Firstly, I congratulate Deputy Connaughton on his appointment as Minister of State and Deputy Noonan on his new appointment as Opposition spokesman for the main Opposition party on agriculture. I am not sure that what I have here is the Minister of State's own script. Coming from the west of Ireland the Minister, Deputy Connaughton, is acutely aware of the problems surrounding the Land Commission on an emotional issue — the distribution of land. That has been the case since the Land Commission were founded over a half a century ago. The policies pursued by the Land Commission in many of our rural parishes have divided families for generations over small portions of land which might or might not have any real agricultural value.
Deputy Connaughton comes from the same constituency as one of our first Ministers for Agriculture, Deputy Hogan, and is only too well aware of the enormous complications and divisions which can be caused in discussing land distribution policy. Approximately 1.5 million acres have been acquired in the last half century by the Land Commission, most of this being distributed to various farmers.
The phrase "the more things change, the more they are the same" is included in the Minister's script and he is quite right about that. I have heard various discussions on land bond Bills in this House over the last eight years and things do change and they are the same. When the people now on the Opposition side were on the Government side they defended the acquisition of land by land bonds and we in Opposition had to make our case for the abolition of land bonds as a means of securing land for distribution. The interdepartmental committee set up on land policy some years ago reported, at paragraph 11.5:
We are of the opinion that the use of Land Bonds as a payment medium for lands purchased or acquired for land structural reform purposes is no langer justified and should be discontinued.
The committee went on to describe land bonds in a reasonably fair fashion as follows:
Land Bonds amount to a forced loan without guarantee of repayment date.
It is a simple fact of life that anyone in rural Ireland wishing to dispose of land does so on the basis of receiving cash in return. It is not an easy thing for any Land Commission official to tell a farmer who has held on to land for many years that all he will receive in return for giving the land to the Land Commission is a bundle of papers which might mean nothing to him, even though the interest rates on land bonds in recent times have held up reasonably well. However, there have been cases where former issues of land bonds at different rates have not held their value when being disposed of on the market, which caused an amount of confusion and resentment among those who had to dispose of land in that way.
The question inherent in the Minister's speech when referring to changes in land policy must be the abolition or non-abolition of the Land Commission. Has it outlived its usefulness? Is there still an effective role for it with regard to distribution of our land? Can its powers of acquisition and distribution and the criteria used for distributing land be changed to make it a more effective, more presentable and more attractive body, in so far as our farmers are concerned? The reports one hears from many small farmers of Land Commission activities are not what they should be. The method of disposal and acquisition of land down through the years has not been as attractive as it should be to farmers. Less than .3 per cent of the land sold is disposed of in the market place. Land is normally sold privately or by auctioneers and the amount of land going before the Land Commission for acquisition and division, with the genuine consent of the farmer in question, is minimal indeed.
When the Minister sets out to implement changes in land policy, coming as he does from a province where these problems are very prevalent, he should set about it in a very workmanlike fashion, as I am sure he will, by calling in various authorities, the various interested groups and organisations, in an effort to do something effective about these problems that have gone on for so long, and a range of other related problems have been raised by his speech today.
One of those concerns the division of commonages which in the west of Ireland is a rather pressing problem. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been held in common for years. There is a move among farmers to have these commonages divided among them either under the western package scheme or some related scheme so that they could fence off appropriate areas and use them for better agricultural purposes. Inherent in the law at present is the problem of objections by one or more of the commonage tenants and this has been making it practically impossible legally for the Land Commission to divide the commonages. They can only do it with full consent of all the tenants.
A serious problem relates to the division of commonages, because a farmer with a share in a commonage, whose herd go down as a result of a disease and are then locked up, has an escape alley, to put his herd out on the commonage in which he has a share. The herd would be free-range to mix with other cattle, thereby spreading the disease. I raised this question some years ago in the House with the former Minister, Deputy Gibbons. He agreed on that point and said that some effective work would be put into that aspect of commonage division and of restructure.
There is a genuine feeling among farmers that they should be able to acquire at least a special portion of these commonages to be divided among themselves. It should be looked at seriously by the Minister under the terms of the western package. The present position is unsatisfactory because when one makes a case to the Land Commission or to the Department for division of commonages, when consent has not been given by all of the tenants one does not make any progress whatever and that causes a lot of resentment among other things.
The Minister should also pay attention to the matter of extra turbary or bog plots from the point of view of the Land Commission. With increased fuel costs in recent years there has been an increasing demand for native resources. Thousands of people are now willing to cut turf either by machine or by hand if they had access to bog plots. Undoubtedly many thousands of acres of bog could be acquired which is now either in the hands of the Land Commission, in commonage holdings and in some cases held by the Forestry Department. Such areas could be acquired and road systems could be put into them at reasonable cost under the EEC package. The bogs could be let out to tenants who are only too willing to use them to the maximum advantage.
The Minister should be concerned that in recent years along the west coast there has been an enormous increase in the amount of property being acquired by non-nationals. This should be looked at seriously by the Department. From Donegal to Cork the incidence of ownership of land, either in small parcels or in reasonably large areas, by people from outside the country is on the increase all the time. The Minister should look at the system of acquisition. It is unfair to smaller farmers who have never had the financial means to acquire that land, farmers who could not acquire it except through the agency or the Land Commission, that they should have to remain stunted in their agricultural output or potential because somebody from abroad can walk into a place and acquire it after the appropriate sanction has been issued.
I will be interested to hear the Minister's reply in relation to the criteria that are used and will be used in any modified restructuring of the Land Commission in regard to the allocation and the allotting of land to tenants. Many people living on small holdings — there are 63,000 holdings of land of less than 40 acres of which approximately 42,000 would be in Connacht which are not viable — find it is not easy for farmers to attempt to make a living on a farm of that size. Down through the years the emigration valve to Britain and the US always relieved the pressure on smaller holdings in the west. Many people have been sustained by the continuous stream of money from abroad, from Britain or the US. It helped those families to rear the remaining children and to make some effort to eke a decent living out of the land.
Those people who have the initiative or were fortunate enough to go out to get jobs for themselves often found themselves out of luck in relation to land allocation when the Land Commission came to divide an acquired estate in a district. I should like the Minister to give a clearer explanation on whether a person with a part-time job is entitled under any modification of the Land Commission Acts to be given an allocation of land when division would occur. People with jobs have the potential to plough that money back into any holding they might get and make the land a little more productive than it had been. The argument against that, of course, is that the person who has not been lucky enough to have acquired a job and who would have to resort to unemployment assistance does not have the same means of ploughing money back into a holding of land.
That raises the vexed question of unemployment assistance or farmers' dole in western Ireland. A recent announcement in the budget stated that the PLV system has been determined to be unconstitutional for the first time, on appeal to the Supreme Court. No increased payments were made to smallholders who had been drawing farmers' dole. Various attempts were made during the years to do something about this, to have the system linked either to productivity or to get some return for the money being paid out. The system of following through on farmers' dole payments and assessments made on people who seek the dole is very complicated and takes a long time to sort out. Farmers' sons aged over 18 years who intend to draw unemployment assistance, or farmers' dole, find themselves assessed for board and lodgings if they stay at home, and the amount of money they will qualify for is only a pittance. When money is paid out at that level — the amount of money paid out in recent years has been increased enormously — the Minister should look seriously at the return given for that. The Minister might look at and develop a system in any parish in rural Ireland where there are some portions of ground not being worked as they should be. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land lying fallow. Land is our most potentially productive resource and, through the co-op or some other system, something could be done to improve the potential output of much of such land.
One could take a typical rural parish and note all of the people drawing farmers' dole in such a parish. One could ask the people of the parish to look to see how there could be greater production from the land — I speak in terms of the number of fences that have to be repaired, the number of gates to be hung, the number of acres to be cleared of scrub, bushes and so on. The Department could provide a service for such farmers. ACOT will lay out the various plans that must be undertaken for the development of an individual farm, whether by way of drainage, land reclamation, reseeding or whatever. If that plan were undertaken in respect of each parish, farmers drawing dole in any of those parishes would be only too willing to give some assistance towards its implementation because it would be in their interest. Also it would give people a sense of pride in what they were doing rather than continuously signing on the line and being handed money for nothing. The farmers who at present draw such dole money would see the value of having the potential productivity of their land increased with help from other farmers and from Government agencies. There would be an intrinsic value for everybody concerned as a result of increased productivity from the land. That is merely an idea from which endless conclusions can be drawn. I would ask the Minister to examine that matter within his Department, to discuss it with the relevant authorities, examine the various options open to him in regard to improving the productivity of our land.
One might well ask: what will the Minister do with these £25 million extra in land bonds? The value of land has fallen in recent years. For example, if he were to acquire land at £1,000 per acre, he would acquire approximately 25,000 acres; if he were to acquire land at £2,000 an acre he would acquire approximately 12,500 acres. Therefore we can assume that, on average, this £25 million in land bonds should acquire approximately 10,000 acres of land. That is not the amount of the land the Land Commission should be acquiring in a year; they should be acquiring much more than that. The section 40 notice is issued for land acquisition initially. Then the process continues until eventually the land is vested in the Land Commission. Perhaps the Minister in replying would indicate how many thousands of acres are in the pipeline for division, that is the amount of land in respect of which section 40 notices have been served but which have not yet been vested in the Land Commission. That would give us some indication of how much work must be undertaken by the Land Commission in the distribution and/or allocation of that land.
The fact that land bonds have not held their value on disposal in many cases over the years has led to a strong reaction on the part of people who have had to give up land under that system. I know the Government answer always has been that it would require massive borrowing in order to facilitate farmers by way of cash in return for the acquisition of their land. Certainly it would be much more attractive to farmers to do it that way. However, I know that the financial constraints imposed on the Department and indeed the Government at present will limit that possibility in the foreseeable future. But it is a matter that must be faced up to. If the Department and the Land Commission want to render the latter an attractive body for the disposal of land, then they must give farmers cash for their land, allowing them to dispose of it as they wish afterwards.
Deputy Noonan mentioned the farmers retirement scheme. I think less than 600 farmers have availed of that scheme since its inception. Deputy Noonan was quite right when he said that this scheme has not been successful. Indeed it should either be abolished or reintroduced in a new form, making it more attractive to farmers. One aspect of that scheme has been that a farmer could not give the land to his son under the scheme as it operates at present whereas his counterpart in some other European countries can do so. The Minister should ensure that that scheme is either totally revamped or introduce some alternative, making it much more attractive for people to dispose of their land.
The amount of land lying fallow at present does the country no credit. We have the potential in our soil to greatly increase productivity. We have also the possibility, by way of the various EEC schemes obtaining, to ensure that land at present not in productive use can be brought into some semblance of production. The channelling of those moneys through to the soil rather than having it wasted in administration and bureaucracy, either through the EEC or the various agencies of the Department, must also be examined by the Minister. There is no point in having £300 million available for the development of ten counties if a minute proportion only finds its way into actively promoting the productivity of the land for which it was intended initially, resulting in an increase in income to the farmers concerned.
I wish the Minister well in his new role. Certainly he has a complex problem on hand with regard to the Land Commission. Various Deputies on this side of the House over the years have spoken about the matter of land bonds, about the Land Commission and what they considered should be done about them. The Land Report has been produced. I am not aware that the headings of the relevant Bill have been drafted. That may take some considerable time. The various agencies involved will have to discuss those headings before anything else is done.
I want to pay the Minister's Department a tribute and thank them for the special allocation made, in conjunction with the Department of Finance, in respect of Ballinafad Agricultural College in my county which I trust will prove of great benefit in the years to come. The ideas inherent in the type of development envisaged there, through the co-operative system, with the assistance of various other organisations, will create a new era in so far as agricultural colleges are concerned. I want to compliment the Minister on having seen to it that that will be allowed continue.