I should like the Minister to appreciate the fact that all of us in this House, when we speak on the policy of the Land Commission, are anxious to see the right thing done according to our lights and that any criticism directed to him or to the Land Commission has always the object of improving the work of the Land Commission. I want him to know that while I have been very critical during the period I have been in this House, my criticism has been in no way personal either to him or the officials of the Land Commission. I simply say and do what I think I am supposed to say and do in the interests of my constituents.
The opening speech of the Minister makes very interesting reading. There are a number of matters about which I was rather surprised. To take one example, the Minister refers to the way in which employees on a farm are treated. He says it is only right, if they are suitable, they should be considered for holdings. I agree entirely with him. If somebody loses employment on a farm because the Land Commission take it over and divide it, it is only right he should be looked after. I have in mind many instances where people working on farms lost their jobs and were neither compensated in money nor given portion of a farm.
I wonder is there some other rule to which the Minister has not referred in his speech? One very sizeable farm was taken over a few years ago. Those employed on it included a young man with a family of six or seven children. All the employees, including some with short service on the farm, got compensation in cash but this man got nothing. I personally raised the matter with the Land Commission repeatedly but he still got nothing. Eventually, he had to emigrate as there was no other work in the area. His young family are now growing up there and he is working in England and comes home once a year to see them. Possibly this occurred before the present Minister took office, but the rule is there and if it is being administered fairly things like that should not occur.
I know of other instances where men employed for a long time on farms were dismissed by the employers before the Land Commission were asked to acquire the land but dismissed because the owners wanted the Land Commission to take over. In those cases the employees concerned were ignored. It was stated that they did not lose their jobs as a result of the Land Commission acquiring the farm and while that may be literally true they would not have lost their jobs if the owner had not decided that he was unable to carry on and that handing over to the Land Commission meant they were out of jobs. If he sold the farm to somebody else, possibly these men would continue in employment.
There are other cases. There is one man in particular who had worked on a farm for donkey's years. It was a sizeable farm and he had worked as a herd. He has no hope of getting employment anywhere in the area and his prospect of living now is to remain on the labour exchange for six months getting unemployment money and after that on the dole until old age catches up with him and he gets the old age pension. He got neither a farm nor compensation. I asked the Minister some time ago if a decision had been taken not to give him a farm and the Minister said that was entirely untrue, that no such decision had been taken but the man had been informed by a member of the Land Commission previous to my question that he was not going to get a farm.
There is in that estate one farm not divided and that brings me to the next point. Surely when the Land Commission decide to divide a farm they should divide the whole of it? Why keep one portion, big or small, dangling before the people of the area so that everybody thinks he may get it? Perhaps the Land Commission have a reason for it but if so, the public should be told of it. It seems odd that the farm is kept sometimes for years and usually for 12 months and eventually somebody who could originally have been given the farm is made the owner of it. This causes a lot of unrest in the area. It is very undesirable and the Land Commission should discontinue the practice.
The Minister has said that the Land Commission do not overhold a holding without very good reason and that they most certainly do not, as he has told me repeatedly in answer to questions, hold them for the purpose of making money. I am prepared to accept that, although it is not the view held by the people generally. I think, however, there can be no explanation for the holding of a farm by the Land Commission and the setting of it on the 11-months system year after year. I know a very large farm which has been held by the Commission since 1957. I cannot understand what the reason is. There was a certain amount of agitation in the area as there is when any farm is being divided and a number of people feel they are entitled to it. But they are civilised people who will not do anything drastic or unlawful and I think they would be very foolish if they did not press their claims as strongly as possible. That should not be taken by the Land Commission as a reason for holding that farm and setting it on the 11-months system exactly as the previous owner did when the farm was taken from him. The Land Commission will take over—and I heartily agree with them —if a farm is being set year after year by the owner, because it is bad husbandry but, apparently, the Land Commission then think there is nothing wrong when they do exactly the same thing.
The Minister is a sensible man and I am sure he will agree, even though he has given replies here to my questions suggesting he does not agree, that it is not desirable that practice should continue. Where farms have been held for a long time, they should be divided as quickly as possible. I also suggest that if, as he stated in his opening speech, it is necessary to hold a certain amount of land on hands, surely the reasonable thing to do is to hold the last farms taken over and divide the farms that have been in the Land Commission's possession for a long time?
The question of who is to get land is a burning one in my constituency. The people who live there and I myself feel that if there are in the area people who could work the land, they should get first preference. The Land Commission hold that congests, particularly from the west and south-west, should be first considered and we have a tug-of-war going on over the years. I think I should repeat what I have said to the Minister on many occasions. While we object strongly to bringing migrants into an area where there are many people who could use land, yet, when the Commission bring those migrants in, we have always made them welcome. That can be borne out by the migrants themselves, many of whom are very close friends of mine, although whether they are political supporters of mine is another matter.
I want to impress on the Minister the situation which occurs when a number of migrants are brought into an area where a large farm is divided and where first you have former employees of that farm seeking employment and in addition a number of landless men and smallholders, many of whom have much less than the farms given out in the 1930s— which were referred to by Deputy Blowick and the Minister as now considered uneconomic. These people and their children are seeking employment in the area.
Has the Minister ever considered the effect on the economy of such an area when 20 or 30 families come in there, many of them with large growing families of their own, all seeking employment, while the only employment available is that held by the natives and their children? It soon becomes a tug-of-war. Somebody must go and in many cases, as a result of the influx of a large number of migrants, particularly in Meath, it is the local people who have to pack up and emigrate to England or move into the city in search of employment. They lose any chance of employment at home because of the appearance on the scene of a number of people who, in some cases, are prepared to work at a rate much lower than the ordinary rate in the area. Apart entirely from the rights and wrongs of land division, the Minister and the Land Commission should take that point into consideration. It has had a terribly bad effect, particularly in Meath.
There is also the position of the people who come in and who may have had a few acres in the west, even though they did not obtain their livelihood from the land. Many of them supplemented their incomes by fishing and other work. They are put into land capable of providing a very good living for somebody who knows how to work it, but, no matter how hard these people try, they find they cannot make a living out of it. Before long, as the Minister is probably aware, they either sell the farm they have been given and get a free gift of £6,000 or £7,000, because I am sure the farms they left in the west would not be worth anything like that, or they close their doors, set the farm and go across to England or elsewhere.
In Meath at present we have a large number of these farms let by people who have emigrated. I grant you they may come home at Christmas or for a few weeks in the summer, but I do not think that was the idea the Land Commission had when they originally brought those people into the areas. I do not want anybody to get the idea that this is being done wholesale, because that would not be true, but it is being done on a fairly large scale. There are certain areas in Meath where a big number of farms were divided and a big number of migrants brought in. Those houses are now closed. If the Minister wishes, I can supply him with the names and addresses of the people to whom I am referring. It is a serious problem and has added fuel to the fire in the hearts of the natives who were not considered when the land was being divided and who now find that those who got the land are not prepared to try to work it.
I am not blaming the Minister, because most of what I am referring to occurred before he took office. As a matter of fact, some of it occurred when the last speaker, Deputy Blowick, was in office. Apparently, it makes very little difference who is Minister— the policy of the Land Commission has not changed. I suggest in the gentlest way possible to the Minister that he should have a look at the whole situation. He says he is going to increase the size of holdings to 40 acres in order to make a viable farm. If he is going to consider people who got 25 acres in the thirties, will he consider also people whose families have had farms for generations but whose farms are smaller than 25 acres, or will they still be told that because they do not live in a congested area, they cannot be considered for an increase in their farm?
I do not like using the expression "rural slum". Unfortunately, that expression can be applied even in Meath. I know very many people have the impression that until recently Meath was made up of very large ranches and that there were no small farmers there. I can assure Deputies not aware of the situation that there are as poor farmers and small farmers in Meath as anywhere else in Ireland and that many of them would be very glad to get an increase in their holdings if the Land Commission would consider them for such an increase.
The question of transfer holdings has been referred to. I agree entirely with the policy of the Land Commission that if somebody is prepared to give up an uneconomic farm on condition he is transferred to a larger holding, that should be done. I am aware it has been done on many occasions and the holding left has been given to one or more than one smallholder in the area. Occasionally, however, rather peculiar things occur when transfers take place.
I should like to refer to a farmer who was transferred quite recently. That farmer had two small holdings in the area in which he lived. He got a full-sized holding and a house in another area. For some extraordinary reason, however, the Land Commission took only one of the holdings from him and he is allowed to set the remaining holding on the 11-months system. That looks to me very much like preferential treatment for some reason or another. If the man was prepared to give up his holding and transfer to a full-sized farm, I agree the Land Commission were correct in transferring him; but if they are going to allow him to hold on to one of the two holdings and have the best of both worlds, they are not doing a good job. It looks a bit odd to people who also applied for a transfer and did not get it that their neighbour can get the transfer and still hold on to half the original amount of his land.
Land division in Meath could be debated for hours, but I do not propose delaying the House to deal with all aspects of it. However, one reply the Minister gave me last year is so peculiar that I should like to recall it to his memory. I believe he may possibly have said in reply to a supplementary something he did not mean. I was making a case for a man who had no land but who had started a dairy and had 12 cows. He had to buy all the root crops he needed; he had to take land from neighbouring farmers for the purpose of getting grazing for his cattle; and he had to take tillage land from another neighbour.
The Minister's explanation as to why that man had not been considered when the farm on which his house was situated was being divided was that a man engaged in dairying was not a farmer. The Minister may recall the reply he gave. I should like to ask him now whether he thinks this man is a farmer or not. It was the Minister's view that dairying is not farming, and I would pose him this question as a rejoinder: has a man not to grow root crops; does he not require land for the purpose of feeding his cattle, if he is in the dairying business? The man I am interested in has proved himself to be a good, industrious worker and is he not, therefore, entitled to a portion of any land being divided in the area? I understand another farm is coming up for division in the vicinity in the near future and would it be too much to ask the Minister to see that this argument is not used against this dairy farmer again?
The new house which has been shown to us in Leinster House this week, and which was on view at Ballsbridge earlier in the month, is something of which the Land Commission engineers can rightly be proud. I would agree it was about time the Land Commission decided to change the stereotyped house they have been erecting for donkey's ages. Apart from its appearance, it was not even a well-planned house. I am delighted the change has been made but I would add to it the suggestion that we do not stick to this type of house until everybody here is dead and gone: if improvements can be made to it I suggest they would be done as soon as possible.
When the Land Commission are siting houses I do not agree they should be lined up in rows but that they should be built, individually if necessary, as the convenience of the landholder demands. Might I also suggest in this regard that the Land Commission, before starting building operations, would ensure it will be possible to get electric power connected with the house at normal rates if at all possible? There is nothing so annoying to a farmer who wants to use all modern conveniences in his home and farm yard as to find that the best he can be offered is a £10 subsidy for bottled gas.