asked the Minister for Lands if in view of the undue delay in the division of land following acquisition by the Land Commission he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Division of Land.
43.
Unremitting effort is made to dispose of lands on hands of the Land Commission as rapidly as possible and there are standing instructions to the effect that acquired lands be put into the possession of the approved allottees as quickly as possible. Where delay occurs, there are invariably justifiable and compelling reasons for it. Dealing with this matter in the Seanad on the Committee Stage of the Land Bill 1963 (Vol. 58, Cols. 437 and 438), I had this to say:
Senators from rural areas will no doubt be aware of the meticulous examination that must take place for the preparation of a scheme for division. Indeed, Senators and Deputies would be the first to complain if all the people within the mile limit are not interviewed and their full circumstances taken into consideration before the scheme is prepared. That takes time and in some counties, when there is a lot of land to be dealt with, the staff have to do the best they can with the work that is there before them.
As I have said, in the general run of cases, the position now is that within two years schemes are prepared and the land is divided. I make a special exception of the cases of land where migrants are involved because in these cases there are often improvement works that take a considerable time.
At 31st March last the Land Commission had in their possession, apart from substantial areas of turbary and inferior quality land, some 59,000 acres of arable land. That such an acreage, however, is not unreasonable can be gauged from the fact that the average annual allotment, involving all classes of land, during the past five years was upwards of 36,000 acres.
I do not like having lands in the possession of the Land Commission for an inordinate time and my fixed ambition is to get the period down to 2 years: in pursuance of that objective I have arranged for the recruitment of extra inspectors and I expect some of them to be on duty during the present spring.