This Bill is designed to furnish the Land Commission with new and improved powers to be used in an accelerated drive to build up the basic farm structure of this country wherever necessary to conform to modern requirements.
Before dealing with this measure in any detail, I would like to fill in the background by drawing attention to two developments of recent years which are very relevant to this question of farm structure.
First, we had the Government's decision that land reform must be based on the maintenance of our traditional family farm pattern but that in this day and age the family farm must be capable of yielding a standard of living comparable with that available to similar families engaged in nonagricultural employment. This led to the decision in favour of the 40/45 acre standard.
In making this choice, we were looking into the future and trying to visualise a unit which would be adequate to maintain a family in comfort under the intensified competitive conditions which we will have to face in future. I know that arguments can be made in favour of even larger units of, say, 50 or 60 acres but the available pool of land is limited and our aim is to do the best we can for the greatest number. We all know that there are far too many farmers in Ireland for whom the possession of even a 40-acre farm is still a distant prospect.
Furthermore, it would be foolish to overlook the fact that, in certain districts, intensification and specialisation rather than physical enlargement is the answer to the problem of the small farm. A recent publication on Agrarian Reform by the International Labour Office of Geneva says: "In all parts of the world agrarian reforms, or broadly conceived programmes aimed at improving the agrarian structure, are being implemented or discussed. In the more advanced countries the main emphasis is on making such modifications as are required to enable incomes in agriculture to become more comparable with those in other sectors".
I wish to state clearly that it is into that progressive segment our programme is being fitted.
Next, I wish to refer to the fact that, by and large, too many of the farms of Ireland—for a variety of reasons— stand vacant and let. Often the reason is that the owner began by taking employment abroad for a limited period and then extended his stay until he became a virtually permanent absentee. In some cases the land was left in the hands of ageing people and now that they have died, there are no young people prepared to uproot themselves from city life and come back to farming. The Small Farms Report published a few years ago drew attention to the problem of these vacant and let lands and I have felt it my duty to ensure, by introducing amending legislation, that the Land Commission will be fully empowered to deal with it.
There is no intention on the part of the Government deliberately to reduce the number of families engaged in farming so as to bring about some arbitrary increase in the average size of a farm. Our aim, in fact, is to achieve economic progress through social justice. We want to establish sound economic family units which will quite naturally retain an adequate and contented population on the land. But in order to achieve this we must find means to take up vacant and underworked land, so that it may be used in the building up of viable units.
These are some of the general considerations which influenced me when the Bill was being drawn up. In addition, as a solicitor with considerable experience of land matters, I felt that there were many ways in which Land Commission procedures could be speeded up with benefit to all concerned. The Bill accordingly includes a substantial number of minor reforms which should all contribute towards accelerating the essential job of land structure reform. I say "essential" because I do not see how we can have really good agriculture if we have a major problem of structural reform; nor can our agricultural industry really prosper if tens of thousands of the people engaged in it are underemployed on under-sized units.
I shall now outline briefly all the main points in the Bill. I should like also to draw attention to the fact that the explanatory memorandum on the Bill has been revised to coincide with the text as it now comes before this House.
I think that sections 1, 2 and 3 call for no particular comment and that section 4 is the first item on which I should speak. It is necessary to define "congested areas" for the purposes of two subsequent sections in the Bill and Senators who are familiar with the land code will have noticed that in furnishing a definition, I have used as starting point the "congested districts" of the old Congested Districts Board.
The Second Schedule is in fact a recital of the list of the counties and rural districts given in section 46, sub-section (1) of the Irish Land Act, 1909. But there are other parts of the country which by modern standards must also be regarded as substantially congested, and so that justice may be done to genuinely congested areas whether north, south, east or west, section 4 contains machinery for the making of Ministerial Orders declaring further areas to be congested areas for the purpose of sections 5 and 7. I have in mind that after the enactment of this Bill the Land Commission inspectors will carry out local surveys and submit reports on which a series of such Ministerial Orders will be based. Having regard to the many variable factors involved, we have tried to provide—in subsection (2)—a reasonably elastic formula for determining where congestion exists.
Section 5 provides the basic authority for the introduction of a scheme for the making of loans to progressive farmers in congested areas who are willing to migrate themselves but who lack the necessary capital. Details of this scheme have yet to be finalised but the general pattern is outlined in the White Paper. The procedure used in purchasing the old holding will be that followed under the cash purchase provisions of the 1950 Act—almost exactly the same as in a sale between private persons. When the applicant comes to take over his new holding from the vendor, the Land Commission will be ready to enter into possession of his old holding, pay him at once for it in cash and make available to him the loan. In the typical case, too, the applicant will be taking over existing buildings; he will not have to wait for the erection of new ones as in the case of normal migration.
I should make it clear also that this new scheme, which we might refer to as the "self-migration" scheme, will be in addition to and not in substitution for the current schemes for long-distance, short-distance and local migration which have been in operation for many years.
Section 6 provides authority for an entirely new scheme under which the Land Commission will pay for land by way of life annuity as an alternative to a capital sum and it is designed for the farmer who is no longer able to work his land to full advantage. Where an elderly bachelor owns a farm, or an ageing couple who have no children to succeed them, the tendency is that the land becomes less and less intensively worked. Even where the standard of farming does not notoriously decline, it may be found that it suffers a relative decline through the lack of incentive and the will of the owner to keep abreast of the times. In such a case, it is clearly in the national interest that the owner should be persuaded to allow the lands to pass on to more active hands. But an elderly countryman is not usually prepared to uproot himself and to face into, say, the noisy life of a big town. It seems to me, at all events, that he would more often be prepared to settle for a secure income, a quiet life in his own home in accustomed surroundings and, perhaps, a few roods of garden such as he would be able to tend in his declining years. This is the basic approach of section 6.
Subsection (1) is framed on the assumption that the farmer is willing to sell his land to the Land Commission for cash. If he is, say, 65 years of age or if he is younger but incapacitated, he may obtain an offer of a life annuity, as an alternative to cash. Depending on his own needs and prejudices he may choose either form of payment or, within reasonable limits, a combination of the two. Most often, I should imagine, he will want some hundreds of pounds in cash to meet immediate commitments and he will ask that the remainder be paid on a life-annuity basis. Under subsection (2) there will be a prescribed table of annuities based on life expectancy by which the amount of his life annuity will be established. Such annuity will, in the typical case, be substantially greater than the annual amount which could be got if, say, the vendor had been paid in land bonds; and had retained them as an investment.
It will be noted that subsection (3) provides for "primary" and "secondary" annuities; for married couples this provision is compulsory. I have given careful thought to the question whether the owner of the land should not be given freedom to choose between this double annuity and a once-for-all annuity which would die with him or her. On balance, I have decided that it would be wrong for a State agency to deal with a man on the basis that he would take all for himself and leave nothing for his widow if he should be the first to die.
In the case of the elderly owner who has reached or is approaching the age for a non-contributory old age pension, the scheme will carry the special attraction that the first £3 per week of a Land Commission life annuity based on the purchase price will not reckon for means test purposes. This concession is not mentioned in the Land Bill because it will be dealt with separately under a Social Welfare Bill.
I have given special consideration to the case of the incapacitated man who is by no means elderly and who has a full expectation of life for the reason that the injury or illness which incapacitates him is not such as would hasten death. On a strictly actuarial basis, such a man would be likely to obtain a very small life annuity, perhaps half or one-third of what an elderly man might get for the same property. Accordingly, it is intended that the regulations to be made under subsection (5) (a) should provide for a special additional allowance to be paid to the incapacitated owner from the date of sale until the date he becomes eligible for the old age pension. This will not be part of the life-annuity, which will in every case be calculated strictly in accordance with subsection (2).
Initially I had intended to confine the system of primary and secondary annuities to the most obvious case of the husband and wife but I found there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the scheme as a whole and a widely-held opinion that the secondary annuity should be available for other dependants. Accordingly, in subsection (4) we now have a provision under which a dependent member of the vendor's family may be nominated by him and is then brought within the arrangement for primary and secondary annuities.
Section 7 provides that in the future the halving of annuities will not be conceded to allottees of enlargements, cottiers and other persons in non-congested areas. The existing concession will continue to apply in the case of all allotments in congested areas and in the case of holdings allotted to migrants in the non-congested areas.
Section 8 deals with a doubt which has arisen regarding the Lay Commissioners' powers to summon witnesses to attend at hearings. This power, incidentally, is rarely needed. The real difficulty arises from the fact that a power to summon is of little use if there is not also a power to punish non-compliance. Accordingly, subsections (1) to (3) set up machinery for summoning and examining witnesses and subsection (4) provides that persons guilty of non-attendance or obstruction may be referred to the High Court.
Section 9 simply confirms that a local authority has power to contribute voluntarily towards the cost of Land Commission works from which the local authority derives benefit.
The next two sections deal with maintenance of improvement works and rates on vacant buildings. The provisions are fully explained in the White Paper and it is scarcely necessary to elaborate on them at this stage; in fact they are for relief of local authorities.
Section 12 is of importance because it introduces the idea of a uniform control over the sub-division, letting and subletting of all agricultural land. Under the existing law, in various Acts between 1870 and 1936, the majority of owners of agricultural holdings are obliged to obtain the consent of the Land Commission if they desire to sub-divide or make lettings of their lands. There are a number of exceptions to this requirement, for example, holdings sold under the Land Acts before the Land Act, 1923 are subject to sub-division control only while the purchase annuity is payable. The Land Commission's control over the fragmentation of holdings, therefore, has a very incomplete and patchwork pattern.
The proposition in the section is that there should be uniform control in all cases whether the lands were or were not purchased under the Land Acts; without such uniformity, much of the work of land reform could be impeded or frustrated. Senators will accept, I think, that landowners must not themselves be free arbitrarily to recreate the conditions which we are striving so hard to undo.
As this section has apparently been misunderstood in some quarters, I should like to emphasise that it is simply a matter of unifying and rationalising one part of the Land Acts. The principle it enshrines has been accepted for very many years and it has been applied to all holdings dealt with by the Land Commission under the Land Act of 1923 and all subsequent Acts. I will concede that for many landowners it will mean that where heretofore they were subject to sub-division control for a limited number of years, they will hereafter be subject to such control for an indefinite period. On the other hand, subsection (2) contains a safeguard against arbitrary refusal of consent to sub-division which was not a feature of any of the older sections. Accordingly I cannot see that the section represents any undue interference with property rights. Above all I would emphasise that conacre and grazing lettings on the 11-month system will remain outside this control.
Section 13 is one of the most important provisions in this Bill. It is designed to counteract any deliberate obstruction by way of sale etc., to compulsory acquisition proceedings by the Land Commission. Such attempts at deliberate obstruction are not uncommon and not only do they cause confusion when they occur but they may ultimately result in the proceedings being defeated to the lasting detriment of deserving neighbouring small-holders. It is considered unreasonable that a landowner with a bad ownership record should be able to frustrate the land settlement plans of the Land Commission for a particular locality just by effecting a quick secret sale of the property. The section accordingly provides a system of control on dealings in lands in respect of which the Land Commission have issued a notice of proposed inspection or have begun acquisition proceedings by publishing a provisional list. The period of control following notice of inspection will normally be three months but sub-section (2) contains provision for the imposition of an extended control over another three months' period by special order of the Commissioners.
In many proceedings under the Land Acts, the Land Commission find it necessary to appoint limited administrators to enable dealings to be carried out in relation to lands of deceased persons but over the years the Land Commission and the Land Registry have found that the existing powers in this type of case are deficient in a number of ways. Section 14 is designed to overcome all these difficulties by introducing a new concept of a Land Commission nominee who will represent all parties with interests in a holding. The nominee will normally be the person in effective control of the holding, whether as principal or as agent. There will be legal power to deal with this nominee as if he were the owner, for all purposes except the distribution of purchase money. This procedure will facilitate the completion of the Land Commission proceedings without disturbing the various legal interests in the property.
The traditional system of judicial allocation of purchase moneys followed in the Land Commission has much to recommend it from the point of view of safeguarding the interests of all concerned in a property but it was originally designed to deal with the large tenanted estates which existed at the turn of the century and it often seems a slow and cumbersome machine for dealing with the smaller and simpler type of properties now being dealt with. With a view to expediting this branch of the Land Commission's work, sections 15 and 16 provide for:
(1) the delegation of decision functions to Examiners of Title in the Land Commission and
(2) the authorisation of acceptance of a shorter root of title than heretofore.
So that Examiners may not be inhibited from exercising these enlarged powers, section 17 provides an indemnity for them against actions which parties aggrieved by bona fide decisions might otherwise take. Similar statutory indemnity has always been available to the Public Trustee under the Land Acts. There will be a right of appeal from the Examiners' decisions to the Judicial Commissioner.
Section 18 provides a simple machinery by which game rights which have not been exercised for upwards of 12 years will lapse. This measure will be especially useful where former landlords to whom rights were reserved under the early Land Acts have left the country and their successors cannot readily be traced. It is envisaged that if a farmer wants to have the exclusive game rights over his own lands and if the rights reserved on sale under the Land Purchase Acts have not been exercised for 12 years, he will submit to the Registrar of Titles the necessary proof of non-user. If, because of a valid counter-claim, it appears that the reserved rights have in fact been kept alive, the application under this section will fail but, once the owner of the rights has made himself known, the acquisition of the rights by the landowner can then be dealt with under section 34, Land Act, 1933, or section 39, Land Act, 1936. Thus there will exist comprehensive machinery for dealing with all owners of reserved game rights whether known or unknown. Incidentally, it is intended that the Land Commission themselves should use this section to divest themselves of reserved sporting rights in appropriate cases.
Sections 19, 21, 22 and 23 are all aimed at correcting technical flaws in the existing machinery of resale and revesting. They are explained rather well, I think, in the White Paper and since I cannot deal with them at any length without becoming involved in considerable technical detail, I propose, if Senators have no objection, to await questions on any aspect of these sections which may cause any difficulty.
Section 20 is a novel item which calls for some explanation. Broadly speaking the existing Land Acts, in so far as they deal with rights of way, are concerned with the question of providing access to agricultural land for the purpose of working it. This new proposal is that the Land Commission should have power to create rights of way to rivers, lakes and the sea and furthermore that they should be able to create rights to park vehicles and to moor, anchor or beach boats.
Section 24 provides for adjustments in land finance accountancy to meet some of the effects of the Statute of Limitations, 1957. The Land Commission are in process of losing title to certain annuities, mainly payable in respect of island holdings, because of the operation of the Statute of Limitations. It is desirable to ensure that the resultant deficits will not fall to be borne by the ratepayers but will be defrayed, where necessary, out of central funds.
Section 25, dealing with consolidation of holdings, is the positive counterpart of section 12 which strengthens the power of the Land Commission to resist the fragmentation of agricultural holdings.
An occasional complaint made by vendors against the land bond system of payment is that, when interest rates are generally rising, a higher interest bearing series of land bonds may come into use in the interval between price-fixation and the vesting of the lands, but owing to the terms of the existing law, payment in such case had to be made in the lower interest bearing series. There is no doubt that some landowners in the past had a sense of grievance about this point but because of the stable interest rate of land bond series, for the past three years it has not been a practical problem. Section 26 will put the position right for the future. There is no question, of course, of penalising any landowner should the interest rate fall after price-fixation.
Section 27 and 29 are best considered together. The first makes it clear that it is legal to delegate to a senior inspector of the Land Commission the power to decide on having an inspection of lands with a view to possible acquisition; the second deals with the issue of the inspection notice to the landowner. The reason for these sections is that it is sometimes necessary for the Land Commission to inspect quickly—as when it is believed that an unsuitable sale is about to take place. I must emphasise, however, that the decision to start acquisition proceedings—as distinct from mere inspection —will still be a matter for decision by two Lay Commissioners of the Land Commission.
I now refer back to section 28. This section has been inserted at the request of the Minister for Finance and though it is not of great significance at the present day, I should perhaps give some brief account of its historical background. At the time of the passing of the Irish Land Act, 1903, it was recognised by the authorities of the time that Trinity College, Dublin, would suffer partial losses of income through the redemption under the Land Purchase Acts of superior interests owned by that college. Provision was made for an annual payment of £5,000 to offset such losses. That was section 39 of that Act. The £5,000 was payable to the Public Trustee and he used it to pay the college the amount of actual losses for each year; any surplus at the end of a year was invested by him to be used to cover losses in later years.
Under section 15 of the Land Act, 1923, the 1903 arrangement was abandoned and instead the College was paid a fixed sum of £3,000 per annum. The funds in the hands of the Public Trustee were handed over to the joint control of the Minister for Finance and an officer of the College. The matter has remained so for the past 40 years; mention of the £3,000 to which I have referred will be found in the current book of Estimates under Vote 34—Universities and Colleges— Subhead F2. The Minister for Finance is of the opinion that it is no longer necessary or desirable that he should exercise joint control over these funds and so the Act of 1923 is being amended in such a way as to leave the College in sole control. I should make it clear that all this relates only to the old accumulation of funds handed over in 1923; the disposal of the annual £3,000 has never been subject to the Minister's control.
Section 30 is designed to remove procedural difficulties which have arisen in the Land Registry in the recording of exchanges of holdings carried out by the Land Commission pursuant to section 46 of the Land Act, 1923.
Section 31 settles a very technical point about the precise manner in which valid claims for rates should be met out of purchase and compensation moneys. It confirms the procedure at present followed.
Sections 32 and 37 bring into conformity with monetary changes since 1931 the limits regulating the modified title requirements which under sections 35 and 38 of the Land Act, 1931, and section 52 of the Land Act, 1933, are to be applied in small purchase money and compensation cases. The limits set 30 years ago are much too small in terms of present day values.
Section 33 disposes of some awkward legal points which have arisen in relation to orders conferring and defining rights of way. Section 39 of the Land Act, 1931, in particular, has been found to be of much less widespread application than one would assume from a straightforward reading of it and it is hoped by introducing a re-wording of the unsatisfactory part of it to remedy the flaws found in it.
Reverting to the question of falling money values, we have in section 34 an upward adjustment of the figure in the 1833 Act related to the possible value of the alternative holding which must, in certain circumstances, be provided for the owner of lands acquired.
In section 35, with which section 42 is intimately associated, we come to a very important matter related to the acquisition and resumption of land. I have indicated earlier in this speech why the Land Commission must be provided with the means to deal with vacant and let lands. The law as it stands, and especially section 32 of the Land Act, 1933, is not very effective to deal with this problem because neither absenteeism nor repeated lettings on the 11-months system constitute, of themselves, a sound legal case for compulsory acquisition. Section 32 is chiefly relied upon in objections to compulsory acquisition since it provides a defence based on two "adequates," that is to say, adequate production and adequate employment. But it was established in a legal decision some years ago that these "adequates" did not necessarily have to be supplied by the owner of the land. If the land were let, the production achieved and the employment created by the efforts of the letting holders could be pleaded by the owner toward satisfying the requirements of the two "adequates" under existing law.
Very careful consideration was given to the idea of stipulating that the repeated letting of lands on a short term basis would be good grounds for acquisition by the Land Commission but eventually it was decided that this posed too many problems—especially on the question of proving the existence of a letting. Apart from these considerations, there is the difficulty that not all lettings are to be condemned. If we are to retain a reasonable balance in this matter, we must be prepared to make allowances for cases involving special family circumstances, for instance, the good farmer who falls seriously ill at sowing time, or the widow whose family are too young to work the farm. Accordingly it was decided that the realistic thing to do would be to proceed against lands on the grounds that they are vacant rather than because they are let. In other words, the absentee or non-resident has to be denied the benefit of the "adequates" defence, if the widespread problem is to be seriously tackled.
Another feature of the law on acquisition which causes concern is the fact that a man can use the adequates defence even though he has already indicated his intention to sell his lands. In my view, if a man no longer needs his lands for his own use and if they can be used for the relief of congestion, then they ought to be vulnerable—provided, of course, that market value is paid. This is not very different in principle from the "right of pre-emption" which is enjoyed by land reform bodies in other lands. Accordingly section 35 also provides that the defence of the adequates will not be available to the owner who has tried to sell his lands in the preceding year.
It has been argued that this section bears very heavily on various types of company but especially on "family companies" because they cannot always meet the residence qualification. There are two answers to this criticism. First, if the family company is a genuine one and the principal members of the family reside on the farm I am quite sure the Land Commission will never consider dispossessing them on a technicality. Secondly, and more important, if a special exemption were written in for the benefit of the family company I am quite sure that a great variety of landowners would convert themselves into family companies overnight for the sole purpose of having their lands immune from the attentions of the Land Commission. I should also like to draw attention to the fact that the definition given on page 17, lines 35 to 45, allows the Lay Commissioners when judging the issue of "residence" to make allowances for a great variety of temporary absences from home.
Of special interest, too, is the passage on page 16 of the Bill, lines 33 to 38, dealing with facilities for persons boating or fishing on lake, river or sea. This is the counterpart of the provision in section 20 for the creation of rights in favour of such persons. It is envisaged that in some instances it may be more satisfactory for all concerned to have the land acquired outright rather than have it left to the original owner but burdened by these rights.
Section 42 provides for the amendment of the law relating to resumption of unvested holdings so as to bring it into agreement with the law for acquisition of vested holdings.
Section 36 is another amendment to allow for the changing value of money. In this case, however, a specific financial limit, for certain expenditure on water courses, etc. is to be removed from the statute and replaced by a flexible system of administrative control.
Section 37 I have already dealt with in conjunction with section 32.
Section 38 deals with one other problem affecting the acquisition of vacant and let holdings. Section 38 of the Land Act, 1936, guarantees the immunity from acquisition of a newly-vested holding and this guarantee at present operates for seven years. It is proposed to cut this period from seven to two years.
Section 39 is intended to cover cases in which, following upon acquisition proceedings, landowners obstruct the Land Commission in taking over possession or, in extreme cases, re-enter into possession after the Land Commission have moved in. The purchase money is put to credit but the owner continues to act in such a way that the Land Commission suffer damages and loss of revenue, and also incur legal costs in dealing with him. The law permits of claims to recover many of these sums but it has been found to be deficient in some respects but most of all in relation to claims arising after the date of vesting, that is to say, principally in cases of re-entry.
Sections 40 and 43 improve certain aspects of the law relating to the sale of default holdings, the writing off of all or part of the arrears and the recovery of such arrears or part of them by way of advance to the new purchaser.
Section 41 rectifies a legal defect in the machinery for partitioning commonages. Its effect will be that burdens attaching to an undivided share will transfer fully to the appropriate divided share and will be re-registered in Land Registry accordingly.
It has been considered necessary under several headings, to expand the cash purchase provisions of the Land Act, 1950, that is to say, sections 27 and 28. In this Bill, the really significant item covering cash purchase is the second-last item in the Repeals Schedule. The removal of a small part of section 27 of the 1950 act will eliminate the narrow statutory restrictions on cash purchases which have confined them to lands required for migrants' holdings or for the rearrangement of fragmented holdings. This is not to say that all future acquisitions will be paid for in cash; the practical extent to which the expanded 1950 provisions will operate will have to be settled administratively from time to time.
Section 44 is a corollary to the repeal I have just dealt with. It will free the hands of the Land Commission in reselling lands on hands which were purchased under the narrower formula existing before the repeal.
Section 45 is an entirely new departure in the Land Acts—introducing as it does a form of absolute control over the purchase of farm land by non-nationals. It is necessarily quite a complicated section and there is a great deal of material in it. I am not at all sure that a long verbal exposition by me would be the best way of explaining its provisions in detail. In the explanatory memorandum, there is a summary, subsection by subsection, and I trust that Senators will find the White Paper helpful in following the scheme of the provisions.
The essence of the section, which is to be found in sub-section (2), is that only certain "qualified" persons and bodies may ordinarily acquire any interest in rural land. All others must seek the consent of the Land Commission.
To achieve this object in practice, it is laid down in subsection (3) that an instrument purporting to vest an interest in land must contain the evidence that the transferee or beneficiary is either qualified or is exempt from the control or has obtained the consent of the Land Commission.
The real check-point of the control system will in almost all cases be the Land Registry. It will not be possible for a purchaser of rural property to have his title registered unless he shows that he can satisfy the requirements of section 45. But even the right to become registered is "caught" by the section so that if an unqualified person tries to purchase a farm and delay registration he will be putting himself in an impossible position; the transaction will be null and void for want of Land Commission consent.
It has been my aim—while framing a system of strict control—to avoid, where possible, creating undue difficulties in relation to ordinary dealings between our own people. In pursuance of this policy, it is provided that the Land Commission's consent will not be needed in the case of purchase by the local authorities, the principal banks, semi-State bodies, charitable companies and various other persons and bodies who should receive the same treatment as nationals or who are, by their nature, unlikely to be used as a cover for secret purchases by non-nationals.
On the other hand, the ordinary commercial company will have to be subject to the general control. I am satisfied that it would not be practicable to exempt an Irish company or a mainly Irish company without creating a very big risk that non-nationals would find a means to obtain effective control of land by the manipulation of paper companies specially created to evade this law.
Other important features to which I invite attention are the machinery in subsection (4) for examining the affairs of suspected persons and, in subsections (6) and (7), the heavy penalties which will attach to the making of false statements and similar types of offences under the section. In general, however, it is expected that there will be no great need to make use of these penalty provisions. The section is tightly drawn and I think the prospects of successful evasion would be so poor that no foreigner would risk becoming entangled in it.
Section 46 is a minor amendment of the 1953 Act to facilitate the Land Commission work on exchanges and re-arrangements.
The first eight items in the Repeals Schedule are associated with the sub-division control to be set up under section 12 of the Bill. They represent the various parts of the older patchwork of control which is now being abandoned.
The ninth item is one with which I have dealt in speaking upon the general question of the purchase of land for cash.
The last item is very much a matter of technical detail. Part of section 15 of the Land Act, 1953, is listed for repeal because it will be rendered redundant by the wording of section 31 of this Bill.
This Bill has been carefully prepared and has been subjected to a very long scrutiny. I have not been slow to introduce amendments wherever I was persuaded that they were genuinely desirable. It is generally acknowledged that maldistribution and defects in the agrarian structure are impediments to the social and economic good: this Bill is framed against such impediments. It is a Bill which will be of great assistance to the Land Commission in carrying out their important work and I confidently recommend it to the Seanad.
