The debate on this Estimate took a line which I did not anticipate. Deputy Moylan, in opening the debate, placed the blame for the shortness of his speech on the fact that the Estimate was introduced so shortly after passing the Land Bill.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 47—Lands (Resumed).
I was going to speak on this Estimate but the Minister is in now.
Too bad, because I am sure I would have benefited very considerably from the brilliance of the Deputy's contribution if he had been earlier off his mark.
That is true definitely.
Deputy Moylan was dumbfounded——
Was the Minister really called at all?
I think he slipped in.
I think he slipped in in the confusion of my moving the adjournment of the last debate.
Not at all. I understood that the acting Ceann Comhairle called on the Minister to conclude.
I think there is a misunderstanding on this.
I said that the debate on the Lands Estimate should be continued.
So that confusion would not be worse confounded I suggest that the Minister should go ahead.
Deputy Burke may wish to treat this as a joke ——
I am not treating it as a joke.
The Deputy was not interrupted while he was making his speech.
The Minister is a good hand at interrupting.
I think I can feel fairly proud of the year's achievement of the Land Commission seeing the position in which I found myself and the Land Commission two years ago at the time of the changes of Government. I think that bringing 1,250 families from the level of poverty to the level of a fairly decent economic holding is no mean achievement for the last 12 months, but I am not satisfied with that and I will not be satisfied with that in the coming year. The relief of 1,250 families with an average of five persons per household totalling well over 6,000 is a very creditable achievement seeing the way we started two years ago. The acquisition of 32,544 acres last year is a very creditable achievement and the distribution of 28,000 acres to 1,800 allottees is a very creditable achievement. At least the Deputies on this side of the House and some Deputies on the opposite side of the House had the manliness to admit that they were perfectly satisfied with it for the year. I feel quite proud of that achievement.
There was a good deal of talk on the question of acreage divided. I want to say that I am more interested in the number of families who have been raised from the poverty level to a fairly decent economic level and I am sure that the 1,250 families if they got the chance to voice an opinion on the subject would agree with me that that is no mean achievement for the past year. Let me say now that if I am the Minister introducing this Vote next year I hope I will come into the House with an achievement of 2,000 families relieved in the year.
Deputy de Valera, the Leader of the Opposition, speaking the other night, referred, as he did last year, to a possible 500,000 acres available for distribution. I asked him last year where it was. I do not want it all together but I want some of it and I want it badly. I want to know where it is because I would love to get my hands on it. The fact is that nobody knows what amount of land is available for acquisition at any given time without a survey and a survey would not be worth the trouble or expense of it because, under the 1939 Land Act, the Land Commission is prohibited from taking land which is being used in a certain way set out very clearly in the Act. Land which was available last year may not be available this year because conditions on the farm may have changed. Therefore the surface of the acquisition and resumption question is as changeable as the surface of the ocean. It is constantly changing. The Land Commission may institute proceedings for the acquisition of a farm. They may make preliminary inquiries; they may make later inquiries; they may even issue provisional lists notifying the owners and all persons concerned that they are going to acquire certain land, but meanwhile the usership of the farm may change and when the question goes before the Land Commission court they may decide not to acquire it. I am not concerned with acreage so much as with the number of families relieved in a particular year and I want to advise the House that that is the only angle from which this question may be approached—the number of families still outstanding to be relieved.
The acquisition question is a burning one and for that reason I have introduced in the Bill which has passed through the Dáil but which has yet to go through the Upper House a method of supplementing the flow of land into the Land Commission machine for the purpose of relieving congestion, that is, the purchase of land in the open market coupled with the fact that we are now giving market value for all land, whether it is acquired or resumed, which I anticipate will remove a lot of the obstacles which the Land Commission hitherto met. Land will be purchased on the open market, always provided—as I said on the Second Stage and on the Committee Stage of the Land Bill when it was passing through this House—that no evils arise as a result of the Land Commission going into the open market. I want to say to Deputies who want to see this Bill benefiting the people that if abuses of any kind arise, either inflation of prices or deflation of prices, as a result of the Land Commission going into the open market, the Land Commission will instantly be prohibited from proceeding further along those lines.
Deputies can help me enormously when this Bill becomes law by advising their constituents who might be inclined to take the law into their own hands or to do something when a sale occurs which might be injurious either to the owner or to the purchaser to leave the matter severely alone. If they advise them in that way they will be helping me and helping the Land Commission enormously. If they take a certain other line of approach they will defeat the good intentions which lay behind the introduction of Section 26 of the Bill which has just passed through the House.
The purchase of land on the open market will not be the final solution of the land question but it will help enormously in three ways. The first, which I hope will be the most beneficial, will be the purchase of standard holdings of economic size which have a fairly decent house, out-office buildings and other amenities put there by the labour of the previous occupiers. These will be capable of being purchased by the Land Commission and will be instantly available for migrants. The second, and no less important, is the purchase of holdings which are described as derelict but which should more be described as ownerless holdings in congested or rundale townlands. When a Land Commission inspector goes to a townland to do a job of rearrangement or resettlement he is confronted with the fact that a number of holdings are apparently ownerless—they may be used by people in the immediate locality—but essentially in order to do a job of rearrangement in the area all these holdings should be purchased by the Land Commission. In some cases up to the present the Land Commission had power to purchase such holdings, but, in other cases, they had not the power to do so.
The law up to the passing of the Land Bill showed many strange faces in that regard. One of them was the fact that the Land Commission had authority under statute to give the market value for unvested land, but for a similar farm, a farm of the same size, the same valuation and of the same value in every way in the same locality which was vested, they could give only a price which was fair to the Land Commission and to the owner. Into the bargain, in the case of vested land, the redemption value, had the land been subject to the Land Purchase Acts previously, had to be taken out of the purchase money, with the result that there was scarcely an owner from whom the Land Commission took land who did not feel aggrieved. The Land Commission also had power to purchase certain holdings, provided they were unvested and purchased under certain Acts, while other holdings in the same locality or near it could not be touched because they had no authority to pay for them in cash. The Land Bill irons out many of these difficulties and that, coupled with the arrangement with regard to a senior inspector under the Bill, which I hope will not be materially altered in the Upper House, will provide a much quicker solution in the matter of rearrangement.
None of the abuses which some of the Opposition seem to fear can possibly arise. I have explained the position in that regard already and it would be superfluous to give a further explanation. It can be truly said that the Minister does a lot in the case of a rearrangement scheme, but, if we examine the problem, what we find is that, even though the inspector is the Minister's officer, when he goes into a townland he asks a number of tenants to surrender their holdings for the time being, so that the whole thing can be rearranged, but I want to remind the House that in such cases the inspector has not got only one commissioner over him. He has more than the Minister over him because he has every tenant being rearranged and every tenant watches very jealously to see that none of his neighbours gets a divide of land which is better than the divide he gets. The result is, that if there is any discrimination, any injustice in the dividing of it, the scheme falls through, because one person can break it. That was so obvious that I think it was Deputy Commons who introduced an amendment whereby three-quarters of the people being rearranged could force a rearrangement through. There is no danger of any of these evils arising.
I think it was Deputy de Valera, the Leader of the Opposition, who went so far as to suggest—I am subject to correction in this regard—that, in taking these powers, the Minister was taking power of acquisition. Such is not the case. Even under the new Bill, I want Deputies to understand clearly that the Minister does not acquire or resume any land. The Minister has not got the allotting of new holdings or the allotting of additional parcels to holdings which are uneconomic but which are not being rearranged.
I want to refer again to the 500,000 acres which the Leader of the Opposition said were available. That is absolutely a myth. There may be 1,000,000 acres available and there may be only 10,000 acres available. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not nearly so concerned with the acreage as with a number of congested homesteads which are relieved each year. I regard the acreage required as only a means to that end and any other approach to the problem is merely turning our backs on it and trying to solve it without looking at it. As I have said, 28,000 acres were allotted last year to 18,000 allottees all told. Of these 18,000, 1,253 were brought from an uneconomic to an economic level. This year, we have more than 32,500 acres with which to relieve congestion in the coming year. There will be more migrants this year than last year and I will not be content with less than 2,000 families relieved this year.
A number of 150,000 congests all told was mentioned by some Opposition Deputy as being the number yet to be relieved. I think that if we had the means of knowing—in this respect again, a survey would be very costly and it would not have been completed three months until changes would have occurred which would render it in-accurate—we would find that about one-third of that number would be nearer the mark. It is quite true that in the Land Commission offices there are records of approximately 383,000 holdings all told, but it must be remembered that, in the nine congested counties, many owners of small uneconomic holdings own one, two and sometimes three holdings, in addition to the one on which they live. The other holdings are not residential. We are more concerned with the actual number of occupied holdings rather than the total number of the holdings.
Many Deputies, I am sorry to say, rambled off into all the usual things they spoke of in other years, seeking to make the Land Commission an omnibus Department covering many matters such as embankments, roads, turbary—which is part of Land Commission work—drainage, fences and so on. Taking the matter of embankments first, it is a really pressing problem and I think Deputy Flynn made the best contribution, or at least showed the greatest knowledge of the problem, because he prefaced his remarks by saying that he was aware that the Land Commission are not responsible, once land is vested in the tenant or farmer. That is exactly the position, and if we carry out repairs to embankments in counties like Clare and Kerry, it is purely a matter of doing a job for the Board of Works or some other Government Department.
I want to repeat what I said last year. The Land Commission is established for the primary purpose of purchasing out the landlords of this country and making the tenant farmers no longer tenants but owners of their holdings. Each tenant farmer, as he becomes vested, ceases to be a tenant. He is the landlord of his own holding, be it big, medium or small in size. The landlord's responsibility goes right over to the tenant the moment he is vested and the embankments thereupon become his liability. In a great many cases, that liability is too heavy for the farmers to carry and the Land Commission steps in, but it means that a special grant has to be got from the Minister for Finance to carry out the job. On the occasion of a visit to some embankments in Kerry which had broken down, it was clear to me that in many cases the farmers whose interest it is to preserve these embankments do not preserve them as they should be preserved.
In the case of one man who was grumbling about an embankment, when I walked along the embankment I found holes made in it by the feet of cattle which had gone up on it for the sweet grazing there. No greater damage could be done to embankments than by the walking of stock on top of them, with the exception of boring by rabbits or rats. The first thing a farmer ought to do is to see that his stock are kept off the embankment and that it should be preserved as much as possible. Very likely it is those who allow their stock to damage such embankments who are the loudest to clamour when a breach occurs and the sea or the river, as the case may be, comes in on the land.
I have the greatest sympathy with those who have embankments on their land and who are at the mercy of high tides or storms which cause a breach and who may find their land, which was dry land the night before, part of the Atlantic the next morning. I am doing my best to come to the relief of those people. The maintenance of embankments is outside the scope of the Land Commission once the lands are vested. When the embankments are in fair condition, the farmers should do their best to maintain them. In County Kerry and County Clare, the two counties where embankments are a very serious problem, I shall do my best to come to the rescue of the farmers concerned if it is humanly possible. I do not want Deputies, however, to take up the position that the Land Commission are liable in these cases. The Land Commission are not. The job of the Land Commission is primarily to buy out the land and to make each tenant farmer the owner of it. Grafted on to that was the problem of relieving congestion when the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board were amalgamated under the 1923 Act.
The question of turbary is also a serious one, because in many areas small bogs which were scattered here and there and which were very suitably located for the people in the district are being cut away and only substantial areas of bogs in mountain areas are left. These are very often too distant from the people who want bog plots. I think it was Deputy Kissane who accused the Land Commission of being slow in purchasing bogs. That is not so. We are anxious to purchase every acre of bog we can put our hands on and to divide the bogs in allotments, provided the people who are clamouring for them have not bog plots of their own. In some cases, the people who clamour for such plots have bogs on their own land or other bog plots which they will not cut because they want to keep them for future generations. In no case have I known the Land Commission to be slow in the purchase of bogs.
In Mayo, Galway, Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Kerry and Clare small bogs of a few hundred acres or less are either cut away or being rapidly cut away. The Land Commission may purchase land for the relief of congestion but they can never create bogs. When a bog is cut away it cannot be replaced. How the people will be provided with firing in the future is a matter which will need serious governmental attention inside the next ten or 15 years, in my opinion. I know areas where there was plenty of bog not so long ago which are now without any and where people have to go 15 or 20 miles for a supply of turf. The trouble is that the Land Commission cannot find bogs to purchase. There may be some isolated places in County Kerry where they refused to purchase some bogs, but they have some reason for it. I will have the matter investigated to see why they are not purchasing these bogs.
I referred to the division of the bogs.
The Land Commission are not anxious to keep bogs on their hands; they gain nothing by so doing. If they are delaying in the division of bogs, they probably have very good and sound reasons for so doing. Several Deputies mentioned that the Land Commission make roads and described them as cul-de-sac roads. That is true. When land is divided, the Land Commission make a road to accommodate the people living in the houses. They make a perfectly good and sound road. Roads which were made 25 or 30 years ago are still perfectly sound and only require slight repairs. It would be useless to ask the Land Commission to make roads linking up one county road with another, because there may be two or three privately-owned farms which would prevent them from doing that. When dividing land, they make a road to accommodate those living in the houses. It would be a waste of good land to continue that road to the other side in order to make a link road connecting two main or county roads. In my opinion, the Land Commission make a good job of roads.
Two Deputies at least raised the question of certain unestablished officials in the Land Commission. It is true that there is a number of unestablished officials, particularly on the outdoor staff of the Land Commission While I do not want to make a definite promise in regard to that matter, I will have the matter looked into to see what can be done for those who have fairly reasonable records of good service to the people and to the Land Commission. I do not want Deputies, however, to take that as a definite promise. All I am promising is to investigate the matter and see if I can do anything along the lines which Deputies Beirne and O'Rourke suggested.
Deputy O'Grady would have us believe that the only Land Commission activity that is taking place is in County Mayo. It might be no harm to give some figures to the Deputy. We shall take County Clare first. In 1946, in County Clare there were 690 acres allotted to 38 allottees. Last year, there were 2,244 acres allotted to 158 allottees, about four times the acreage and about four times the number of allottees.
Mr. de Valera
Remember the year 1946.
I am taking the year 1946 and last year and taking the same two years for the county the boundaries of which are said to limit the vision of the Minister for Lands— County Mayo. In 1946, in County Mayo there were 1,182 acres allotted to 63 allottees. If we maintained the same poportion as was allotted in Clare last year, there should be almost 4,500 acres allotted in Mayo last year and the number of allottees should have risen from 63 to 250. We find that only double the acreage, 2,287 acres, was allotted in Mayo last year. Therefore, while the Land Commission activity increased fourfold in Clare, it increased only twofold in Mayo in those two years. I am thankful to the Deputy for having brought this matter to my attention because otherwise I might not have checked up the figures so accurately. Perhaps the Deputy might want me to take some of the Land Commission officers out of County Clare and put them into County Mayo.
Mr. de Valera
We might also see what was the rate of working in Mayo in 1946.
Deputy Bartley mentioned that I was only asking for £855,170 in this Vote. The Estimate is for £1,535,380. The difference, £688,210, has already been granted in the Vote on Account a few weeks ago. Deputy O'Rourke referred to sports fields and playing fields and asked that the question of vesting them in local Gaelic Athletic Association clubs should be considered. Then he revealed the fact that it is the Central Council of the Gaelic Athletic Association who did not make a grant available to the local club for improvements or the erection of certain buildings on the local plot. That appears to me to be purely a domestic matter for the Gaelic Athletic Association. I think that the Central Council are splitting hairs with the local club when they will not make a grant available. I should like any Deputy to inform me of any instance where the Land Commission have taken back from a local Gaelic Athletic Association club any field which had been allotted to them.
What Deputy Burke said, I think, was that they will not give a grant from the Gaelic Athletic Association central fund until the playing-field is vested.
That is the point. I do not see why the central committee or whatever body has the allotting of funds should do so. While a sports-field or park, as the case may be, is being used for the purpose for which it is allotted the Land Commission is not interested in taking it back. It is absolutely unthinkable that such should occur.
What guarantee have the Gaelic Athletic Association that the Land Commission will not do so?
The fact that it has not been done for the past 40 years.
That is not a business proposition.
Suppose that, for any reason, the sports-field ceases to be used for the purpose for which it is allotted. Does that mean that the local club can call it their own private property and seek to dispose of it as they wish?
What about the county council?
After all, it is the people's property they are disposing of.
Would the Minister indicate the real difficulty about vesting in so far as it applies to a playing-ground?
Once the Land Commission hands over ownership they cannot tie on any conditions. While they can lay down conditions in regard to an agreement these conditions cease to have any force or effect once the ownership passes from the Land Commission to the particular allottee.
With respect, that is not right.
The Agricultural Credit Corporation have been taking the very same line in regard to loans. Legally, the Central Council of the Gaelic Athletic Association cannot make the allocation of a grant until the playing-field is vested.
There is such a thing as a restrictive covenant, and the Minister knows that.
This is the third Estimate which I have moved, and this is the first time that that particular point has been raised. I shall have it examined. I can foresee the difficulties in the Land Commission in regard to the question of vesting it in the local trustees.
Deputy Davin raised a point about cottage plots that are not vested.
Not purchased.
A cottage plot which is not purchased is the property of the county council. Suppose the Land Commission decided to give an allotment of land, if land was being divided in the locality, to a man who did not own the land or house in which he was living, they would be making an addition to something that belonged to the county council. In the case of an enlargement, it is always to the parent holding rather than to the resident on the holding, that the enlargement is given. It is for the purpose of bringing the holding from an uneconomic level to as near an economic level as possible, and nothing can be done there. I am sorry to say that, but nothing can be done in a case like that.
It is a very serious matter for the thousands of cottage tenants in the country.
Is it not true that allotments have been made to cottage tenants who are not purchasers?
I do not know of any.
Mr. Collins
I do.
They insist on the purchase transaction.
Maybe I am wrong.
Now I come to the subject of acquisition. Deputies have tabled questions to the Minister to ask the Land Commission to acquire land. As I have said in reply to a parliamentary question during the year, there are some decisions which the Land Commission arrive at and with which I do not agree. Nevertheless, they have been vested with powers by this House to use their discretion in all cases of acquisition and resumption. While, sometimes, I should like to see them taking farms which they do not take, there is absolutely nothing the Minister can do about it. The new Land Bill does not give the Minister power—regardless of what some members on the Opposition side of the House have said—to acquire or resume under any circumstances, not even in the case of a rearrangement scheme. If the Land Commission fail to take farms it is within their discretion to do so. They are not breaking the law. We may disagree with them but there is nothing the Minister can do about it. They have been given judicial functions under the 1933 Act and they have them under the new Bill as regards acquisition or resumption. Therefore, they have the very same status as a court. They are a court in connection with the question of the acquisition or resumption of land on the one hand or the allotting of it on the other hand and, as such, they are not obliged to give reasons for their decisions.
Most Deputies seem to feel, as I do, perfectly satisfied at the fact that 1,250 people have been raised from the level of poverty to the level of being able to make a fairly decent living for themselves. Let us take a round figure of, say, 30,000 congests to be relieved in this country, or even 50,000. If we can get the Land Commission machine geared to take 2,000 holdings per year we would be making good progress. I want to dispel the gloomy forecasts of certain people in the Opposition who threw up their hands to heaven and said that there can be no finality in respect of the relief of congestion. I do not agree with that outlook. I do not want to say that congestion will be fully relieved by this time next year or by this time five years but, if the Land Commission relieves 2,000 holdings per year—and let them get the necessary land for it in any way they like, by compulsory acquisition, by resumption or by purchase on the open market as is permitted under the new Bill—they will surely come to the end of the relief of congestion when the rural slums we know of that stretch all the way from Donegal to West Cork will be abolished.
Some Deputies say that the pool of land is running dry. I say that there is nothing wrong about going into the open market and purchasing land there. A close eye will be kept on whether evils arise out of such a practice or not. I may say that I do not think they will. I have that faith in the people who know that their own Government is out for their benefit and good. I believe I will get the co-operation of the vast bulk of the people with the exception, perhaps, of an occasional crank here and there. The Land Commission can get land to relieve congestion by that means. Deputy Maguire made what I consider a remarkable speech. He said that that section was crushing people off the land. I cannot see that it is. I do not agree that it is. If a man puts up his holding of land for sale on the open market, who knows what he has in his head? Perhaps he has money with which to buy a larger farm. Perhaps he intends to change his mode of living and to take on some other means of living. Is he not free to sell his land in the open market? Is the Land Commission, under the new Land Bill, not free to buy it? If that man chooses to change his existing method of making a living and to put up his land for sale, why should the Land Commission not purchase it if they want it?
As I said during the Report Stage of the Bill, it is my belief that about 250,000 acres per year come into the open market for sale. Less than about one-tenth of that would be quite sufficient for the Land Commission to purchase, if they want to do so, along with compulsory acquisition. The necessary money required under the Land Bill is not included in the Vote I am asking for now. It is not customary in this House to ask for money for a measure which has not been passed finally into law, until the Bill has gone through all stages in the Upper House and received the assent of the President. Then and only then can I ask here for a Supplementary Estimate to implement the 1949 Land Bill.
I am perfectly satisfied with the work of the Land Commission and do not think it right to conclude without expressing a word of gratitude to the staff and, particularly, to the outdoor staff who have achieved such wonderful results this year. Deputies complain that this or that has not been done. The reason is that the Land Commission was idle from April, 1941, when the close down order was issued. A vast amount of arrears of work of all kinds has grown up. When the present Government took office two years ago, Deputies on this side naturally thought everything should be done at once. The inspectors of the Land Commission are being asked to be everywhere at the same time. That is very confusing and it is not conducive to the steady output of work which we would like.
When the Bill becomes law, a priority system will have to be established in each county, whereby the worst congested estates will be dealt with first. Under the present system, the inspectors are hopping about from one place to another, working 12, 14 or even 16 hours a day in trying to meet the problem. Just as under the Arterial Drainage Act in the Board of Works, a priority system will be needed to deal with the worst estates first. In such a case, the whole estate will be completely combed out and left in fairly good order; the holdings will be brought up to an economic size; new dwellings and outoffices will be erected; fences, drains, suitable roads, etc., will be provided. That is a fairly big job. I am glad to say I got very good co-operation from all Deputies last year and I will encroach on their goodwill and their indulgence this year to give me the same co-operation, particularly when the new Bill starts to operate.
There is one question I mentioned, which interests me very much and also the Minister himself, in connection with the Cottage Farm at Ballyhaunis. Can he give me now an assurance that it will be in the hands of the Land Commission by next Christmas?
There, again, we come up against Section 11 of the new Bill. The farthest I will go is to say that the Land Commission are moving as regards Cottage Farm. While I cannot give the assurance the Deputy asks for, I think that, if things turn out as we hope—there is no trouble about the migration of the particular man who owns Cottage Farm—by the fall of the year, or by Christmas at least, it should be in the Land Commission's hands. Arrangements have been made to effect a migration in that particular case. It is not at the Cottage end that the hold-up is: it is at the end into which he is being migrated.
Question—"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration"— put and declared lost.
Vote put and agreed to.