I agree with the Minister entirely in spreading his net wide to bring under control companies operated for the benefit of non-nationals who hold land under the cloak of a variety of company law devices which, in fact, are operated to frustrate the functioning of the land code. I think the Minister has received a considerable number of warnings from this side of the House that a situation was developing here that required control. We are glad to see that the Minister has come to realise that an undue acreage of Irish land is passing into the hands of aliens, either by direct purchase or by a series of company law devices which are merely a thin disguise for the alienation of Irish agricultural land to foreigners.
However, in dealing with that situation we should not spread our net so wide as to make no distinction between Irish nationals — people born and reared in this country — and people who have come from the ends of the earth to buy land in Ireland. We want legislation which will bring under the closest possible attention of the Irish Land Commission any acquisition of Irish agricultural land by aliens, no matter what device is operated to achieve that end. We welcome this awakening by the present Minister for Lands to the gravity of the situation, which can only be brought under control by a comprehensive power which gives the Minister the right and imposes on the Land Commission the duty to take note of the acquisition of Irish agricultural land by aliens by any device, so that appropriate steps may be taken to put the matter right.
As the Minister says, we may look at this again in connection with another group of amendments. He has asked us to study the amendments in certain groups. That is acceptable to us. We are glad to convenience the Minister by undertaking to do that. He has asked us to look at this section and these amendments together with section 41— one in the light of the other. Now, in the first group of amendments which the Minister would like us to discuss together occurs amendment No. 43c. That amendment reads:
In page 18, after line 35, to insert the following:
"immediate neighbourhood" includes any place which the Lay Commissioners are satisfied is not more than three miles from the nearest point of the relevant holding.
I had occasion to raise this question of the Lay Commissioners before in connection with section 27, and I explained the vicious and detestable character of the proposal that the executive head of the Department of Lands should also be a Lay Commissioner. This problem recurs here again because he exercises a quasi-judicial function in determining whether lands are in the "immediate neighbourhood" for the purposes of the Act. The Minister intervened very impressively on a previous occasion and quoted from a memorandum prepared for the then Minister for Lands by the late Commissioner Deegan. No doubt it impressed the House that the Minister was in a position to say that Commissioner Deegan—a most distinguished public servant whom all sides of the House are prepared to acknowledge as having given great public service to the country—had expressed his opinion very categorically and very clearly that not only was it permissible but eminently desirable that the Secretary of the Department of Lands should himself be a Lay Commissioner.
It was disingenuous of the Minister, to say the least of it, to make that communication in so formal a way to the House without adding that every single other Lay Commissioner appointed since 1923 down to today wished to be emphatically dissociated from Commissioner Deegan's opinion. Commissioner Deegan was the only person holding that post in Ireland since 1881 to hold that view. It so happens that other men like Mr. Waddell, Mr. Herlihy and Mr. Browne —men I remember with admiration and, indeed, affection—were Lay Commissioners and were also officials of the Department of Lands. It was Mr. Waddell, I think, who most strenuously objected to having thrust upon him the dual duties of chief inspector and Lay Commissioner. I think it was Mr. Nally —another distinguished public servant —who succeeded in prevailing upon Deputy Blowick, then Minister, to relieve him of the post as Secretary of the Department because he said his experience of functioning as Secretary of the Department, and as a Lay Commissioner, which had been thrust upon him, had convinced him of the deplorable character of such a dual relation.
I want to emphasise that every single Land Commissioner who has functioned since the Land Commission was first instituted in Ireland has taken a view diametrically opposed to that of Commissioner Deegan. I want to warn the House that the very best information in the Land Commission is that if anyone challenges in the High Court a decision taken by the Land Commission when the Commission sits with the Secretary of the Department as one of its members, it will be upset as being contrary to the Constitution. Remember the consequences of that. If anyone goes to the High Court or the Supreme Court and succeeds in upsetting one decision of the Land Commission, which comprised as one of its members at a court of the Lay Commissioners the Secretary of the Department of Lands, every decision of the Commissioners in which the Secretary of the Department participated will thereupon become null and void and every individual affected by the decision will have a right of action for damages against the Land Commission. That will be the law. That will be the finding in law, and it will not be open to Oireachtas Éireann to introduce retrospective legislation depriving people of rights which the Supreme Court had declared to be theirs under the law. It is not constitutionally possible for the Oireachtas to legislate and say—once a person has been determined by the High Court to be entitled to compensation from the Government—"You will not get the compensation".
We will put down an amendment on Report Stage which will declare once and for all that executive officers of the Department of Lands must not be members of the Land Commission, and that the quasi-judicial state of the Land Commission must be restored. I most earnestly ask the Minister between now and Report Stage to examine, if he has not already had put before him, the opinion of every Lay Commissioner who ever functioned in this country under a British or an Irish Government, against the opinion which he has tendered to the House as the judgement of Commissioner Deegan.
I put it to the Minister that here is a change which he says is designed to achieve nothing but expedition in the discharge of Land Commission business. Against that, we on this side of the House consider this goes to the root and foundation not only of fixity of tenure but of the judicial functioning of the Land Commission.