That is not so bad because we can go to the Statistical Abstract and find a huge number of holdings, but from my experience in the Land Commission, that number could be very misleading. I think the way the statistics people got these figures is from the number of receivable orders of the Land Commission. That means additions and so on, and most of us from the western counties are well aware that many farmers may have half-a-dozen receivable orders. I have heard of one man who had 21 receivable orders and could almost keep a postman going at the annuity period.
Some Deputies seemed to welcome this Bill. Looking at it, trying to digest it and see what is behind it, the only conclusion I could come to is that it is a cross between Deasy's Act of 1860 and my own Act of 1950. I hope I am wrong but I fear the hybrid, which this Bill is, has all the bad points of both Acts and very few of the good ones. What made the Minister introduce a section in the Bill prohibiting the letting of land, something never sought by the Land Commission before? For the past 30 years, Fianna Fáil were busily engaged in chasing the people, particularly the young people, off the land over to England. Now that holdings are deserted since these people are driven out and now that the father and mother are too old to change their means of living and go to England themselves and also too old to work the land, it becomes a crime, according to the Minister, to let that land.
What else would they do with it? What was all the fight for from Michael Davitt's time to get ownership of the land if we do not have a little control over it? It should not be labelled as a crime under this section to live on a holding and not be able to work it and it should not be the occasion for the Government to grab it and turn people out of house and home. Does the Minister know what is in this section in which he prohibits the letting of land? I do not mind a prohibition on subdivision which is a different matter. The Minister rather slipped over this section when introducing the Bill. I think it is a desperate provision.
It may be only a small thing but I have in mind several cases it would hit. We had a very tragic case recently in my area. I do not know the circumstances of the family concerned. A young man was electrocuted, the father of nine children, of whom the eldest was only 13½. These are neighbours. I hope the widow and family are well enough off to continue stocking the holding and running it to the best advantage, as the breadwinner himself did up to his death. Now if the widow is not able to work the land while saddled with the rearing of nine children, she must go on her knees to beg leave to let the holding. I suppose she will be criminal No. 1 in the locality if she lets that land.
There is a second type of case, where the youngsters as well as the father and mother have been waiting year after weary year for the Land Commission to increase the size of the holding but it never happens and eventually they have to go to England. The old people are unable to work. The youngsters send back remittances, part of the £16 million emigrants remittances that come in every year. The old couple have no option but to let the land. As far as I can see, that land is producing just as much as, or very little less than, it would otherwise produce because the farmer still owns it, is living on it and will not allow it to be abused.
People stand up here, not one of whom so far as I know, owns a perch of land, and tell us what should be done with farmers, how they should run their holdings and try to paint a picture of farmers as a type of criminal out to undermine the economy of the State. These are people who took care to have nothing to do with land themselves. When I hear a Deputy who owns and works land speaking, I have the greatest respect for his experience, but when other Deputies who have sought from childhood other means of livelihood and would not be seen dead on a farm say that farmers who sublet land are this, that and the other and that people who let the land and go to England are another type of criminal, it feeds me up, particularly when I hear it from people who should know better. Deputies might have the decency not to stand up unless they know what they are talking about.
There are some good points in this Bill and I shall do my best, as far as I can, to help the Land Commission to implement them. The principal innovation is the cash grant and allowing the old couple to live on the land, if they so desire. I hope this will not be used as the thin end of the wedge for wholesale compulsory acquisition and as a means of dumping these people into the local town later on with some other Minister banishing them from the land.
The man who has lived all his life on a holding has put a great deal of his personality into improvements, drainage, fencing, liming, fertilising, improvement of outoffices and of access to fields. He takes great pride in it and it is his death sentence when the State comes along like a huge steamroller and crushes him out of his holding. In no other livelihood or profession does a person become so wrapped up in his property. While every inducement should be offered to the small farmer to sell his holding, compulsion should be used most carefully.
The Minister is introducing a section to take over to himself one of the excepted matters under section 12 of the 1950 Act which I think was set out in the 1933 Act in section 6, that is section 27 which states:
For the removal of doubt, it is hereby declared that the determination of the land to be inspected under subsection (6) of section 40 of the Land Act, 1923, as amended by this Act, is not an excepted matter for the purposes of section 12 of the Land Act, 1950;
Would the Minister tell us why he wants that power, or what good it will do him, or in what way it will expedite acquisition or the relief of congestion? Does he know, from a purely political point of view, what he has landed himself with by taking on that power, or has he done it deliberately? I do not know the answers to these questions but I know the House should have them. For the first time, the Minister is now taking on himself the power to send, without reference to the Lay Commissioners, a divisional inspector on to anyone's land if he sees fit to do so. Everyone knows the terror created in the heart of anyone who is a land owner when he hears that a Land Commission inspector has walked his land. That was not the case when the function was being exercised by the Commissioners, who, whatever their faults may have been, were very strict, impartial and fair in the administration of the functions which this House placed upon them in the various Land Acts introduced by both foreign and home Governments.
Now any Fianna Fáil group sitting around the fireside can decide that one of their neighbours is to be liquidated. They can say; "We will tell Mr. Moran. We will get him to send an inspector on to that land". It is not much good to that man to know that the inspector's report has to go for final consideration to the Commissioners. The very fact that a political head can order an official of his Department on to another man's property is an outrage of a type that would not be found in any country this side of Russia. I cannot help turning my mind back to the time when the 1950 Act was going through this House and remembering how vocal the Minister was and how determined he was about two things: the excepted matters and the purchase of land for cash. The end of the world was to come when the 1950 Act became law because the Land Commission were being given power to purchase land for cash.
It must be pretty clear to him that I safeguarded first the Land Commission and secondly, the owners of land, and that that has been lived up to and adhered to ever since. The Minister is doing a desperate thing when he takes on himself the right to prohibit the letting of land. I do not care what legal definition is placed on the word "letting". We have only one meaning for it in the west. If we are not able to stock the land ourselves it is a desperate thing to take from us the right to let the land, for the time being until we overcome a period of difficulty, to a neighbour who will pay us perhaps as much as we would make in profit from the land. I could never see anything very wrong with letting land. Members of this House, solicitors, schoolteachers and others, are very vocal about the letting of land but the man who pays conacre will produce as much off the land, in all probability, as would the owner. The only thing about it is that neither the owner nor the conacre man may fertilise the land as much during the period of conacre letting.
In regard to section 27, the Minister is extremely foolish to take one of the excepted matters on to himself. It is an excepted matter whether the Minister likes it or not and I do not care what he may say when replying. There are other excepted matters and I would not care if they went overboard during the night but the two big things are the determination of the lands to be acquired and the determination of those to whom the lands will be allotted. These two should be sacrosanct. The Minister is knocking down the barrier around the first of these when he takes to himself power to send a divisional inspector on to the land.
I would object just as strongly if the Minister took power to send one of the Commissioners personally on to the land. That should be purely an executive function and the Lay Commissioners and the political head of the Department should have nothing to do with it, both for the Minister's good and the good of the country. It is the first time that a crowbar has been levered under the foundation stone of fixity of tenure in this country. There are a few excellent sections in this Bill and it is a pity that it should be marred so grievously by these two other sections.
Everything in this measure designed to relieve congestion will receive my wholehearted support. After 20 years in this House, there is no need for me to re-affirm that, but it is no harm for me to say so. The same applies to any other measure which the Minister brings in to relieve congestion. There is very little that will help the Commissioners, the inspectors or the Minister in relieving congestion.
A good deal has been said about the purchase of land by foreigners. Personally I have not been alarmed by the amount of land purchased up to the present; nevertheless I cannot help feeling that the time has come when something much more definite will have to be done about the matter. Personally, and I say this for what it is worth, I cannot see what is wrong with denying foreigners the right to purchase farmland, and I could never see anything wrong with it. When I was Minister, I met with fierce opposition in that regard. If a prohibition or embargo were placed on the purchase of land by outsiders, I would be the first to support it and I cannot see what is wrong with such a move. The statistics are there, published by the Statistics Office, for everyone to see and there is little enough land in the country for our own flesh and blood. I do not think foreigners would take umbrage if they were told: "Ireland is very land-hungry, and there is little enough land for our own people. We have nothing against you—we like you and we are very friendly with you and your Governments—but it would be like stealing bread from children to take land from us."
The time has come for additional measures to those taken in the past to discourage the purchase of land by foreigners—the 25 per cent duty and, later, the keeping of a register. I do not know what good the keeping of a list of names in the Land Commission will do. I should like some more positive action. The keeping of a register may be a useful statistical exercise giving information as to how many foreigners have bought land, but it will not stop one outsider from buying land.
Another argument is that some of our own people have acquired the nationality of the country in which they have been living and would, therefore, be classified as foreigners. That difficulty could be surmounted very easily. There should be no trouble in saying that a person who was born here, and whose parents lived here, who has taken out citizenship of another country, will be allowed to purchase land in the same way as if he had never left the country or taken out citizenship elsewhere. Remembering the list published by Macra na Feirme, and it has not been denied, showing lands purchased by foreigners, particularly in the midlands and in the Minister's and my county, I think it is time we sat up and took notice. The figure has not reached alarming proportions when one remembers the total acreage but it has attained a size that should give us pause. Steps should be taken and these steps need not cause any friction or difficulty with foreign Governments or their nationals. The longer the present position is allowed to continue, the more difficult it will be ultimately to right the wrong.
The most important aspect of this whole measure is deciding what is an economic holding. An economic holding has never been defined except in the loosest terms. During the 12 to 18 months in which the Minister was trying to hatch this Bill, I was hoping that he would bring forward a proposal to give the Land Commission powers to enable them to speed up the relief of congestion. I was also hoping that those parts of the Department of Agriculture and Local Government more germane really to administration by the Land Commission would be taken over by the Land Commission. The time has come when the mere giving out of land is no help in stemming the flight from the land. Whole families are now turning their backs on the 40 acres about which the Minister has talked so much. As far back as 1951, under my direction, the Land Commission were giving 40 and 45 acres to migrants in the midlands; they were to get 33 acres of good land, or its equivalent. In most cases the acreage was 40, 45 or 47 acres.
It is time the Land Commission took over the functions of the Department of Agriculture in regard to the production of food and also in regard to the cost of producing that food. That part of Local Government which deals with rating on agricultural land should also be brought within the scope of the Land Commission. I have studied the problem deeply. I have talked to hundreds who have left the land. I know I speak truth when I say that the flight from the land is occasioned not so much by the size of the holding as by the fact that no holding up to 100 acres pays any more. Suppose the Minister had all the ranches of the mid-United States and started to carve them up, like a sheet of postage stamps, into 40 or 45 acre holdings, with conditions as they are at present in relation to agricultural produce, plus the cost of overheads, people would be flying from these holdings in four, five or ten years' time just as quickly as they are flying from small holdings today.
This Bill falls far short of what is really needed. I should like to quote here what Most Rev. Dr. Fergus had to say on 15th June last at a meeting at Charlestown. That meeting was composed of farmers from all over the west; there were three or four bishops present and several priests, including Fr. McDyer, who has done such trojan work and who has virtually brought about a revolution in his part of Donegal:
It is here that the importance of this meeting comes in. The meeting has a plan for small holdings which has been tried and tested, under the auspices of Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, at Glencolumbcille, in Co. Donegal. Father McDyer, to whom the project owes so much, is here this evening to tell us of its success. What is asked is that facilities be provided for the establishment of similar projects all over the west.
Two things are necessary for success, first the provision of an adequate subsidy and, second, the co-operation of the small holders themselves. This very representative meeting is a guarantee that the necessary co-operation will be forthcoming. The initiative in the case comes from the people concerned. It is something that should be welcomed by any Government.
A certain amount has already been done for the west in the way of setting up industries and making grants to farmers, and this should be duly acknowledged. But it is not enough. What is needed for the west is an enlightened agricultural policy vigorously pursued. The only suggestion made so far in this connection is to increase the size of holdings, which, of course, cannot be done unless many more of the small holders leave. I have no confidence whatever in a policy of this kind, and I hope it will never be implemented. It is based on the faulty assumption that the mere acreage of a holding is the sole test of economic sufficiency. It also leaves out of account the human factor. There is no guarantee whatsoever that men possessed of holdings of forty acres or more will be more conscious of their social responsibilities than they are at present.
Most Rev. Dr. Fergus put the position very neatly. It shows he knows intimately how the small farmer lives and also how he thinks.
Deputies blame the Land Commission for slowness and so on, but the real reason for the flight from the land is the policy of successive Fianna Fáil Governments since 1932, Governments who have looked upon the agriculturist as a kind of donkey, there to work, to produce cheap food, cheap fuel, and provide taxation for every wildcat scheme in the head of every wildcat Minister. The farmers are being taxed out of existence. Down through the years, they have got absolutely no assistance. This is not the appropriate occasion on which to deal with agricultural grants but I should like to point out that the grants given are only a quarter or one-fifth of what farmers in Northern Ireland get.
