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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 28 Nov 1963

Vol. 206 No. 3

Land Bill, 1963—Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Last night I was about to deal with the purchase of land by non-nationals. There is grave disquier in the country over the purchase of land by foreigners. While the position has been exaggerated, nevertheless I am of opinion that the Government should take drastic action because people are seriously perturbed over these purchases. The stamp duty of 25 per cent should be doubled or, better still, increased to 100 per cent. The amount of land available to the Land Commission should be preserved because sales of land to non-nationals will reduce the pool of land.

Another matter that enters into it is that those foreigners who purchase estates pay grossly inflated prices for them. I know of a holding in the midlands which was sold for a very big figure and shortly afterwards the Land Commission tried to acquire a holding within three or four miles of this estate which had been purchased by a non-national. The Land Commission made an offer which was rejected and Land Court proceedings were held at which the owner pointed out, and rightly so, that this adjoining holding had fetched so much an acre. He made that price his yardstick and the Commission had to pay more or less the same price. Consequently, the rent they will get from the allottees will have to be considerably higher because of a purchase of land in the locality by a foreigner.

The Minister referred to the fact that a 40 or 45-acre farm is the ideal standard and one at which the Land Commission will aim. However, I think in many cases over the last year or so his officials have not been aiming at that standard. I know of one estate near Loughrea, the Bowes-Daly estate at Dunsandle, where the officials have not put the Minister's ideal standard into practice. They have given tenants six or seven or eight acres of land bringing them up to 33 acres, 34 acres or 35 acres, but in few cases have they brought the tenants up to the 45-acre standard the Minister has prescribed, despite the fact that there is still ample land to achieve that aim.

Reference was made last night to the over-holding of land on the part of the Land Commission. Deputy Seán Flanagan and Deputy Leneghan, both from Mayo, referred to this practice. It is one that is very difficult to explain away. The Land Commission will be given power now to take land that has been let over long periods. They may find out that they themselves are the biggest culprits and some other statutory body may have to be set up to take from the Land Commission land which they themselves have been holding for ten or 12 years. They give the explanation that they are waiting for some other land to become available in the locality so that they can effect their proposed rearrangement scheme or they will tell you that they paid so much for the land in question when acquiring it that they have to let it for many years to recoup their losses. That should not be.

The Minister should insist that a register be kept of all the lands held for two years or longer and each year the Minister or some senior official of his Department should demand an explanation from the Land Commission as to why lands acquired over two years previously should not be disposed of or what good reasons they have for holding them.

The Minister rightly attached great importance to Section 13 which prohibits the sale, transfer, letting or subletting of certain lands without the consent of the Land Commission. That is the best section of the Bill. Advantage has been taken of the Minister's announcement of this legislation to get out from under the umbrella and dispose of land without giving the Land Commission an opportunity of entering into competition for its purchase. Section 13 will prevent things like that happening in future and so it is a very important section.

This Bill will make an important contribution to the relief of congestion especially in the west of Ireland where it is a very serious problem. However, people should not expect that after its enactment congestion will disappear overnight. It will be impossible, in the course of a few years or a few decades, to bring up all farms to the ideal standard of 40 to 45 acres mentioned by the Minister. There is not enough land in the west of Ireland to bring farms up to that standard and it will take some time to carry out the overall rearrangement scheme.

However, there is plenty of land in the midlands and other parts of the country that should be purchased by the Land Commission and there is also plenty of scope for the purchase of small holdings that come up for sale in the congested districts and there should be plenty of opportunities for working out good rearrangement schemes. You often hear people say that land is not paying but these are the very people who buy up every farm that becomes available in my part of the country. They march with farmers' organisations protesting about rates and other matters affecting them but yet they buy up small farm after small farm as they come on the market. Farming pays for them. It does not pay for the small farmer who has not enough land to rear his family and provide them with the decencies of life.

I appeal to the Minister to get the Land Commission to deal expeditiously with all the holdings they have on hands and get rid of them before attempting to acquire other holdings. The Bill is a good one. I hope it will be enacted by the House and its provisions accepted by all Parties.

There are a few good spots in this particular Bill but that is no justification for the attempt at this stage to hoodwink the small farmer and congest into the belief that his economic salvation is around the corner. Some of the proposals in the Bill will be of benefit at a later stage to a Government really interested in the solution of congestion and the setting up of economic holdings but we must examine the intentions behind this legislation so far as the present Government are concerned.

In the past 15 years during which I have been familiar with statements made in this House, it has been stated by the former leader of Fianna Fáil, by his successor and by various Fianna Fáil Ministers for Lands that the pool of land available for the relief of congestion in this country is drying up and that it would not be possible to give economic holdings to all the farmers who needed them. At that time an economic holding was regarded as one with a valuation of approximately £13 10s. which constituted a farm of about 20 to 23 acres. The average sized holding created by the Land Commission between 1930 and 1950 was about 23 acres. It was during that time that the Fianna Fáil Government kept telling the people that there was not sufficient land available to relieve congestion. How then is it suggested that this Bill can propose to give power to the Land Commission to create holdings of from 40 to 45 acres if the land was not available in the past to create 25 acre holdings?

This is another attempt on the part of the Government to hoodwink still further the unfortunate congests in the west of Ireland. I should like to congratulate Deputy Carty on the remarks I heard him make here last night when he pointed out that if the Minister is really serious about the welfare of the smallholder he would put a ceiling on the amount of land to be held by any individual. While you have no power to limit the amount of land that can be purchased you will never have enough land available to relieve congestion. I have no doubt that Fianna Fáil have no intention of putting any ceiling on the purchase of land by non-nationals, by speculators, by big business people or by big professional people.

I believe, however, that Fianna Fáil are no longer in a position to delude the small farmers and congests of this country, because, everywhere large tracts of land became available over the past ten years, they have been allowed to pass into the hands of people already well off, people who had no need of land and who, in many instances, purchase land to evade responsibilities as far as income tax and other State levies are concerned. At the same time, small farmers in the vicinity of these large tracts were left with no hope for the future because those tracts represented the only opportunity in the different localities of getting an increase in holdings.

The main thing we have to examine in this Bill is, as I said, the intention of the Government to do something. Let me put this to the Minister: he is now of the opinion that 40 to 45 acres of good land is the essential sized holding. Yet, he tells us that he has experience of small farmers and their needs over the past 30 years. Will he tell me now why only two years ago he stated publicly that 33 acres of good land should be sufficient for any farmer? Why did he change his mind within two years and jump from 33 acres of good land to 40 to 45 acres now?

Surely, if a man has any knowledge of land problems, or professes to have any deep interest in the farming community, he will not be dogmatic in 1961 in relation to the figure and then be equally dogmatic two years later in substantially altering that figure. The simple fact, of course, is that the Minister let the cat out of the bag in his opening statement when he said there was a very strong volume of opinion that an economic holding should be a larger unit, say of 50 to 60 acres, but he went on to add that the available pool of land is limited; he felt, if he went a little higher, the fraud that it is proposed to perpetrate now would be completely exposed so he settled for a lower figure of 40 to 45 acres. Tied in with the intention of increasing what he terms the size of an economic holding is the warning that conditions by 1970, if we are admitted to the Common Market, would justify raising the ceiling with regard to the size of the holding.

Leaving aside the question of our entrance into the Common Market, is it not a fact that the Common Market countries are making preparations for the extinction of eight million farmers in Europe? Eight million smallholders will go out of farming as a result of the policy of the Common Market countries. Is it not fair to suggest now that this Government are prepared to tie in with Common Market policy by creating circumstances here which will wipe out completely the small farmer; when I say "wipe out completely the small farmer" I mean wipe out those of them who remain.

The Minister in his opening statement has, of course, an answer to that. At page 5 he tells us "I must emphasise the adoption of an area of 40 to 45 acres for the family farm does not carry with it any implication of deliberately reducing the number of persons on the land." What implication does it carry if it does not carry that? If there are a number of small holdings in rural Ireland under £20 valuation, and the pool of land is limited, and if you increase some of these holdings to a £25 valuation, what happens the remainder? Do you not need the remainder in order to create the £25 valuation holding? You are, therefore, automatically decreasing the number of landholders in the country and it is a dishonest statement on the part of the Minister to say there is no intention of deliberately reducing the number of people on the land. This is a deliberate, planned step on the part of the Government to hasten further the flight from rural Ireland. The key to any solution of the land problem is a ceiling on the amount of land to be held by any individual and until such a ceiling is imposed it is nonsense for this House to try to give hope to those who need land that their needs will be satisfied. The real test is whether the present Government are prepared to put that ceiling on. It is my belief they are not prepared to do so.

We must examine, as I said, the intention of the Government in introducing this Bill. According to the Minister, one of the reasons for the introduction of the measure is the fact that in certain parts of the country many holdings lie vacant and let in most cases being badly worked. When the Minister comes to reply I want him to clarify that statement. I want him to state what the certain parts of the country to which he refers are. The belief is prevalent at the moment that the Minister is referring to the west of Ireland in particular where as a result of the policies of this Government over the years, a large number of very small farmers and congests have been forced, through economic circumstances, to pack their bags, close the door of the house, set the little bit of land, and go to work in England.

This is a very serious matter. Is it intended that in an area where such events have taken place the Land Commission will now direct their attention as far as the acquisition of land is concerned? I make no bones about it: the aim of this Government is, in my opinion, to rap down on these unfortunate people whom the Government drove out of this country. It is an amazing situation to find at the moment that, when the Land Court sits, there are a dozen cases of acquisition notices on holders of 10, 20 or 30 acres. Much time is wasted and much money spent on arguing whether a 10 acre holding should be acquired by the Land Commission. Inspectors are brought to Galway or Roscommon, or from these areas to Dublin, to give evidence about the working of a 15 acre holding. Counsel are engaged on both sides to advise and, after very serious deliberation, the authorities make a decision either for or against. All that time, all that effort and all that money is spent on a few acres, a few acres held by a man who had to leave the country and who left it with the clear intention of returning, when he had made some money in England, and enlarging his holding.

While that is going on, we have on the other side the scandalous position of large farms changing hands and the Land Commission doing absolutely nothing about them. If the Minister thinks my description is wrong, I shall give him a specific example. If he cares to look at the local papers in Roscommon published over the past two months, he will find that a large number of cases were heard by the Land Court, and various appeals, and all in connection with small holdings.

When the question arose of dealing with substantial holdings first, for some unknown reason, these cases were brought up to Dublin for hearing, and then they were dealt with within a few minutes. Within three miles of the town of Roscommon there was a farm of land of approximately 100 acres situated in the heart of 25 or 30 small holdings. This was a nonresidential farm, a first-class piece of land. The majority of the smallholders around it were hard-working farmers trying to eke out an existence on their existing holdings. The Land Commission showed an interest in this farm for a couple of years prior to its going on the market. When it did go on the market, it was purchased by a professional man. I have nothing whatever against the individual who purchased it, but it was purchased by a professional man who had no need whatever of the land. The Land Commission notified their intention of acquisition, but the Land Court confirmed the sale of this farm to this professional man, in spite of the needs in the area.

How can the Minister reconcile that position with his intention to give from 40 to 45 acres of good land to people in the west? That is only one farm. Within the past two years over 2,000 acres of suitable land within ten miles of Roscommon town were purchased by professional people, cattle tanglers, people who had no need whatever for land. What has happened, in fact, is that practically all the suitable land in that area has been bought up by people who should not have been allowed to have it. There is no hope now of the small farmers in that area ever getting an economic holding.

I want the Minister to realise that this Land Bill was not necessary to acquire those 2,000 acres. All that was needed was a proper mentality on the part of those charged with relieving congestion. The existing powers of the Land Commission were sufficient to acquire the lands to which I have referred. In fact, the existing powers of the Commission are sufficient to acquire all the land necessary for the relief of congestion provided a ceiling is put on the amount of land held by any individual. We have a Government who profess an interest in the smallholders, a Government supporting a Constitution which states it is the duty of the Land Commission to create the maximum number of economic holdings. Yet they appoint on the deciding authority in the Land Commission persons who have no interest whatever in the relief of congestion and who are all along the line on the side of the big fellow. The intent of whatever legislation has been passed in this House by the goodwill of Deputies on all sides is being defeated because of the type of people appointed to decide whether land should be taken or not. The position is so serious that only after very careful screening should people be appointed as Lay Commissioners to carry out this very onerous and responsible task towards the small farmers. All the legislation here is useless if people are appointed as Lay Commissioners with the mentality of ranchers. That is what has happened in the past. That is one of the real reasons why we have no proper approach made to the solution of congestion.

I want the Minister to tell us the certain parts of the country where these holdings he referred to are vacant and are badly worked. I do not want to quote at length from a speech the Minister made some time ago about the people who spent all their time going to race tracks, when he said it was time they were forced to work their land or have it taken off them. If he is referring to these gentlemen farmers who are not utilising their land, then I am with him. But we know there are very few of that type in the undeveloped areas and congested areas. There are few gentlemen farmers there who can bring their Jaguars to every race meeting in the country. The Minister knows where those gentlemen live. He must know the way their land is being neglected. Yet he has the audacity to come in here and say it is necessary to bring in legislation to deal with them. It is not necessary to bring in legislation to deal with people not working their land at present. This is another attempt to suggest that the Government are now serious about dealing with those people who have made no use of their land over the years. I am referring in particular to the midlands, where thousands of acres of land are being allowed go to waste—a sin against the nation—and no attempt is being made by the Government to acquire these lands and create economic holdings in order to give the small farmers and congests in that part of Ireland an opportunity of working that land in the interest of their families and of the nation.

I do not know whether the Minister has made any close analysis of the extraordinary way the population is based here and how unfairly balanced the land is distributed so far as the small farmer is concerned. There are 12,000 holdings in Ireland with a poor law valuation of approximately £2¼ million. There are another 280,000 holdings with a poor law valuation of £1.9 million. The 12,000 holdings I refer to represent 3 per cent of the holdings in Ireland, while the 280,000 represent 70 per cent. Therefore, 3 per cent of the holdings have a poor law valuation of £2 million, whereas 70 per cent have a poor law valuation of less than £2 million. What kind of a balance is that? If we are to have any land policy, we must start on the holdings in the category to which I have referred. It is a terrible crime to find our young people, who are anxious to work the land and to go to agricultural colleges to increase their knowledge of farming, being denied that opportunity while first-class land is left to people with no sense of responsibility to the State.

It was either Deputy Leneghan or Deputy Flanagan—perhaps both—who stated that this Bill came too late, that it is 40 years too late. It shows that the Deputies concerned are aware of the situation in rural Ireland. What they are not aware of is that there was sufficient legislation there already to deal with the majority of the problems but it was never brought into proper use or when the Land Court dealt with matters, they leaned over backwards to favour the big fellow, as I have described him already. I do not see where this new legislation will be loaded in favour of the congest or the small man.

There are a number of matters in the Bill which I would prefer to deal with on Committee Stage and I will reserve some of my comments on the various sections for that Stage. The Bill, which was heralded for months by the Fianna Fáil Party, is one further proof that they have no hope left in them as far as rural Ireland is concerned, that the mentality of big business, big everything, has now taken over completely in this Government, big industrialists to get into big production as far as the Common Market is concerned, big supermarkets as far as business is concerned and big ranches as far as rural Ireland is concerned. It is a big change for a Party like Fianna Fáil which professed to look after the small man.

It is quite clear now that Fianna Fáil are in the hands of the very wealthy and powerful interests which are in the city of Dublin and that the backbenchers of the Fianna Fáil Party, some of whom have spoken here, no longer carry weight. The very fact that Deputies Carty, Flanagan and others were forced by circumstances to come into this House and protest that the Bill was either 40 years too late or that there was nothing in it that would bring about a solution of the land problem is proof positive that the people who elected them to this House are losing confidence fast in Fianna Fáil and when this Bill, with whatever changes are made in it, becomes law, it will be then even more apparent that the hopes which the small people in Ireland have are finally dashed.

It is significant today to hear members of the Fianna Fáil Party themselves express anxiety about a matter to which we have drawn the attention of the Government repeatedly over the past few years, that is, the purchase of agricultural land by non-nationals. It is a deplorable thing that the Government have sought consistently to minimise that situation and even to deny the existence of the problem. Now their own backbenchers are warning them. It is a problem which causes acute anxiety in the country and is there in spite of the denials of the Government Ministers.

I direct the attention of the House to this situation because I think it is not only socially undesirable but may give rise to very undesirable consequences. We seek to promote the introduction of industrial capital from abroad for the purpose of industrial development in this country and our people have no instinctive reaction against the introduction of foreign capital for industrial development and the provision of employment. They have no instinctive reaction against the acquisition of land for the erection of industrial premises or factories and they do not very much mind the acquisition of residences with pleasure grounds annexed to them, but they know quite well the difference between that kind of acquisition and the acquisition of agricultural land. If you asked them to define it they might find some difficulty but there is really no confusion in their mind. They are perfectly right: there is a fundamental difference between the two kinds of transaction and the transaction which is pregnant with evil is the acquisition of agricultural land by non-nationals. That ought to be brought under stricter control so that the magnitude of the problem can be kept under constant review and where it seems, as I believe it now seems, that in certain areas it has gone beyond the limit which it is socially desirable to permit, then the powers of the Land Commission should be invoked compulsorily to acquire that land for distribution amongst congested holders whom it is desired to resettle.

The only satisfactory way in which this can be done is to make suitable provision that any transfer of land which operates to transfer the beneficial ownership of the land to a non-national shall be null and void if it is not registered in the Land Commission. Unless that is done, all sorts of legal devices will be operated in order to conceal the true purchaser of the land. Trusts will be set up and Irish companies will be established and a variety of legal devices employed so as to ensure that the legal title to the land, in fact, passes from an Irish owner to a new Irish owner in the person of a company or a trust but where that is further pursued to the point of ascertaining who the beneficial owner is, it will be found in many cases that the legal owner, who is an Irish personality in the form of a trust or company is, in fact, holding the land for the benefit of a non-national.

The only way in which that can be effectively checked is to declare by law that any arrangement of that kind is null and void and the payment of the consideration will not operate effectively to transfer title to the land. In those circumstances, this kind of transaction will no longer take place because competent conveyancers will realise that the non-national purchaser would fail to get a good title to the land he sought to buy unless there was prior notification to the Irish Land Commission.

If we could get that kind of exhaustive record kept then the true dimensions of this problem would become manifest and the great evil of public malaise which the Minister must himself now realise exists when he hears the backbenchers of his own Party speak of it would be allayed and we would know what the real situation was and be in a position to determine what steps were necessary to bring the problem under effective control.

This Land Bill has some useful proposals in it and some proposals that will want very scrupulous attention on Committee Stage but I want to raise specifically this issue of principle. What purpose have we in mind? Are we trying to wipe out the whole system of tenant proprietor farmers in this country? If we are, we are mad. We have a whole social system built up in this country based on the principle of the man who works the land owning the land he works upon. We arrived at that arrangement after fighting a land war and after years and years of struggle, and subsequently of domestic legislation, in order to give effect to it.

Some of us here remember the air of triumph and rejoicing which swept through this country when the 1923 Land Act was passed which transferred all tenanted land in Ireland to the Land Commission for conveyance to the tenants. Are we to go back on that? Do we want to get the people we settled on the land off the land? I do not. It is very popular continental economists' talk to say that the only way to operate the land satisfactorily— from the economists' point of view— is to wipe all the smallholders off the land, divide it into large sections and operate it on a quasi-industrial basis. That was Lord Lucan's view. It is nothing new.

Lord Lucan took that view in the first quarter of the 19th century and proceeded to do it on all the Lucan estates in west Mayo. His idea was to remove all the tenants from their holdings, consolidating the holdings into 500 acre lots, to bring in Scotch factors and to re-employ the displaced tenants as labourers. The net result was a savage land war, at the end of which it was not the tenants who were gone off. Lord Lucan was gone. I am sure the economist, John Stuart Mill, and others who contemplated that operation deplored the failure of Lord Lucan's plan. Do we? I do not.

Our people were right. They kept a firm grip on their holdings and they have since reared generations of good people on that land. This is a very fundamental matter. I was recently in west Donegal and I came to two houses I knew very well when I first went to Donegal as a representative for the constituency 30 years ago. When I first went there 30 years ago, those two houses were situated on two adjoining small farms and according to the standards obtaining today, the people living there were poor. They did not think they were poor. They were two very independent families and as fine people as one could meet in any part of the world.

Out of these two houses there came, in the poverty which an economist would regard as unsufferable, a university professor, the matron of one of the largest specialist hospitals in the world, two principal teachers of national schools and a very high member of the Irish Civil Service who was universally esteemed. Now those two houses today are receiving into them, I am sure, four to six times the income that they had when I first knew them. Where are the children of those houses now? They are not acquiring, at great sacrifice, the education which their predecessors sought, secured and exploited. They are working in the tunnels of Scotland. There are two or three girls in industrial employment in England. They are earning four to six times as much as their parents ever earned, but they have never passed the sixth book in school and they never will. The girls are working in factories in England and are earning far more than the women of their homes earned 30 years ago. They are lucky to get married to respectable boys in England or they will come home and get married here if they are luckier. Which is the better life?

I think the life these people lived, in dignity and security on their own holdings, and the struggle they made to get education and to aim at higher things for their children were infinitely better than the transfer of those families from those small holdings into the comparative affluence of industrial employment in Great Britain. In that part of the world, they go largely to the tunnelling employment. Not a month passes in Donegal that some boy is not brought home in a coffin because everybody knows that the mortality rate in that work is very high and hence the immensely high wages they are in a position to secure.

Everybody in this country should ask himself what is most important in life. Is it money or is it happiness? I am convinced that the people who knew poverty but who, by their efforts, attained to the positions of professor, matron, principal teachers, and so on, are infinitely better off in that they are truly using the faculties with which God endowed them to the highest possible purpose, with a corresponding satisfaction, than the succeeding generation who, turning their backs on that kind of struggle for higher education, have gladly sought the additional financial reward of prompt enrichment in the ranks of industrial labour in Great Britain.

I think it is true that in many parts of rural Ireland today economic difficulties have become so great, particularly in the case of small farmers, that they have been forced into industrial employment in Britain because the struggle to keep their families at home became impossible. The rising cost of living operated to destroy the possibilities of very small farmers in this country hanging on and they have been forced to abandon the life they would have preferred in favour of industrial employment in Britain so that they can live. That is a great tragedy.

We must ask ourselves now, when considering this Land Bill, what is our ultimate objective. I want to see kept on the land of Ireland as property-owning farmers the maximum number of families the land is capable of supporting. I want to suggest to the Dáil that if you want effective land reform in this country, one of the essential features of it is reform in housing. If we are to have the people firmly fixed on the land, we must envisage a situation in which girls are prepared to marry into farms and rear families. The plain truth is that in the congested areas, particularly, though the houses are decent, time has slipped by. People really have not adverted to the fact that many of the houses are there since their reconstruction after the Famine. They have been there 100 years. There have been adjustments and alterations made but fundamentally the amenities and accommodation are those of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Such houses in our cities and towns have largely disappeared. The Gaeltacht housing scheme brought a great revolution in housing in the fíorGhaeltacht, but outside the Gaeltacht in the congested areas as defined by law, the plain truth is that the general accommodation of the houses on the farms corresponds closely to the kind of accommodation that used to be there for all to see in the thatched houses in our towns and villages. In the towns and villages now, there are no thatched houses left. In the course of the past 40 or 50 years they have all been pulled down and replaced by new houses with modern amenities.

On the small holdings in the country, no such revolution in housing has taken place and unless and until we can promote that revolution in housing on the small holdings, then our hopes of preserving the present social pattern of our society must be illfounded. Therefore I suggest to the Minister that one of the most important reforms required in land legislation at the present time is a clear indication to small holders all over the country that they can build themselves a new house with reasonable amenities and on terms they can afford to pay.

I saw an admirable model of a Land Commission house which was shown here in Leinster House some time ago. I understand that such a house can be built for under £2,000. With appropriate grants from the local authority and the Department of Local Government the net cost of that house could be brought down probably to something of the order of £1,400. If that were spread over a sufficient term of years as an addition to the small farmers' annuity, it should be possible for a very large number of small farmers who really require new houses to arrange for such houses to be built.

I imagine that if this matter were closely examined, the building of these houses could possibly be undertaken by a body analogous to the National Housing Agency, albeit that it might be better annexed to the Land Commission. I envisage a situation in which a farmer would say: "I want a house" and the Land Commission, if they were satisfied that he was in good faith, would arrange for the collection of the appropriate grants from the Department of Local Government, proceed to build the house, then add the cost to his annuity and collect it over the years as the land annuity is at present collected.

There is not the slightest use in giving a grant of 30, 40 or 45 acres of land, unless the farmer is helped to use it to the best advantage. If a family in rural Ireland are provided with 45 acres of land, unless they use that land to the very best advantage, instead of being a blessing, it may be a curse to them. It is no easy job for one man to run 45 acres of land and to get the maximum output from it. Forty-five acres of land is a borderline case. It is too small to be mechanised and it is almost too large to be operated single-handed without mechanical assistance. Therefore unless you install, alongside a comprehensive programme of enlargement of holdings, an adequate advisory service to help the farmers to work the land to the best advantage, instead of doing good, you may be doing harm. Advisory services are not primarily the responsibility of the Department of Lands. Therein is one of the anachronisms of our Government, that the Department of Lands is separated from the Department of Agriculture, because both are so intimately concerned with land.

The Minister for Lands might as well make up his mind to the fact that no alteration in the distribution of land without effective assistance for the farmers to enable them to use it to the best advantage will do any good. The Minister must also face this fact, that no action on his part can hope to have a successful issue unless the farmers are provided not only with advice but with the means to give effect to that advice. I am quite certain that if we are to get effective use of the land of Ireland, particularly in the congested areas, we must provide the farmers living there with credit on the terms they can afford to pay.

I want to suggest that it is quite useless in the Second Schedule of this Bill, which purports to define the areas where congestion exists, to exclude the counties of Cavan and Monaghan. Indeed I would be glad to hear what argument is there for scheduling any particular area. Why are the operations of this Bill or any part of it restricted to that area? Would there be any objection to making the provisions of the Bill applicable to the whole Twenty-Six Counties? If there is insurmountable objection to that course and it is desirable to segregate for the purpose of this Bill the congested areas, then I suggest to the Minister that it is remote from reality to omit Cavan and Monaghan, the two counties in Ireland which have suffered most heavily from emigration resulting from poverty during the past ten years.

I view the provisions of section 10 with the gravest concern and I do not think this is an honest section. We all know when land purchase was proceeding in this country, in many cases the landlord had an obligation to his tenants to maintain certain embankments and works of that character which protected the land for which his tenants were paying rent from perennial flooding. When the Land Commission bought the estate from the landlords, they took over the estate with all its liabilities and then they divided it. On some estates they remembered to apportion out responsibility for the maintenance of embankments and I understand that in those cases there was a suitable abatement of the purchase price and the consequent annuity payable on the land.

In other estates, they did not purport to do that. They divided the land, but the residual obligation to maintain these embankments remained with the Land Commission. For years, there has been litigation and there have been battles going on, the Land Commission claiming they were not liable, the tenants being advised they were not liable, and my experience has been that at the point of starting proceedings in the High Court, the Land Commission have said: "Oh, we will get the Board of Works to do something," and a modus vivendi was found and the proceedings dropped.

I think this section 10 is designed to put an end to all that and instead of saying that these holdings were conveyed to the tenants without any apportionment of the old landlord's obligation to maintain embankments, we are now putting that obligation on the tenants. If that is so, it is a very wrong arrangement to try by law to unload on to the tenant purchasers these liabilities. They were not set out in the original agreement under which they acquired the holdings on which they now live.

One has to read section 13 in connection with section 27. At first glance, it seems to be not an unreasonable arrangement that if the Land Commission, who are an autonomous body with quasi-judicial standing, determine it is desirable to consider the acquisition of a holding, they will not make such determination without proper inquiries and due consideration of all relevant matter and that, having made the decision that they are going to inspect the land and consider its acquisition, the Land Commission should have the right to say to the person: "With the exception of conacre, you cannot during the next 12 months enter into any arrangement involving the letting or sale without prior consultation with the Land Commission."

I do not think that it is an unreasonable stipulation, but when you read it in the context of section 27, quite a new picture emerges. Now there has been taken from the Land Commission what hitherto was a reserved power, what was recorded as excepted matter under section 12 of the Land Act. Now the Minister is to have the power through his four senior inspectors to serve notice. The moment he serves notice now, there may be no dealings in the land, as defined by the restriction, without prior consideration by the Land Commission. That is a very dangerous departure because if the Minister has power to go to anybody in the country and get his senior inspectors to take the step which brings section 13 into operation, that is a power the Minister never has had before and I do not think it is a power the Minister ought to have.

We have always been very scrupulous in this House, and wisely so, to preserve the fixity of tenure, the free sale to which our people have rightly attached such importance at all times. We have consented to some abridgement of that principle if the power to abridge that principle were an excepted service in that it could be exercised only by a quasi-judicial body, the Land Commission, who were not answerable to the political head of the Department for the exercise of that power.

It is now proposed under section 27 to give that power to the Minister's servants, and in those circumstances I think section 13 requires much more rigorous examination. In my view, the amount of time you will save by the operation of section 27 is not worth the candle. We are standing on a rock, and mind you, it is a rock which for 40 years Ministers of three successive Governments—Cumann na nGaedheal, Fianna Fáil, inter-Party, then again Fianna Fáil, then again inter-Party and now Fianna Fáil—have always defended even under vigorous pressure from their own supporters. That rock was that no political head of the Department of Lands would ever accept responsibility for determining what land should be acquired and what land should not be acquired.

I know that the final decision as to whether the land is to be acquired or not remains an excepted matter reserved to the Land Commission, but here we have introduced this new principle that the notice to consider the matter can create a 12 months' restriction on the user of that land. I am prepared to consent to that so long as this question of inspection and acquisition remains an excepted matter, but if it becomes the power of the political head of the Department of Lands to create that situation, I believe we are making a most unfortunate inroad on a principle which hitherto we have all had the wisdom to regard as sacrosanct—that the ownership of land shall not be infringed by the political head of the Department of Lands no matter what Government he belongs to. If the Minister finds himself with the power to direct his senior inspectors to initiate proceedings of this character, his life will cease to be worth living if he is a conscientious man, because the pressures on him to make promiscuous miscellaneous decisions of this character will be well-nigh irresistible.

Sitting here in Dublin, we are only too liable to forget what inspection of such land and a restriction of this kind operating for 12 months thereafter involve in rural Ireland. It means that for 12 months a family are living in an atmosphere of gloom. There is a possibility, there is a prospect hanging over them that the Land Commission will put them out and it is a disruption of their lives which I think it should not be in the power of any man in the public life of this country to impose upon them.

Even if any Minister's senior inspector says: "This is not a holding of this sort; really we ought not to proceed", the Minister, under heavy pressure, is constrained to say: "Nevertheless, leave the matter to the Land Commission". There will be more and more cases in which local political pressure will make that course well-nigh unavoidable and serious injustice will be done and great injury inflicted.

At the present time, the Minister is in a position to say: "I have nothing to do with the acquisition of the land: if you think any place should be acquired, write to the Land Commission and if they think it is right, they will proceed and if they do not, it is no job of mine; I do not want to make them". We all know the fraudulent representations which have gone on here by many members representing to their constituents that they are in a position to divide land. We all know the meetings at dead of night and the promises: "This land is being divided and I guarantee you you will get a stripe of it".

It has always been a source of infinite satisfaction to me to be able to say: "I have nothing whatsoever to do with the division of land; except for bringing your case to the attention of the Land Commission, which is something that will ensure your claims will be considered, I have nothing to do with it. But anyone who says to you that he is in a position to get you land is a fraud." And, of course, they found it out. That is true. Now the situation will arise in which a meeting can be held in any village and a TD faced with a claim that they want such-and-such lands inspected. He is no longer able to say that he will bring the representations to the Land Commission but that he has no power to influence them; that they must decide in their own judgment what is to be done. Now the people will be entitled to say: "You have the power: the Minister who belongs to your Party and whom you say you represent in this constituency, has the power to get this land inspected and that is what we want".

I think that is a very serious and undesirable departure. It is supposed to expedite the process of land acquisition. It may operate to that end but when I hear Deputies speak of the desirability of setting up a super Land Commission, compulsorily to acquire from the Land Commission the land they already have and will not divide, you cannot help wondering will the little extra expedition which Section 27 is designed to produce be worth the candle in exposing people in all parts of the country to a system of political persecution of a most malignant kind if it becomes no longer an excepted function but a political function to determine whose land is to be inspected for acquisition and whose is not.

There is another detail which the Minister ought to consider. I understand the permanent Secretary of the Department has been appointed to the Land Commission. There is nobody better fitted to be a Land Commissioner than he is and there is a precedent for it. The late Mr. Deegan, the Lord have mercy on him, was a Land Commissioner. He was a friend of mine. But there is a difference. When Mr. Deegan was a Commissioner, the powers envisaged in section 27 did not exist. Now we are in danger of a situation arising in which the executive head of a Department, the Secretary, is directed by the Minister to order one of the four senior inspectors to initiate proceedings for the acquisition of land. Then the question of whether the land should be taken or not comes before the executive head of the Department who is now sitting under a different hat and is supposed to be sitting in a quasi-judicial capacity to determine between the owner and the senior inspector of the Department as to whether the land should be acquired.

You have the extraordinary situation of land, in respect of which he has given a direction that acquisition proceedings should be initiated under section 27, comes before him in his judicial capacity to determine whether or not it should be acquired. I think the Minister should review that matter. Personally, I hope he will drop section 27. If he does, this problem does not arise. If he does not, he should face the fact that the precedent of Mr. Deegan being at one time Secretary of the Department and a Land Commissioner is not a satisfactory one in the situation it is now proposed to create. In the absence of section 27, I have no quarrel with the arrangement, but with the operation of section 27, it appears to me we are imposing on an individual an executive and a judicial function in respect of the same matter which it is impossible for one individual faithfully to discharge.

One of the new proposals in the Bill and one for which there is much to be said is the proposal to enable a farmer incapacitated by years or, I gather, by any other circumstance to opt to surrender his holding to the Land Commission in consideration of a pension which will be payable to himself and if desired, to his wife for the rest of her life and in addition—a humane and sensible arrangement—that they may rent their own house and an accommodation garden for the remainder of their days and that there will be special concessions in respect of the annuity for old age pension purposes.

The only question I want to ask the Minister is whether he has made the category of persons eligible to avail of this wide enough? You have a number of odd familiar situations arising in rural Ireland where it is manifestly desirable that persons in possession of a small holding should pass it on to people prepared to work it. You have old spinsters left in holdings desperately trying, by letting some in conacre and grazing a goat, to struggle on. It would be much better if they took the pension and settled in the adjoining town and made the land available to some active person. You have a number of categories of persons other than those who are actually old and incapacitated who, I think, could with advantage avail of this provision, and where the provision is purely optional and the initiative lies with the tenant, is there any objection to making it pretty wide?

If somebody wants to give up land and can advance the justification to the Commission that he is physically unable to work it or for any other reason unable to use it, or, indeed, if he simply wants to give it up and no longer wants to work that land and would prefer to take a pension, is there any reason that he should not fall into this category? What is the use of leaving a holding with anybody who says he is not able to work it or does not want to work it and would sooner be rid of it? The best evidence of that is his frame of mind. As long as the initiative lies entirely with him, as long as we are not proposing that the Land Commission should have power to order him off the land. I see no objection to widening the category very extensively.

I would not be in favour of giving the Land Commission compulsory powers to put anyone out of his home. It is much better to wait for elderly people to die. It is their home and in my eyes, it is quite sacrosanct. It is a good thing to say to elderly people, many of whom we know personally are hanging on beyond the limits of reason and sometimes at great sacrifice: "Look, the sooner you settle down in comfort in the house and in the garden and let the land go, you ought to do it." I think that is a very good idea. I admit you may not be able to be quite as liberal in your proposals to persons who cannot plead old age or other incapacities but I am not sure you could not extend the plan where a person does not plead old age or incapacity but simply wants to give up the land, and elects to take a pension, rather than sell to the Commission, that would be available to the person provided he was prepared to give up house, land and all. I suggest to the Minister that that is worth considering.

I note that the explanatory memorandum states that:

Cash purchases (by auction or private treaty) under the Land Act, 1950, will be open to all the purposes of the Land Acts—and no longer restricted to lands required for migrants or for the re-arrangement of fragmented holdings.

I wonder does the Minister remember when the 1950 Act was going through this House and what he had to say about this business, that it was useless, it could never be used and that it was merely eyewash to mislead the people? The education of Fianna Fáil is a slow and tedious process but it is gratifying to those of us who have undertaken it to realise that slow and tedious as it is, it progresses steadily.

I am going to make it workable.

Of course there was a time when the Minister said that it could not be made to work. I am glad now that he realises the principle is a sound principle. I am glad that he acknowledges in this regard, as he has so often acknowledged before, that it is a principle which he at first rejected categorically, which he had shoved down his throat like a child swallowing castor oil, and has come to recognise it did him good, and he is going to take more and go to the chemist and ask for another bottle and say that while he did not like it at first now he realises it is excellent and salubrious.

I urge most strongly on the Minister for the reasons set out by me in regard to the dual function proposed for the Secretary of the Department, but for the far graver reason of avoiding any suggestion of political interference in the acquisition and inspection of land, that he should drop section 27. Its only purpose is to expedite proceedings. I believe any expedition we procure thereby will be altogether at an excessive price and will create endless problems, not only for the Minister but for any successor, no matter what side of the House he might come from.

These are powers which, if I were Minister for Lands tomorrow, I would not want to have. These are powers which if I were Taoiseach and were seeking to appoint a man as Minister for Lands, I would not wish to put in the hands of any person who is engaged in public life, but which I would put quite cheerfully in the hands of Land Commissioners appointed either by myself or my predecessor in office. Contrary to what Deputy McQuillan says, I believe, if you choose decent men for the position of Land Commissioners, they will recognise, as they have recognised for the past 40 years, the quasi-judicial responsibilities devolving on them and give effect to the land code enacted by this Oireachtas. That is what we want. The more detached and the more independent we can preserve the Land Commissioners in charge of this extremely delicate task, the better it will be.

I cannot conclude on a Bill of such importance without urging every Deputy to ask himself the questions again: "Whither are we going? What are we trying to do?" I want to repeat here what I have said at home and abroad and of the truth of which I am profoundly convinced. One of the most precious things we have in Ireland is the institution of a farming community who own the land they work on. One of the proudest boasts we should have is that west of the Shannon, there are virtually no agricultural labourers— every man works for himself. I believe that is a great sheet-anchor of stability in our society; I believe it produces a way of life which is very precious, very happy and very good. It would be an irreparable tragedy if we abandoned that system and reconciled ourselves to the facile proposition that the dry-as-dust economists were right in the belief that there was no aspect of the user of land except that it corresponded to the higher standards of efficient operation.

There is a social side to land tenure to which due weight must be given, not only to the economic return to be derived from the land but to the quality of life and to the element of happiness in the family who live and work on an economic holding in the west of Ireland as compared with the alternative available to them if they seek industrial employment either in their own country or abroad. We will always have a sufficiency of people who choose security, dignity and happiness on their own holdings to the monetary reward and alternative enjoyments available in Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Boston and New York. There will always be those who want to go but there will always be enough who want to stay, and we should concern ourselves most earnestly to ensure that nothing we do in Oireachtas Éireann will make it more likely that those who want to stay will, for the want of security, be driven from their homes.

The announcement of this Land Bill some months ago was accompanied by a flourish of trumpets throughout the nation. It raised the hopes of our depressed farming community; it gave them new hope that salvation was on the way. Whether it was wise to announce a Bill of this kind 12 months in advance is open to serious question because it does seem that the Minister, despite all the good intentions inherent in the Bill, did give to those people directly concerned in the new acquisition of land an opportunity to circumvent the Minister's intentions, and to render useless a goodly portion of the good intentions of this measure.

Anything which can be done to help the small farmers of this country, to bring them a greater sense of prosperity, security and happiness will, as always, have the full support of the Labour Party. We welcome enthusiastically those parts of the Bill which seek to ensure that in future there will be allocated to those needing them economic holdings of land of from 40 to 45 acres so that the people living on these farms will be assured of a decent livelihood, that they will have a decent standard of living and be able to live in frugal comfort. That is a very desirable thing.

There are many important features in the Land Bill, in its intention to give the Land Commission power to acquire more land, acquire it more speedily, divide it more speedily, to ensure economic holdings, to restrict the usage of land by people who are not using it to the best advantage, to restrict ownership by absentee landlords and by those who are unable to work the land properly. Those are good features and so are the provisions which ensure adequate compensation for the owners of land acquired, the payment of pensions to old people who give up their land and the provision of facilities for them to continue to live in their old homes.

However, we have to have regard to the fact that land is limited in this country since ours is an island home, surrounded by the sea. Land is very much coveted in this country and clearly there is not enough to go round. For that reason, we wonder why the Minister did not think fit to tackle the fundamental problem facing the farming community by reason of the acquisition of land by foreigners. This Land Bill fails miserably to grapple effectively with the land problem because it ignores the situation which is created by the right of foreigners to purchase land in this country.

I wonder why the Minister has not had regard to the pleas made in this House in recent years to stop the purchase of land by foreigners. I wonder why, given this unique opportunity, he did not take the necessary steps to ensure that something effective was done in this regard. We are agreed to concede to the Minister and the Land Commission the power to acquire land which is not properly worked and we are doing this at a time when we are well aware that the most arable tracts of land in Ireland to-day are being purchased by outsiders and that the Land Commission are unable or unwilling to grapple with this problem while we have terrible congestion all over the country.

If the Minister were sincere in his desire to provide economic holdings for all farmers in need of them, he surely should have taken steps in this Bill to restrict the acquisition of land by outsiders, by people who have no regard for the Irish people or for our heritage, who are alien in origin and outlook and who are only coming here to exploit to their own selfish advantage the people and land of the country.

We welcome outside capital, outside advice and guidance in respect of our industrial potential and, indeed, of our farming potential as well. We welcome foreign investment in industry to create employment but, as a Party, we stop short when it comes to the selling out of the land of Ireland. This is something which no Irishman could condone and it is a problem fraught with the danger of serious repercussions. We deplore greatly the absence of any restriction on the purchase of our land by aliens. We say that the Bill fails in its objective by reason of the fact that the amount of land available to the Land Commission is clearly restricted to these parcels of land which from time to time come on the open market.

The vast tracts of land in this country, the big estates, are becoming more and more coveted by outside people and are being sold privately to people who come in here when large estates are available. This is causing indignation and anger amongst the unfortunate small farmers in the congested areas. These men know when an estate is likely to be sold and they look forward to seeing it acquired by the Land Commission and divided amongst them. There is consternation when they find that it has been sold privately to some foreigner. The Minister has completely ignored that aspect of social life in Ireland. There is nothing in this measure to grapple with that problem. We merely give more power to the Land Commission to do a deal in regard to these small parcels of land which may become available from time to time; but, in regard to the vast areas of arable land, so coveted by outsiders, the Land Commission are clearly bereft of power to deal with them.

We do not believe the Irish farmer should be sacrificed on the altar of private property. We do not believe the Minister should permit a situation to continue wherein the profit motive reigns or wherein money is the criterion by which land is adjudged. We all know outsiders can come in here with packets of paper money, buying up our best land, and the Land Commission are unable to compete with them. In such circumstances, what chance has the small farmer? What chance have the small farmers in the congested areas of ever getting a decent parcel of land? There are no provisions in this Bill to deal with that problem.

I hope it is not yet too late to prevail upon the Minister to introduce the necessary restrictions to preserve the land for the people of Ireland in the first instance. That is what we should do if we are sincere. We support the contention of so many Fianna Fáil Deputies that a ceiling should be placed on the number of acres any person may own. That is a reasonable suggestion. Its reasonableness is made manifest by statements of Deputies in the Minister's Party. It is desirable and timely that a limit should be placed on the acreage any one person may own. Only by such restriction can we hope to deal effectively with the land problem and give to uneconomic holders the acreage the Minister envisages and the opportunity to enjoy a fuller, happier and more prosperous living.

In 1961, some 19,000 persons left the rural areas. They migrated to the cities and towns or emigrated to Great Britain and elsewhere. The figure is an alarming one and it should engender shock and shame in all, and particularly in those in authority and in power. This is a fantastic drift from the land. Our rural areas, which form the basic social fibre of the nation, are denuded of population. If this denudation continues, we shall have no land problem for there will be no one left to whom to give land. They will have gone, as a result of economic pressure, because of their clear inability to eke out a meagre livelihood in the rural areas.

It is time some Government took the necessary steps to bring back a spark of life to our rural areas and do something to entice our people to remain on the land. The whole question of land has been grossly mismanaged since the inception of this State. The great pity is that the ideals and aspirations for which so many generations fought and died were not given effect to at the foundation of this State in 1922. Down the years, little or nothing has been done to put the Irish farmer back on his own land, to make him the heir to the land of Ireland, to the wealth of Ireland, and to help him to share in the national estate which his forebears before him created and in which he is entitled to participate.

Nothing effective has been done by so-called Republican Governments to undo the conquest of 700 years. Vast estates have been allowed to remain in the hands of the land barons and the laws condoned that situation and consolidated the position of these barons. Our concern is not for the rancher and the land baron; our concern is for the poor small farmer. Our concern is for the real people of Ireland who look to an Irish Government to acquire and divide these estates and give them a chance of a new life in the new Republic. Irish Governments have failed to recognise their signal, patriotic duty. We have now a Land Bill which merely tinkers with the problem, which avoids any reference to restriction on the purchase of land by aliens, or other flagrant defects in present land policy. We welcome the extra powers the Land Commission seek. We hope that this Bill will have the effect of ensuring that land that is not being properly worked, land owned by absentee landlords, will be speedily acquired and speedily allotted and that this interminable delay we have experienced in the Land Commission will be obviated.

I feel disposed to speak on this subject of the Land Bill because since I was elected to this House two years ago I have been inundated with representations from the smallholders of South Tipperary and West Waterford in respect of their crying need for more land. Those people reside mainly on the sides of mountains or close to bogs. The problem they have of trying to eke out an existence on a few acres is, indeed, a sorry one. In the main they live away from the built-up areas. They have no proper roads to give access to their farmsteads; their houses are in a state of dilapidation. They have no running water, no sewerage facilities and no modern amenities in their homes. Under such conditions is it any wonder that as soon as their children come to adult age they get away as fast as their heels will carry them from these lonely primitive parts of Ireland? In the face of such circumstances, is it any wonder that we had something like 20,000 people leaving rural Ireland in 1961? The number fell slightly last year, but an alarming number of persons are still flying from rural Ireland. This is because of the lack of land, lack of modern amenities and lack of the effective State aid necessary to enable these people to remain on the land.

It is greatly to be deplored and regretted that despite the generous State aid and stimulation to agriculture by the Department of Lands and the Department of Agriculture—these twin Departments concerned generally with the land question—in the main it can be proven conclusively that these aids are benefiting one section of the farming community only, that is, the big man. The rich farmer is benefiting mainly by these State aids. Clearly the poor man is unable to avail of them because he does not have the initial capital. Therefore, we have a policy of State aid which makes the rich farmer richer and the poor farmer poorer. We should like to see differentiation in the allocation of grants.

The Deputy is now going beyond the scope of the Bill.

We should like to see the help and aid provided in the Bill conferred on those who most need it, to bring them up from the bottom rather than down from the top. Apart from the desirability of an economic holding of from 45 to 50 acres, the Minister must have regard to the fact that, because of the isolated locations in which some of these farmers reside, there is a problem of housing. It is no good giving a man a holding of 40 to 45 acres, unless one has regard to the house in which he lives and to the social amenities which he enjoys. He must have good roads, running water and electric light. He must have a comfortable home with all modern amenities. The Land Commission must be prepared to build more houses for our small farmers. In my constituency particularly we rarely see houses being built for farmers where land division is concerned. Many of the farmers living on the foot hills of Slievenamon, the Comeraghs and the Galtees who have hopes of getting land where estates are being divided are wondering what will be done about their housing circumstances. Many of them are anxious to leave these mountainous parts and come down to the lowlands. But that involves a problem of whether the Commission are prepared to build houses for them. We should like to see greater emphasis laid on the ideal of providing proper homes and outoffices with the land, so that these families will have a sense of security and permanency and that they will remain on in these farms and work them as effectively as they can.

I am glad to see in the Bill that the Minister is prepared to facilitate in every way the purchase of farms where people are unable to work them economically by reason of age or disability and that he is prepared to pay a decent price, if necessary even in ready cash. Moreover, there is provision in this measure for a pension, so to speak, for these old and disabled persons who remain on in the homestead. The Minister will appreciate that the enticement of the old age pension for the aged owner of a farm to make over that farm to the younger members of the family has not been the great incentive it was hoped it would be. Admittedly, there is an enticement to the old folk to hand over the farm, but it is not a sufficient enticement. I know many old farmers not enamoured of the prospect of 35/- a week when they sign over their farm to the eldest son or other relative. The Minister described the pension he has in mind as an annuity. I was wondering whether it would be paid annually or monthly. Having in mind the type of person we are dealing with, I believe the pension should be a weekly pension. Those disabled persons who may have land but are unable to work it should be treated particularly generously.

We welcome and support many of the other provisions of this measure. We congratulate the Minister on his courage and daring in facing up to this problem of the land question in Ireland. He has done something effective towards remedying the problem. As I have pointed out in the main portion of my speech, it is greatly to be deplored that he did not face up to the main and fundamental problem confronting us, that is, restriction on the purchase of land by aliens. I only hope that as a result of the overwhelming consensus of opinion on all sides of this House in respect of this problem, the Minister may be able to see fit on Committee Stage to bring in a provision which will satisfy us that the large tracts of pastureland which are now falling into alien hands will be conserved for the Irish farmer as being the only effective thing we can do to resolve this problem of smallholders and congestion with which we are concerned today.

In respect of the acquisition of land by the Land Commission, there ought not to be the great delay from the time land is acquired until it is actually allotted. It is a matter of concern to us that so much land acquired by the Land Commission is let in conacre. I may say in respect of the land which is let in conacre that it is not being availed of by the smallholders in the area concerned. It is put up for public competition and it is mainly the big farmer who is able to acquire the conacre. There are estates being let in conacre not merely for one year but for two years, and perhaps three years and more. We feel that when land is acquired, the Land Commission should be in a position to carry out the necessary investigations and allot the land within a reasonable period of time and should not allow this practice of reletting year by year to go on interminably while leaving people in congested areas in a state of expectancy and agitation as to when they will eventually be helped by being allotted a piece of land.

I think it is agreed on all sides of the House that every Deputy welcomes a Bill such as the one now before us. In my opinion, this is the one Bill that will solve the problem of small western farmers. Having regard to the position in the Minister's constituency, which is the same as that in mine, the Minister more than any other Minister ever appointed Minister of State must realise the difficulty of the small uneconomic holders of the west. The Minister is to be congratulated on the Bill he has introduced.

I should also like to congratulate the Minister on the design of the new Land Commission house which has water, sewerage and other amenities laid on. The provision of such a house was long overdue.

I could not agree with the last speaker's statement that the Land Commission did not build houses for people. To my knowledge, the Land Commission have built houses on rearrangement or resettlement, at any rate in the west. There were certain cases where the Land Commission did not build but they were cases where the holders were not being moved from their original holding. In all such cases, however, the Land Commission gave substantial grants to the people to build their own houses.

The Minister should direct his Department not to sanction the sale of land, especially in congested areas, until a full-scale investigation is made as to whether it is suitable for rearrangement or resettlement.

My principal reason for intervening in the debate is to ask the Minister to make provision in this Bill in respect of commonages in townlands. The time is long overdue when the division of such commonages should take place. There may be ten to 15 or there may be only three to five persons availing of the commonage. They all pay a certain annuity in respect of it. One of these persons may be better off than his neighbour and may be able to stock the commonage with sheep or cattle, as the case may be, while the others may not be in a position to do so. It means that the one person is grazing the whole commonage. If the commonages were divided amongst the persons concerned, with the aid of grants from the Department of Agriculture, each individual would be able to hold his own portion and, if necessary, sell the grazing of it and make a few badly needed pounds out of it. I hope the Minister will make provision in the Bill to deal with that matter.

(South Tipperary): This Bill, I suppose, is like many Bills, another curate's egg: it has its good parts, its bad parts and its doubtful parts. Land division is generally deemed to be good politics, if you do not divide the land. It is generally deemed to be good politics if you keep on promising but difficulty often arises for a politician when the land is divided in that he makes one friend but makes many enemies.

This Bill is a western Bill. It has the complexion of a western Bill introduced by a western Minister. I am sure the Minister would not object to being clothed in the mantle of a modern Moses leading the displaced children west of the Shannon to the Promised Land of Westmeath and Kildare.

I was surprised that in the Schedule to the Bill there is no mention of Tipperary or of my constituency of South Tipperary. I know, of course, that we have not the problem of land congestion as it exists in the west—no Munster or Leinster county has—but there is this problem in Munster, and I am sure in Leinster, in practically every county. I could mention places in my constituency like Hollyford, Upperchurch, Kilcommon, Newport, the Glen of Aherlow, the Nore Valley, many areas in west Waterford, in which the problem is as bad as it is in many parts of the west. Indeed, I am quite sure that for any lands made available in Tipperary we would have sufficient deserving applicants there without ever having to cross the Shannon or to go outside our own county. I do not believe this Bill will make the tremendous impression upon the land congestion problem west of the Shannon that the Minister appears to think it will unless he proceeds with some kind of system of wholesale confiscation of land—and, of course, that is not envisaged.

Will any priority basis operate as regards the distribution of land? The information is not given in the book of statistics for constituencies. Presumably, the number of holders under one acre would mostly be cottage holders. In South Tipperary alone, we have 3,000 and for North Tipperary, the figure is 5,322. The total number of holdings is 19,545—roughly, 20,000.

According to the book of statistics there are 1,311 holdings of one to 5 acres; 895 holdings of five to ten acres; 621 holdings of from ten to 15 acres; 2,262 holdings of from 15 to 30 acres and 3,023 holdings of from 30 to 50 acres. I have divided the 30 to 50 acre group and taken half of the figure as the number of people with uneconomic holdings, simply as an estimate. I have eliminated entirely the cottage holders. On that basis, from one acre upwards to half the figure between 30 to 50 acres, I find we have a total number of between 6,000 and 7,000 holdings that might be classified as uneconomic. That is in County Tipperary as a whole.

Will the Minister deal with these holdings on any kind of a priority basis? Will the man with 30 acres take precedence as regards land settlement over the man with 20 acres? With only a limited amount of land, obviously we can deal with a larger number of holdings if, for instance, we take the marginal economic holdings. Furthermore, will the Minister stop at marginal economic holdings? Will the person with from five to ten acres ever secure an economic holding?

I asked a question in the House here some months ago whether cottage holders will qualify or can get land. We are always told they are not excluded but, in practice, I think it happens that they very rarely secure a division of land. I asked how many landless men secured land in North and South Tipperary over the previous five years. The answer was 15. In other words, three men in every twelve months in North and South Tipperary who were classified as landless secured some parcel of land. I cannot remember how much the persons in question got but at least they got some land. That was only a small percentage of the amount of land distributed during that period.

From a practical point of view, as regards getting land, I think cottage dwellers can be written off. It is well that that should be known. Unfortunately, they have been used for political purposes down through the years. In my constituency I have found, going around here and there, that it is quite commonplace to establish persons in a cottage next to a farm where a couple of old people live. Down through the years, the cottage dwellers are promised at various political meetings that, for instance, Mick Murphy's farm will be divided any day now. Loyally, year after year, those people would be at the polling booths, waiting for the day when Mick Murphy would die and they would acquire a piece of his land.

Mick was not being treated by the doctor.

(South Tipperary): It would be well if these people were told honestly that their chances of getting land is practically next to nothing rather than have them live in a kind of fool's paradise down through the years.

What is the position of people with from one to five acres, from five to ten acres and from ten to 15 acres? Will the Minister tell these people now that to resettle them would require a large amount of land and that there are so many of them that in the first instance, from a practical point of view, we must deal with the marginal holders as our first concern because they are much fewer in number and would more easily be dealt with in so far as they would require only a small amount of extra land to make their holdings viable?

Has any Minister the courage to say to these people with from one to five acres and from five to ten acres that there are so many of them and that they need so much land that they have to be written off? Any Minister would be very slow to tell these people that harsh truth. I think it was Deputy McQuillan who mentioned that there was a steady process in operation on the Continent under which they were prepared to extinguish eight million landowners because of the Common Market.

If we took the people in North and South Tipperary with from one to 15 acres and said to them: "You are too difficult a problem for land resettlement," we would be telling 2,827 people: "There is no more hope for you now."

Debate adjourned.
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