During the debate on forestry yesterday evening the hint I gave the House about a Bill to assist the furtherance of forestry caused some comment. I hope I shall not be blamed for anticipating the Bill when I give an explanation of some of the points that were raised.
Deputy Moylan seemed to be under the impression that the Bill was one to further the compulsory acquisition of land. I want to clear the air on that point. It is not my intention to bring in a Bill along such lines because we have under the 1946 Act all the compulsory powers we want for that purpose. I will say a word of explanation now about the Bill. Many useful offers of land are held up and have been held up, some of them for years, owing to the fact that title to the land is not clear. Naturally enough it is absolutely essential that the Minister for Lands should have full and clear title before operations are started. Any Deputy can easily visualise the kind of situation that would arise if some person, or a number of persons, could walk in and claim a plantation four, five or ten years after it was planted. That may seem a somewhat extravagant statement, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. It could happen.
I could imagine people who have gone to the United States, to England or to some other country coming home and finding that a brother, or perhaps a sister, had sold portions of the holding to the Land Commission for forestry purposes. He would immediately say that he had as much claim to that holding as the person who sold it. A situation might arise in which the Department would find itself involved in a host of claims of that kind. Such a situation would be a very messy one for any Government Department to permit to arise. It is towards that end I propose to introduce the Bill. I hope it is within the bounds of possibility for the draftsman to produce a bill which will give the Department a good title and at the same time give the person who is selling the land a reasonable measure of security without endangering in any way the claims of persons who may be abroad.
That is what I have in mind. I come from a county in which I think I am safe in saying title to 90 per cent. of the holdings is in a pretty bad way. That is holding up the acquisition of land for forestry purposes very, very seriously. I want to make my intentions perfectly clear. The Government has approved a Bill along the lines I have adumbrated. Deputy McQuillan is anxious that the Bill should be introduced very shortly. There will be no delay. I am at least as anxious about this as any other Deputy, the reason being that it is quite clear to everybody that the acquisition of land is the whole trouble in forestry.
When the land is acquired, and it is only right here to give a pat on the back to the technical staff, the provision of young trees and the work of fencing is fairly easy. It is only in a very few areas that we have any difficulty in getting labour. There are some areas in which we have to bring men some distance to do the work. I am very proud and glad that the House does appreciate that the acquisition of land is the greatest difficulty.
Some Deputies seem to think that we should take extraordinary powers to take over land but we should not forget that the land the Forestry Department is forced to fall back on is very often the poorest quality of land owned by the very poorest of our farmers. In my opinion it would be a shocking abuse of the authority the people have given us to trample on that poorer section of the people. Sometimes I have almost lost my temper myself in dealing with people who have useless strips of mountain and who say they will not part with it.
I can understand their point of view because their income is very small and they have to live very frugally. To part with some of their property is quite a big thing for these people. It is all right for us to talk about it, but we must take their point of view if we can. Even the poorest of these is a citizen of this State just the same as anyone in this House and is entitled to the same protection.
I want to see forestry going ahead and I intend to push it ahead and I believe that we can push it ahead without trampling on any section of our people.
As a result of experiments which have been carried out by the Forestry Department and which have proceeded very well I think the time has come when we can push a little bit further into what has been described, even now, as unplantable ground. I do not want any big set-back or failure in any large area which might damn forestry altogether in the eyes of those who do not understand it, but I still think that we can push further ahead into what has been regarded as unplantable land. The experimental plots carried on in Galway and in North Mayo on land which has been described as unplantable have done very well, even though the trees have had to get a little nursing and coaxing. In most of these areas experiments have been carried out with different types of fertilisers, the principal one being basic slag. An ounce or two applied to each tree has given very good results but we cannot say with certainty that they will continue to do well.
In Ballyhowra, County Cork, there is an instance where the forest started very well and flourished to a certain point and then the trees failed and as much as 20 acres have had to be felled and planted with different types of trees. I think that difficulty has now been overcome as machinery has been able to break up the hard pan underneath the soil which prevented the roots going down. Up to the present when the roots went down as far as that pan the forest wilted away. We do not want that to happen again and if it did we might give forestry a sudden death at the present time.
In dealing with forestry we are dealing with something that belongs to the public and it is vital to proceed very carefully. We do not want any wild spring into the unknown that might result in disaster. If the House gives me the Bill I have in mind the intake of land can be stepped up so as to please the most enthusiastic Deputy in the House. I am not holding out hopes that will be misleading. I do think that it will happen. Negotiations for most of the land that has come in since this Government took office were started as far back as three years ago and in some cases as far back as five or six years ago. While we may chafe and grumble at the slowness of the Department I want to make it quite clear that the Department must get full title to the land they acquire. We must avoid having claims come in at the last moment and holding up everything. That is my purpose in bringing in the Bill I am talking about.
Deputy Moylan mentioned that home-grown timber is not fully appreciated or regarded in a proper light by our own people. He suggested that a stand of kiln dried timber should be sent as an exhibit to various towns and cities so that our people would get to know its worth. I entirely agree with that suggestion. I am afraid that the way our native timber was handled has a lot to do with the present feeling about it. It was cut and sold to the customer with the sap running out of it. Then when it dried it was warped and twisted and found faulty. That has given a bad name to our home-grown timber. My information is that Irish home-grown timber, if treated in the same way as imported timber, would be as good, and possibly better, than any foreign timber.
Deputies who come up against the argument that home-grown timber is no good should be able to reply that that is not true. It is no good in the manner in which it had been mishandled up to the present and that is one of the reasons that the drying kilns were established and not to compete with the timber merchant. They were established to show the way the timber should be treated—what can be done, and what ought to be done with it.
Deputy Derrig seems to be under the impression that we should use compulsion for the acquisition of land and Deputy Moylan says that we should not. I take the side of Deputy Moylan. I do not think that we should use compulsion because the Department has had a very bitter experience of taking over land in an area where we had not the goodwill of the local people. I could quote one particular instance where a man took it into his head that the land we acquired should have been his. It should not have been sold. He could make better use of it for sheep raising than the Forestry Department could for growing timber. He burned it out systematically several times but that could not be brought home to him. A forest is very vulnerable. One match in the month of March could destroy hundreds of acres.
