Would the Minister please tell me what is the repeal referred to in sub-section (2)? The Minister will see that sub-section (2) of Section 5 repeals Section 17 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906. What is the effect of Section 17 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act?
Committee on Finance. - Housing (Amendment) Bill, 1958—Committee Stage.
Sections 1 to 4, inclusive, agreed to.
SECTION 5.
Question proposed: "That Section 5 stand part of the Bill."
This section is dealt with at a later stage in detail. From the layman's point of view, this section, and a few other sections we will come to, are really book-keeping arrangements within the various Departments of Finance, Local Government and the Land Commission, where certain subsidies of small amounts were being paid out from the Department of Local Government to local authorities to meet commitments entered into by the local authorities in the past and which we are now proposing should be brought into the hands and under the control of the Minister for Finance. Hereafter, we will cease to pay out with our left hands to the local authorities that which the Minister for Finance will be taking back with his right hand, and the same with the Land Commission, or vice versa. We are dealing with it at a later stage in the Bill and it is merely referred to in this section as a repeal.
I appreciate that these things are complex, particularly where there are proposals for repeals. Perhaps the Minister would understand that the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, is dear to me, for a variety of reasons into which we need not go. I just do not know what Section 17 of that Act did. Perhaps, before the matter is resumed, the Minister may have a chance of looking at the original Act—indeed I may have that chance myself—and letting me know what Section 17 of the old Act is and what it is we are dropping.
I have it here.
Will you read it out?
"17. (1) Subject to the provisions of this section, sixteen pounds per cent. of the total amount of the purchase annuities payable in each financial year in respect of advances made by the Irish Land Commission for the provision of cottages and allotments under the Labourers Acts shall be paid out of the Labourers" Cottages Fund, and twenty pounds per cent. of that amount shall be charged upon and paid out of the Ireland Development Grant."
It is really that we are repealing and we will be dealing with it in a more positive way.
And that is a book-keeping transaction. So far as we are concerned, Section 5 is agreed to.
Question put and agreed to.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.