25 acres of land, rehabilitated so that it produces twice as much as it produced ten years ago, not in better case than the man who has 25 acres of poor land to-day and who has added to it ten more acres of poor land to-morrow?

I think it is the purpose of the Minister, not to set targets, not to do sums, but to be human, even to be so weak as to hitch his wagon to a star, to do his best and not to be ashamed of it and cheefully to await the judgment of his neighbours on his best—nothing less than his best, with no claim to ability to do more than his best. I await with confidence the verdict of our people on the results of the mathematics of the Leader of the Opposition as compared with the results of nothing more impressive than my best and the best of the Minister for Lands, and I will go cheerfully with the Minister for Lands before the small tenant farmers any time and take their verdict on whether our humble efforts have produced more satisfactory results for the ordinary, common or garden, pedestrian small farmer than the 30-acre farms in Meath, with their quarterly birds' nests conflagrations.

Fixity of tenure, free sale and fair rent—God forbid that this Oireachtas to which we all belong should ever deprive our people of these things that our fathers fought so hard to get. There never was a landlord driven out of this country who did not pray in his heart that our people, having ended landlordism, would be so dead to principle that they would fail to distinguish between the curse of landlordism and the blessings of the three F's. There never was a landlord driven out of this country who did not pray that our people, frenzied by their triumph, might rob their neighbours and themselves of fixity of tenure. So far, our people have been farsighted enough and close enough to the source of their present security to withstand the foolish persuasion to which they are so often exposed.

I know that the present Minister will never so administer the Department over which he presides as to rob our people of their security in their homes, of their certainty that the money and savings they invest in their holdings are safe and of the guarantee they have that, when they pay their semi-annual gale, it is an unalterable instalment not of rent, but on the purchase price of their freehold. Long may he be spared to do it the way he is doing it, not with figures and sums, not with cosmic physics and calculations, but with the humble resolve of somebody who was himself born and reared on a farm that was none too big to do for his neighbours what he would have wished his neighbours to do for him— justice, and no more.

Mr. Maguire

On this Estimate, there must necessarily always be a very general debate on this whole problem. The land of this country is a real national asset, and, while that position remains, the land problem must be one of our greatest problems and hence one which has attached to it a wider interest than any other. This question of land division ought at this stage to have shown its difficulties to the minds of the simplest people in this Dáil, and, to a much wider extent, the minds of those outside.

I wish that the Dáil would take care that the problem fundamental to the question of land in this country would be made known as generally as is general education to the youngest members of the community, the children who are compelled to attend our elementary schools. There is a belief generally in the country that the whole difficulty of land acquisition and the ownership of land is entirely and exclusively within the power of the Government in existence to solve.

I listened with interest to the speeches in this House this afternoon. Some of them were very enlightening. Deputy de Valera quoted figures of the entire land that is available in this country and of the total area of land which is required to bring the congests of this country or, as they are known in some districts, the uneconomic holders, up to an economic level. He showed that from figures which he obtained while he was in office it was not mathematically possible, with the acreage of land available, to bring those uneconomic holdings up to the level of what is regarded as economic. In view of that statement, what is the solution? Deputy de Valera said we have not sufficient land to enable us to bring up to an economic level all the uneconomic holdings in the country. Very good. If we have not sufficient land available, how then are we to deal with uneconomic holdings?

The Minister for Lands recently introduced a Bill which is now about to become law and when it is an Act he is going to go into the open market and buy lands offered for sale. That means that, to a very large extent, the State will become the owners of lands which, in the ordinary way and hitherto, would be the property of certain private individuals who would purchase them in the open or in a similar market. That, in effect, means that we are going to solve the problem of our uneconomic holdings by reducing the number of people who will in future live on these lands. These lands are to be bought in the open market, at a public auction or by private treaty or otherwise. In that way a farm will become extinct, for practical purposes, as a unit for maintaining a family in future.

That is not so.

Mr. Maguire

What is the purpose, might I inquire, then, of the scheme?

To instal a migrant in it in most cases—or perhaps two or three migrants. Where it was carrying only one family prior to the sale it is quite possible that it might carry from two to six families afterwards.

Mr. Maguire

When the Minister transfers a migrant or migrants to the farm which he has purchased, what is to become of the lands which the migrant or migrants so transferred leave?

It is quite obvious.

Mr. Maguire

What?

It will be given to the neighbours for the relief of congestion.

Mr. Maguire

Is that not what I said? Does that not mean that you are eliminating out of the unit in existence, say, one family because you are dividing that land for the accommodation of three or four other uneconomic holdings?

Otherwise we would have to leave the problem of congestion as it is.

Mr. Maguire

I am not disputing that. The position is obvious and the Minister has faced it. Deputy de Valera said that, with the area of land which comprises large farms in this country, or even arable land, it is not possible to meet that problem of the relief of congestion. That being so, the Minister faced up to a position in which he provided an alternative method, namely the reduction of the number of people living on the land at present by increasing the size of holdings to an economic level but, in the process, reducing the number of families who hitherto had derived their livelihood from the land.

That is one side of the picture.

Mr. Maguire

It is a fact.

It is not.

Mr. Maguire

Where am I wrong?

It would be better if Deputy Maguire would make a statement.

Mr. Maguire

I say that it is the only practical solution as far as the Minister sees it. I have listened, as I have already said, to the speeches which were made and, in view of the point to which this subject has been surveyed by the present Government and by previous Governments in this country, it is the only solution. Land is a national asset. If the land should cease to provide what we export this country would cease to exist as an economic unit and, as a matter of fact, our industrial movement could never have commenced or continued to be of value were it not for the produce that is derived, mainly, from the uneconomic holdings.

Deputy de Valera stated that during his examination of the question of the land of this country he found there was not enough arable land available to raise the standard of all the uneconomic holdings to an economic level. He also stated that, in his survey, he found that in the poorer districts where land was poorer in quality than it is in, say, Meath or Westmeath, a smaller area of land was the allotment and that he discovered, during that survey, that it required more land in the rich counties to live economically than it did in the poorer lands. Of course it does. Any schoolboy in the poorer parts of this country will tell you that if you have poor land the only way in which you can make your farm pay and be economic is to have a small farm. On the other hand, if you have good land the only way in which you can make it pay is to have a large farm. There is no point in a farmer in Meath or Westmeath thinking that he can live on 30 or 40 acres that will feed, say, 30 or 40 cattle per year. The profit per head is not sufficient to keep him going if the farm is grazing land, as it it has been down through the generations. If you have poor land then you can make a living for a family of probably eight, 10 or 15 children out of 15 or 20 acres. How is it done? It is done by intelligent and industrious work. Let Ministers come in turn to this House and try to solve the economic problems of this country and the problem of uneconomic holdings and of the number of people living on them—the number of people who are living on them and providing for a family out of very poor wages. Let them see how it is done. It is done only by super-industry, by hard application to work, by economic living and by great intelligence on the part of the wife of the small farmer or the labourer. It will continue to be done, in spite of what Government may sit in office here. It is not a matter to be determined by acres or settled by some rule or measurement. It is to be solved by people who put their intelligence and their industry into the work, which is worth more than all the land in Meath.

According to the mathematical basis on which the Minister is continuing the policy of his predecessors, he knows he will not have enough land to make economic holdings to maintain the families of all those seeking land. What standard has he got for 100 acres? Does he mean to tell me that, given three farms equal in measure, size, quality, convenience to markets and otherwise, they will have equal income at the end of the year? I know the answer. Since the Minister cannot establish the standard of an economic holding, why should he work in a water-tight compartment? What will he do with the surplus people that the new Bill will throw on the waves of the world? He will reduce the number of people so maintained on farms in the past, but what will he do with them? Will he give them some land bonds and let them get out into the world with that? Or is there alternative employment? There has been nothing worse, in the elimination of the population, than the Land Acts of the past 25 years, and this new one shows no improvement. The Minister's desire may be to provide economic holdings, but instead he is creating a clearance just as effectively as Cromwell did, though not with the same intention or motive. That is the only difference.

Deputy de Valera said he clearly realised there was not land enough to make economic holdings for everyone. His standard of economic holding is just as false as the Minister's. A Minister cannot determine the standard; that is determined by the character of the person who works the land. Successive Governments have been following a false plan, an auditor's scheme, which may be right mathematically but is wrong in substance and wrong according to the knowledge and practice of the people who know most about farming.

Why does a Government remain tied up and put a Department in this watertight position? My grievance is that Government after Government are using land and misrepresenting the position for political purposes. The Minister got into office on his promise to remedy the uneconomic position in the West of Ireland. God bless him, if he can do it, but he cannot. His predecessors did the same thing and no doubt successors will delude the public in the same way. There is not the land and the economic holding cannot be determined. Even according to the standard taken, the land is not available. Why not widen the whole issue of national assets and make a compact with the Department of Industry and Commerce, to the effect that, where under the new Land Bill there will be a clearance of smallholders in the West of Ireland, thereby enlarging the uneconomic holdings, some form of industry will be provided for those people and their families? If this were made a national programme of ruralisation of industry, with co-operation between the two Departments, it would not mean, as at present, eliminating people from the land without improving production nationally.

Is there any plan to that effect, or are we to go on as we have been going, each Party trying to hit it off against the other and make political capital out of the whole problem of our land assets, to try and capture votes by promising to do more than their predecessors? Is it not a national disgrace, a travesty on the honesty and integrity of our leadership, that those things should prevail? We know we have not land enough. What about the landless men to whom land has been promised? Is not that dishonesty? Why is there not a general scheme, in co-operation with industrial development, to retain the rural population by bringing industry into the rural districts which are uneconomic? I know very well what I will be told in reply, as I have often experimented on it. It will be said that it is impracticable, as the expenses of transport and the lack of facilities make it impracticable. If it is impracticable, then let us face up to it and make that known to the public, teach it to the children going to school, that our whole ruralisation scheme is false and cannot be maintained.

Let us tell them they must get out of the district and let us give them training and the trade to fit them for employment wherever they can find it. They will not find it in the rural districts. Fewer of them must exist there in the future, according to the new Bill. Where then can they find it? In the City of Dublin, if they are lucky enough to get through a Civil Service examination. Only a few can get that far. It must be remembered that they are not allowed to find employment in Dublin, as they are not members of a trade union. Because they come from the country, their fathers were not employed as trade unionists and the Labour section of this House, through their regulations, have determined that they must not become members of a union or find employment in the city.

That is not absolutely true.

It is absolutely true.

Mr. Maguire

It is true to a large extent. We are eliminating, under new legislation, a number of people who have existed in our rural community. We have no alternative employment to offer them in rural Ireland. We cannot send them to the City of Dublin. Emigration—is not that the only scheme that is proposed? The Minister cannot provide them with an economic holding. He will buy land that ordinarily would have gone to a small farmer or a middle-sized farmer. He and his family must go. They can find no work in the town or in the city. Emigration is forced on them. Cromwell made a clearance. We are doing it now. I do not say the present Minister is doing it any more than his predecessor but all political Parties have been engaged in hugger-mugger about the division of land for the purpose of making political capital, without regard to a national programme that would solve the problem of the uneconomic holders, who do not count a snap of the fingers as far as Governments are concerned. I asked a question of the Minister a few days ago. He asked for time to reply to it. I guarantee that, if the migrants of the West were taken into consideration, they would show their merits as successful farmers in the Midlands. The Minister has the Department to refer to. I assert, and it is well known, that the relatively few migrants that were taken out of Leitrim-Sligo stand very high in the opinion of the officials of the Department as successful farmers, highest of all the counties from which migrants were taken. The number taken from that constituency was so ridiculously low that there was either prejudice on the part of the Government or on the part of the Land Commission. There certainly was not good judgment or a desire to secure the best people, who would work the land successfully.

I have heard reference here to political influence in the matter of the division of land. I have had years of experience, as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I was one of a committee appointed to investigate the matter and to see what would be a reasonable scheme in regard to the division of land when it became available in a district. I, with others, went through that matter most carefully. We made recommendations. Most of them were adopted. My experience as a member of that Party was that there was no political distinction as to who got land. I am quite satisfied that there is no political distinction now. If there were, it would be one of the most fatal things that could happen.

I have the utmost respect, from my own experience, for the officials appointed—by what Government, it does not matter, present or past. They are honourable men who endeavour to do their work honourably, fairly, and according to regulations. I would disapprove entirely of any suggestion that politics have been successfully operated in regard to the division of land. In fairness to the last Government, of which I was a member for many years, I must say that. I have no doubt at all that the same will apply in regard to the present Government. I imply no dishonesty against the present Administration.

You have no reason to.

Mr. Maguire

No, not the smallest. So long as the question of land in this country is used as it has been used and is at present being used for the purpose of deceiving the public, to make it appear that the Government will acquire land and give it to their own supporters, which is not so, all Ministers, past and present, should make it known to the public that that is not the case. The Land Commission should not be used for showroom purposes, promising added land to smallholders or a holding of land to landless men. They should extend their business and should co-operate with industry in rural districts and thus make it possible to retain the small holdings by having additional employment provided for those working them. They should also co-operate with forestry developments. When they are taking a migrant from a poor part of the country they should consider how far it is possible to use the land that is vacated for the purpose of forestry. I find that the Forestry Branch require an area of not less than 300 acres in order to establish a forest. The Land Commission, by acting conjointly with the Forestry Branch, could help in the development of forests.

The Land Commission have a moral responsibility, if not a legal one—they are always able to safeguard themselves legally against the tenant—of ensuring that, where an annuity is payable to them by the tenant, the tenant will have reasonable facilities, such as roads to his house, such as water on his farm. An estate may have been acquired from the landlord 50 to 80 years ago. At that time the amenities such as water and roads were not provided. There is no use in the Land Commission trying, like Pontius Pilate, to wash their hands of their responsibility and to say that a contract that was made 50 years ago must still hold. They must take responsibility for providing modern requirements and, if there are no roads to farms—and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such farms—they should introduce a scheme whereby a grant would be made available to the farmer, plus a loan, in respect of which a small sum per annum would be charged on his annuity, so as to provide amenities that would make life for him more in keeping with present-day conditions.

You cannot fool all the people all the time. You cannot provide land enough to make all the uneconomic holdings economic but you can do a lot in simple ways to make life more bearable. I suggest to the Minister, who comes from a poor part of the country, as I do, and who represents such a part of the country, that he would bear these things in mind and ensure that, if he cannot do all that in his heart he would like to do, he would at least, in his period of office, do the things that are possible and thereby make life more pleasant and more comfortable for those who have to live in small holdings.

I think the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy de Valera, was making a genuine effort to have the whole problem of land division discussed in an over-all way when he referred to matters involving figures and calculations. But the Minister for Agriculture chose to take advantage of his position and, in a few quiet subtle phrases, hurled an insult at the head of the Opposition by insinuating that he was out of touch with realities, that he was not aware of the position or psychology of the small farmer, and that he apparently lived in some kind of ivory tower for the past 16 years so far as the problem of land settlement in this country is concerned. If the Minister for Agriculture wishes to turn this debate into a political one, he can do so; but we can reply and we can say that the mathematician at the head of this Party was nobly supported by all the small farmers in, very largely, the small farming areas for the last 16 years and that in those constituencies where we did lose some little support in the last election that support was not that of the small farmers or those whose congestion urgently needed relief. I think that is a proper answer to the Minister for Agriculture. The very people about whom he talked have waited patiently over the years for their turn to come. For some of them their turn will never come no matter who the Minister for Lands may be. But they have always given support to this mathematician at the head of our Party. They gave it nobly in the past and at the last general election.

The whole problem of land division and land settlement necessitates a good deal of calculation, and asking for figures is entirely reasonable since the problem is a complicated one and the people should be given some idea what constitutes congestion. Anybody who represents a country constituency as I do, knows full well the vast difference there is in ideas on this problem. It is very useful to have some approximate target and some general statement made to relieve the minds of thousands of people who dream by the fireside night after night that some day they will get an increase in their holding, or perhaps a new holding, from the Government and through the operation of the Land Commission. The vast majority of those are inevitably destined to be disappointed for the very reasons given by the Leader of the Opposition.

It seems almost unnecessary that one should make an elementary statement on the land problem here but, if the Minister for Agriculture and others accuse anyone on this side of the House of being unrealistic in his approach to the problem, then we shall have to reply. There are two main problems in regard to land settlement as we saw it in our time. There is the problem of relieving the extreme congestion that exists and the problem of trying to satisfy the thousands of people whose holdings are less than 15 acres, the thousands of people living in Westmeath and Laoighis and Offaly all of whom are dreaming that some day they will get their holdings made up to 25 acres, and whose position economically in relation to the problem as a whole is far superior to that of the congests in the West and elsewhere. Added to those are thousands of farmers' sons throughout the country, one of whom will probably get the holding and the remainder of whom must go into the towns to take industrial employment or become road labourers. There are thousands of those who dream night after night that some day they may be given some part of a big estate which is now lying derelict and neglected for one reason or another.

That army must be added to the numbers thinking upon land division. You pass from those then to the men with one acre who are barely farmers at all and you add to them in turn the group of landless men, cottiers, who have the industry and determination to take land year after year on the conacre system. They have become farmers. Some of them may work their holdings with the assistance of their families. Some of them work as agricultural labourers during part of the year. Some of the family looks after the conacre. Sometimes they look after it in the evening when their day's work is done. Thousands of these also behave that one day they will get land. On top of all those you have 133,000 agricultural labourers who, whether they have conacre or not, dream that some day they will have a holding of their own.

We want some certainty about the position. A great degree of uncertainty has been created because of our history during the number of different experiments carried out by our own Governments since we secured independence and even in the days of the British régime. We must have a situation where there is no uncertainty. We must have some kind of programme. We must have some categorical statement by the Government as to which of these classes they hope to satisfy in the course of the next ten years. How many of those people, all of whom dream they will some day get land, are likely to be satisfied? The Minister has already made it abundantly clear in the course of his speech that a very large number of these people will never be satisfied. He has made it abundantly clear that the main problem that affects his mind is that of relieving the extreme congestion, largely in the West of Ireland but also in pockets hither and thither in other parts of the country.

They are not pockets at all. They are fairly large areas.

That makes it all the more important to have this over-all statement provided for the House, if the Minister can do that. If the Minister needs more time before he can make the kind of statement asked for by the Leader of the Opposition, I am quite prepared to recognise that that may be necessary. I quite recognise that the whole situation in regard to land settlement is fluid since, with improvements in methods, production may increase and partly solve the problem. Emigration is a sad and tragic continuing solution to congestion. It went on in our time though we reduced the total very much up to 1939, when it increased again. It has increased enormously since the present Government came into office. Emigration is the one sad, tragic and desperate solution for congestion. It has gone on almost continuously and the Minister himself referred to it specifically in the course of the debate last year. There are also variations which take place throughout the country. There are some areas in which the people would give anything in the world to have even 10 more acres of reasonably good arable land. There are other areas where they want 25 to 40 acres of good arable land before they will be satisfied. There are all these variations throughout the country, but it should still be possible for the Minister to give us some over-all information about the general position.

The Minister for Agriculture, of course, loves to exaggerate. I hope that the very decent group of migrants now living in Kildare and Meath appreciate the insults hurled against them. I hope the migrants who are happy in their homes and who do not leave birds' nests in the chimneys to be lit when the Land Commission inspector comes along appreciate the insults hurled against them.

Deputy Kennedy said that yesterday.

I hope the vast majority of these migrants in Meath and Kildare will appreciate the suggestion made so very clearly by the Minister that the whole business has been a failure and that the bird's nest is not an isolated incident but can be multiplied all over the country where there are empty and unoccupied houses and derelict lands. That was the clear suggestion made by the Minister for Agriculture. He chose to use his position to insult that group of people who helped us by taking part in an experiment conducted by our Government, an experiment that was naturally associated with the problems that had to be solved.

Deputy Kennedy referred to them as spoon-fed.

These were the tenants against whom you had to bring in the 1946 Act.

The Minister will permit me to make my speech without interruption. I did not interrupt him when he was speaking. The Minister for Agriculture implied that the 1946 Act was passed or advocated in this House, with the object of correcting a situation, not related only to a few thousand holdings but to correct a situation related to the whole of the vast land division undertaken by the Fianna Fáil Government during its 16 years of office. The implication was that the Act was going to result in the displacement of 10,000 farmers, that it was intended to correct a situation in which we had advised the Land Commission to act too hastily and that, as a result, nine out of ten instead of one out of ten allottees were found unsuitable.

The actual fact is that everybody knows that the number of holdings affected was very small. The people concerned were warned that they must do tillage properly and look after their holdings or they would be removed. So far as I know, very few had to be removed. Once land division was speeded up, it was inevitable that there would be a certain number of allottees who might not have been chosen so wisely as others. The actual fact is that in the years from 1935 to 1939, each year nearly 7,000 allottees were given land and the vast majority were found satisfactory. Of course, the Minister for Agriculture likes to give the impression that the 1946 Act was the climax to years and years of disastrous land division and of giving land to people who were not worthy of it. I hope that there, again, some 40,000 to 50,000 Fianna Fáil Government allottees will appreciate the Minister's remarks that appear to apply to them as though they had all been found unsuitable, instead of its being a marginal business.

One of the reasons why we look for precision in this matter, as far as possible, is that members of the Government themselves disagree or appear to have all sorts of individual opinions in regard to land settlement. We had the Minister for Agriculture advocating, for the second time, the prohibition of the renting of land. He gave us a number of exceptions in which he said land could be rented but he left the matter extremely vague. He did not tell us how he was going to carry out this new principle. He did not tell us whether something more than the normal Land Commission machinery should be devised to deal with that situation. He did not tell us how we could deal with the marginal cases that might arise, whether a special committee or commission should be set up to deal with such marginal cases, or how long a person, who finds himself in distressing circumstances, should be allowed to set his land. It is a very difficult problem but the Minister for Agriculture likes to make these grand suggestions without giving any details of how they can be carried out.

We also heard the Minister for Agriculture referring to the homestead as being sacred. He said nothing whatever about agricultural competence. He implied that the position of the landlord or landowner, however great his holding, was sacrosanct whereas according to the present Government and the last Government his land could be resumed if he did not exercise good husbandry. What is the policy of the Government in regard to that? Do they agree with the Minister for Agriculture that once a man gets land and does not set it, he should be allowed to remain in it, no matter what the acreage is or do they agree with the principle that the user of the land is an important factor?

We should like to hear the Minister's views on what the Minister for Agriculture said in regard to having two migrations instead of one. The Minister for Agriculture thinks that no migrant should be sent directly to Meath, that there should be an indirect process involving two migrations with all its attendant expense. Will the Minister for Lands tell us what is the policy in regard to land rearrangement—Mr. Dillon's or the practice hitherto pursued, whereby whatever course seemed most convenient was adopted and whereby every effort was made to save some of the colossal expenses of arranging for two migrations instead of one? We should like to hear the Minister's views in regard to that.

It is very nice to hear the Minister for Agriculture speak of the impartiality of the Land Commission inspectors and of the fact that it is possible for seven out of every eight allottees to be in the Fianna Fáil Cumann of the district without there being any suggestion of political patronage or corruption but we remember how Clann na Poblachta during the last general election made every kind of wholesale accusation in regard to the methods of the division of land carried on up to that time. The clear implication was that the Land Commission were far from being incorruptible, that they were under the dictate of the then Minister for Lands and gave land in large quantities to Fianna Fáil supporters because they were Fianna Fáil supporters. It is interesting now to hear the Minister for Agriculture make those almost hallowed statements in regard to the impartiality of the Land Commission inspectors.

Another reason why the head of the Opposition asked for an over-all statement was that the Minister himself has been far from consistent in his own statements. The Minister for Lands, who was then Deputy Blowick, stated in the course of the debate on the Land Commission Estimate on the 6th May, 1947, as reported in Volume 105, column 2143:

"The Minister is asking the House to-day for a sum that is slightly short of £1,500,000 for his Department."

That is the sum that can be compared with the present Estimate.

"In my opinion that sum is completely inadequate if any genuine attempt is to be made to settle the land question ... If he were genuine in his attempts to do so, he would not have come to the House to ask for a sum that is less than £1,500,000. That is less than the sum that is collected in land annuities in each year. Instead the Minister would have come and asked for a sum of £6,000,000 or £7,000,000. He would treat this matter much more seriously. His colleague, the Minister for Defence, came to the House and asked for a sum of £5,000,000 for a peace-time Army. That is what the Minister for Lands should have done, so that, in my opinion, the work of the Minister and the Department is a huge joke."

That was the attitude of the Minister when he was in opposition. Apparently the work of the Department is still a huge joke, because the sum has hardly been increased although the actual cost of many Land Commission operations has gone up, particularly the improvement of land. Then on the 28th of February, 1949, as reported in the Irish Times, we had Mr. Blowick addressing a meeting of the County Executive of the Cork Farmers' Association. In the course of a discussion on future policy of the Minister said: “It was the policy of the Government to eliminate congestion and to place the largest number of families on economic farms. He hoped that the Land Commission would complete its task within the next five or six years.” If these words, in the report of that speech, are taken out of their context the Minister can tell us.

My own prophecy is that the Minister cannot possibly, no matter how excellent his officials, no matter how many Acts he passes, relieve the land settlement problem in five or six years. Not even the greatest genius in the world could do it. He can, he says, do something towards a solution of that problem. That is a statement which results in our asking for a plan, even if it is only a plan of what they think they can do, a plan with even up to 70 per cent. accuracy. If the Minister only gave the figures asked for by the head of the Opposition to the degree of 70 per cent. accuracy, at least we would know where we were. We would like to know, in particular, the amount of land he thinks is available for division and settlement. We would like to know, divided up into various categories, the total acreage which he considers available. We would like to know how many of these acres are likely to be voluntarily surrendered, how many are derelict sites, how much land is actually in the hands of the Land Commission for distribution, how much land he will be able to get through the Land Act under which, if proper husbandry is not exercised, land can be resumed. How many acres will come under that category?

How much land does he think he will be able to buy in the open market out of the 200,000 acres which change hands each year in this country, where we have a total of 17,000,000 acres of arable and non-arable land? We would also like the Minister to repeat the statement that in the future holdings are to be 40 statute acres, regardless of the district. We would like a clear statement of the present Minister's view of an economic holding. Will he tell us what an economic holding should be in Meath or a farm in Mayo, and whether he intends to alter the acreage in different districts?

I represent an area where there are a great number of people who have from eight to 15 acres. In that area in the Midlands a number of farms have been acquired recently by the Land Commission. There are a great many people there very distributed because they want to know whether they will be included in the allocation of land. What is the Minister going to do with the 200 and 300-acre estates he has taken in Westmeath if, surrounding these estates, there are very few of what might be described as extreme congests? Will he bring people into the area and will he tell the people who have ten or 15 acres and are looking for an extra holding what his intentions are with regard to them and what general principles he will adopt? From hearing the Minister at one time one would gather that these holdings will be used for fresh migrations and arrangement schemes that will only result in satisfaction for people living in extremely congested conditions.

One hears rumours in the country— they are not always reliable—that some of these places may be divided and the ordinary rules of division will be the order of the day, namely, that people with less than 25 acres on the estate will get land first and will have their holdings made up and that after the local tenants have been satisfied the claims of others will be considered. What principle has been adopted with regard to the Midland divisions now taking place? If the Minister will give us an indication of that, perhaps he will do much to satisfy the anxious feelings of small farmers and their sons who desire to know their position.

We would also like to hear the Minister's definition of a user of land. During the Fianna Fáil régime, we stressed greatly the value of tillage. Tillage is decling all over the country. In a great many areas the land is going back to grass. In other areas, one finds rather the opposite. It is delightful to see in certain areas that there is a great deal of tillage being done. The Minister must be aware that the more the land goes back to grass, the more land will be available for him.

We would like to hear whether his policy can be reconciled with that of the Minister for Agriculture. Do the Ministers see eye to eye? Is that supposed to be a method of solving the land problem—to allow it to go back to grass, even though by doing so we may find ourselves in a position of extreme danger at some future date with relation to our food supplies? As it is, we have to borrow American dollars in order to feed ourselves. In one sense we are placing ourselves in an insecure position if there is another war, an insecure position financially, and in another sense we are providing the Minister for Lands with more land. What is the Government's policy? We would like to hear the Minister on the subject of the user of land.

It is all very well to say there will be more land available if the Minister will take large farms that are not being tilled, but we have the statement of the Minister for External Affairs the other day when he said, in a report to the E.C.A. mission, that the effect of the E.C.A. policy, so far as this country is concerned, is that we are saving the British Government millions of dollars every year by exporting cattle to Great Britain in large numbers, running into debt ourselves when, in fact, said Mr. MacBride, hitting the British in their pocket, we should be growing more wheat. That policy will give more land to the Minister for Lands, but it will not be good for us economically, politically or militarily. We would like to hear more from the Minister about his policy in that regard.

I will mention one thing which has been the cause of much dissatisfaction in my constituency and for which the Minister for Lands, so far as I know, is not at all responsible. It speaks well for the people of Westmeath and other areas that they have resisted the poisonous propaganda of quite a large number of people belonging to Clann na Poblachta who, in order to get for themselves cheap popularity, started an agitation in Westmeath for the acquisition of large, residential farms that had been bought, not by Englishmen, not even by Irishmen returning to Ireland, but by people who came from another part of Ireland and who bought certain farms of 300 acres, proceeded to employ regularly anything up to 21 persons on the 300 acres, and proceeded to improve the land. Then the cry went up: "This man should be deprived of his 300 acres because he is a Cromwellian."

I want to mention that because it is just as well to record that the people of Westmeath did not listen to that kind of poisonous propaganda. They rejected the blandishments of the Clann na Poblachta candidates and show no sign of having any greater interest in them in the future. That kind of thing can happen in this country—that men can actually encourage the resumption of an estate where employment is largely given, on the ground that the man who bought the estate although an Irishman was a Cromwellian and an Orangeman. That was resisted by the people in Westmeath in the election and I have no doubt it will be so resisted again. Otherwise, we will not be placing ourselves in the position of following the example set us by the men of 1916 who, in the course of the Proclamation of the Republic, proclaimed the equality of all classes and creeds in this country.

Mr. Browne

In connection with this Estimate some Deputies seemed to put the case that there is not sufficient land available to meet the requirements of uneconomic holders, while others stated that there is. In my area of North Mayo we have a huge population of very small farmers with low valuations. They work very hard, but their holdings are so small that they find it very difficult to make a living. If there is no hope of migrating them to the Midlands, the future for them is not very bright. There is not enough land in the area to enlarge their holdings. I have a suggestion to make to the Minister, though he may not agree with it.

The suggestion is that if the Land Commission are, say, acquiring a farm of 150 acres in an area where you have a huge number of small tenants that, instead of dividing that farm into six 25-acre holdings on which, of course, six new houses with stabling accommodation and other out-offices would have to be built, he should distribute that land amongst small tenants living within say three miles of it by giving additional allotments of it to those with valuations between £4 and £6 or between £6 10s. and £8. If that were done, these additional allotments would be of enormous help to people with low valuations. They would be put in the position of being able to make a fairly comfortable living for themselves and their families.

The people I speak of work very hard. As Deputy Maguire has pointed out, the people in those congested areas have a way of making a living for themselves. If my suggestion were carried out they would be able to make a better living for themselves with the help of these additional allotments than if they were migrated to Meath and given 20 or 25 acres of land there. Their annuities and their rates in Mayo are small compared with what they would have to pay in Meath. Many of those who have been migrated to Meath find it very difficult to make a living because of the high annuities and rates which they have to pay. That is what they tell us. I think it would be preferable to do what I suggest with this 150-acre farm than to divide it amongst six families because by the time the Land Commission had provided new houses and out-offices on each holding, the cost, I imagine for each would run into £1,200 or £1,500.

There is the point too that if these tenants with small holdings, instead of being given the additional allotments that I speak of, are migrated to the Midlands, in time the fairly good houses and stabling which they have at present will become derelict, and so a great deal of waste will be occasioned in that way. All these small farmers are, as I have said, very hard workers and by getting six or eight additional acres they could make a fairly comfortable living for themselves and their families.

I should like to point out to the Minister that about 20 years ago when land was divided in my area and small farmers there were given additional land, they made the very best use of it and I think that if the Minister were to go through that district to-day he would be proud to see the way in which they have utilised the additional land they got. I would venture to say that they are making far more out of the six or eight acres of additional land they got than the people are who were taken to the Midlands and given 20 or 25 acres. These are the views that I hold about land acquisition and land distribution in my constituency.

I come now to deal with the Erris area. There is a very big population there. The people there are living in hope that they will be migrated to the Midlands. I think it is only fair that the Land Commission should acquire more land in the Midlands and so make provision for taking families out of poor areas such as we have in Erris. The people there are expecting word every day that they will be migrated. I would make a special appeal to the Minister not to overlook the people in that area which stretches back into Belmullet because I know they are in great need of getting a transfer to the Midlands where they should be put in a position of being able to make a living for themselves and their families.

Finally I want to complain that Land Commission roads in my area and roads which were made in areas which the Land Commission took over and divided years ago have gone practically derelict now. They seem to be nobody's property and nobody takes responsibility of having them repaired with the result that nobody can make use of the land which lies along those roads.

I do not want to hold up the debate any further except to press upon the Minister my point about additions to small holdings in my area.

I think the one mistake made in this Dáil was made on the day that a division was made between the Department of Lands and the Department of Agriculture and I think it is a pretty serious mistake. We had the position where the Minister for Lands would also be responsible to this House for agricultural policy. We had a condition of affairs then when the two Departments would not be working against each other. You had one Department. You would not have one Department dividing land up into what they consider to be economic holdings and another Department working away to make no holding economic unless it had 250 acres of good land in it. That is what is happening with the present policy between the Department of Lands and the Department of Agriculture.

We hear a lot of talk here about economic holdings. What is an economic holding? A holding on which a man and his family can work and live in at least frugal comfort. You can make a 20-acre holding economic by seeing that the agricultural produce from that 20-acre holding fetches a price that will make it economic. I say here frankly that 50 per cent. of the holdings that were economic in 1947 are uneconomic to-day.

The reason you have that condition of affairs is the mistake which was made of having two Ministers, one for lands and another for agriculture. Experts were sent from the universities down to my county and other counties to find out the income of a farmer and how much he had to live on. They found out that on an ordinary 50 acre holding the farmer had about £3 2s. 6d. a week on 1947 figures. I will take the usual gambit and take a 30 or 35 acre holding; I suppose you would say that that was economic. The man on that holding would have roughly ten cows. After 25 years of rather intensive beef trading he would still succeed in having in his dairy stock 480 gallon cows, and if he has 480 gallon cows that farmer is worse off to-day than he was in 1947 by something over £70. Whether that makes him uneconomic or not——

The Deputy is going into the question of agricultural production.

I am going into the question of what is considered an economic holding.

The Deputy is discussing agricultural production. He will have to confine himself to what the Minister for Lands controls.

All right. Another complaint I have to make is that the Minister for Lands does not control——

That was done by legislation and cannot be discussed either.

One of the complaints I have to make is that you cannot discuss what should be discussed. Yet you can switch over easily.

We have talk about the 350,000 farmers there are in the country and the splitting and fixing up of the land needed to make each one into an economic holder. One would think that each of the 350,000 farmers was the one age, that they were all newly married men just gone into their farms to start off life and that we would have no more bother for 17 or 18 years until the young fellows grow up and start courting. Unfortunately that is not the way. You can say that out of those 350,000 farms you have 160,000 holdings where there is a man, his wife, two or three able-bodied sons and a couple of daughters.

Now what is going to become of them? Deputy Maguire alluded to the question to-night when he spoke of the closed boroughs of the trades. If you want to be a carpenter you must be a carpenter's son; if you want to be a mason you must be a mason's son; if you want to go as a builder's labourer you must get a ticket from a transport worker which you will not get.

That is not true.

It is absolutely true. I know what I am talking about, and any amount of protests from Deputy Hickey will not make any difference.

What is going to become of the 160,000 young men who have worked all their life on the land and are ready to go out to earn a livelihood elsewhere? With all other trades closed to them, with no outlet except that of the unskilled labourer, he must, if he can collect enough out of the farm, take ship for America or England. That is the outlook and that is the only outlet for them. There is very little use in talking about forming economic holdings and all the rest of it when you look at the returns for the past two years and find that 21,000 people who were earning a livelihood on the land in 1947 have gone from it to-day.

The Deputy is reverting to agricultural policy.

I want to know by what policy the Land Commission will make economic holdings, remove congestion, and all the rest of it. Where will it lead? What is it going to mean? Will it mean that those 21,000 people will be brought back or at least that 21,000 more will not be sent after them? Or will it mean that, because I happen to have a ten-acre farm in County Mayo, I am going to get a farm of 30 or 40 acres somewhere else, and that a new tribe of congests is going to be created? In every house in the country, you will have the old farmer and his wife and two or three sons, anywhere between 40 and 50, and two or three daughters between 30 and 40, and no outlet for any of them. That is the choice. If the farmer is thrifty and hard-working and if his sons and daughters are hard-working, and if he collects a little money which would help him to buy a holding adjacent to his farm when it comes up for sale, under the new régime, the Land Commission will step in and will buy that farm for somebody from a congested area and that farmer will have no hope of these boys settling down on the land.

With that knowledge, how long are they going to stay on it? They are going to remain there until they are about 14 years of age and will then clear out, because there is no man in his senses to-day who will work for the income to be got from the land of £3 5s. 0d. per week when he can get a job building a sanatorium at £5 6s. 0d. a week, with a half-day on Saturday and Sunday off. He would be mad if he did.

I thought a few moments ago the argument was that he could not get into a trade.

We have any amount of that kind of thing. If the Minister will turn to his colleague, Deputy Donnellan, he will tell him that he has given up growing beet because his men were leaving him. Let us get down to bedrock and see what is going to be the future position in regard to the land we have all the talk about. The object of providing an economic holding for a man is to give him a livelihood. I did not agree with the policy pursued by previous Governments. I do not agree with the kind of policy which puts on a 20-acre farm a man who has to go into competition the following month with the labourer in the labourer's cottage across the road for work with somebody else because he cannot get a livelihood on his 20 acres. That is what is happening all over this country—new congests and a new condition of congestion being created.

The Minister for Agriculture was very local here to-night. He attacked Deputy Moylan for bringing in legislation under which he took power to take back on behalf of this nation the present which the taxpayers gave a man when they handed him a farm of land for nothing. Any number of people will take farms of land for nothing, but every man put into one of these holdings is getting a present from the State of anything from £1,000 to £2,000 worth of property and, considering that it costs up to £1,200 to build a labourer's cottage, I do not know what you could build a house on a farm for. The Minister for Agriculture was very vocal about these people, but there are black sheep in every flock. Even in the case of the 195 creameries circularised by the Minister the other day, there were three found to take the shilling. I asked for their names, as I thought they should be held up as curiosities, but I would not get them. You will get this type of people all over the country, but what was the alternative? I can tell the Minister what the alternative was and what I saw actually happening. I saw a farm taken over in my constituency by the Land Commission and I saw a migrant of the description he has given, a man with 40 acres of bare land, shifted on to this farm. He stayed in it three and a half years and it cost a fairly good deal to shift him out of it. He paid a half year's annuity during that period and paid no rates.

Who recommended him?

The Land Commission went to work and put him out. He retook forcible possession and was sent to jail for six months. When he came back, the Land Commission took him and his family holus-bolus and planted them back on that farm which they had secured some six years previously for the relief of congestion.

When did that happen?

It happened before Deputy de Valera took office.

I was wondering if it happened while he was in office.

I am quoting it as an example of what the Land Commission had to do in cases of this kind before Deputy Moylan's Land Act was brought in. For the Minister's information, that little farm back in Bandon was waiting for him and it had not been divided up amongst any congests. It was waiting for that man to go back and he went back quite happily.

They were good times, apparently.

They were great times when you could owe three and a half years' rates.

They were the good days of Deputy Sweetman's Party's administration.

The present Minister had no responsibility for that.

I am not pretending he had. I merely give it as an example of the reasons for the Land Act brought in by Deputy Moylan and for which he was attacked by the Minister for Agriculture.

I suggest that the Deputy come nearer to the Estimate.

I am only dealing with what the Minister for Agriculture dealt with in this connection.

That case was not the reason Deputy Moylan gave for bringing in the 1946 Act.

The Minister for Agriculture accused Deputy Moylan to-night of having brought in that Act to drive out the bad tenants he had put into these holdings. I am giving the reasons why Deputy Moylan brought it in. He had his choice—either that procedure or the procedure adopted by the previous Government for settling these matters. Hard things have to be done sometimes, and, if you were to take a cross-section of the population at any time, you would always find a couple of black sheep like the three creameries which took the shilling from the Minister the other day— a five-year period for milk, the cost of production of which had gone up 3d. a gallon.

I never offered a price for milk to anyone.

One for the other. There was another statement made here which I was very glad to hear. It was well worth hearing and even well worth the extreme misfortune for this country of having Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture for two years. It was worth it all to get this much from the arch-mud slinger of that Party, the admission, from that arch-mud slinger——

There is no necessity to repeat these charges.

——that the Minister for Lands has nothing to do with the allottees who get land. We got that amazing admission from the Minister for Agriculture to-night. I hope I will have some time between this and next Tuesday, when I shall be resuming here, to look up some of the amazing charges of that description made in this House by the Minister for Agriculture and other distinguished gentlemen over there, charges of fraud and corruption, and that nominees, not of the Land Commission, but of Fianna Fáil clubs were given land. We were even told that the officials were able to be got at.

Apparently, two years in office have made people wiser. I hope that they are not leaving too many disappointed people amongst the boys down the country who thought when these people got into office they would be getting nice little holdings of land, despite all that Deputy Giles might do. When these people went over to the Government Benches they found that, instead of coming up against the very humane and soft-hearted Minister for Lands they were confronted by a hardhearted Land Commissioner who began to test out the qualifications of the individuals recommended to him for land. Deputies over there are, as a consequence, a lot wiser to-day than they were two years ago when they were making these unfounded charges. When the Fianna Fáil Government was in office, I remember that when my colleague from Youghal, the former Deputy Broderick, and myself counted up the score we found that we were just about 50-50. Perhaps he got one or two more than I got on some estates, and I pulled a little over him on others. But, judging by the results, the Land Commission were absolutely impartial.

Getting away from the general discussion which has gone on since four o'clock this afternoon and coming to the Estimate proper, I agree with what Deputy Maguire said. All over the country we have the Land Commission acquiring estates and pretending to build a kind of road into them and then leaving it there. That road afterwards presents a problem. In one portion of my constituency there are some 12 families living on a divided estate served by a road one and a half or one and threequarter miles in length. The local creamery had to refuse to send their lorry over that Land Commission road, after breaking the springs of the lorry a couple of times. When the Land Commission hands over an estate of that kind one would expect that at least they would put the road in such a condition that the representatives on the local authority would be able to move straight away that the road be taken over by the county council and maintained. That would be a sensible way to do things.

The Deputy is now talking sense.

I always talk sense.

It is a pity he did not impress that on the former Government years ago.

I often have to visit the Deputy's area from time to time to correct the bad legal advice that he gives his clients. One man whom I advised got £120 for barley after being told by the Deputy that he had no case. A fortnight ago my colleague, Deputy Keane, and myself brought a proposal before the county council to take over one of these roads in the Kilworth district. The county council had already expended on that road something between £200 and £250. It would cost another £125 to put it in such a condition that the county council could take it over. Therefore, it has to remain as it is. When we see the enormous sum of £354,800 provided here for improvement of estates—the Minister got that amount last year and he is looking for the same amount in this Estimate—one would expect that, in a case like that, he would see that his inspectors would provide a road that these people can travel over and which can be taken over by the local authority without further expense. That is not asking too much. In the case I mentioned a moment ago, the local creamery put 15 lorry loads of gravel on the road and even after that it was a bad job.

That is what smashed it up.

I ask the Minister to look into that matter and see if he cannot spend a few pounds out of this £354,000 in improving the condition of these roads.

Does the Deputy want me——

Mr. Sweetman interrupted.

Will the Deputy keep quiet for the remaining ten minutes? He is a man who will charge an unfortunate client three guineas for five words.

Will the Deputy deal now with the estimate?

I hope the Chair will protect me and see that I am not interrupted too much. I would expect that some portion of that money would be set aside to see that those two roads I have mentioned would at least be put in such a condition by the Land Commission that the county council engineer would be able to certify them and get them taken over by the county council. That will relieve the Land Commission of an obligation; it will give those people the service to which they are entitled and it will help to make their little holdings more economic. Instead of having to harness a horse in the morning to take their churn of milk one and a half miles to the main road so that the lorry can collect it there, the lorry will be able to come right up to the gate and take it away. The thresher will be able to come up and thresh their corn and the lorry will be able to come in for their beet. All that can be done if the Land Commission will give up cheese-paring for the sake of a few pounds. I am quite sure that that would not be the most unwisely spent money ever spent by the Land Commission.

The Minister has now completed two years of office. I have no fault to find with him and no complaint to make of his work up to the present. I am, however, watching carefully the division of the Trabolgan estate. I am watching carefully for this purpose alone——

Is it going according to the Deputy's wishes?

I have already stated my views on that matter. I have no reason to think that there has been any change. What I am interested in is the fact that an estate was divided some years ago in that district and unfortunately there was not sufficient land to go round. A number of those people at that period got uneconomic holdings from the Land Commission. I would make it clear now to the Minister that this is a golden opportunity of making these holdings economic before bringing any strangers into the district. I do not think that it is asking too much when I say that the first claimants on an estate which is to be divided should be the uneconomic holders in the district. I would say that their claim should be even stronger if the Land Commission themselves were responsible for making uneconomic holdings there.

Yes. We always deal with uneconomic holders in the locality. But the Land Commission determines whether they are uneconomic. We do not allow themselves to do it—that makes a difference.

I am not asking you to do it. I have not been some 24 years in this House without learning the rules of the game in that matter.

Of all the games, yes. I have at least learned the valuation that is supposed to be on a holding that is considered to be uneconomic. There is also another rather vexed question which I and my colleagues, Deputy Keane and Deputy O'Gorman, raised with the Minister some 18 months ago, that is, the question of the Finnure estate. Deputy Keane had a question about it. Deputy O'Gorman had a question about it and I myself had a question about it.

I do not think so.

If you had not, you were interested enough to come along. Were you not?

Where to?

You were interested enough to come along and to advocate that it be taken over for division.

This conversation must cease, Deputy Corry.

Very well.

Through you, Sir, I should like to say that I do not like to be brought into something that I have no remembrance or cognisance of. Again let me say to Deputy Corry that I do not think I did.

I am interested in this estate. The Land Commission is looking for land. There is a farm of 500 acres. The poor law valuation is somewhere between £550 and £600. That is good land. It is a holding from which a large number of families had been evicted previous to the last Government's getting possession of it.

The owner of the holding died and the holding was advertised for public auction. I considered it my responsibility and Deputy Keane considered it his responsibility—I do not know whether Deputy O'Gorman considered it to be his responsibility or not—to send representations to the Land Commission in connection with this holding and requesting that it be taken over. I understand that the Minister received a petition from the thousands of those who were evicted from that holding, asking that it be taken over, but, though the Minister's officials were down there on a couple of occasions, I understand nothing was done about that aspect of the matter. There is a lot of talk in this House about congests and about looking for land here and looking for land there, but, in spite of all that kind of talk, the land in question was purchased by an Englishman. I would be very slow to blame anybody and I judge every bridge just as I cross it, but I must say that I consider that that was completely wrong. I would like the Minister to tell me the reasons which prevented the Land Commission from stepping in, in this case, and taking possession of that holding for division.

They had no power.

They had plenty of power. They had power any time.

Did the Deputy support the 1939 Land Act when it was going through this House?

Certainly.

I see. Therein the Deputy will probably find the reason.

Oh, no. I will have a chat with the Minister next Tuesday about that. I hope that when he comes to the House next Tuesday he will be able to quote chapter and verse on that. I will be looking for chapter and verse on it.

So will I.

As the Minister is conversant with that Act I hope he will quote me the section under which the Land Commission is prevented from taking such action. Whether the Minister is responsible for the Land Commission or not is another story but he is responsible for it to this House.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported. The Committee to sit again.
The Dail adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 2nd May, 1950.
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