This is an Estimate which comes in for a fair amount of criticism every year, and rightly so. I hope that he will reverse many of the decisions that the Land Commission and himself made from 1948 onwards, because when he was in office before he set a headline which eastern Deputies will long remember. The problems which concern this Department relate to different areas. Western Deputies and eastern Deputies have different problems. We Deputies in the eastern areas have our problems also. We must look after the interests of the people who live there and I feel their rights are being taken away and justice has not been done over the past seven or eight years either by the present Minister, when he was in office before, or by the last Minister.
Land division is a very complex problem and it should be dealt with on a national basis. A complete review is immediately necessary instead of carrying on with the present haphazard method of dividing land which has been adopted over the last 100 years. If we continue in this fashion we will need the Land Commission for ever. I saw ranches divided under the British régime 30 and 35 years ago, and I see some of the landholders from whom this land had been taken buying back land around those estates. Unless something is done about that we will see after the next five or six years, these big estates as they were 30 or 35 years ago, and the people who got these small holdings will be selling out and leaving the country.
I am not one of those who will pull back my punches where my punches are needed. I am not against migration from the West or the North if it is reasonable, but I do not want a flood of migrants to the eastern counties to destroy the economy of the whole country. There is, I admit, a vast amount of land in Westmeath, Meath and Dublin that could be divided in the national interest, but this must be done prudently and on a national scale. We have in the eastern area, which was the area of the planters long ago—and certainly they were very securely planted there—very large holdings up to 2,000 and 3,000 acres, and the owners are lords of all they survey. There is no effort being made to whittle down some of these vast estates. I cannot see what legal terms should prevent us from doing our duty towards the people. These owners should be quite satisfied to be left with 300 acres of this land and to allow 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 acres to be divided amongst the people. Instead of concentrating on these huge estates we find the touts of the Land Commission day in, day out, interfering with the middling farmers who are hard-working people owning a mere 40, 50 or 60-acre farm. That is victimisation of a bitter type, and I hope it will stop. There are scores of big farms worthy of the attention of the Land Commission. I want to know why, after all the Acts we passed five or six years ago, they will not take over these ranches and divide them, instead of having hugger-mugger and back-hand methods and people buying many of these large estates by telephone and working them as cattle ranches.
The Land Commission are not doing their duty. Any holding of 300, 400 or 500 acres of land that comes on the market should be taken over by the Irish Government in the interests of the nation and divided amongst the people. I am asking the present Minister to be realistic and to face up to the problems as a responsible Minister. He can do an immense amount of good to the Irish economy or an immense amount of harm according to the policy he adopts.
I am not one of those who are too well satisfied with this removal en masse of congests from the West of Ireland. Hundreds and hundreds of those people are coming up, particularly from Mayo, and no blame to them.
More power to them for coming up! But what good is it from the point of view of the national economy? What problem are you solving by bringing up tens of thousands and planting them in the eastern counties? These men are being planted on small holdings of 22 to 28 acres, holdings upon which they cannot make a living. What is the result? They are not a fortnight in the eastern counties before 80 per cent. of the family emigrates to England or Scotland, or elsewhere; it is they who send the money home to keep the home going. No one is left except the parents and possibly one son to work the holding.
We are tired of appealing to successive Governments and Ministers to remedy that situation. An area of 22 or 28 statute acres is no use in the eastern counties. In the West of Ireland 25 acres would rank as a ranch. But in the West of Ireland one does not live on the land. One lives by fishing and making poteen and on the money that is sent home from relatives in Great Britain and America. The land there is only barren rock.
If something is not done to rectify the position in the eastern counties we will find ourselves one day with as acute a congestion problem as exists in the West. Many of these holdings are being offered for sale and the strongest man in the area is buying them up. If that continues there will be a reversion to the ranching system in the Midlands. We will have travelled the vicious circle and the Land Commission will be back where it started.
It is time we woke up to the fact that a man must have an economic holding on which to live and rear his family. Nothing less than 35 or 40 Irish acres constitutes an economic holding in the Midlands or eastern counties. These holdings should be capable of giving employment to at least one man. The situation to-day is that the owners of these uneconomic holdings are seeking work on the roads, in the pits and on afforestation, thereby depriving others of employment. Thirty years ago emigration was unheard of in the eastern counties. Now emigration is as rife there as it is in the West.
Lands offered for sale should be taken by the Minister and divided amongst applicants who will work them and make a living on them Deputy Flynn has said that many of these men who got land in the past did not work the land. I know men who have sold land over the last eight years; these were men handpicked by Fianna Fáil through the medium of their cumanns. Some of them had never looked for land. In my own area I saw a man taken up by an inspector, a bogus I.R.A. captain, and brought around in a Land Commission car. Every Fianna Fáil supporter got land although some of them had not tuppence to their name. Many of them were living on home assistance. Many of them would not work in a fit. More shame to Fianna Fáil for destroying our Irish economy! These are the men who are selling out. These men were never land-minded. All they wanted was money and a good time. They are having a good time on the £1,600 or the £1,800 they got for their farms. They are having a royal time in the public-houses, on the racecourse and on the dog tracks. That will continue as long as the money lasts and, when it is gone, they will go back to the labour exchange. I must condemn Fianna Fáil for what they did in that respect. We are paying for it to-day.
Many have sold out and many have succeeded. Those who have succeeded are a credit to the country. The claim of the Meath men to land in their own county is the paramount claim. There are very fine men living on the edges of estates in County Meath. They are not asked if they want land when land is being divided. An Order has been made excluding the cottage tenants. Whether a cottage is vested or not, the owner is excluded; I say he is deliberately excluded by the Land Commission. I know that those cottage tenants would be satisfied with five or six acres. I know that the uneconomic holder would be satisfied with ten or 12 acres. Inspectors come down at colossal expense to the taxpayers and take statements. The applicants are told to sit tight and they need not worry. They sit tight too long, the land is divided and they are passed over. All they see is two or three buses arriving from the West of Ireland with migrants, while they cannot get as much as an acre of land. I have no quarrel with the migrants. They are living all round me. They are decent men who work hard but they cannot live on their present uneconomic holdings. Their children have to emigrate so that they can find the money to pay the rates and taxes. Valuations in Meath are not like valuations in the rest of Ireland. There is no free commonage and no free grazing. The rates must be paid on the 22 statute acres; if they are not paid, they must get out. I appeal to the Minister to think twice before he insults the people amongst whom he sends these migrants.
We want justice and fair play and nothing more. If the Fianna Fáil Minister made an Order excluding cottiers from getting plots to provide grazing for their cows, then I would ask the present Minister to revoke that Order and see that justice is done. If he does not he is going to create a problem for himself. He is going to do something that will leave a sour and bitter taste among many of us for long years to come. If there was reason and common sense used in connection with the work of land division, then I suggest the eastern and western Deputies could work hand in hand. They could see that good work was done in the national interest. All we are asking for is fair play and justice.
I would ask the Minister to see that, before any more migrants are brought up to the Midlands, justice is done to the few dozen men in the area who are looking for land. At the present moment there are men who have been herds on estates for 20 and 25 years. The employment they had was their sole means of gaining a livelihood. What is the Land Commission doing for any of them? Are they being given a holding on these estates, a thing to which they are perfectly entitled? They are not. They are being offered £150 to get out lock, stock and barrel, to fend for themselves on that small sum after giving 20 or more years' service on these estates. Are these men supposed to go with their tails between their legs to bow and scrape and to feel lucky that they have not been thrown into jail by the Land Commission? I will not stand for that.
I say that these men, after their long years of service, are fully entitled to a holding. I do not care whether they are married or single. At present they are being shoved out on the roadside. In my opinion, they are fully entitled to a holding. If they do not make good, the holdings can be taken off them after a few years. I say, give them a trial. The present position is that they are turfed out and others are turfed in and planted where these local men should be given an opportunity of making a living for themselves. What use is £150 to any man? But that is all we get in the County Meath, and we are supposed to be contented with it. We are not contented with it.
Another grievance that we have in my county is that the Land Commission spend too much time in the taking over of a holding. There is a holding at Moneymore, Longwood. The land is not good. We have there eight uneconomic holders and two or three cottiers. The man from whom that land is being taken has taken crops of wheat off it three years in succession, so that when it is finally taken over it is going to be nothing more than a dust bowl. How can anyone expect the poor impoverished men who will get ten or 12 acres of it to make good in view of the fact that it is nothing more than, as I have said, a dust bowl? Crops of wheat have been taken off it three years in succession. The guts have been pulled out of that particular farm.
These are things which the Land Commission should be thinking about. In my county it has land set for the last four, five or six years. It has been getting £32 an acre for it for tillage. I say that is a public disgrace. The wheat racketeers from England have been brought in there by the Land Commission. They bring in their tractors, tear up the land, get big crops of wheat from it and then they are off. The result is that the land is left in a condition in which it will produce nothing but scutch, dirt and thistles.
The Land Commission then steps in and divides it amongst the poor fools from Clare and Mayo and expect them to make good on it. Why should the Land Commission try to make money in that way? Their job should be to provide economic holdings for our own people and so enable them to make a living on the land. But no, the Land Commission will not do that. They must do the racketeer with this 11 months' system by setting the land for as long as they can get anyone to take it. I hope that will be stopped immediately. It is not good enough to allow it to happen. I hope the present Minister will take his courage in his hands—that he will be the boss and not the Land Commission. I am satisfied that the Land Commission have been in full control of the Minister. In my opinion he should not be a tool in the hands of these people.
In my county we have many headaches as far as land division is concerned. I am asking the Minister to be a realist this time. I am demanding now that those men who are being denied five or seven acre plots should be provided with a cow plot of 40 or 50 acres in the vicinity of where they live on which they can graze their cows. I say it is nothing short of a public scandal that these men do not get land. At least, in the interests of fair play, they should be given a cow plot. They are fully entitled to that. These cow plots should be provided since the land is there. That should be done before other people are brought in from outside the county. If the answer is given to me that the maps have already been fixed up, then I say let the maps be changed so that those men are given their rights.
Ten or 15 years ago, under the Fianna Fáil régime, there was the case of a man who got a holding. He turned out to be of the type I spoke about earlier. He set the land for years. He got £180 for the building of a house but never built it. The land was set. It was a public disgrace and eventually he was evicted, and I must say rightly so. He made no effort whatever to work the land. The result was that a new man was brought up from the West of Ireland. The land had been on the hands of the Land Commission for three years, but when this man came up a new house was built for him. He came up, let the land and locked the house, and we have never heard of him since. The house is there locked up. Right beside that holding there is another one. The house on it has never been opened during the last 30 years. The rats are running in the front door and out the back door. There are 40 or 50 acres of land going with that house. That is the way the Irish taxpayer's money is being spent.
While that is the case, I can see in my own locality how a poor unfortunate widow, with a small holding of about 22 acres, is being treated by the Land Commission. I see inspector after inspector coming there peeping in through the windows to see if there is a bed in the house. This poor woman is in very bad health herself. She spent 20 years nursing her husband who for years had suffered from paralysis. The inspectors come there to see if they can find any loophole in order to take the land off that poor widow. It is time that that should be stopped. If it is not stopped, I shall keep on exposing it here. I would ask the Minister to face up to these things.
In my opinion the people in East Meath are getting a very raw deal indeed. They are getting nothing at all. Everything is given there to the stranger. In that area they go in extensively for the growing of fruit. They are a good thrifty people and try to make a living from fruit growing. I would ask the Minister, as I asked the last Minister, to make a concession to them by giving them five or ten acres to enable them to enlarge their small holdings. Nothing has been done for them. I would ask the present Minister to reverse the decisions that were taken in these cases by previous Ministers. Fruit growing fits into the Irish economy and those men who are engaged in it should be helped. They grow fruit for the Dublin market. I would ask the Minister to see that they get five or ten acres of land to enable them to put up new plants for the production of fruit. In many cases, the old plants are worn out. The Government should see that justice is done —fair, simple justice.
I would ask the Minister—as I asked before—to realise that North Westmeath from Castletown up to the border of Cavan across to Kells and down almost to Athboy is a terribly congested area. It is just as much congested as Mayo, Sligo or Leitrim. I challenge contradiction on that and the people there are living on bare, barren rocks. The Land Commission say they have combed it out and they cannot do any more although there are many men there in the area who have offered to give up holdings of 20 and 30 acres and get out and go elsewhere and allow their land to be divided. But the Land Commission says, "No, our books are closed."
I think that is a terrible scandal. In the Castletown area, near Navan, in County Meath, where a holding was divided there were so many uneconomic holdings in the vicinity that it would all be eaten up. What was the result? They got two or three, whom they brought in from outside, and planted them there and we public men were ignored. How can we stand over the like of that? We are supposed to be loyal to the country, to the Government, to the people and to the Dáil, but we must voice our grievances, and we have grievances, scores of them. I believe myself that land division should be taken completely out of the hands of the Land Commission. They do not know what they are about. I believe the committee of agriculture and the Minister for Agriculture should have some control over land division. The Land Commission is too complex and too big and too unwieldy, and is not facing up to its tasks as it should. I am not saying that everything done by the Land Commission was wrong. There was plenty of good work done by them, but there is too much wrong being done.
It is the same with vesting. We are told that some counties are completely vested. As far as my County of Meath is concerned there are people who have had holdings for 15 or 20 years and they are not vested yet, and they are expected to stock these holdings with the best of stock and market their produce. But how are they to do it? They cannot go into the banks for £100 unless they have three or four of their strongest neighbours with them, and even then they may be kicked out. They are expected to make good on 20 or 22 acres of land, and it was these people who got the dirty end of it. They got the scutch and the sedge and the rushes, but the high and dry banks were given to the big lordly men from the West. The big men got the big, broad acres surrounding the big house, and they were very glad to be able to go in there and make good, and so they did.
I would ask that the land, when it is divided, be vested after seven years, or even before seven years, to give the owner a chance of proving his title. What is the use of giving a man 22 acres of land and a house and no money and expecting him to make good? Those men are just as poor as anyone in the West of Ireland, and no honest farmer there wants to go to his neighbours to ask them to bail him for £100 or £200, because it is a risk that the neighbours do not like to take, as the man does not own his land. The banks are tough people, and they want to get a hold on any title deeds you have or any insurance policies, and they will make sure that they are well covered.
The poor little devils of farmers as result will not face the door of the bank at all. They know the insult they would get. Then if they set their land in order to make a few pounds for 11 months the inspectors and the touts are down after them asking: "Have you your land set?" What else can the man do but set it when he has no money? I would ask the Minister to see that vesting is carried on as quickly as possible.
I am living on a Land Commission holding myself and when was it vested? Twenty-one years after I got it, and had it not been that I had a little money of my own I might have had to emigrate to England myself to earn a living. The Minister should realise that these people need a little money to work their holdings. Five hundred pounds or £1,000 is nothing to-day when you come to stock a little holding. It is the same as a couple of £5 notes two years ago. You may have to pay £70 for a cow and £80 for a bullock. Are they expected to go to the West of Ireland and buy sheep for £6 or £7 each? They cannot do it.
Before the Land Commission concludes I would ask them to recognise that the Counties of Meath, Westmeath and Dublin are the gateways of the markets for the Irish people and there are no other gateways. It is through these gateways that the cattle and the beef have been going for the past 20 years. The farmers were able to go to the West, to Ballinasloe, to Roscommon, to Longford, to Waterford and all over the country and buy suckling calves and store cattle and feed them and rear them in Meath, export them and bring back money to this country. But if you keep on making 22 or 30-acre scraggy farms you will have County Meath in the same position as the West, and no longer will the Meath farmers be able to go to the West to buy as they did in the past. The farms in Meath should be 70, 60, 50, 40 and 30 acres and nothing under that except for cottage plots. We want to see an improvement in the lives of these people so that the thrifty farmer in the West will again open his eyes as he sees the train puff in when he knows and sees the Meath men are there, because he knows the Westmeath and the Meath men and the Dublin men of old, and he knows that they will sweep out the fairs and get C.I.E. lorries to bring the store cattle, the sheep and the sucking calves and pump them into County Meath and Westmeath to carry on the Irish economy, to sell the beef off the land and bring back the money that is keeping this country going.
The Minister knows that what I say is a fact, and I hope he will not lose sight of this and that when land division is embarked on scores and scores of men will not be brought up and planted down on 22 or 20 acres of land. Those men have the tradition of going across to England to earn their living and sending the money home, but that does not lead to national economy. There is no progress being made and no national outlook. We want to stop that and to stop emigration, and we want to see that when a man is given a holding that he lives on it, works it and rears his family and, if possible, gives employment to at least one man as well, because no man with a holding of 30 acres is doing well unless he has an agricultural worker with him.
These are problems which many other people like me know of, and as the Minister is now taking over for a fairly long term—I believe a ten-year term——