I know the meaning of fixity of tenure, fair rent and free sale. I know the precautions that we and those who went before us took to preserve those things. I know the meaning of fixity of tenure. Fixity of tenure never meant in this country that in no circumstances could the Land Commission acquire land. Fixity of tenure meant that anyone who owned land should not have it taken from him arbitrarily, at the whim of a landlord or a politician, but that a quasi-judicial body, holding their office by judicial tenure, irremovable except by a two-thirds majority of this House, would judge each case on its merits. We all have experience of submitting cases to the Land Commission. We do it every day and we get the reply that the Land Commission have considered the matter and that they have determined that there are certain circumstances surrounding that tenant purchaser's conditions which entitle him to a year or two years, or maybe five years, to see how he will turn out, before the Land Commission are prepared to consider compulsory acquisition.
I am not trying to confuse this issue, to represent to the House that the Minister is seeking power to determine the question of acquisition in this Bill, because he is not. The only power he is seeking is to send in the inspector for the purpose of making an inspection, and there is the danger of this. Talk to the poor Minister for Agriculture from north-east Dublin and tell him that the Minister proposes to take this power and what does the poor fellow who lives up in Raheny know about it? His inclination is to say: "That is perfectly reasonable; what harm would that be? You could get corporation inspectors to inspect your house and what about it?" He does not understand. How could it hurt the man in rural Ireland to have the inspector come in and inspect his land? It always meant before that there was imminent danger of the Land Commission being persuaded compulsorily to acquire it. It now means much more, that the day the arrangement is made for the land to be inspected, all dealings in that land are suspended and that there is a danger that your home will be taken away, but paramount, above all these dangers, is the knowledge that this is a procedure no longer ordained by people in a judicial position with a long and intimate history of dealing with land and supported by a body of permanent officials who understand all the delicacy of fixity of tenure and that all that that means is the very fabric of our society. This power is now put into the hands of a politician.
I am proud to be a politician, proud to be the son of a politician and proud to be the grandson of a politician. I do not want to appear to sound as if I looked upon being a politician as anything but the highest vocation, next to the priesthood, in the life of any man, but all of us in politics are aware of the difficulties with which we have to contend as well as the magnitude of the job we undertake to do and we ought try to the limit of our ability to make ourselves independent of pressure which might betray us into doing an injustice to the individual under pressure that politically we are unable to withstand.
I put it plainly to this House: there are three Deputies in Monaghan—and I do not think Deputy Mooney will misunderstand me if I put it this way— there are three seats in County Monaghan—Deputy Mooney has one, I have the other and the Minister for Transport and Power, Deputy Childers, scrambled into the third. Pressure is brought to bear on Deputy Mooney that he is to get so-and-so's land inspected. He is familiar with the whole background of that particular parcel of land and in his heart believes it is not just to inspect that parcel, that there is nothing concerned in that parcel of land which would ever justify the Land Commission compulsorily acquiring it, at this time in any case. He says to his supporters: "I do not think we ought to get that land inspected. There is no justification for the Land Commission inspecting that land. Go and ask the man would he care to sell it to the Land Commission. If he would, I shall be glad to introduce him to the Land Commission and see if they can reach mutual agreement but compulsorily to acquire the land, no." He finds himself confronted with the irrational, passionate agitation of his own supporters, who say: "We have said we are going to ask Paddy Mooney about it and he will get the land inspected. Do you want to make us look foolish among our neighbours?" He says: "Do you want me to do what I think is not right?" They reply: "Look, it is politically necessary to get that land inspected. That fellow was out bawling for Dillon at the last election. He has the biggest holding in that area and there are a lot of smallholders there. Why not get it inspected? What harm will that do? If you put a blister on him for 12 months, he will keep his mouth shut the next time. Even if the Land Commission decide they do not want to take it, you will have taught him a lesson."
What can Deputy Mooney say? He has only two courses open to him. One is to say: "No, I will not do it", and the alternative is to say: "Very well; I represent you. If that is what you think is right and proper to do, I shall see Deputy Moran, the Minister for Lands." If Deputy Moran says "No. I will not inspect that land", Deputy Mooney has to come back to Monaghan and say "I went to Deputy Moran and made this case to him but he kicked me out and told me he would not touch it." I ask any reasonable Deputy on any side of the House: do you want to create such a situation in this country?
I want to say most categorically— let us be clear as crystal on this— you may do it today, but we shall repeal it the moment we get the power to do so. If I were Minister for Lands in the next Government, the first Bill I would bring in to this House is a Bill to divest myself of the power to order the inspection of my neighbours' land. I am convinced that every experienced Deputy on the Fianna Fáil side who really understands the foundations of the whole rural economy of Ireland is in his heart opposed to this proposal. It is such a useless proposal. The justification advanced for it is that it will save time. That is all. My gracious me it has been truly said that democracy is the worst system of Government in the world, except all the others. Look at what is going on. Here we are passing a simple piece of legislation. There are weeks and weeks of discussion. It is a slow, tedious, inefficient, difficult way to get laws passed; but it has this redeeming feature: it preserves every man's right to be free within the law.
Of course, it takes more time to get lands inspected if the inspection can be done only on the orders of an utterly independent quasi-judicial body. I admit that at once. Of course, land acquisition can be expedited if the Minister has the right to direct inspection; but you can expedite it far more if you give the Minister the right to determine acquisition. Why have the whole paraphernalia of the Land Commission at all? Why do you not wipe it out? Why do you not do away with the whole system of the land courts? For the very simple reason that most of us here were born very close to the land and we know what fixity of tenure means.
If you go down west of the Shannon, or into Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal, Clare or Kerry, can you imagine the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture, who knows no more of rural Ireland than he has seen from the back of a horse hunting with the Ward Hounds, asking himself the question: why would they stay here on 20 acres in Monaghan, Cavan, Mayo, Galway or any other part of the west or south-west or Donegal? Of course, they do not understand what it means to be born on the land, to have your home on the land, to belong to the land just as much as the land belongs to you. It does not occur to them. They cannot understand that, even though the public good demands that that absolute right of the ownership of land must on occasion be abridged, such abridgement must be hedged around by every conceivable protection. Just as before we send a man to jail in this country we give him the right of trial by jury —it is a most inefficient way of trying any man, but we found it preserves individual liberty—so in regard to fixity of tenure we have provided, in our wisdom, that no one should touch it or abridge it except those immune from pressure outside.
I put it to the Minister for Lands: is it worth making himself responsible for something like this out of pure obstinacy? What will he get out of it? What benefit will he confer upon anybody? Does he not know in his heart, whether he agrees with it or not, that there are a number of his colleagues in his own Party, quite apart from the members of this and other Parties, who feel, and feel deeply, that such limitations as these in section 13 are not to be set in motion by the initiative of the political head of the Department of Lands?
That is the issue joined between us here. I put it to Deputies, on whatever side of the House they may sit: who positively believes in the necessity, apart from the desirability, of this grave abridgement of the fixity of tenure of every farmer in this country, large or small? I warn you it is madness. I warn you it cannot long obtain. I promise solemnly the first opportunity I get it will be repealed and I put it to you that in the meantime bitter wrong may be done.
I ask Deputies to remember this. We passed a Land Act in this House in 1933. I saw a widow woman in comfortable circumstances but carrying a burden of debt left by her husband. But she had about 87 acres of land. She had a young family, none of them old enough to work on the land. She was selling the land. Those were the angry days of the early 30's and the machinery of the Land Act of 1933 was set in motion against her. They compulsorily acquired her holding. By the time they had discharged the annuity on that land, which was then the practice, I think the Land Commission gave her £18 11s. 7d. and put her on the road. That was in West Tipperary or East Limerick. The bitterness of those memories will remain in the hearts of many families who were treated in that way for generations.
When we came into office, we prescribed that a farmer whose land was acquired should get the market value of the land. I am quite prepared to make the case in the country at any time that 99 per cent of the old horror of compulsory land acquisition has vanished because the Land Commission are as good a buyer as anyone else. They are required by law to give the market value of the land and the land judge is there set above them. If a tenant thinks the Land Commission are offering less than the value of his land, he has the right to go to a judge of the High Court and quite frequently the land judge says the Land Commission are offering too little and fixes a price. The Land Commission then withdraw and say: "We cannot afford it," and the man is confirmed in his ownership of the land.
I do not believe there is a Fianna Fáil Deputy who knows rural Ireland who wants to go back to the old evil of virtually confiscating a farmer's holding, which obtained from 1936 until the Land Act, which guaranteed a full market price. It was done in anger and grave injustices were perpetrated as a result of the operation of that law. That iniquitous proceeding was put to an end and everyone heaved a sigh of relief and was glad when that black period was over. Why in heaven's name should we want to start another period of resentment, bitterness and hatred which will be precipitated in rural Ireland?
I do not want to be put in the position when I go down to Chapelrock or Scotshouse in Monaghan of being put up against the wall by my constituents and told to ask the Minister for Lands to do something. So long as I am in opposition, I have at least the alibi of saying: "Deputy Moran will not do what I ask him to do. The fact that I want it done will not commend it to his favourable consideration." If we had an inter-Party Government and Deputy Blowick was Minister for Lands, I would be appalled at the situation in which I might find myself every time I went to Monaghan having to battle with my own constituents. I have said a thousand times since I became a Deputy for Monaghan that everyone knows simple people who will come to you in rural Ireland and ask you to get them a bit of this or that holding. I have always said: "I am not able to do it; I cannot do it; but I can and will send in an application to the Land Commission and if I know the circumstances to be deserving, I will recommend them to the Land Commission for favourable consideration but I cannot acquire land and I cannot make the Land Commission acquire it. When I was Minister for Agriculture, I could not do it nor could my colleague, Deputy Blowick, when he was Minister for Lands." Does any responsible Deputy want to change that position?
Surely argument and reason have some place in our deliberations. Has anyone in this House made the case that it is a good thing that the political head of the Department of Lands should have power to inspect rather than the Land Commission. Has anyone made that case? I cannot understand how anyone could make that case. I do not believe that Deputy Allen could make it and I do not believe Deputy Millar could make it. Deputy Allen comes from Wexford and may have heard of the evictions at Coolgreany from his father. Deputy Millar may know of the evictions on the Clanrickarde estate which is not far from where he was born. Deputy Mooney knows of the evictions near St. Mary's. Does anyone want that ghost to be raised again? Does anyone want again to create a situation in which the ownership of land could be abridged by the caprice of an individual? Do we not all infinitely prefer to stand firm on the principle that the acquisition of land should be the function of a quasi-judicial body, immune from outside pressure and irremovable except for the exceptional processes prescribed under the land code of this country? I hope and pray that before this business is disposed of, we will have some evidence of understanding on the part of the Minister.
Recently we had a Succession Bill which we were told was the law of the Medes and Persians and the fruit of protracted reflection by the Fianna Fáil Party. It has been blown away and most of it has gone down the drain. We are not asking that the bulk of this Land Bill should go down the drain. There are some quite good provisions in it. What we want to remove are the bad parts and we would sooner do it now. We shall certainly do it hereafter but in the meantime injustices may be done and rancour and ill-will may be precipitated and neighbour set against neighbour by its provisions. I do not believe that Deputy Mooney wants it. I certainly do not want it in respect of the small farmers in Monaghan. We both know in our hearts that such provisions can only create bad feeling and hatred in rural Ireland that neither he nor I wish to be part of. I do not believe that the efficient working of the land code will be in the least undone by the preservation of the principle that has been sacrosanct for 80 years— 40 years under the British Government and 40 years under four or five different Governments of our own election. If reason continues to have any force in this House, I put it to Deputies that we should change the provision the Minister has brought before us and if reason does not prevail now, it will hereafter.