I had not anticipated this Estimate coming on so soon but, now that it has come up for discussion, I cannot let the opportunity go without saying a few words on the administration of the Department of Lands and commenting, in a somewhat repetitious manner, if you like, on the general policy of this Government and former Governments in relation to the important objective for which the Land Commission was primarily set up, namely, the relief of congestion and the establishment of as many economic holdings as possible.
It is my personal opinion that, next in importance to the Estimate on Education, comes the Estimate on the Department of Lands. In normal times I do not believe this Estimate either would or could assume the importance it has to-day; but, remembering that the most important industry in the country is agriculture, the expansion we all desire to see in agriculture cannot be achieved unless the problems relating to land are first solved. So important is this problem of congestion and uneconomic holdings, that reference is actually made to it even in our Constitution; and, until we solve congestion and bring our uneconomic holdings up to an economic standard, we can never hope to achieve that expansion in agriculture so essential for our progressive development as a nation.
The work of the Land Commission should be mainly directed towards the ending of congestion and towards the setting up of as many economic holdings as possible. Therefore, the main function of the Land Commission is to acquire and redistribute land. Remembering that is the main function with which that big body is charged, let us examine for a moment the facilities at its disposal in relation to both staff and finances for the purpose of achieving that objective.
It is my intention now to draw some comparison between the Land Commission and other Departments in relation to the number of employees and in relation to the amount of money available. In this year's Estimates the sum of £7,400,000 odd is allotted for expenditure by the Department of Agriculture. Of that figure, a sum of £438,000 goes on salaries, and the number of officials employed is 713. In the Department of Industry and Commerce the Estimate for the current year is £8,057,000 odd. Out of that the sum of £334,354 goes on salaries to officials; the number of officials involved, ranging from the Minister down, is 568. I could give other examples of other Departments but I think those two give a fair comparison.
Let us look now at the Estimate for the Department of Lands. According to the Minister's opening statement the gross Estimate is a little over £2,000,000. Of that £2,000,000 the sum of £588,000 goes on salaries alone and the number of officials involved is 1,091. If we take the percentage figures of the total Estimate in relation to salaries in these Departments, they are roughly as follows: in the Department of Local Government the salaries amount to 4.4 per cent. of the total Estimate; in the Department of Agriculture the salaries amount to 5.7 per cent. of the total Estimate; in the Department of Industry and Commerce the salaries amount to 4.1 per cent. of the total Estimate; and in the Department of Lands the figure for salaries alone out of the total Estimate is over 30 per cent. of the expenditure involved.
But that is not the worst aspect of this matter. As I said, the main function of the Land Commission in my opinion, and in the opinion of others, is to relieve congestion and to establish as many economic holdings as possible. In order to set up these economic holdings and provide the necessary land for the relief of congestion it is obviously essential that a large sum of money should first of all be made available for the purchase of the necessary land. That is a reasonable proposition; that is a reasonable achievement to expect on the part of the Land Commission.
What do we find when we examine the figures and ponder on the amount of money made available for the purchase of land for the relief of congestion? This year a provisional figure of £400,442 is being provided for the purchase of land for the relief of congestion. In order to expend that sum of £400,000 we are paying salaries to the tune of £588,010. That is the comparative figure. Now let us break that down a little further. Let us start at the top with the Minister's own office; it costs £11,290 to administer the Minister's own office. The Minister himself receives the not inconsiderable sum of £2,125 out of this £11,290, and he receives that sum for acting as the mouthpiece or the scapegoat, whichever one likes, for the Department of Lands. The sum expended on his office alone is £11,290 for the sole purpose of carrying into effect decisions taken by the commissioners; in other words, the Minister and his office staff are nothing but rubber stamps. At a later stage I propose to make a suggestion as to the steps that should be taken with regard to the office of Minister for Lands and his office staff.
I have stated that the Land Commission employs 1,091 officials ranging from the commissioners down to shorthand typists and that the salaries of these 1,091 officials alone come to £588,010. To that we must add the figure of £34,000 for travelling expenses. I presume, as I am sure other Deputies do, that the travelling expenses involved are mainly concerned with the visits of inspectors and other important people to localities where farms are up for sale or where it is necessary to visit small holdings in connection with the redistribution of land and the solving of the rundale problem. Therefore, if we take the figure for salaries and expenses in the Department of Lands, it amounts in all to a sum of £622,000. For an expenditure of £622,000 on salaries and travelling expenses, we turn round and spend, or intend to spend this year, only £400,000 on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion. I do not know of any Department of State where the figures are so top heavy in relation to salaries as compared with the functions the paid staff should carry out. Generally, in any business undertaking, very careful attention is paid to what percentage of the total turnover goes into salaries, especially in relation to the management end.
In the Department of Lands there is not one penny piece of provision made for the payment of gangers, officials or labouring men employed on improvement works and I am dealing now solely with the clerical expenses involved from the Minister down to the shorthand typist; the sum involved for salaries alone for all these people is £588,000 and all that host of officials will spend on the purchase of land to solve the most acute problem in the country this year is only £400,000.
Now I want to make it quite clear that it is not the officials I am criticising. In the Land Commission there is a group of the best-trained officials in the State and the State should be glad to have their services. The tragedy is that there are over 1,000 skilful people employed in the Land Commission killing time while in other Departments the officials are responsible for six to seven times the amount of money that is made available to the Land Commission. I do not blame the officials; I blame the Government. That applies to every Government we have had up to this which has permitted a situation to arise wherein there are first-class officials prepared to carry out certain work but whose efforts are stultified for the simple reason that the finances are not made available to them to do the work.
A number of people have asked time and again whether this and former Governments are serious in relation to solving the problem of congestion. Personally I do not believe that the present Minister is a bit serious about relieving congestion. It is perhaps somewhat regrettable that I should have to make such a personal criticism, but there is nothing like facing facts. The present Minister and his predecessor nibbled at this very acute problem. I propose to support my argument here with figures taken from the Minister's own Estimates and with information given here from time to time in reply to questions. It is on these I must make my case; otherwise, I could not expect Deputies to accept what I am saying.
Is the present Government serious about the purchase of land for the relief of congestion? I say it is not. Let us consider some examples in relation to the amount of money spent in the last 15 or 20 years on the purchase of land. In 1937, when the Land Commission was properly geared up, a sum of £536,218 was spent on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion. In 1938, that figure went up to £617,174. The war intervened and many of the staff in the Land Commission were diverted to other important work and I do not propose, therefore, to take any figure during the war years because that would be unfair.
From 1946 onwards there was plenty of opportunity for Ministers, be they Fianna Fáil or inter-Party, to get the Land Commission once more geared up so that the problem of purchasing land for the relief of congestion could be dealt with properly. They earliest figure I propose to give since the end of the war is that for 1953. I do not think I can be described as unreasonable in going back only to 1953. Surely after the three years of dynamic pressure exerted by the present Minister for Lands when he was a Minister in the inter-Party Government that gearing-up process should have been put into operation.
In 1953 the amount of money spent on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion was £400,212. In 1954— mark you, the first year the present Minister returned to office—that figure fell to £336,447. Now there may be a genuine excuse for that actual drop in the amount of money available. I understand one of the reasons was that, due to certain decisions in the courts, there was a hold-up in the actual acquisition of land in 1954; but in 1955 we are back again to the figure of £400,000 for the purchase of land for the relief of congestion.
If it was considered desirable in 1938 to spend £617,174 on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion, surely we have reason to complain that in 1955 an expenditure of only £400,000 for a similar purpose is totally inadequate. There are a number of reasons why it is inadequate. Let us dwell for a moment on the value of the £ in 1938 and the value of the £ in 1953. On that basis alone if we wanted to purchase the same amount of land in 1955 as was purchased in 1938 we should now be expending three times the 1938 figure. Apart from the fall in the value of the £ we must also take into consideration another important factor, and that is the increase in the value of land in the last five years; the value of land since 1946 has doubled in many instances.
We have had two factors since 1938. The value of the £ went down and the value of land went up, and yet, in spite of all that, we are spending £200,000 less this year on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion than we did in 1937-38. That is the only way I can put it: that, in comparison with 1937-38, we are now only spending a fraction of the money that we then spent on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion. We have now a Minister who comes from a congested area. He came into this House because he was from the congested areas, and his election to this House was to ensure that, in so far as it lay within his power, steps would be taken to solve that problem within a period of years. The figures which I have given cannot be contradicted, that we are now spending less money on the purchase of land for the relief of congestion than we did in pre-war years.
I have said that I do not believe this Government has a bit of interest in land division. Naturally enough, the major Party in the Government group, Fine Gael, shy away from the division of land because their support is mainly gathered from the rancher and those generally who produce the bullocks, and from the big men in the Midlands with farms of from 300 acres up. It is too bad, therefore, that they are able to impose the landlord policy on a Party that comes from the West of Ireland—that is Clann na Talmhan.
Last year, the suggestion was made that the Department of Lands could not expend all the money available to it on the purchase of land because a decision made in the Supreme Court slowed up the Land Commission in its work of acquisition. They are never short of an excuse. I am sure that can be looked upon by the general public as a reasonable excuse, and I am sure it was a godsend to the Government to be able to hold back so much money from expenditure on land. They can use that decision of the Supreme Court as an excuse for slowing up land division.
There was another method by which that money could have been spent and it was not necessary to try that bluff on the public—that it was a decision of the Supreme Court that was holding up the acquisition of land. There was another method by which land could have been acquired or obtained. I refer now to sub-head R in the Estimate. The purchase of land in the open market could be achieved under that sub-head. The section that deals with the purchase of land in the open market was brought in under the 1950 Land Act. The present Minister for Lands happens to be that Minister who brought that Bill before the House in 1950. Many of us who were members of the House then supported him in the belief that the Land Commission would take full advantage of that section. It enables them to go into the open market and purchase existing holdings on which suitable migrants or congests could then be placed, thus helping to relieve the problem of congestion.
It is quite true that an amount of land comes on the market each year which could be purchased under that section. There is not a day in the week on which we do not see advertisements in the provincial newspapers giving particulars of farms of land ranging from 30 acres to 50 acres which are being offered for sale. It is very seldom that we hear of the representatives of the Land Commission going to a public auction to purchase these suitable holdings, although that power to purchase is there. It is a power that was given specifically to the Land Commission under the 1950 Land Act.
During the last few years, under that sub-head in the Estimate, we have seen a figure of £20,000 set out for the purchase of suitable holdings, but in no year so far has that sum of £20,000 been expended. I think I am correct in saying that not even half that sum was spent in any a particular year, and yet that was one of the Acts that was brought in by the present Minister in order to show the congests and the smallholders in the West of Ireland that he was serious about ending congestion. The proof of that is that the amount of money which is being spent under that section of the Land Act is negligible. It is an insult to the people in the West of Ireland to suggest that it was ever intended as a help to relieve their problems.
I want to repeat that quite a large number of holdings come on the market every year which would be suitable for purchase by the Land Commission, but the one controlling influence which prevents the Land Commission from exercising their powers under the 1950 Lands Act is the purse-strings held by the Minister for Finance, and as long as the Minister for Finance, or any other member of his Party, has control of the purse-strings, then there will be no money made available, or as little as possible, for the relief of congestion. If the Minister were to go down on his two knees to-morrow morning to the Minister for Finance he would be spurned and told to go away and not be annoying him as there was no money available. This thing has to be exposed to the public because this delusion has gone on for years.
There are thousands of congested holdings all over the West of Ireland, and in other counties throughout the State. On them you have the finest of our people living. They are living there from year to year in the hope that some Government will carry out its promise of solving the congestion problem. It has to be made quite clear now that this Government has no intention of solving their problems for them, and that the people living on those holdings will have to solve their own problems as they have been solving them all over the years, and that is by leaving on the boats that will take them to the land of John Bull in order to seek employment there.
I have often said that we blamed the British in the past for many of the evils that beset this country, and rightly so. It may be unpalatable, however, to suggest in this House to certain people that, within the last 30 years, more of our people had to leave this country, due to economic circumstances, than had ever left it in any similar period under the British régime, with the exception of the famine years. I have time and again stated in this House that it was economic conditions which had forced our people across the Shannon to seek a livelihood in England and America.
Certain other things may have attracted a number of them to go, such as those that were referred to in another debate by Deputy O'Donovan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Government. In other words, when people leave the congested areas in the West of Ireland and go to England, the fact that a number of them do well naturally attracts their former comrades and the folk at home to go after them, but I suggest that the main reason which comples our people to leave home are the economic circumstances under which they have to exist.
I have often referred to the fact that the congested areas in Ireland can only be compared to the slums in Dublin. They are rural slums and the conditions in them can be compared to the conditions that existed in Dublin some years ago. Let us see what Dublin and other cities did about their slums. In Dublin, those slum areas where people were living in condemned houses, were given priority by the responsible authority dealing with the problem. The slums were dealt with on a priority basis and to-day we see the fruits of that priority in the new towns that have sprung up all around Dublin. We have new towns with new houses, suitable amenities and sewerage and water facilities available to those families. There are playgrounds available for their children, while libraries and shops are made available for the people taken out of the slum areas. That is priority of the right kind.
Let us see now the kind of priority which the Minister gives to the rural slum areas. In column 269, Volume 151, the Minister stands condemned out of his own mouth. The Minister states:—
"For the benefit of Deputies who are not familiar with such rural conditions, perhaps I should say that throughout the congested districts there still exist thousands of cases of the worst possible type of congestion, namely, intermixed and rundale holdings. These cases are the rural equivalent of the city slums. Because there are great difficulties in relieving these acutely congested districts, they have been left over for attention until recent times. But the Land Commission are now tackling them energetically to the limit of their resources."
In the cities, priority was given to the problem of the slum areas but in the rural areas, which the Minister represents, that problem had to be left over because it was a difficult one and it is only now that the Land Commission is tackling it to the limit of its resources. I have already pointed out the resources available to the Land Commission and it might be no harm to emphasise this matter again at this particular point in the debate. The Minister says that the Land Commission is now tackling this problem cuergetically to the limit of its resources. This would lead us to presume that the commission is going to have plenty of money to purchase the necessary lands. Yet we find in a reply given to me to a question put down in this House that in the year 1955 the provisional amount laid out for the purchase of land for the relief of congestion is only £400,442.
That is the limit of the Land Commission's resources and yet, in 1936 and 1937, there was almost £200,000 more spent in each of those years on the same problem. We now find that the Land Commission is utilising its full resources and we find that the full resources amount only to £400,000. Does the Minister think that the people are fools? If the Minister wants help or pressure to get money for the relief of congestion, can he not come into this House where he will get plenty of help from Deputies on all sides and not allow the vested interests that exist to prejudice and hold up this very necessary and desirable work?
I want to refer again to remarks made by the Minister in his opening statement on this Estimate. Going on from that very hopeful picture he has painted as to the work the Land Commission is doing for the relief of congestion, he points out that he has placed in the main hall of this House two maps showing the position before and after rearrangement in a typical congested district. In column 269, Volume 151, he goes on to tell us of the great work done in this particular district and tells Deputies that they should go and look at what has happened in that particular district. He goes on to say:—
"By various proceedings, including acquisition, resumption, migration, turbary development, housing, fencing and other improvement works, the Land Commission, in rearranging the four townlands concerned, raised the 84 small holdings from an average of £5 rateable valuation to an average of £10 and made available £45,000 for expenditure on improvement works."
Any Deputy in this House need not be an expert on land to know that a £10 holding in that type of land is not an economic holding and it would be a far better proposition for the people if the Minister, instead of improving, in a slight way, the 84 holdings concerned halved the number of holdings and made 42 decent holdings of them.
This particular outlook on the part of the powers that be and the increase in size of a few holdings such as this is supposed to keep the dog from barking for the next couple of years. That is the mentality behind this. By the few examples given to this House, we find the Land Commission in the act of creating congested holdings themselves. This is one of the cases in which the Land Commission can be charged with the improper use of public funds and the Minister himself ought to be indicted in relation to that action. I make that as a very serious statement. If any Deputy tells me that any holding of £10 valuation can be looked on as an economic holding, I would like him to show it to me.
It would be better to have 42 of these 84 holdings fixed up as economic holdings, on any of which a young man could live and rear a family. All that has happened now as a result of the work done by the Land Commission is that the occupier of that £10 holding, instead of having to work four months out of the year for the county council, need now only work three months of the year to enable him to exist and keep his family going. That man has not been given an economic holding. He is still depending on the extra bit of work that he can get either from the county council, the special employment office or from forestry work.
There you have a typical example of what is being done by the Land Commission towards the relief of congestion where they have tried to fit 84 men with families into a congested area and given them holdings with a rateable valuation of £10, while perhaps 50 miles away, in County Westmeath, County Kildare or one of these counties, enough land is available in the hands of one man to solve all the problems in these townlands. But who carries the most weight when it comes to Government policy? Is it the poor congest or the big fellow with the 700 acres around Mullingar?
I was attracted by certain remarks which the former Minister made in connection with the co-operation that should exist between the Land Commission and other bodies. There we have a typical example of a case in which there should be co-operation. These people need instruction and education in co-operative matters. That is the only way they can ever hope to live now. Before leaving that area, the Land Commission should have secured the means of purchasing machinery on a co-operative basis and they should have ensured that fertilisers were made available to these people. Under the system in Italy, where land division takes place, the work of the Land Commission is integrated with the work of the Department of Agriculture, but in this country they are two separate and watertight compartments—"My right hand does not know what my left hand is doing" type of things. I intend to deal at a later stage with improvement works generally—so called improvement works —carried out by the Land Commission.
In order to get a clear picture, if a clear picture can be got, of the work of the Land Commission in the past 34 or 35 years, I think it is essential that the House should get certain figures, because, before the end of this debate, Deputies will get up here— some of them briefed—to give stunning figures of the amount of land acquired by the Land Commission since 1931, and before these Deputies get up, I want to give certain facts so that the House can judge whether or not the claims that will be made at a later stage by these Deputies are exaggerated or otherwise.
According to a reply given recently by the Minister, the Land Commission established 13,000 new holdings in the country between 1931 and 1953. They established or created 13,000 new holdings of an average area of 23 acres. That information was given to me as the result of a parliamentary question and in that question I asked for information as to the average valuation of these holdings. The reply by the Minister in the course of a letter to me was that the average valuation was not available in the Department. What an extraordinary state of affairs it is that he was able to give me the average acreage of the holdings but was unable to give me the average valuation. That is what I want to bring home to Deputies—that you can never judge the work of the Land Commission by acreage alone. You must always take into consideration in a big way the valuation of the land they acquire and divide. It will be found that, whenever an attempt is made in this House to get the valuations in connection with matters like this, every obstacle will be put in the way of the particular Deputy. I will deal later on with the valuations.
I want to deal first with these 13,000 holdings established by the Land Commission. In addition to establishing these 13,000 holdings, the Land Commission enlarged some 30,000 existing small holdings and when they had finished their activities with these small holdings, the average size of the holdings was 21 acres. Again, I could not get any figures for the average valuations of these small holdings improved by the Land Commission. During the same period, 1931 to 1953, the number of holdings between 15 and 30 acres decreased by 3,381. While the Land Commission was creating these small holdings of an average area of 23 acres, the number of holdings between 15 and 30 acres decreased by 3,381.
Let us take then the next category —holdings between 30 and 50 acres. Most Deputies will agree that a reasonable holding on which a man can live and have a hope of rearing a family in some comfort is in the region from 30 to 50 acres, but during the period 1931 to 1939 the number of holdings within that range increased by the large number of 186 and—and this is the significant part of it—that increase was confined almost entirely to the province of Connacht. In the Midlands, in the counties where the land is available, in that period, there was no increase in the number of holdings between 30 and 50 acres.
Here again I want to refer to the importance of the valuation basis. The Minister is an expert at this business of telling us the wonderful work done by the Land Commission and at patting himself and ex-Ministers, as well as the Department, on the back for the tremendous acreage of land acquired since 1931 and redistributed amongst smallholders. It is quite possible that I will not be able to get my figures across to the public, but it is well known that in the past the Department and the particular Ministers involved have got across to the public what are not and never were facts. It is easy to blind the public with figures given by experts in the various Departments, and if we are to accept the Land Commission idea that we can gauge their work purely on the acreage of land they acquire, we are wasting our time here. We have to examine, in conjunction with acreage, the valuation of the land to get a real test of the work done by the Land Commission.
The Minister and some ex-Ministers may think that because the actual figures for land division, the figures of acreages, look big, great work has been done, but I ask the Minister and Deputies concerned here to check up on the valuation of the land acquired. It is a well-known fact that wherever possible the Land Commission went for the poorest valued land. They were not interested in getting the best land for the relief of congestion: they were interested in getting the land that was as lightly valued as possible. You could get 25 to 30 acres of land very lightly valued. It would be poor land but, so far as the statistics are concerned, it looks big when brought in with all the other 25-acre holdings.
The idea of the Land Commission is to buy the cheapest land possible. I suppose that idea came about, naturally enough, because the amount of money at their disposal was limited. That was one reason. The other reason, of course, was that those people who lived on the best land, whether they used it or not—those people who lived on the large holdings and spent their time at race meetings and did no tillage or any other useful work on the land—were vocal enough and were able to bring whatever pressure was necessary to bear on whatever Government might be in office to ensure that that good land would not be divided.
I propose to give some figures to bear out my contention in connection with the importance of valuation when we are dealing with land and land distribution. According to the figures returned by the Department, we have approximately 380,000 holdings in Ireland of which we have 280,000 with a total area of 6,000,000 acres land a total poor law valuation of £2,000,000. We have 11,600 holdings of land, apart from that 280,000, with a total area of 2,750,000 acres and a poor law valuation of £2,250,000. I can put that in a simpler way. The 280,000 holdings I have mentioned represent approximately 70 per cent. of the holdings in the country and, for that 70 per cent. of the holdings in Ireland, the poor law valuation is £2,000,000. The 11,600 holdings I have mentioned represent 3 per cent. of the holdings in Ireland and for that 3 per cent. the total poor law valuation is £2,250,000. Therefore, for that 3 per cent. of the holdings in Ireland the valuation is £250,000 more than the valuation in respect of the 70 per cent. of the holdings of Ireland.
What can we read from that except that there are too many people on one type of land and too few people on the good land? As the man said, there is something rotten in the State of Denmark when something like that is allowed to exist in a Christian country: at any rate, we call ourselves Christians. What I am saying here are not just my beliefs alone. Many people who have a higher standing than I have outside this House have agreed with the figures I have given. I am glad to be in the company of some of those people because, if I were not, I should be described to-morrow morning as a rip-roaring Communist by reason of the statements I am about to make in this House.
I do not know how many Deputies went to the trouble of reading the report of the Commission on Emigration. The majority report is a very excellent volume and it is full of very interesting factual matter. When it came to the point of reaching certain conclusions as to what steps should be taken in connection with problems in rural areas, in my opinion the signatories of the majority report were rather lukewarm in their recommendations but, lukewarm and all as they were, they admitted that increased activity by the Land Commission was essential in the Midlands. That is a recommendation in the majority report. They recommended the acquisition and division of the large holdings that are not being properly utilised to-day. Then there is the minority report by Dr. Lucey. Dr. Lucey has not put a tooth in it with regard to the action he believes should be taken in the Midlands and elsewhere.
Dr. Lucey's argument—and I agree with it—is that the big problem in rural Ireland is the maldistribution of the population as between the West of Ireland and the rich Midlands. The remedy, according to Dr. Lucey, as can be read on page 30 of the minority report, lies in the break-up of the large holdings in the Midlands into family sized farms. That is not an unreasonable suggestion and I hope the Minister will give serious consideration to it. Dr. Lucey, who comes from Cork, is familiar with the problems of the congested areas and the Minister in charge of the Department of Lands comes from County Mayo, a congested area. Any man who comes from these areas should understand the problem and should not allow himself to be hoodwinked by people whose sole interest is the maintenance of the large landlord system in this country, especially in the Midland areas.
I think it is an admitted fact that, in the Midlands, the bullock is monarch of all he surveys. The human element does not count except in so far as the bullocks are owned by certain individuals who are reaping the full benefits of the first-class market available in Britain to-day. The mentality of certain sections of the community is that these lands should not be interfered with and that if the larger farms in the Midlands are broken up it will upset our economy—it will upset the present system of cattle rearing and the cattle export business. The moment any attempt is made to enlighten the public as to the desirability of breaking up these farms, the big stick is immediately waved that you will harm the cattle trade. Of course, that is pure nonsense—but they are let get away with it.
Other experts—so-called experts— maintain that the pool of land for the relief of congestion has dried up and that the land is not available. I heard Deputy de Valera, the Leader of the Opposition, state that here some couple of years ago, and I have heard the present Minister saying practically the same thing. It seems to be a rather accepted fact now that the work of the Land Commission is slowing down and that we will soon be at a full stop, on the ground that the pool of land is drying up. Into that pool there should be a constant flow of new land, if the proper steps are taken to make that new land available. If no attempt is made to replenish the pool with the lands that are available, then it can reasonably be argued that the pool has dried up.
What is essential is that a vigorous and inspired policy of land division must be got under way. I do not know whether the present Minister is strong enough to cope with the vested interests, whether he is strong enough to cut the red tape, whether he is strong enough to ensure that finance is made available and that no financial difficulties will stand in his way of solving this problem during his term of office. Dr. Lucey and other public people have stated their view that in order to reach some definite policy with regard to land division, there must be a ceiling put on the amount of land available to any particular farmer. So far I have heard no Minister or ex-Minister and no Government statement to the effect that they believe there should be a ceiling or a limitation imposed on the size of a holding.
It would be a courageous thing for some particular Party here to make its views quite clear on that, whether or not they believe that a man who has 700 acres is entitled to purchase another 700 if he feels like it, as is happening to-day all over the country. Is that accepted policy? When I question a thing like that here, the Minister will reply: "I have no function in the matter; that is the responsibility of the Land Commission." Has the Land Commission been given any direction as to the amount of land that any man should have or as to when they should step in and say: "You have 300 acres; you are not going to be allowed to purchase another 100 in any part of Ireland." Is there any Government policy in that respect? Was there any Government policy in that respect or will there be in the future? It is a thorny problem, one that no Government likes to face; but as long as they do not face it the problem will go on for all time.
I am one of those people who believe a limit should be imposed on the amount of land that any man should have in this country, but I am not expert enough to be able to state what exactly that figure should be. That is where the question of valuation comes in. I believe that it is a matter that should be decided by the Government and let the Opposition then say whether or not they agree with it. If any Government were serious about ending congestion, doing away with rundale and setting up as many economic holdings as possible, in accord with the directive principles in the Constitution, I believe it would be possible to set up another 50,000 holdings. It is possible to establish 50,000 new holdings of land each with a minimum area of 30 acres. I want to pursue that a bit further and I want to repeat it. I believe that it is possible to establish 50,000 new holdings with a minimum area of 30 acres, without interfering with any holding of 200 acres or less which is at present being properly utilised.
If we take the figures since 1931, that the Land Commission have created only 13,000 new holdings with an average area of 23 acres and if I suggest now that another 50,000 could be made available with the minimum area of 30 acres without touching any holding in the country to-day with 200 acres or less that is being properly utilised, that is a statement that I make in this House, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and that I will stand over as being possible of achievement if this Minister or any other Minister is serious about the problem. No matter how much the pool may be drying up at the moment, that pool can be refilled from these farms I have mentioned, these large farms, and the statistics are there to prove that, from the amount of land in the hands of these people, ranging from 300 acres up. I am advocating that as a line of policy to the Minister—and I am not alone in doing so. Again I refer you to the minority report of Dr. Lucey, who has advocated that line of approach.
I do not know whether or not my words will sink into the Minister's head and give him a bit of courage. It is necessary to say these things here, in the hope that the Minister will gain a bit of courage and not be discrediting the Front Bench of the House, as if he were a member of the Fine Gael Party instead of being a member of Clann na Talmhan which came into this House to solve congestion. He can rest assured that as long as I have the opportunity I will be behind him in every sense of the word, to ensure that he does not neglect his first duty, that is, to the smallholders. Any help I can give him, whether it is in a critical form or otherwise, will be for the purpose of ensuring that he is not submerged by these vested interests that believe the bullock should rule this country as he ruled it for the last 12 months.
I have heard various Deputies inside the House and outside it pointing out the tremendous chance made available to the people on these small holdings at the present time to make the holdings economic. Reference is made to the land project and similar schemes made available by different Departments. To the man living on a congested holding the land project is of little benefit. It is of little benefit to a man to drain the few acres of bog-land or light land that he has, as the accrued benefit would not give him anything like sufficient for a livelihood for himself and his family. However, it is one of the arguments used against speeding up the acquisition of land in other areas. The land project is a desirable thing, but no matter how desirable it is the people who reap the most benefit from it are the bigger people—the bigger they are the more benefit they get from the land project.
There is no good in suggesting, as some Deputies have done, that the fact that there is such a great price for cattle is of benefit to those small holdings in the West of Ireland. That is more of the nonsense that is talked. The bullock could never give employment in the West of Ireland, because the land is not there to feed him. The result of the increased price for our cattle in England is of little benefit to the small congested holder in the West of Ireland. The only means by which he can hope to earn an existence to-day is by pig production and poultry—and those things are not there. I wonder can the Minister hold out any hope that the conditions that exist in his own area and in the areas of Roscommon of people who have been congests for the last 50 years can be changed?
I would like to bring the minds of older Deputies back to the times when they took a very active interest in freeing this part of our country from British domination. I am sure that I will bring back memories of the feeling at the time that not alone were they going to free Ireland in the physical sense as far as the flag and our Government are concerned, but that the land of Ireland would, in so far as it was possible for them to do so, be returned to the people.
I have here a copy of an announcement that was plastered or placarded in Ballaghaderreen, very near the present Minister's home place, during the last week of February, 1918, and this placard states that Sinn Féin was out to promote tillage and satisfy the land-hungry men of the West. "The Sinn Féin Club of Ballaghaderreen and district will secure for tillage purposes to labourers and farmers having ten acres or under the use at £4 per acre of the lands situated at the following townlands—Castlemaine, Brook-lawn, Colebrooke, Edmondstown," and others. It went on to state that "the owners of available land in the aforementioned districts have been asked to co-operate with the Sinn Féin Club in allotting the lands. The work of allotting would begin at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 26th, and would be carried on in the districts in the order mentioned."
