I am always amused to hear the concern of Deputy Burke for his people. I am always amused also to see how the Deputy always leaves after having almost wept bitter tears. Deputy Burke and the Minister would have been better advised to shed some of their tears last summer when in discussing an amendment to this section, put down by Deputy Hogan (South Tipperary), we put forward from these benches exactly that which the Minister for Agriculture announced in Loughrea in East Galway last Sunday. I was interested to notice, too, that it was the Minister for Agriculture who made the announcement about the Land Bill, and not the Minister for Lands. It was something to salve the amour propre of the Minister for Agriculture because the new Minister for Justice, appointed today, was slashing the Succession Bill to bits.
The statement in relation to the Succession Bill in some respects was pretty vague, but when Deputy Hogan of South Tipperary put down an amendment in the summer to the effect that every purchase of an agricultural holding by an alien should be subject to the consent of the Land Commission, the Minister for Lands said it was utterly unthinkable anybody should do such a thing, that it was merely some deep-laid Fine Gael plot to put him in a jam, some deep-laid Fine Gael plot to do away with free sale.
Of course, the Minister himself is the person best capable of doing away with that. The fact is that now the Government have come around to the point of view we have been advocating from these benches for a considerable time. The tragedy is—and everybody in Kildare knows just how serious a tragedy—that he is, to an enormous extent, locking the stable door after the horse has gone. The amount of land in Irish hands in my constituency which has now been sold to people who are accustomed to the land values of the continent and were in a position to outbid any Irish person wanting to settle a farm on his son would shock anyone who takes the trouble to go around County Kildare.
One always welcomes a conversion at any time but was there anything significant in the fact that it was the ex-Minister for Justice, now the Minister for Agriculture and lately the promoter of the fragmentation of the Succession Bill, who made the announcement rather than the Minister for Lands, the man in charge of this Bill? It will be rather interesting to find on the Report Stage that we shall have Deputy Michael Moran, the Minister for Lands, introducing a provision diametrically opposed to what Deputy Michael Moran said on the Committee Stage of the same sections. We are used to Fianna Fáil turning around and jumping around, but the drafting of the Minister's introductory statement on the Report Stage amendment will be a matter that will require all the delicacy at the command of those accustomed to couching such phrases in Departmental ways and means.
Apart from all that, this section, taken in conjunction with section 27, puts into the hands of a political Minister the possibility of political tyranny in such a way that it should certainly not be enacted. This section leaves a landowner open to the gravest injustice because even admitting, which I do not, that the Minister was right in what he wanted, the section was so badly drafted in relation to the protection of all landowners concerned that there is grave fear of real injustices being done.
Let me deal with the political end first of all. Anybody who has any experience of land sales in rural Ireland knows very well that the moment any place goes up for auction and it goes out that the Land Commission have inspected it or are about to inspect it an owner has no hope of selling that farm. The price drops by at least 25 per cent of what its value is the moment the story goes out that the farm has been or is about to be inspected by the Land Commission.
I suggest to the Minister that if he has any doubt about what I am saying he should ask all the solicitors practising in County Kildare, all the auctioneers practising in County Kildare, because naturally one speaks here of the area with which one has the most experience. I put it to an auctioneer today that the drop in value was 25 per cent and he told me I was very much underestimating it, that the difficulty would be it might be impossible to get a purchaser at all. If the Land Commission stepped in and purchased the farm afterwards, of course the stamp duty and the costs would be all thrown away because they would not be paid.
Even after a threat of Land Commission proceedings, the position heretofore was one of which the Judicial Commissioner would have to take judicial or semi-judicial notice. What is happening? For the first time since 1923 when we established our own institutions, when the Land Bill of 1923 was passed, the Minister for Lands, a political Minister, is taking to himself the right to decide whether an inspector of the Land Commission shall go in and shall inspect Farm A and Farm B but shall not go in and shall not inspect Farm C. That has always been something reserved to the Lay Commissioners, people who are appointed with rights properly appertaining to semi-judicial appointments, people whose permanency of office gives them rights to make decisions above those of a political Minister.
A political Minister is given the right for the first time to say who will go in on whose land and make an inspection. That is a right being taken away from the Land Commissioners. It is being taken by the Minister to himself. I agree, of course, that the Minister himself will not walk down and go in. That can be done only by a person not below the rank of a senior inspector, but a senior inspector is a servant of the Minister and is bound by the terms of his office, by the terms of his appointment as a civil servant, to carry out the directives given by the Minister to him.
It is perfectly obvious that any Minister could in those circumstances, under section 27, arrange for the commencement of proceedings for the purpose of victimisation, if he wishes, of political opponents. Apart from that, it will be extremely difficult in the future for a political Minister to disregard directions that may come to him from a cumann or other group of his political organisation in a constituency when they say: "Go and get so-and-so's land inspected." Immediately that is done, the owner concerned virtually cannot sell. It is the beginning of Land Commission proceedings; it is the prerequisite of section 13 coming into operation.
That is a wrong power to give to any Minister. It is the beginning of political segregation as between one citizen and another. Except in cases of emergency, it is a type of thing democracy requires should not be done except by those vested with judicial or semi-judicial tenure of office, people who are entitled and able to exercise their judicial or semi-judicial discretion, free and unfettered, on the merits of each individual case.
What happens when the Minister has set out on his progress and says: "There is a list which my senior inspector is to have inspected in that county"? The next thing is that a report is made and a determination reached that proceedings shall be pushed a step further. I do not want to mislead anybody. Pushing all the proceedings a stage further is a matter for the Lay Commissioners but it is obvious, after all that has been done, that the damage to the man's property has already been done and that he has not been able to sell. I believe the purpose of this is to provide that having had the damage done in the way I have indicated, with, then, the threat of the action under section 13, with the freezing of his land for a long period, it will mean that the Land Commission will be able to get that man's farm at substantially less than the value. I believe that will be the effect and I believe it is the designed effect of the joint operation of these sections.
What happens? An order is made under subsection (2) of section 40 of the Land Act, 1923, that the farm at a certain place is one that is going to vest in the Land Commission unless in pursuance of a valid objection. That is done pretty regularly and in what one might call the balance of cases, so that the objection can come up for full hearing and be decided upon. But the damage is done. It is going to be frozen for a year.
Let me take a case I meet pretty often in the course of my profession, a case which, I am sure, the Minister has met pretty often in the course of his profession. A man has a farm, shall we say, of 100 acres. For one reason or another—some type of misfortune— he has found himself in the position of being substantially in debt. His creditors are pressing him all round. He decides that the best way of meeting his obligations is to sell his 100 acres, and having sold it, pay his creditors and then buy a farm of 50 acres and establish himself on that and have adequate working capital for the 50 acres.
Now, under this section, he will not be allowed to do it. Once section 13 comes into operation, he cannot sell. He cannot sell for the period initially introduced in the Bill, for a year, but there is nothing in the Bill to provide that his creditors cannot make him a bankrupt in that year. Although the man desires and is anxious in an honourable way to meet his obligation to pay his debts, to clear them out of the way and to go into a smaller farm and set himself up, there is nothing in this Bill that prevents his creditors, be it a bank or anybody else, from making him a bankrupt and casting upon him all the expenses of that bankruptcy. He is not allowed to realise his assets for the purpose of meeting his debts but there is nothing anywhere to say that the person to whom he owes money is not bound to stop taking him by the throat and there is nothing to say that because the assets cannot be readily realised, in fact he is not to be made a bankrupt and not to be made to suffer all the expenses that might be involved in a court judgment, a judgment mortgage or perhaps even an equity suit to realise a judgment mortgage.
I have no doubt whatever that any solicitor who examines this section and the manner in which it is drawn and the effect it will have will say that under this section and its operation, many people who are really solvent are nevertheless going to be made bankrupts and have all the costs of such bankruptcy put upon them, even though at the end of the period, when the freezing comes off, and the land is acquired by the Land Commission, on the one hand, or when the Land Commission say they do not want it, on the other hand, and he is able to sell it, it is found that he has quite ample funds to meet his obligations.
That is a real danger and one that will undoubtedly arise if this section goes through with its existing provisions and it is one that creates a type of injustice which should not be permitted.
There is another type of injustice which is perpetrated by this section. Once a notice has been given under section 40, subsection (2) of the Land Act 1923, which is the basis for section 13, a person is not allowed even to transfer the farm to his son. The son may be willing and anxious to get married, may have found a suitable girl, may have decided that he wants to set up home on that farm and the owner concerned may be perfectly happy to give it to him, to set him up in it. But, under this section, during the freezing period provided by the section, the wedding bells cannot ring and nothing can be done to set up that member of the farmer's family on a farm of his own. What justification can there be for that? The Minister alleges that it is because by transferring a farm to his son a man would be dodging proceedings. That can perfectly well be dealt with in another way, as the Minister knows very well.
This is just the soft, easy way of the administrative bureaucrat, the soft, easy way, administratively, to get everything, as the Land Commission want, in their own maw, regardless of the injustice it may create, regardless of the fact that the procedure they are adumbrating and introducing can be used as political tyranny, regardless of the fact that it may and will result in certain people, inherently solvent, being forced into the bankruptcy court or into taking an arrangement of creditors under the bankruptcy rules because the Minister has frozen their assets and at the same time the debts that are due by them are not frozen.
When the Land Acts were introduced, there was wise and proper drafting then. A mortgagee was not entitled to take the owner of the land through the courts during the course of the Land Commission proceedings. The mortgagee was going to be paid out of the lands. There is no such provision here to save a man being hounded in costs through the courts because the Land Commission—not he —have decided that they want to take the easy way of freezing administratively this land so that they can take their own time about deciding what they want to do. That is obviously unjust. It is obviously unfair when you ally it with the powers the Minister is taking to himself for the first time in section 27 to ensure that there will not be a sale in practice, not in theory, but in practice as everyone knows in the country. Then, the joint operation of these is tyranny which should be resisted.