(Cavan) asked the Minister for Finance the amount of money involved in loans cancelled by the Agricultural Credit Corporation on the grounds that they were not taken up within three months since 15th July 1965.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Cancellation of Agricultural Credit Corporation Loans.
4.
The amount of money involved in offers of loans cancelled by the Agricultural Credit Corporation, on the grounds that they were not taken up within three months, since the 15th July, 1965, is approximately £600,000.
As explained in a reply I gave to the Deputy on 20 October in order to ensure that available capital is conserved for productive purposes, it was found necessary to cancel loan offers for unproductive purposes, i.e., funding of debt, land purchase and purchase of motor cars, where the offers had not been taken up within the time stipulated by the Corporation. If the Corporation did not restrict its loans to directly productive purposes, it could at a time of general scarcity of capital, such as the present, be charged with operating a policy prejudicial to agricultural development.
Would the Minister consider asking the Corporation to differentiate between those loans to which expressed approval had been given and any new applications and is the Minister aware that a not inconsiderable number of persons entered into commitments for the purchase of land and even made deposits and are now in danger of losing those deposits owing to their inability to get the loan which they understood the Agricultural Credit Corporation had committed itself to giving them? Would the Minister consider asking that past cases be reviewed in the light of any hardship that may arise?
There is a number of cases in which land purchase has been mixed up with funding of bank debts and in many of these cases the banks, I think, themselves have honoured their own commitments. I want to point out to the Deputy that as a result of consultation I had with the Agricultural Credit Corporation, I put them in funds to the extent of £1 million more than had been settled in the review of the Capital Budget. I do not think there is any possibility that I could put them further in funds for the purposes suggested by the Deputy.
Will the Minister agree that this exercise of the three months' limit, which is merely a technicality, is a new thing to be insisted upon by the Corporation, that there were always delays due to Land Registry delays, Land Commission delays and other legal matters, that this is purely an effort at this moment to avail of a technicality in order to avoid giving out money?
No; it is not completely new. The three months' limit was always in operation.
It was always there but never exercised.
In many cases, I understand, the time that had elapsed was so long that the Agricultural Credit Corporation had to look again at the original proposition and the creditworthiness of the applicant and in some of these cases loans had to be cancelled in the past.
Yes. If it goes over one week now, it is gone.
Is it not a fact that without any notice to the borrowers concerned or to their legal advisers, outstanding arrangements were cancelled, notwithstanding the fact that they might have been only, in one case that I heard of, three weeks overdue and would the Minister at least take the matter this far, that in respect of any loan granted in the year 1965, the time limit would not be insisted upon where there was a reasonable reason for the delay?
I would not like to promise the Deputy that I could undertake to do that because the Agricultural Credit Corporation is limited in this year to about £5¼ million for lending purposes. I do not think it will be possible to put them in funds to any greater extent.
The Minister in his private life is a barrister and the Minister knows the view that a court would take of anybody who tried to put into effect forfeiture without notice of that sort. That is what the Minister is doing. He is encouraging the Corportion — not merely encouraging but directing the Corporation—to welsh on their bargains. It is not their fault; it is his.
Would the Minister not agree that when the Agricultural Credit Corporation agreed to give a loan, even though the statutory period which the Corporation are now sheltering under has expired, it is a legal and binding contract and that, in fact, they have no right to do what they are doing?
I would not like to pronounce upon the legal implications of these contracts here.
The Minister is a lawyer and would know more about it than I do. I am telling him as a layman.
That is why I would not like to say anything here.