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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 29 Oct 1963

Vol. 205 No. 3

Private Members' Business. - Purchase of Land by Aliens: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That Dáil Éireann is of the opinion that investigations should be carried out by the Department of Lands in order to ascertain what areas of land and what type of land have been purchased by aliens in the last five years, with a view to introducing any controls which may be found necessary on the purchase of agricultural land in Ireland by aliens.—(Deputy Tully.)

I dealt last week with the position regarding not alone agricultural land but of all types of countryside in Ireland and with the lack of interest shown by the Government in holding on to those lands for the benefit of our native population. The argument is used by the Government against anybody like myself who protests against this sale of land to non-nationals, that this is a narrowminded, bigoted attitude and is contrary to the international outlook of the Government.

I would say to the Minister and to his Leader that the people have become bewildered and bewitched by the fuss that is being made of the Taoiseach by bigger nations. It is a well-known fact that if somebody in power, some wealthy individual, wants to impress an ignoramus, he wines and dines him and pats him on the back. I do not suggest the Taoiseach is an ignoramus but I submit he is far too big for his boots, and the fact that he was allowed to look at this famous wall in Berlin has given him the idea that he is now a world leader instead of the leader of a very small country.

One has begun to wonder whether his idea of Ireland is that we have as much land here as there is in the prairies of America and that we can satisfy the demands for land not only of our own people but of all the foreigners who wish to come in. It is time an end were put to the gallop of this firm of auctioneers, which is how I would describe the Government. They have hawked the land of this country all over the world. When a foreigner comes in here to set up a factory under our industrial development programme, why is it necessary for him to bring in five or six of his colleagues to buy land as well? I do not think that is necessary.

The grants and other incentives made available by the Government to attract industrialists should be sufficient in themselves, without also allowing those people to buy up all sporting and amenity rights as well as the best agricultural land in the country. It has been suggested by the Minister that the 25 per cent purchase tax on land is enough to keep away those people. However, is it not a fact that the price of agricultural land in Germany today is three times what it is here? On that basis, is it not an attractive proposition for a German to buy Irish land and pay the 25 per cent purchase tax?

Is it not also a fact that much of our undeveloped land is being sold to non-nationals, that they have been availing of our grants under the Land Project to develop those lands and that they have then been selling again to their compatriots or to other foreigners, thus making a considerable profit? Is it not a fact that because of these transactions, there is an insufficiency of land to meet the legitimate needs of small farmers and other poor people throughout rural Ireland?

The Irish Independent of 17th February, 1961, carried a report of a speech made by the Minister at a Fianna Fáil comhairle ceanntar meeting in Dublin. According to the report, the Minister pointed out that there was a minimum of 60,000 to 80,000 small farmers still trying to derive a subsistence livelihood from uneconomic holdings and that those farmers had a strong and reasonable claim for the enlargement of their holdings. That was the Minister's view in 1961, and in the past two years, we have extracted from him figures which cannot be contradicted.

According to figures given to us, 14,000 acres of land have been purchased here by non-nationals since the new land register came into operation. If we take those 14,000 acres and the Minister's estimate of 50-acre economic holdings, these 14,000 acres now in the hands of foreigners would have given economic holdings to 250 families. Which would have been the better—to let this land get into the hands of foreigners or to settle it on 250 families who would then have economic holdings?Which would be the greater benefit to the State? Yet we have still got the small farmers pulling up their roots and clearing out of the country.

During the past 12 years, I have been told on many occasions by this Minister, and by his former Leader, the present President, that the pool of land was drying up and that it would be impossible to give economic holdings to all the people in the country who should have them. I should like to know if that situation has come about because the Land Commission were overworked in the creation of new holdings or because the Land Commission have done so little that the pool of land was allowed to get into the hands of non-nationals.

As I have stated, in the past two years, 14,000 acres of good land with which the Government could have created 250 new holdings have found their way into the hands of foreigners. Consequently, 250 families have had to get the boat. Of course, that figure of 14,000 acres is a reduced figure by comparison with what took place since the end of the war in 1945. I gave the figures here last week and I do not propose to trouble the House with them again, but Commissioner Mansfield, a man of the highest integrity who had been in the Land Commission for years, gave figures towards the end of 1950 to prove that more than 100,000 acres of the finest land in Ireland had passed into the hands of non-nationals between 1945 and 1950.

In the period from 1950 to 1961, there is not the slightest doubt that at least a further 100,000 acres of good land were purchased by non-nationals, making, for the entire period since the war, a total of at least 200,000 acres purchased by foreigners. If you break that figure into lots of 50 acres, it would mean that more than 4,000 families could have been given economic holdings in that period. Having considered that figure, if we then examine the number of new holdings created each year by the Land Commission, the number of people taken from the congested areas, we find that the Land Commission and the Minister are clapping themselves on the back if they take 80 people from the congested areas and give them new holdings in the midlands or elsewhere. That is their record in the creation of completely new economic holdings whereas the amount of land that is going into the hands of people who have no right to it would create, on average, 250 new holdings annually of 50 acres each.

I cannot understand why this Government should try to pretend any longer that they are interested in the welfare of the small farmer. The very fact that they have suggested an increase to 50 acres in addition to allowing the foreigner complete right of purchase in this country is proof positive that they want to get rid of the small farmer and the congest, not by giving them economic holdings but by putting them on the boat for England. That is the answer because the Government cannot suggest that they are serious about ending congestion and creating economic holdings of 50 acres if all the good land in the country is being purchased by non-nationals and what is left is purchased by ranchers within the country.

I am precluded under the terms of the motion from dealing with the second group that I have mentioned and must concentrate on the amount of land that has been allowed to pass into the hands of non-nationals. The Minister's statement that we have to have reciprocal arrangements, due to the 1934 Aliens Act, that we must allow foreigners to have the same rights here as citizens have, is something that the public should consider very seriously. I am trying to find out in what country similar rights are available to foreigners. Take the six countries that are members of the EEC. Has a German, for instance, the right to walk in and purchase any amount of land he likes in France? Is it contained in the laws of these member States that a non-national has the same rights as a national to purchase agricultural land? I have asked this Government and a former Government to produce evidence to that effect. It has never been produced. We seem to be one of the foolish little nations who say it is all right; that if the foreigner wants to come in here we will allow him because of reciprocal arrangements.

If this country were as big as America, Russia or China and there was plenty of land to spare, I do not think there would be any objection at all to an influx of people who would help to develop the land but the amount of land available in Ireland is very limited. It is not suggestive of a parochial mentality to assert that the first right to that limited pool of land is vested in the Irish people who have waited for years to get land. I am told that we should respect the right of free sale. I want to say that free sale of land to non-nationals makes nonsense of free sale. I do not object to any Irishman selling his land within the State provided that that land is made available to other Irishmen. The laws made by the State should be for the protection of the agricultural community.

I have no hesitation in condemning inside this House and outside it the suggestion that a farmer should have the right to sell his land to a non-national.Apparently, the view taken by a number of people is "Good luck to a man if he can get £20,000 or £10,000 for land from a non-national". My view is that that temptation should be removed; that it should not be possible to reach the stage where a man might be tempted to sell his land to a non-national. If the sale of land to non-nationals were justifiable, could not every acre of Irish land be purchased by non-nationals?

I do not think the value of land should be allowed to be inflated to a point that would harm the agricultural community in general and, therefore, in the long run, harm the country.

As far as this motion is concerned, I am speaking to it because I should like to be on record and so that whatever Minister occupies the Front Bench in six weeks' time may be aware of the views expressed in this House. Even though the present Minister is now beginning to realise that the path pursued by himself and his advisers on this question of land has been the wrong one, it is rather late in the day for him to change; he will not be in a position to do much about it after tomorrow night.

I am very pleased that Deputies are given an opportunity once more to air their views and express their opinions on what is one of the most important problems affecting rural Ireland today. This is a matter which should engage the active attention and very serious consideration of any responsible Government and demands positive action. We have had the experience over the past number of years of large tracts of land being bought up by non-nationals. For the record, let me say that non-nationals have bought extensive tracts of Irish land, not for the love of Ireland, not because of an anxiety to engage in Irish farming, but simply for the purpose of getting all that they possibly could get out of the land. Having achieved that object, they will possibly agree that Ireland is a very happy hunting ground for foreigners.

That is most regrettable from the point of view of farmers' sons, smallholders and others who are well prepared, financed and equipped to work land. Many of them are to be found in Britain. It is well known that Irishmen who used to migrate to Scotland for seasonal work and then return to their homes in Ireland now tend to settle in Scotland.

In relation to the purchase of Irish land by aliens, the Government have done nothing whatever to prevent what can be described as a very serious national problem, a problem to which the Minister for Lands and the Government in general have closed their eyes. I do not know if it has been referred to by any other Deputy who spoke on this motion, but the Minister for Agriculture spoke some time ago in Mullingar and the text of his speech at the time was that he was pleased there were so many non-nationals in the country setting an example to Irish farmers in relation to hard work. It is deplorable that any Minister of State should declare in public that he welcomes non-nationals here simply because they can be put into competition with and be held up as an example to Irish farmers. That statement has degraded and belittled our Irish farmers who probably are the best farmers in the world if they get a little encouragement and assistance and are allowed a measure of freedom.

It is well known that there is no assessment whatever in the Land Commission in relation to the amount of land bought by aliens in recent years and that the statistics that are available are in no way accurate because there is no register kept in the Land Commission.

That is untrue. There is a statutory record kept there of land purchased as the Deputy well knows.

I can recall——

The Deputy can recall legislation passed in this House.

I can recall it is not too long since the Leader of the Opposition tabled a Private Members' Bill here because he felt there was a great deal of comment about the purchase of land by non-nationals. The Bill was designed to enable an assessment of the problem to be made. The Government at the time opposed that Bill and there has been no legislation introduced in this House since which has come from the Minister's Department enabling a record to be kept of the amount of land purchased by non-nationals.

The Deputy is the only man in the country who is unaware of the law on this matter.

I want to point out, if I may be allowed to do so, for the record of the House, that, to my knowledge, there has been no legislation passed here whereby a proper and up-to-date assessment can be made of the amount of land purchased by non-nationals in recent years.

Will the Deputy go down to the Library and read the Finance Act of 1961? Will he check the facts before coming into the House in this manner?

The Finance Act of 1961 is an Act we are not discussing now.

That is what provides for the law.

I am talking about the Minister for Lands and the Government rejecting a proposal by the Leader of the Opposition when he wanted a Bill passed here enabling the Land Commission to establish a register in which would be recorded the nationality of persons buying Irish land where these persons were not Irish citizens or were not ordinarily resident in this country for three years preceding 15th October, 1947. That Bill was opposed by the Minister for Lands and by the Fianna Fáil Party. If it had been accepted at the time by the Government, there would be a proper assessment today of the amount of land that was purchased by aliens in recent years.

That is baloney and the Deputy knows it.

Neither he nor anybody else has a proper assessment of the urgency or the extent of this problem. There are in every county in Ireland today foreigners buying up land and I venture to say — I am sure the Minister knows it quite well — that the amount of duty they have to pay under the Finance Act is insufficient to keep them out. They realise that the investing of money in land is a sound investment and they look upon Ireland as probably the one place in the world where they can get what suits them, a peaceful country, an attractive countryside, and fishing and shooting facilities. If they wanted to buy land in any part of the continent, they could not possibly obtain it as reasonably as they can get it here. The amount of duty they have to pay is negligible and they are prepared to pay it in order to make for themselves a paradise in this country, while our own people are forced to emigrate, our small farmers forced to take conacre land and while we have a congestion problem which makes it necessary for the Government to bring in next week or the week after special legislation in the nature of a Land Bill to deal with the problem.

If Deputy Flanagan's Party were here, they would get it on the cheap. His leader opposed this tax of 25 per cent.

The purchase of land by aliens should be stopped because in recent years the problem has become so immense that it has caused widespread emigration. Recent statistics prove that there are fewer workers engaged in agricultural employment today than there ever were since this State was founded or many years before that. One of the results of that is that the Irish farmer is being forced out of existence.

Because he is prosperous and has bought a tractor.

He is replaced by aliens who want to invest in property because they realise they will get a good return for their money. I should like to hear from the Minister for Lands what are the actual figures by way of acreage of agricultural land that has been bought by aliens over the past 12 years. I do not expect the Minister to answer that right away but I give him notice that I shall put down a question so that he will have an opportunity of answering it next Wednesday.

If he will do me the honour of reading my speech of the last night, he will get them, but the Deputy is so little interested in this problem that he was not here when it was being discussed.

I am quite satisfied there is no machinery in the Land Commission to give us the proper picture of the amount of land that has been purchased by aliens in recent years and that is why I want to accuse the Minister for Lands and the Government for giving this matter not alone the blind eye but the deaf ear. Even within the past few months, quite a number of farms have been bought up by aliens, of which the Minister is well aware.

Could the Deputy consult his colleague, Senator L'Estrange, on the issue, since he is on the Party's Executive?

On the one hand, the Land Commission are anxious to obtain land for the relief of congestion while, on the other, aliens are allowed to purchase land, thus depriving deserving Irish applicants of the right to live on the land of this country. The Land Commission are about 100 years out of date in regard to this whole problem. The prospect of bringing them up to date is very remote unless there is some revolutionary change and there is no sign of such a change.

I am opposed bitterly to the freedom which is being allowed to aliens to buy up land in this country. The Land Commission have stood idly by, although there was nothing to stop them, when they saw aliens about to take over estates, from intervening, acquiring the lands and making them available for the relief of congestion. I want to assure the House that part of the land policy of Fine Gael will be to take positive action to stop the purchase of land by aliens. Not alone will that action be taken but it will be done within 48 hours of Fine Gael Government coming into office here. It is action which is long overdue, action which has not been taken by the Government and which has been put on the long finger by them.

The Minister will have some job to convince this House about the number of farms being bought by aliens if he is to rely on the figures provided by the Finance Act. There are many ways by which the stamp duty imposed in that Act can be evaded. I am satisfied that the Minister has not got the proper figures to give the House and that the problem is much greater than he tells us it is. The Minister would tell us that this is not a big problem, that these people are buying up worthless land, land and houses that nobody else would buy. I have known them to buy some of the best land in this country.

It is most regrettable that any Government should stand idly by while the alien invasion takes place. The land is being bought up by aliens who have endless cheque books. We are selling out to those people and I want to accuse the Fianna Fáil Party of selling out the land of this country to aliens, thereby depriving our small farmers and farmers' sons who are anxious to marry and bring up their families here of an opportunity to do so. Rural Ireland is diminishing. We see schools closing, homesteads disappearing and a queer type of emigration in which not only one person but whole families are on the trot out of the country.

This is a great national ill and one which we can remedy only by restoring confidence in the land, by bringing back our people and by creating better conditions of life for them on the land. That is something for which the Government have now no policy, have no promise of a policy for the future and have a bad record in the past. This motion has been put down by the Labour Party to focus attention on one of the great national evils of our day. The failure of the Government to act in this matter is a national disgrace, is imposing hardship on our people and is causing discontent in those areas where land is being purchased by aliens. Immediately after the general election which will take place in the next few months, this is one of the problems which will immediately be tackled by the incoming Government.

You will do the same as you did before — do nothing about it.

This debate has covered a wide field and I am going to comment briefly on some of the statements made by the Minister. First of all, he posed a fair question when he asked what investigation we would suggest. We would suggest that the Department of Lands be put in a position to check on all aliens who purchase land, not on all aliens who register their purchases. These are two entirely different things. Having investigated that, where he finds that land has been bought by aliens for the purpose of holding property and stashing away their money, whether it be ill-gotten or otherwise, the Land Commission should be empowered to take over that land and divide it.

I am sure the landless men of this country have been heartened by the statement of the Minister that the Irish Government have protected their right to go out to any country in Europe and purchase property there. Is it the suggestion that people in this country should go abroad and have a guaranteed right to purchase land in other countries while they cannot buy an acre of land here? The only manner in which you can get land in this country now is if some relative of yours has land, dies and leaves it to you. In the case of every farm going up for sale, there are some of these aliens around the corner waiting to rush in and buy it.

The Deputy may have misunderstood what I said. What I did say was that our people had the right to buy land in England or America, if they so desired.

Surely the Minister is not suggesting that we should insist on our right to buy land abroad so that foreigners should be free to come over here in their thousands and buy our land? On two occasions in the debate, the Minister made reference to a member of the other House who sold land to aliens and he has also made reference to the stamp duty that has to be paid. Was stamp duty paid on the purchase of the land to which he has referred on these two occasions? It was not. What the Minister said could not be done has been done. The land to which he refers has been bought by a company registered as an Irish company. Now that he has that information, let us see what he will do with it.

It is all right to come in here and make statements that this is right or that is not right. I know what I am talking about when I tell the Minister that land is being bought in this country by foreigners and that the stamp duty on the sale is not being paid because I am aware that it is not being paid. The only register is the register which is kept when the information is passed to the Land Commission that the stamp duty has been paid.

I do not want to be unfair and my Party are not going to be unfair about this problem but we feel very sore about it. When the Minister states that it is not a problem which need worry anybody, or when he asks why should we worry about it, that it is only one-fifth of the land which is taken over annually by the Land Commission, does he realise what he is saying, that for every five acres the Land Commission take over to divide among Irish people, one acre is bought by somebody outside the country? Does he realise what will happen eventually if that is allowed to continue? I think the Minister did not go into the matter fully. I live in an area where this is happening day after day. If I did not take an interest in it, people, whether supporters of mine or supporters of Fianna Fáil, would soon tell me what is happening. It is my duty to pass the information along to the Minister and to the House and that is what I am doing this evening and what I did on the last evening.

In regard to the question of permission to purchase land abroad, I should like to inform the Minister that it cannot be done in Holland. I paid a compliment to the Dutch farmers who came here because they are farmers. Nobody, even if he has the money, can buy land in Holland unless he is a farmer and can prove he is a farmer. He must have graduated through an agricultural college or have had practical experience of farming. Yet people can come here from the centre of Berlin, Paris, or elsewhere, and go straight into the countryside and buy a farm. The thing that really annoys me is that then they erect a sign which says "So-and-so stud farm" and the Land Commission inspector dare not look across the fence at it because it is sacrosanct. Do we not know that a lot of stud farms have all the horses with horns on them? It is just a big joke to call it a stud farm in order to prevent the Land Commission from taking action.

If the Minister desires, I can give him facts and figures. I do not propose to act as a common informer here but I have been challenged, as others have been, regarding whether or not these things are happening. If the Minister wants information, he can have it. This matter has gone far enough and, as I said, there is one way of putting an end to it. The Minister also referred to 5,500 acres which were bought in the west of Ireland as being worth only twopence an acre. It is rather a pity that the Forestry Commission did not take possession of that land.

It was rejected by the Forestry Division five years ago.

It must have been very poor, if it was rejected by the Forestry Division. I agree that there are such places but they are very few. The land which is bought in Meath was certainly not worth only twopence an acre. One other thing about it is that we have been told that on record for slightly over two years, 1,155 acres in Meath alone have been bought for over £83,000. I do not know whether or not somebody is trying to be funny about all this but if the Minister could spare the time in one day, I could show him that acreage of land bought in County Meath without going too far from the borders of County Dublin. He would be amazed to find all the land which has been bought openly by these people. I do not know how they are getting away with that and there seems to be no record of it.

The Minister said that the pool of land was drying up and that it would not be possible to give everybody the portion of land he was looking for. All my time in public life I have been claiming that the people who should get land are those who would use it, those who were born and reared on it. They are mainly the small farmer and his sons and the farm labourer who has been working all his life on the land and perhaps knows more about it than the people for whom he works. Why should the pool not dry up if in one county in two years 1,100 acres have been taken over and have passed out of the hands of the Land Commission?I think that the pool is not drying up. Not alone land held by aliens but quite a lot of land held by so-called Irishmen could be dealt with in the same way.

Deputy McQuillan referred to the amount of land bought or taken over before records were kept. I cannot prove this but my information is exactly the same as his, that before records were kept, the amount of land which was being bought was very much greater, but it eased off considerably in the past two years. I am told that because a loophole has been found, it is speeding up again. That is why I am anxious that the Minister should use the power which he has. It would be too bad if the matter were allowed to go too far. I am sure everybody in this House is anxious that the matter be dealt with properly.

The reason this motion was put down was to bring these matters to the notice of the House. It has got a fairly good hearing and the Minister will agree that he has not had it all his own way when the matter was being discussed. The facts have been given on both sides. The Minister's comment that most of the speeches were made for political purposes could just as well have been left out. Personally, I do not care whether the people who read about this or hear about it are supporters of mine or not. It is immaterial to me. I can assure the Minister that his Party's supporters in County Meath are as anxious to have this straightened out as my supporters are and therefore the question of making political capital out of it does not arise. The Minister has assured us that he has adequate powers and assures us that having gone into the information he has collected, such as it is, over the past two years, he can now deal with the matter. We do not want to force the issue but if the Minister is prepared to deal with the matter, we are prepared to say: "Go ahead and deal with it; you say you have the information and the power", and if it is not dealt with in the way we think it should be, well, there will be another day.

I have told the Deputy I will welcome particulars conveyed to me of any case in which it is even suspected that the law is being evaded.

I have given the Minister one.

Is the Deputy pressing the motion?

No; it is being withdrawn.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
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