Last night, the Minister——
Land Bill, 1963—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That section 3 stand part of the Bill."
Deputy Tully reported progress.
It is Committee Stage.
Unless there is any other Deputy who wishes to offer——
Deputy McQuillan has offered.
Very good.
The Minister last night pointed out that the key to a successful policy of land division was that the necessary finance should be made available to implement the policy. In section 3 of this Bill, as in section 2, the Minister for Finance plays a very big part in controlling the activities of whatever Minister for Lands is in office. I should like to put a question to the Minister: is it not a fact that, if the necessary finances had been made available over the years, with the existing Land Acts properly operated, the congestion problem, which is still with us in such a major form, would be greatly remedied today?
We are faced with a new Land Bill. Have we any guarantee that the dead hand of Finance will not appear again, with the same monotonous regularity as it has appeared over the past 30 years as far as land division is concerned? I am not at all satisfied that the control with regard to expenditure on land division should be exercised so strongly by a Minister for Finance, but it is written in here deliberately in the two sections we have discussed up to this.
The Minister said last night that it was all very fine for Deputy McQuillan, and others, to say that the sky was the limit as far as money was concerned and that they were irresponsible in their approach. The fact is that no Government since 1938 have made sufficient money available to make even a dent in the congestion problem. The result of this interference by the Minister for Finance in the land problem has amounted to this: in order to appease the Finance people, the Land Commission were forced to buy or acquire inferior land in the majority of cases. If the Minister says that is not true and that the Minister for Finance had nothing to do with the type of land purchased, then the Land Commission must take the blame for the fact that it was to a great extent inferior land, or lowly-valued land, the Land Commission acquired.
The Minister is not so very long in office and, if he does not believe that what I am saying is correct, I should like to remind him that his predecessor, Deputy Childers, was very clear in his own mind as to the amount of money the Land Commission were prepared to spend per acre on land for the relief of congestion. I quote from a speech Deputy Childers, then Minister for Lands, made at a Fianna Fáil convention in Tullamore on 12th April, 1958: "The Land Commission made a gift of taxpayers' money of £36 per acre to each person receiving an allotment... land would only be taken where this large gift was not exceeded".
Was the Minister for Lands at that time, in 1958, not making it quite clear that the Land Commission could not go beyond a certain figure in the price paid for land for the relief of congestion? The Minister for Lands stated that £36 per acre was the gift given to a congest or a migrant who received land, and that, at a time when the average price of land in the west was around £100 an acre, good, arable land. We can see from this the type of land likely to be made available to the Land Commission.
Successive Ministers for Lands have over the past 30 years taken every opportunity in this House to exhort migrants, to exhort congests, to exhort those living on rundale holdings, to co-operate more with the Land Commission and successive Ministers have threatened to use the big stick on those unfortunates who they believed were not co-operating in the efforts made to solve the problem. Is it any wonder that lack of co-operation was there when the type of land being dished out in many instances was of inferior quality? The small farmer and the congest is fully entitled, in my opinion, to fight his corner to the utmost of his capacity in order to ensure that he gets a good type of land.
I shall not argue on this section as to what the size of a holding should be. That will fall for discussion on a later section. If, as a result of this section, the Minister for Finance can tell the Land Commission that they must not pay more than £60 or £80 an acre for land for the relief of congestion, then the situation is a bad one. I should like the Minister to tell us what is the average price per acre at the moment paid by the Land Commission for land purchased for the relief of congestion.
I should like to give Deputy McQuillan some assurance with regard to some of the statements he has made here. I know that what can be described as second-class land has been acquired here and there but it has been acquired in areas where land was urgently needed to enlarge the holdings of the smallholders who were very glad to get it. I do not know where the Deputy got his figures. However, it was a great pity that more land was not acquired when it was cheaper. I have seen a holding down in my constituency which we did our utmost to persuade Deputy Blowick to take when he was Minister for Lands. It was a holding of 425 acres which a large number of unfortunate people whose predecessors had been evicted from it previously were waiting to have taken. That holding will now be acquired by the Land Commission but it will cost four or five times as much as it would have cost when Deputy Blowick had the opportunity of taking it.
As regards the congested areas, there is not a Deputy who has not congested areas of land in his constituency.
That does not arise on this section. The Deputy may get an opportunity of discissing it later but this section deals with the provision of the money to give effect to the Act.
We can take the money very easily. There is not an iota of sense behind the statements made here by Deputy McQuillan in regard to money. He has stated that if land goes to £80 or £90 an acre, the Minister cannot pay it.
I did not say any such thing.
The Deputy has a short memory.
I asked him what is the position now.
I shall explain the position to the Deputy.
I think the Minister would be more reliable.
In Newmarket there is a holding of 97 statute acres. Surrounding that holding were seven smallholders, the largest of them having 21 statute acres of land. I admit many Deputies who have not much brains or much sense were messing around with this for a couple of years. I got word on a Monday night that the farm was being sold by public auction the following Thursday. A representative of the Minister for Lands attended there and offered £9,000 for the 97 acres. He did not get it. It went for £9,025. However, it was acquired two months afterwards by the Land Commission for the £9,025. That will give a fair idea of what is being paid for land today which, had Deputy Blowick done his job when he was Minister for Lands, would have been purchased for one-fifth of that money. Anybody who doubts my word can look up the records and see that I raised these matters on the Adjournment.
The Deputy could not raise them on the Adjournment.
I raised them on the Adjournment by way of question. Deputy McQuillan may be intelligent but he makes a lot of guesses.
The Deputy could not raise the question of a farm of land on the Adjournment, and he knows that.
If the Deputy goes back, he will find it.
I tried it. I am glad to hear that.
If he examines the reports of the House, he will learn a few tricks he has not got already.
Let us come back to the section.
During the past week, another holding in my constituency has been acquired by the Land Commission. Some 140 acres have been acquired for around £15,000. A third holding of 90-odd acres down in the Ballymacoda area was acquired last year by the Land Commission for £13,000. To indicate the position of smallholders in connection with finding land on which they can make a livelihood, let me say that the letting of that land for 12 months for grazing and tillage made £1,800.
I have at present lined up for the Minister's attention three more holdings. One of them is a holding of 425 acres which Deputy Blowick let go and which unfortunately will now cost five times as much as when Deputy Blowick yielded to the appeals of the Unionist minority in that area and pulled out, for fear he would offend any of them. Another holding down in the Ballintubber-Carrigtuohill area has been taken over from an alien. Another holding in Ballinona, Midleton, has been taken over. They will all be wanted and more of them will be wanted to make any dent in the congestion and to help the unfortunate people endeavouring to eke out an existence on uneconomic holdings in my constituency. We must face that as I had to face another situation here when I appealed to have a holding of more than 1,000 acres owned by Mrs. Flowers of Cloyne taken over by the Land Commission. The Land Commission, having had a long stretch of kind, Blowick guidance, took over 15 of the 1,000 acres. If you want facts about land division, I can give you plenty of them. Up to the moment at any rate, I have not found a single instance where either the Minister for Lands or the Minister for Finance put any obstacle in the way of the acquisition of land required for division among congests.
Section 3 of the Bill very clearly states that payments made and expenses incurred by the Minister for Lands and the Land Commission in giving effect to the Act and in the administration thereof shall, to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance, be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas. We have had experience, and we know from close contacts with both the Department and the Land Commission, that there have been extraordinary delays in paying the owners of lands for lands already acquired simply because ample provision was not made by the Department of Finance and the money was not readily available.
That is untrue and completely irrelevant to the section we are discussing.
That is the position. Assuming this Bill becomes law and that the lands are available, that the congests are there, that the machinery is set up for the bringing into effect of the Bill, the Minister for Finance says: "I shall permit the expenditure of only £x for the purpose of acquiring lands to put that section of the Act in operation." What happens then? It is well known that in cases where the Land Commission had not sufficient funds to carry on to the end of a financial year, in order to avoid the embarrassment of telling the client's solicitor that he would have to hang on until the next financial year, the Land Commission proceeded to set lands in their possession by conacre in order to get the money.
That is another Flanagan lie.
The word "lie" must be withdrawn.
I beg your pardon, Sir —another Flanagan untruth.
I shall deal with that. I can give the case of a man named Patrick Daly of Rashine, Ballinahown, Athlone, in my constituency, whose land has been acquired, divided out, but who has not been paid.
The Deputy is dealing with cases that do not arise under this Bill.
The Minister says these cases do not exist and I am giving this instance.
Had he title?
He had title. I put it to the Minister that this is one case with which the Minister is familiar in which the Land Commission have been slow in making payments.
Let me repeat that it is competely untrue for the Deputy to allege there is any slowness on the part of the Land Commission in paying any owner for his land because of any lack of finance. In 99 per cent of cases, it is the fault of the owner's solicitor in not proving title.
That is not the experience of Deputies. We hope that experiences we have had in the past will not prevent the bringing into operation of the Act and we are forewarning the Minister of difficulties likely to arise. Deputy Corry queried the accuracy of Deputy McQuillan's recollection of a statement made by a former Minister for Lands in which the former Minister clearly indicated that only £36 per acre was paid by the Land Commission. Everybody knows that at the present day land which could be described as good arable ground could not be bought for anything less than £150 to £175 per acre.
£250 soon.
The price of land is always determined by the demand. In one area it might not be more than £50 if the demand is not there, but in another area, in a congested district, where there are a number of prospective purchasers, land could go as high as £200 per acre and has gone more than £200 in many cases. Therefore, I say Deputy McQuillan's argument must be taken seriously. A former Minister for Lands said that the Land Commission's expenditure only rose to £36 an acre.
That must have been Blowick's time.
It was in Childers's time. It was in a speech to a Fianna Fáil convention before the 1958 election.
It must have been graveyard land.
We must take what he said as accurate. The Minister has the assistance of very able and efficient officials. They go to great rounds to supply the Minister with accurate statistics. Here we have a statement by the Minister for Lands at the time to the effect that an average sum of £36 per acre was paid. What type of land could you get at such a price? It certainly could not be described as first quality.
I should like to get a more definite assurance from the Minister on this section that the Minister for Finance will not in any way curtail the activities of the Land Commission. I view the section with very great suspicion. I am afraid of this section. I am afraid that no matter how enthusiastic the Minister may feel, no matter how deeply he feels for congests in his constituency and elsewhere, no matter how eager he may be to relieve the problem of congestion which exists, as Deputy Corry said, in every constituency in Ireland, the Minister for Finance may cut in and curtail the operation of the Act.
The Minister for Finance, when faced with the provisions of the Act, may say: "This year, I shall be generous in the allocation of State money for Land Commission purchase of land, for the erection of buildings in congested areas and other districts." In another year, however, the Minister for Finance may say: "The Land Commission have had it good up to this; I shall cut down their operations." In such circumstances, what provision is there in the Bill to help the Minister implement it?
The undertaking the Minister gave the House last night on section 3 is insufficient. We know the Minister for Lands cannot speak for another Minister; we know it would not be fair of the House to ask the Minister for Lands to give an undertaking for the Minister for Finance. It is something he cannot do. We may take it that there is such a thing as collective responsibility in this Government. If that collective responsbility exists, we are safe in taking an undertaking from the Minister for Lands that no financial crisis will arise in relation to the financing of this Bill when it becomes an Act. On the other hand, if you have not that co-operation between the two Ministers, I can see this Bill ending in disaster, being left on the shelves in Merrion Street, covered with cobwebs and dust. We have enough plans, schemes and Acts in the Land Commission and in other Departments hidden away covered with dust and we do not want to see the Land Bill of 1963 joining them.
They are like the plans you had in Cork.
There is one plan which I might mention, although it is not relevant to this Bill, the plan for the 100,000 jobs. That is covered with dust now.
Will the Deputy come back to the provisions of section 3?
None of us on this side of the House is inclined to doubt the word of the Minister for Lands or of any other Minister, but we are entitled to be suspicious because we have had promises and undertakings from them before. Here in section 3, we are asking the Minister for Lands to give an undertaking for another Minister who is not in the House to answer for himself. He cannot give an undertaking that there will be no lack of money to implement this Bill. I am seriously suggesting to the Minister that he will find himself in a seriously embarrassing position if the occasion arises, as outlined by Deputy McQuillan and myself, that money will not be forthcoming for the implementation of the various sections of the Bill.
That is why I should like to hear from the Minister a greater degree of undertaking on his own behalf and on behalf of his colleague so that it may be on record that the Minister for Lands has committed the Minister for Finance. I think this is an occasion on which the Minister should commit the Minister for Finance. We are all very enthusiastic about this Bill and about its implementation but we are whipping a dead horse unless we are satisfied that section 3 will not be a hindrance to the good intentions behind the principles of the Bill. I should like to have more definite assurances from the Minister in that regard.
I had no intention of intervening in this debate, but having heard the case made by Deputy McQuillan and Deputy Flanagan, I thought that as a Deputy coming from the land I should flatly contradict the statements they have made here in relation to the Department of Finance. My experience is that when the Coalition Government were in office, the finance for the purchase of land was not forthcoming and I came across cases of people from whom land was acquired and who were not paid for two years.
With regard to the statement made by Deputy McQuillan that Deputy Childers had stated that no more than £38 an acre would be paid for land, I am glad to be able to inform that Deputy that 10,000 acres have been acquired in my constituency in the past two or three years, more land acquired in one year than was acquired in six years of Coalition Government, and the price paid was up to £150 an acre, for the best land in Ireland.
The Bennekerry land club put the skids under you.
All the speeches made from the Opposition benches cannot change that fact. The Opposition are too fond of playing politics and of under-estimating the intelligence of the ordinary people. I should like to congratulate the Minister on the Bill and also congratulate the Minister for Finance on making money available. On behalf of the uneconomic holders of the large tillage belt which I represent, I thank the Minister and say: "God speed the work".
There is nothing further from the truth than the statement made by Deputy McQuillan that the Minister for Finance interferes in any way in the day-to-day working of the Land Commission or tells them what they must or must not pay for land, and I am sure Deputy McQuillan knows that. I do not know what allegations he is making about some speech alleged to have been made by a predecessor of mine who was Minister for Lands and I will not accept the figure quoted here by the Deputy as correct because the facts are well known to everybody.
Is the Minister challenging the figures which his predecessor has given?
I am challenging the accuracy of the figure given by the Deputy and the allegation that Deputy Childers, as Minister for Lands in 1958, made the statement that land would not be taken over at more than £36 an acre.
The Westmeath Independent says that is what he said.
I am not responsible for the compositors on that particular paper, nor am I prepared to accept the accuracy of a newspaper report, no matter what paper it is, with regard to this particular figure, when everybody knows that anybody who sold land to the Land Commission or from whom it was acquired had to get the market value of the land under the law of this House. If any person is not satisfied with the price offered, then he has the right of appeal to the Appeals Tribunal which fixed the market value of the land in 1958 as well as today. Any other land acquired by the Land Commission in that year would have to be acquired by voluntary negotiations with the owners concerned. In that instance, if they sold land at the low figure suggested here, I take it they were glad to make that deal on a voluntary basis with the Land Commission. If they could get anything extra from any other purchaser, they would certainly do so.
This section is not new. In fact, it is a regular section relating to finance which is in practically all Acts passed by this House. This is well known to the Deputies opposite. This is a deliberate attempt to obstruct the passage of this Bill. When Deputy Flanagan, to quote him, "has very grave suspicion of this section" and "fears very much as to what may happen because of this section," he conveniently forgets that the Land Bill of 1950, passed by the Government in which he served, contains the very same section. Section 4 of the 1950 Act reads as follows:
The payments made and expenses incurred by the Minister and by the Land Commission in giving effect to this Act and in the administration thereof shall, to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance, be paid out of the moneys provided by the Oireachtas.
If we went back to the records of the House for 1950, I wonder would we find there grave suspicion expressed by Deputy Flanagan about the Minister for Lands or the Minister for Finance in that year? If Deputy Flanagan expressed grave suspicion of the then Minister for Finance, he would be right on the ball. That very Act of 1950 was supposed to enable the Land Commission to purchase land on the open market, but the sinews of war provided by the then Minister for Finance to give effect to that Act amounted to £1,400 in that year.
Let me now come to a further Land Act passed in the year 1953, and let me quote section 3 of that Act:
The payments made and expenses incurred by the Minister for Lands and by the Land Commission to give effect to this Act and in the administration thereof shall, to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance, be paid out of the moneys provided by the Oireachtas.
Is Deputy Flanagan on record in 1953 as expressing his fears, his doubts, his grave suspicions of what the Minister for Finance did under that section? In section 3 of this Bill, we have the same provision, word for word, which has been sanctioned in every one of these Land Acts, which must be there to enable the Minister for Finance to provide the moneys to implement the Acts. I am sure Deputy Flanagan knows that very well, but he wants to try to create these fears and delay as long as possible the passage of this Bill. I suppose I should not be surprised at this, because the Deputy and his colleagues are probably licking their wounds after recent events and must do something in this House to try to create a different image of themselves in the public mind.
Deputy McQuillan asked me the average price paid by the Land Commission for land. I could not give him the figures without notice, but I can tell him that during the past five years, with which I am familiar, approximately 206,000 acres were allotted to approximately 11,000 allottees, that the cost of the land, speaking from memory, was approximately £4.5 million and that, in addition, the Land Commission expended approximately £3.3 million on improvements. That is a very substantial expenditure for this purpose. I do not say it is too much. Let nobody suggest a very substantial amount of money has not been provided for this purpose over the years. The Deputy can see the figures quoted in the papers day after day on the decisions given by the Appeals Tribunal on the question of price. The Land Commission must pay the market value for any land they acquire, unless the land is acquired by agreement. But in that case the people who sell the land believe the Land Commission are the best purchasers and that the price they offer is the best price they can get. If the Land Commission exercise their powers of compulsory acquisition, the persons dissatisfied with the price offered by the Land Commission have the right under law —a right regularly exercised—to appeal on the question of price to the Appeals Tribunal, which is presided over by a High Court judge. In that court, they are entitled to call as many auctioneers and valuers as they wish to give evidence on their behalf. It is for the court to decide what is the market value of the land.
It is therefore a complete fairy tale to suggest there is any limit per acre on the amount to be paid by the Land Commission for land. In many cases the Land Commission must compete on the open market to get land. In fact, under this Bill, the limitations prescribed by the 1950 Act will go altogether, and under the powers sought here, the Land Commission will be enabled to purchase land, not for the limited purposes and under the conditions set out in the 1950 Act— that the land is for the provision of migrant holdings and that there must be intermixed plots in the immediate vicinity—but for any of the purposes under this Bill. Of course, the Land Commission can succeed in getting land only if they are prepared to pay the market value, which is what the law lays down. I respectfully suggest that sufficient of the time of this House has been wasted, deliberately or otherwise, in discussion of a section that is in every Land Act for as long as I remember.
The Minister has, in fact, made the strongest case that has been made in the House against the section because he points out that because of this section in a previous Act, the Minister for Finance was able to impede the working of that Act. What stronger case could be made against the section than that? Having had that experience, is it not rather surprising that the Minister for Lands did not take the opportunity of changing the wording of the section so that nobody could suggest that the Bill would be held up by the Minister for Finance?
I had an open mind on this but the Minister has nearly convinced me that there must be something wrong with it. He cannot accuse this side of the House of holding up the section or of holding up the Bill because the longest speeches made were made by Deputy Corry and Deputy Medlar and the Minister himself has added his share now. It is unfair to make an allegation of the sort the Minister has made.
As far as the price is concerned, I wonder was the Minister serious when he gave the figures which he gave a couple of minutes ago. There is something seriously wrong. He says that his predecessor, Deputy Childers, was incorrectly reported in the Westmeath Independent of 12th November, 1958 as saying that the Land Commission were not prepared to make a present of more than £32 per acre. In other words, they were not prepared to pay more than that. But he went on further and this is what Deputy Childers—he was then Minister for Lands—is reported as having said:
There were 165 holdings of under £20 valuation. The pool of badly-worked land was diminishing and the Land Commission would not take well worked land in this early effort because two million acres would be required and congestion would never be solved. There was not the £100 million required for the work nor the land.
If you do a bit of reckoning there, after having given the price as £32, Deputy Childers then proceeded to say that he proposed to spend £50 on it and the Minister's figures here, as far as I can make them out, roughly, work out at an average of £40. Would the Minister check again and see if somebody has been codding him or have I got the whole thing wrong?
I think the Deputy has. I think the speech of the former Minister for Lands possibly was referring to the subsidisation element, perhaps, in resales. I certainly would look for the full text of his speech because, as the Deputy well knows and as everybody knows, in 1958, just the same as today, market value had to be paid for land by the Land Commission. There is never any question and there could not be any question because the law is there as far as the Land Commission are concerned that they must pay market value for any land they acquire. That is the reason I have challenged the accuracy of that newspaper report because I am quite certain that the former Minister is misreported or, by not publishing the full context of his speech, there is something wrong with the report.
I should like this to be accurate because that is necessary. The Minister has stated that in the past two years, to his knowledge—we are speaking roughly—a total of 206,000 acres was given to 11,000 allottees.
In the past five years.
In the past five years. Two sums were mentioned— one a cost of £4½ million, to which was added a sum of £3½ million for improvements.
£3.3 million.
I do not pose as a mathematician but if we take the 206,000 acres at a cost to the Land Commission of £4½ million, it works out at £22 10s per acre.
Perhaps I unintentionally misled the Deputy. I said there was approximately that amount divided amongst approximately 11,000 allottees, and that is correct. The intake of land during that period is a different question. I think that, rough and ready, the figure of the intake of land over those years would be approximately 157,000 acres and if the Deputy calculates to get an average —he was probably later at school than I was—let him work out what price per acre it was.
The moral is that the Minister should not trust the paper given to him in a hurry.
I have been accused here of misquoting the Minister's predecessor Deputy Childers, that the figure of £32 per acre would not be accepted by the Minister in any circumstances, that the compositor on the Westmeath Independent could be, shall we say, slightly intoxicated when he set that figure. I know the Minister did not mean that but, at any rate, the Minister was not prepared to accept that figure. Now he has given figures himself of 206,000 acres. I am not concerned with the 11,000 allottees at all but we will take the price paid for the 206,000 acres, which is £4½ million. Now we will add to that the Minister's figure of £3½ million for improvement works and I will give the Minister the two figures together— £8 million—and we will divide 206,000 acres into that. It works out at £40 per acre, improvements and all, and that is, to my mind, an example of what the Land Commission are doing when it comes to the division of land.
It proves to the hilt, unless the Minister's figures are wrong, my earlier point, that the Land Commission have concentrated their efforts in areas where the land is inferior or of poor quality and that is where the hand of Finance has come in. I am not satisfied now from the Minister's approach on this that it is not the Minister for Finance who is the deciding factor, who says: "This is all you can spend, Minister for Lands. I am allowing you only this much and if you want to buy good land, well, I am sorry, you will have to reduce the acreage involved".
There is a significant thing in the Land Commission that I have found over the years. I have a fair amount of experience in probing this Department and very little success attended my efforts from time to time to extract information. Why is it that the Land Commission, on this issue, the question of value, never yet gave any figures to this House or to Deputies on the valuation of land that is acquired and distributed amongst the locals?
I have a letter here from the Minister's office dated 25th November, 1954:
With reference to your question on 17th November, 1954, I am desired by the Minister for Lands to inform you that he has ascertained from the Land Commission that some 13,000 new holdings of an average acreage of 23 acres were created in the period between 1931 and 1953.
The question I asked was, what was the valuation of the holdings—of the whole lot—and what was the average valuation. What was the answer?—"The Land Commission have no record of the rateable valuation of these lands".
That proves my point that the Land Commission are very shy about giving information as to the valuation of the land which they are taking over. We know that the valuation of land varies considerably. For instance, in Meath, the average valuation per acre is around 16/-. In Roscommon the valuation is around 9/-. I am speaking roughly now. I have not looked at these figures for some time. The valuation varies from 16/- in Meath, perhaps a little more, to 9/- in Roscommon, 7/-, say, in Mayo and various other figures throughout the country. That valuation is based on the 1854 Griffith valuation, which has not been changed since.
It does not take a very suspicious character, and one need have no suspicions at all about the Land Commission to worry as to why, when they are giving figures of acreages of land acquired, they fail to give the valuation. It is very easy to get co-operaation from the Land Commission when they want to give you a figure of 206,000 acres being acquired, but when I ask what is the valuation of that land, I will not be told. Not so many years ago, the Land Commission acquired several thousand acres in Donegal. I think the valuation of that land was about 6d. an acre. The acreage seemed huge but, in reality, the land would not support a fly. In the eyes of the public, the Land Commission were doing great work. When the Land Commission deal with the question of value as we are discussing it on section 3 here, I want them to let us know the valuation of the land taken over by them, because only on that basis will be able to assess what type of land is being acquired and what average price per acre is paid.
I am not asking the Minister to give me an answer in a hurry to this question: what is the average price over the country paid per acre by the Land Commission for land acquired for the relief of congestion? If he has not got it to-night, I am sure he will be able to make it available on some other occasion.
It is correct to say that when the 1950 Land Act was going through this House, there was a section in it similar to this section we are now debating. The Minister went to great pains to ascertain whether I made any contribution on the section at that time and whether I had any suspicions of the section then. I certainly had not and I made no contribution on that section of the 1950 Act because I had implicit confidence and trust in the then Minister for Finance. That is the answer to the Minister.
The debate in the past half hour has drawn special attention to the quotation by Deputy McQuillan of a speech by the former Minister for Lands, which the present Minister states must have been misquoted. That is an old game with the Government: every time they are caught out they blame the newspaper. I do not believe the former Minister was misreported. I believe the report published by this well-known and trusted journal must have come from a script handed in by the Minister outlining his statement in relation to the amount per acre of benefits which were being bestowed by the Government on the successful allottees. That is why I am not prepared to accept a statement by the Minister that the former Minister was misreported. I do not believe he was. Knowing the present Minister and his colleagues, I believe there are grounds for suspicion. Telling us about the misquotation in newspapers is a cock that cannot always crow. He has been crowing for a long time as far as the Government are concerned. We do not believe it any more.
Just for the record, let me again mention—in case Deputy McQuillan twisted round what I said —that during the past five years, what I told him was that the intake of land was 157,000 acres which cost £4.5 million. I gave the other figure as the amount of land divided, 206,000 acres among 11,000 allottees. I repeat that in case it is suggested I was trying to mislead the Deputy or the House. The only average figure available to me and which I have been given to-night is the average price paid last year. The average price approximately throughout the length and breadth of the country was £56.7 per acre last year.
Was that the value or the value after the work had been done on it? The cash value to the owner?
Yes. Acquisition of land cost us an average price of £56.7 per acre.
Does that include land for forestry purposes?
No; I am talking of agricultural land. I do not think it is a very useful exercise to be discussing the newspaper report of what the then Minister for Lands said in 1958, but let me reiterate that I do not accept the allegations made for the reasons I have stated—the law was the same then as far as the market value was concerned as it is now and the Land Commission had to pay in 1958 on compulsory cases the market value as decided by law or, where there were voluntary acquisitions by the Land Commission, they had to buy land in competition with anybody else in the market. Therefore, the allegations made to-night that my predecessor then said that the Land Commission would not pay more than a certain figure per acre could not possibly be correct. I believe that that report is either a summary of his speech or that perhaps the then Minister was dealing with subsidisation on resale prices that would be charged to certain allottees. Certainly, in the form in which his speech is quoted here, it is incorrect, and whether it is the fault of the reporter or of the summary, I do not know. It could not possibly be correct. No Minister for Lands could make such a statement because the law on market value was the same then as now.
Perhaps that is why he is not Minister for Lands, because he made a speech of that kind.
I want this clarified. It is not my duty to defend newspapers here except to the extent of saying that I have never found this newspaper to be inaccurate in its reporting. I know the previous Minister for Lands, on every possible occasion, issues a typed statement to every newspaper in the locality to which he is going before he speaks at all. That is his practice over the years and he is never "taken down" by a shorthand notetaker at any political meeting. Every Deputy is well aware that the Minister for Transport and Power, Deputy Childers, snows under every newspaper with his typed copy. This is, in my opinion, a very accurate report of what the Minister said. If it is inaccurate, then the former Minister or his advisers must be at fault. I doubt very much if his advisers are at fault. I believe what the Minister said or is reported to have said according to the Westmeath Independent dated 12th April, 1958. If I wanted any proof of the accuracy of that report, I have found it in the statements made here by the Minister because he has said—and nobody attempted to twist what he said—first, that the Land Commission had acquired 206,000 acres——
I said they had divided 206,000 acres among 11,000 allottees, and that the intake of land was 157,000 acres at a cost of £4½ million in that period.
That figure has been altered now to 157,000 acres.
The Deputy knows that he can check the Official Report. I said that the 206,000 acres were divided among 11,000 allottees during that period. I told the Deputy that £4½ million was spent on the intake of land during that period and I have given him the figures for the intake.
If the Minister says now that he did not use the figure of 206,000 in the context to which I referred, I accept that, but I am going to go on to the figure he gave as a correction, namely the figure of 157,000 acres. That is the one I am going to argue about with the Minister now. The Minister said that that figure was the intake and the same figure of £4½ million stands here but if it does, the cost per acre in these circumstances was £27 10s. per acre. Where does the Minister think he is going? This is the only place in which we get an opportunity of analysing the figures. If the Minister is going to tell me that over the past five years the intake of land was 157,000 acres and that the Land Commission paid £4½ million for that, is it not a fact that they paid roughly £27 10s. per acre?
Deputies, whether they are from Cork, Donegal, Roscommon, Meath, Offaly or Mayo, know that nobody will get agricultural land for £27 10s. per acre. The Minister has given the impression: "Let us forget the past five years and let us take this year, that £57 10s. was the average this year." Has that jump taken place from £27 10s. to £57 10s.? I will accept that with a very large grain of salt because I am quite satisfied, with all respect to the Minister, that that is completely inaccurate because the figures he has given prior to that prove that his Department officials have not got the figures with them at the moment. I have made a charge that the type of land bought by the Land Commission over the years, through the Department of Finance sticking its fingers into the pie, has been inferior land. Is the proof not there that in the past five years the figure was £27 10s. and that land has not been taken over for forestry but for the purpose of settling families on it? It is a disgrace and it shows what the Land Commission have been doing.
I shall go even further into this question of Land Commission expenditure over the years. The Minister can announce with a flourish of trumpets that the Minister for Finance is behind him and that money presents no problem in this drive for the relief of congestion, in which the Land Commission are paying £27 10s. an acre and meeting with opposition, resistance and stubbornness from the small farmers and the congests who will not play ball when the big stick is held over them.
I agree with Deputy Corry in regard to Deputy Blowick and what I have to say applies to every Minister for Lands who has been in this House, using the big stick on congests and on the people living on small holdings, on intermixed plots, and telling them: "You will be left here like this for the rest of your lives if you do not co-operate"——
May I suggest, Sir, that this is completely irrelevant?
I do not want to delay the Minister or his Bill but it is essential that we should know that the prices paid for land are so low and I want to make this relevant under section 3. Last night I asked the Minister a simple question. It was: how far the dead hand of Finance penetrates into the working of the Land Commission, and I have got it tonight, that the dead hand of Finance has penetrated so far in that the Minister is paying only £27 10s. per acre for agricultural land.
That is all wrong.
Go to sleep.
This has been said over and over again and I do not see the relevancy of it.
The Minister has denied it.
If you keep on repeating an inaccuracy, somebody will eventually fall for it.
The inaccuracies did not come from this side.
I am not the one who was inaccurate. I did not present the figures for the past five years.
The Deputy is repeating himself. In any event, what he said is quite irrevelant.
The section says that "the payments made and the expenses incurred by the Minister and by the Land Commission in giving effect to this Act shall be paid"——
Out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas. I do not see the relevance.
It goes on to state "to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance"——
Yes.
And I want——
I do not see that all the Deputy is saying is relevant to the section. Clearly it is not.
What I am saying is that the Land Commission, through a wrong policy pursued by the Minister, are not paying enough money for the land——
That may arise on some other section but clearly it does not on this section.
I am asking the Minister to clarify whether it is the Department of Lands or the Minister for Finance who is responsible for the fact that only £27 10s. is paid——
That does not arise on this section.
Of course it does, with all respect. It arises on the type of land that is being bought.
Clearly it does not arise on this section.
The 1950 Act provides cash by which the Land Commission buys at public auction and that arises on this section.
This section says that the purchases are to be financed—that is all.
Yes, and the Minister for Finance says: "You will only purchase in so far as I give you authority."
The Deputy may find that in some other section; he will not find it in this.
It says "As may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance." I am only reading——
Why does the Chair seek to frustrate the Deputy in the course of his remarks?
Section 3 deals with the restraining influence the Minister for Finance will have on the activities of the Minister for Lands.
The Deputy may say that on some other section but this section does not give him an opportunity of saying it.
Then what, in the name of goodness, is the section there for?
The section says how the Act is to be financed, through the Minister for Finance and through moneys provided by the Oireachtas.
But it says "to such extent", and those are the operative words on which I am basing my case. "To such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance."
Yes, to such extent.
I want the Minister to tell me what does "to such extent" mean, and I think I am entitled to pose that question. Does it mean that the Land Commission are entitled to spend only a certain amount of money on the acquisition of land? If that is so, I am entitled to pose the further question: does it mean that because the Land Commission are restricted in the amount of money available, they will buy inferior land or, in other words, a larger acreage of land which is of inferior quality?
The Deputy has made that point on several occasions in my hearing. It is repetition.
I do not dispute that, but I am asking the Minister to state whether it is right or wrong and each time I sought an answer he has suggested that the figures I have given are inaccurate and when I quoted a colleague of his, he said that I misquoted him.
I cannot allow the Deputy to proceed on this irrelevant line.
I shall not pursue it. I do not want this House to be turned into a bear garden but if I am tested on this, there will not be a very pleasant performance in this House. The Minister has suggested that I misrepresented the Minister for Transport and Power, that I gave wrong figures with regard to the price the Land Commission were paying and that I had been inaccurate. I say that the Minister and his Department have been codding the congests over the years. They have been defrauding the small farmers of the kind of land which should have been made available to them and the dead hand of Finance will still reach into this proposed legislation to prevent the purchase of the good land which is available in many parts of the country.
I simply do not understand what this performance is all about. Any county councillor, much less a Deputy, must know, even after a week, that everything works on the basis of permission to spend money. The only permission I know of to spend money where the State is concerned comes from the Cabinet and the Minister for Finance is the operative channel through which the money flows. If one wants to promote any Governmental activity and one has to spend money thereon, then in whatever legislation is introduced, there appears a provision in similar phraseology to the phraseology of section 3 of this Bill. If one wants to describe the regulating hand of the Minister for Finance as the dead hand of Finance, and assert that has a depressive effect, then one is perfectly entitled to do so. If one, on the other hand, wants to describe this as an expansive provision, with the Minister for Finance increasing the amounts, equally one can do so. This is permissive legislation and, since it is, I do not understand the criticism. I fail to see what Deputy McQuillan's long performances ever achieve here, except perhaps some newspaper publicity; if people talk at a certain time of the night, they may get certain publicity.
If one does not come into the House, one does not talk at all of course.
I read the reports. These performances do not just ring true to me.
The Deputy is not interested in the small farmer.
My constituency has many, many small farmers. I suppose it has more small farmers than any other part of the country, with the exception of the west. I have a deep interest in the small farmers.
It does not arise.
I agree. I should not listen to disorderly interruptions.
They would shoot the Deputy down in the west, and with his own shotgun—the one he is so inaccurate with so often.
That is a matter of opinion. A figure of £56 or £57 per acre was quoted by the Minister as the average figure paid for land. Deputy McQuillan's figure is £27 per acre. I accept the Minister's figure. It seems to me to be extraordinarily low and I am as anxious as anybody to see something done for the congests. I wonder if owners of lands acquired by compulsory acquisition are being fully compensated? I do not go with Deputy McQuillan on this question of the quality of land. As far as I know, all the land divided in my constituency is first-class. I think the same is true of other areas. Not so long ago, I had the opportunity during a rather disastrous by-election to be in a certain place in Kildare, in which there were numbers of congests, some from Deputy McQuillan's constituency and some from Kerry. The land divided there was first-class land. However, I find this figure rather low. I am told that after valuation by competent valuers on behalf of the owner and on behalf of the Land Commission, the matter is decided finally by the Lay Commissioners and a figure struck. I should like to know what the trend has been over the past year or so. What has been the average price for good land? This figure is very relevant. I find a figure of £56 to £57 ridiculously low.
What Deputies have failed to appreciate is that the figure is an average per acre for the whole country. Quite obviously, some Deputies are under the impression that this is the figure the Land Commission are offering. That is utter nonsense. Recently I took over a very large estate in my own county for which a very high figure was paid. On that estate, there are 500 acres of very poor land. That will be handed over to the Forestry Division. In practically all lands taken over, one finds some element of mountain, lakes, turbary. Deputies simply have not grasped the fact that, when one is dealing with average figures, the average does not mean that this is the figure offered per acre to the owner. The owner has his price. He is entitled to the market value. The Land Commission have either to get the land voluntarily from him at a price he is prepared to accept or buy it compulsorily at its market value.
What is the average price, so?
For the past year it was £56.7 per acre.
Does that include forestry?
I have not the average price for previous years, but what I have said is correct. In some of the land taken over, there may even be some commonage, the intrinsic value of which would be very low. What I describe as the parent holding acquired by the Land Commission would command a very substantial price. Recent experience is that the Land Commission have had to pay very substantial prices for land in competition with other buyers. I dealt with all this extensively last night. As Deputy Donegan has said, this section appears in every Land Bill. I cited section 4 of the 1950 Act and section 3 of the 1953 Act. It is in every Act. It is a provision to provide for the financing of the work to be done under the Bill. Deputies have made all kinds of suggestions on this section. One would think that something sinister was appearing for the first time in a Land Bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is purely an enabling section and I respectfully suggest that enough of the time of the House has been spent now in debating this innocuous section.
Would the Minister answer one question? He stated categorically earlier tonight that the figure given did not include land for forestry. He has stated now that not alone does it include some land for forestry but it includes turbary as well.
Of course. I was asked did the figure include lands for forestry. It did not. The Deputy knows well that when lands are acquired by the Land Commission, those portions which are not of good quality are handed over to the Forestry Division. In some of the old large estates, there are already some woodlands which were planted as such by the owners. In different parts of the country, particularly in the congested areas, in many instances some of the holdings taken over are extremely small by our standards but most important rfor the job the Land Commission are doing. These holdings would comprise commonages or stretches of poor land and, of course, when these acres of land are schemed by the Land Commission, an average figure is arrived at which covers the good land as well as the bad land, which covers the stretches of water, drains and so on, as well as the acres of good land.
So the Minister's earlier statement was not correct?
My statement was correct in the sense in which the question was asked. I was asked did this include the lands acquired by the Forestry Division, and I said no.
I think what we have found out is that this figure is no use to anybody. For instance, if you take a number of land deals of any auctioneer in an area of good arable land, there would not be any percentage of waste in them which would reduce the value to £56 per acre. Apparently what the Minister is buying includes all sorts of things such as woodlands, lakes and so on. Therefore, the figure given is of no interest to anybody and we can forget about it.
May I take it that the Minister withdraws any accusation or suggestion against the very reputable newspaper with a very wide circulation in the midlands that he was misreported in the course of the speech which was referred to by Deputy McQuillan? That newspaper is one of the most accurate and reliable in circulation in Ireland today and I should not like this opportunity to pass without registering appreciation of the accuracy of that newspaper. The Minister's suggestion was unwarranted.
That does not seem to be relevant.
I suggest the least that newspaper might do is put a photograph of the Deputy on the front page.
They would not have to sell at a reduced rate like the Irish Press in order to maintain circulation.
Question put and agreed to.
NEW SECTION.
I move amendment No. 3:
Before section 4 to insert the following new section:
"For the purposes of sections *, * and * of this Act, `land' means `agricultural land'."
Amendments Nos. 4, 5, and 6 may be discussed with this amendment, as they form a compositive proposal.
Section 4 (1) reads:
Each of the following shall be a congested area for the purposes of this Act—
(a) a county or portion of a county specified in the Second Schedule to this Act;
(b) such other area as may from time to time be declared by order of the Minister to be a congested area.
This is a section which should be given very close consideration because, according to the section, the Minister can declare any area outside the congested districts a congested area. This is giving too much power to the Minister and can be open to all kinds of very serious abuses. When it suits the Minister, his Party or his Party's supporters, he can declare an area congested and thus have the annuities halved where his own Party supporters would obtain land. I cannot help feeling that if this Bill had become law six months ago, the whole of County Kildare and the greater part of Cork city could have been declared congested districts.
It was too congested for the Deputy, anyway.
For the purpose of this Act, there is nothing to stop the Minister from declaring any part of the country a congested district. That is why I should like to see this section——
We are dealing with the Deputy's amendment at the moment.
I am suggesting that this section as it stands in the Bill should be drastically amended. That is why I put down these amendments. We have heard from the Minister earlier tonight and last night that there were occasions on which he referred to land, non-agricultural and agricultural. For that reason, I feel he should make it very clear in this section that the land referred to is agricultural land. There is turbary and land suitable for forestry and there are other areas of land which could not possibly be described as arable. Therefore, the Minister should accept this amendment, thus deciding that the land for the purpose of this section should be agricultural land.
In addition to that, the Land Commission should establish and maintain a register in which, as outlined in the amendment, particulars of the various purchases of land should be recorded. There is a serious national problem in relation to the purchase of land by aliens. Many people who support the Government in this House and who have been loud in their protests outside the House against the purchase of land by foreigners should avail of this opportunity to put right those wrongs of which they speak outside the House.
This is a very serious problem even though the Minister for Lands tells us that the purchase of land by aliens is not a cause for concern. He has told us in the course of discussion on his Estimate and on other occasions in the House that he is glad to see aliens coming to purchase lands which are unsuitable for acquisition by the Land Commission. He has quoted instances of large tracts of land being purchased by aliens which he described as too poor in quality for the Land Commission to acquire for division among the many local applicants.
Here we have an opportunity for the Land Commission to assess the importance of this national problem. I put it to the Minister that the Land Commission have no idea of this problem and the reason for that is that there is no proper means of accurately finding out the amount of land being purchased by aliens. The Minister may proceed to give a report from the Revenue Commissioners on the amount of stamp duty paid on purchases by aliens. That is not an accurate figure for the Land Commission, the Minister or the country to go on because we have known of many cases of land being purchased by aliens where, by various ways and means, they avoided paying the stamp duty.
We know well that large tracts of land have been purchased by aliens whose children were born in this country and shortly after the birth of these children, the lands were put in their names and, because they were of Irish birth, that was sufficient to avoid the payment of the 25 per cent duty. Aliens are purchasing land in this country today and they are avoiding the 25 per cent duty in a wholesale manner by putting the land in the names of their children. There are other means by which the Revenue Commissioners have their eyes wiped and the Minister knows that those aliens do not mind paying the 25 per cent duty. Those who come from Germany and the continent come over with very substantial cheque-books. When they come to invest in Irish land, it is all the same to them whether they pay £50,000 or £100,000 for the farm. They are not concerned with the duty but if they can possibly avoid paying it, they will do so.
The Land Commission should establish a register for the purpose of ascertaining what the real position is. They should record in that register the nationality of all persons buying Irish land and they should give full details of all the circumstances of the purchases. Again, where a company buys land, full details of that concern should be registered as I have suggested in these amendments.
This problem is so very serious and of such great importance that many organisations in this country have given a good deal of thought to it. I am sure that the Minister has received the findings of the Small Farms Committee of the National Farmers' Association. That committee was established to investigate the extent to which foreigners were buying land in this country and in the first part of its report, it states that insufficient land is available in this country to meet the requirements of Irish citizens. Whatever else we may say about the National Farmers' Association, we all recognise that it is a body of intelligent farmers, looking after their own problems in a sensible way and in a non-political atmosphere.
This committee has made a finding that there is insufficient land available to meet the requirements of the people of the country anxious and equipped to work the land. In the face of that finding, surely it is time that we had a stocktaking as to why we are allowing the best of our Irish land to get into the hands of foreigners who are coming here, not for the love of the land, but to get what they can out of the land, to beggar it and then to fly out of the country again. That is why I say that this Bill as it stands does nothing to prevent the purchase of land by aliens. The amendments which I suggest will make this an effective Bill as far as that is concerned.
The second finding of the Small Farms Committee of the NFA is that in the light of the many sales of large tracts of Irish land to non-nationals in recent years, the land of Ireland is not being preserved for the people of Ireland. Surely everybody must agree that that is so when we see so much land being purchased by those undesirable people who come in and purchase land and thereby deprive our small farmers and local applicants of the benefit of their land. The Minister represents a western constituency and he must be well aware of the serious flight from the land of our small farmers. He knows the numbers who have emigrated in recent years, the number of families who have emigrated in their entirety and left their houses closed up with corrugated iron. Here we have the small farmers of the west and the midlands being forced out of this country because they are being denied a livelihood at home and are being replaced by foreigners coming over here.
Is that a sound land policy? Is that good economics? Can it be described as a land policy with a good national outlook? Our small Irish farmers are being forced out and foreigners are coming in and buying up the land which is the backbone of this country and the source of all good as far as any agricultural country is concerned.
The third finding of the NFA Committee is that the disposition of Irish land is not sufficiently controlled. This Committee of the NFA were asked to make certain recommendations. They made them and the first recommendation was that legislation be enacted to preserve the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland.
That is what we want to do.
Is that not the real problem? What good is it to pass legislation dealing with land division and distribution to settle the problem of congestion until steps have been taken to see that the land of Ireland is preserved for the people of Ireland? Was it not James Fintan Lalor who said: "The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to have and to hold as God gave it to them", or something of the sort? Could there be anything more desirable? This section as it stands does nothing to change the situation. The time has now come for a complete overhaul of Land Commission activity in so far as the purchase of land by aliens is concerned.
Section 4 deals with the setting up of congested districts and the Committee on Small Farms recommended that any legislation of this kind should apply equally to every part of the country. With that I very much agree. I cannot understand why the Minister has brought in this Bill without a single mention of the purchase of land by aliens. If one listened carefully to the Minister's speeches in recent months, one would not have found a single reference to this great problem. That is why I am compelled to put down those amendments.
Might I point out that the Deputy's amendment proposes the establishment of a non-nationals land register?
That is what I want.
The debate on the sale of land to foreigners would arise on amendment No. 33 in the names of Deputies McQuillan and Tully.
My point is that the Land Commission should have a register in which to enter details of the nationality of the purchasers of land here. I cannot understand why this register of non-nationals has not already been set up because I have been reading a speech made by a former Minister for Lands, now Minister for Transport and Power. I shall quote part of the report of that speech, made at Castleblayney, County Monaghan, his own constituency, and recorded on page 8, column 7 of the Irish Independent of 1st January, 1964. He was addressing a meeting of the National Farmers' Association. I want the Minister for Lands to listen carefully to this, lest the Minister for Transport and Power should say later that I misquoted him:
A Bill which will shortly be introduced would, it is hoped, defeat the misuse of land division and would have a definite effect in preventing foreigners from buying up vast tracts of Irish land, said Mr. Childers, Minister for Transport and Power. A special register of vacated farms was being compiled by the Irish Land Commission, he added.
The Minister was accompanied by Mr. P. Mooney, T.D. and Senator J. J. Brennan.
What has happened since New Year's Day? According to Deputy Childers, the Land Commission were to set up a register such as I now suggest in my amendment. Surely there is such a thing as collective responsibility in Government? You cannot have the Minister for Lands doing one thing and the Minister for Transport and Power saying another thing in relation to the relief of congestion and the utilisation of the land of Ireland. What makes it more serious is that Deputy Childers was addressing the NFA who have been dealing with this very problem.
I should therefore like to hear from the Minister for Lands why he is not prepared to accept the amendments aimed at setting up a register of aliens. What serious objection have the Land Commission to it? Can the Minister tell us now that this is not a very serious problem? Of course he cannot, because everybody realises the vast amount of Irish land that has gone into the hands of foreigners.
The amendments I propose would render this Bill most effective. Some years ago, Deputy Dillon introduced a Private Members' Bill dealing with this problem but the Government of the day did not see their way to accept it. I put it to the Government and the Minister that there is no more serious national problem, no problem more distasteful to Irish farmers and to farmers' sons, the deserving applicants for land, than this undesirable penetration by aliens and the purchase by them of the best arable land in the country.
How would the keeping of a register prevent them from buying land? It would only be a regisster of those who already had bought land.
It would tell us how we stood. The Minister has told us, and will again, I suppose, that this is not a serious problem. How can we accurately gauge its seriousness when there is no clear record of the amount of land that has gone to aliens? I am sure the Minister cannot deny that the amount of land that has got into the hands of aliens has been the subject of much representation to the Land Commission.
The NFA carried out a survey of the amount of land in the hands of foreigners. We were told some time ago that there was no register set up in the Land Commission, that all the Minister could go on was the stamp duty paid by aliens. That does not cut any ice. There are ways and means of getting out of that, and they have got out of it. If an alien comes in here and any of his family are born in this country, his children cannot be described as aliens and they can buy land. Section 3 of the Aliens Act gives the same rights to aliens to purchase property as to any Irish citizen. A number of townlands were selected by the NFA in the survey they undertook. We see in it Kells, County Meath. Meath is a county that cannot be described as having the worst land in Ireland. Yet the Minister has stated that these people only buy land nobody else would touch. The survey shows the following purchases of land: Kells, Meath, 200 acres; Athboy, Meath, 500 acres; Trim, Meath, 150 acres; Edenderry, Offaly, 250 acres; Athy, Kildare, 600 acres; Naas, Kildare, 500 acres; Straffan——
This does not arise on these amendments, which deal with the setting up of a register.
The Minister will dispute the facts which the NFA and I have given him?
I am saying they are not facts and I have already said so.
The NFA said they are facts.
I dealt with that elsewhere.
If a register were set up in the Land Commission, surely the Minister would not deny the existence of large tracts of land in the ownership of aliens?
The Deputy well knows there is a register in the Land Commission provided under the law passed by this House. If he does not know that, he is asleep.
I know there is no special register in the Land Commission for the purchase of land by aliens.
I assert there is in the Land Commission a register set up under the law passed by this House, that it is my duty to come in here and answer questions put by Deputies to me giving particulars from that register.
May I ask the Minister when was the register of non-nationals established?
Under the Finance Act, 1961.
That deals only with those who paid the 25 per cent duty. What about the aliens who escaped the 25 per cent duty who are not on that register? How can the Minister give us details about the purchase of land by aliens when he has details only about the aliens who paid the duty? He has no details about the aliens who did not pay the duty. I put it to the Minister that the list in the Land Commission is one compiled in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Finance and does not give a true picture in relation to the purchase of land by aliens. For that reason I commend my amendments to the House.
Deputy Flanagan and every other Deputy has admitted there are congested districts in every constituency which are not recognised as congested districts. Therefore, the Minister must have power to step in and declare those areas congested districts under the meaning of the Act. I could take a line right across from the Kerry boundary at Rockchapel to Meelin and Newmarket. The whole of that area is a congested district.
I think the Deputy may be under a misapprehension. That is dealt with in the section.
We have not come to the section yet. We are dealing with amendment No. 3 by Deputy O.J. Flanagan which relates to the question of agricultural land.
Deputy Corry will excuse me. I understood all Deputy Flanagan's amendments were to be taken together?
We agreed on that.
But all the amendments do not refer to the power of the Minister to declare a congested area. That is the section and we have not reached that.
Deputy Flanagan is congested after Kildare all right. There is a place in my constituency, known as Finnure, where there are 425 acres. We appealed to Deputy Blowick when he was Minister and Deputy Flanagan when he was Parliamentary Secretary to take this land over. But it was purchased by an Englishman for £7,000. Afterwards it was bought by a cattle dealer for £14,600. In 1955 we had Deputy Sweetman as Minister for Finance and Deputy Blowick as Minister for Lands. That farm was purchased by a German called Von Harder for something like £27,000.
This does not arise on the amendments. It would relevantly arise on amendment No. 33, which deals with the purchase of land by aliens. Deputy Flanagan's amendments deal with the setting up of a land register.
A register is not needed when we have the present Minister because he has stepped in and said: "I am taking this." Those 425 acres will now be divided among the Irish nationals for whom Deputy Flanagan has shed all the dry tears.
The division of land does not arise.
I have not the slightest intention of entering into the scrap which is developing into a major war as to whether the defunct Fine Gael Party or the Labour Party are to be the official Opposition. Scrap that out between yourselves and I will sit back here and have a good laugh.
You will be in opposition after the next election.
Deputy Flanagan is like the angel who, when he gets a kick, comes back for another one. You got a kick in Cork and a kick in Kildare.
Will the Deputy please come to the amendments?
There is no need whatever for a register when we have a Minister who believes, not in registers but in action. I think Deputy Flanagan is deliberately wasting the time of the House with this kind of nonsensical stuff.
These amendments are designed merely to produce this register which the Minister says he has but, if one examines the type of register he has, one will find it is not very detailed. Our proposal is that the register be confined to agricultural land. That is the first thing about it.
The thing we would like to impress is that as a Party we have no objection at all to the introduction here of foreign capital. We have no objection at all to a foreigner. As a matter of fact, we were the first Party to encourage the introduction of foreign capital here for factory building and for the promotion of industry. But, as well as that, there is the fact that the people of this country are perturbed by the purchase of large tracts of land by foreigners.
There are two points about this. The first is that Deputy Corry must be barking up the wrong tree because if he takes the sales of land as a unit in any one year and takes the amount of land the Land Commission can buy and distribute with the funds at their disposal, even if one were to double or treble the funds, one would find that this was still but a very small percentage of the total sales of land. So it is no good saying the Minister is a good Minister and he will see that a certain area is divided and that we do not need this register because non-nationals cannot come in and buy land. The amount of land changing hands in the country is far greater than the impact of the Land Commission. Therefore, we do need some sort of specified register.
Put them down in a jotter.
Yes, as long as you have the jotter properly tabulated. This does not mean that we think it is wrong in all cases for a non-national to buy land for agricultural purposes. Where these men can come in and employ people, there is nothing wrong with it. I can give instances in my county of non-nationals who came in and who are now paying in the production of vegetables as much as £11 a week to four, five or six times as many people as were employed on these lands before, but it is necessary because of the trend and because of the fears of our people, particularly of our congests and larger farmers, that a proper register should be kept.
This is not an extreme measure. It is, in my opinion, a very well-measured piece of legislation. It goes into detail. It is well drafted and it would give us the kind of register that would be available to all and that would give far more information than any type of general register which the Minister assures us is available.
The first amendment defines the type of land that would be involved as agricultural land. The sole purpose of this amendment No. 3 is to exclude all other varieties of land, to exclude woodlands, building sites, factory sites, places along a beach where there might be development for holiday camps or any of that sort of thing, and to get this register strictly confined to non-nationals who are buying agricultural land for agricultural purposes.
Our concern as a Party is with agricultural land. In a general way, our concern as a Party is to see more foreign capital coming in here but we do want to keep a closely-knit register of the amounts of land being purchased for agricultural use by foreigners.
The machinery is there in our amendments. It would be but delaying the House if we were to go into every word in these amendments but if the Minister wants to question whether or not they are properly drafted, we are ready here and willing and able to debate that point with him.
Amendment No. 4 makes it necessary for a non-national to notify his intention to purchase land. This, in fact, means that the net should be complete and that no fish should get through. Deputy Flanagan has pointed to the position in relation to section 3 of the Aliens Act whereby, if a child is born here of a non-national, he is automatically a national and the registering of the land here in his name means, of course, that you have the transfer without paying the 25 per cent stamp duty. That is something that is not covered by these amendments but acceptance of the amendments would means, without going to extremes, that a proper register would be kept and we would know how far this is going.
I should like, before the Minister intervenes on the amendments, to say that I have sympathy with Deputy Flanagan. He has made here the best case that I know for the amendment which the Labour Party have down, namely, for the restriction of the sale of land to non-nationals. I cannot understand what Deputy Donegan is after. He agreed with me when I said that a jotter is all that is necessary.
A properly tabulated jotter.
One that Deputy Donegan would fill in, perhaps.
The quality of the paper would not worry me.
That is what he wants—a properly tabulated jotter— and it does not matter how much land is bought by non-nationals as long as the jotter is big enough to hold it and if the jotter is not able to hold it, Deputy Donegan would buy another jotter and fill that, too.
This is the type of nonsense we get from Deputy Donegan and his like, who are trying to bluff the small farmers and to have it both ways. On the one hand they are saying to the non-national: "Everything is all right; you can buy up all the land in Ireland, provided you are registered in Deputy Donegan's jotter" and, on the other hand, he will go down the country if he gets a cumann or club foolish enough to listen to him and say that Deputy Donegan and his group want to prevent the non-national from buying land here in Ireland. Let us put it quite bluntly. A register of this nature will not stop the sale of one acre of land to a non-national.
Words are being put into my mouth now. It is suggested that I said this could be kept in a jotter. It was not my jotter. It was Deputy McQuillan's jotter for a start and I immediately took it up and said "a properly tabulated jotter". I do not care how you keep the register. I presume in the Department of Lands it would not be kept in a jotter. The point is now being made by Deputy McQuillan that when the jotter is filled up, all you do is get another one; in other words, that nothing is done about this problem if it assumes major proportions.
The whole purpose of our amendments is to get this thing properly tabulated so that if the problem does assume major proportions, legislation can be passed in this House. We do not believe that it has assumed major proportions but, in order to allay the fears of the people and of ourselves that it can go wrong, we believe there should be a proper register and, after that, we can, if we desire, legislate and give the Government an opportunity of voting against us if they want to.
I am very glad to hear Deputy Donegan yielding the point to Deputy McQuillan because, whether Deputy McQuillan is right or wrong, he is positive but the Fine Gael Party are not positive. The register of which the Deputy speaks is merely a smoke-screen, of course, and the Deputy knows well that there is a register in the Land Commission already and that a register of the type the Deputy advocates would not be worth a pinch of snuff. Whatever about the merits of Deputy McQuillan's amendment—and I do not agree with it because I do not think it is workable—I can certainly see no point in Deputy Flanagan's amendment.
We had better go into this in detail. Section 3 defines the land to be dealt with in this register as agricultural land, the purpose being to exclude everything else. Amendment No. 4 is to insert a new section and gives the exact wording of that section and tells us exactly what we want to know. It is not a general register of sales of land but a specific register with a specified name and there is a definition contained in subsection (2). Section 1 indicates that the Land Commission must establish and maintain the register and subsection (2) states:
The register established by subsection (1) of this section may be called, and is in this Act referred to as, the Non-Nationals' Land Register, and shall be in such form as the Land Commission may decide.
That defines that it shall be a Non-Nationals' Land Register. There is a difference between that, as Deputy Flanagan pointed out, and the people who pay their stamp duty and the people who do not. Payment of stamp duty is a different matter governed by different legislation and there is a serious discrepancy between the NFA document and the Minister's figures but in the counties of Louth and Meath, with considerable difficulty I have gone into this, and examined the details of the NFA figures and in my opinion, they are correct and I have as many dealings with farmers in that area as anybody.
But it is the Minister who must be responsible to the nation and the people.
Here is where the value of this particular register comes in. We have the position where we have a discrepancy between the figures of a responsible farmers' organisation and the Minister's figures. The Minister says he has dealt with that elsewhere. As an ordinary Deputy, I am not competent to go around saying that the Minister is wrong about the number of non-nationals, but I would be perfectly competent to take a list in the places I know in Louth and Westmeath and add up the number of holdings that have changed hands and the number of acres involved. I have done that and I am fairly certain that the NFA are not too far wrong in regard to Louth and Meath. So far as the question of this particular register, which I assume is a register of people who pay stamp duty, being correct is concerned it may be correct in its own content but it is not what we want.
We want details of what the ordinary man in the street would describe as the amount of land bought by non-nationals. That is defined in subsection (2) of the amendment. Subsection (3) of amendment No. 4 is a most important subsection and we have gone to considerable trouble about it and have done so because it is so important. It states:
Certified extracts of the Non-Nationals' Land Register may be furnished by the Land Commission to any person appearing to them to have a bona fide interest in the information therein contained in relation to a particular property or properties, or generally.
This leaves in the hands of the Land Commission the duty of behaving reasonably in relation to information; they must not throw it around. But if any Deputy wants this information or some responsible member of the community in a district—such persons would all be clearly covered by this subsection.
This register is not something we thought up in five minutes. We did not want to go into the details of these amendments but the House has questioned whether we are serious in what we want to do and it is our duty to explain to the House why we phrased these amendments in this way and what we want to do and how we feel the amendments will effect the change.
Amendment No. 5 goes further to give the machinery by which this procedure may be carried out. It is not easy to draft these amendments when the purpose is to get a watertight register. If the NFA are at grave variance with the Minister—I assure the Minister I am honest in saying this —and if a Deputy from Louth and Meath who knows the area can agree with their figures—apart from my political work, I have very close contact with a large number of farmers in these counties and I know the NFA figures are pretty accurate—then there is necessity for a very clear series of amendments.
Amendment No. 5 proposes:
Before section 4 to insert a new section as follows:
"(1) This section and sections * and * of this Act shall apply to every conveyance, transfer or lease of land where the person or body corporate to whom the land is conveyed, transferred or leased—
(i) being an individual person is not—
Then we define most specifically the individual persons who will be covered:
(a) an Irish citizen, or
(b) a person who is for the time being ordinarily resident in the State and who was ordinarily resident in the State continuously during the three years immediately preceding the 15th day of October, 1947; or,
(ii) is a body corporate where any of the shares is held by—
(a) a person within paragraph (i) of this subsection, or
(b) a body corporate where any of the shares is held by a person within paragraph (i) of this subsection.
This is most important because, as well as the particular "fiddle"—if I may so describe it—of registering lands in the name of an infant born here of non-national parents, there is also the "fiddle" of the limited company or body corporate. There is neither an auctioneer nor a solicitor in the country who is not expert at this operation.
We want to make it quite clear that even to the extent of one share in a limited liability company, that one share shall mean that the purchase of land by the limited liability company or the public company shall be registered. You can get the information, for instance, that Cement Ltd. bought some land in the Swilly Valley. That is an Irish company and this we would not ordinarily include. But you can have a limited liability company with a small number of shares held by a person who is named for life as the governing director of that company. The Minister is in the legal profession and if he follows company law, he knows that to be true as well as I do. Here you have a section in which the register he talks about, unless it has the important defence we have included in our amendments, will fall down and there is not a country solicitor or auctioneer who could not tell the Minister this, if he knows his job.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, March 5th, 1964.