Those who are on the land at present with uneconomic farms must continue to have first claim on the available pool of land. Therefore, we cannot divert land, money and effort away from this problem to accommodate landless farmers' sons or farm workers' sons, however deserving these classes may be. Landless men are not statutorily debarred from consideration at present but in practice there is not sufficient land to accommodate them when the prior requirements of the relief of congestion are satisfied. The Senator who suggested that we were tied up in some way with an ancient and outmoded provision of an alien Government in this issue is in error.
We are tied up with the realities and in cutting our cloth to measure under the 1923 Land Act. The basis of this whole business is section 31 of the Act which provides, in regard to advances, what persons or bodies may receive them. Subsection (1) says that advances can be made to a person being the tenant or proprietor of a holding which is not economic in the opinion of the Land Commission. It goes on to deal with the exchange of holdings and with the eviction of tenants under the 1903 Act and to provide for "a person being a labourer who by reason of the sale of any lands under the provisions of the Land Purchase Acts has been deprived of his employment on the said lands."
Let me pause here before coming to the final section. Some speakers who have been advocating this issue should remember that under the Land Act, 1950 it was provided for the first time that instead of giving holdings to people who were workers and who were displaced where an estate was divided, could be compensated and the compensation was scaled from £80 to a couple of hundred pounds. That was written into the 1950 Act in respect of these landless men who were displaced where estates were acquired by the Land Commission. There was a substantial case for doing that because, irrespective of what some people may think, it was found in practice that where such men did get holdings they made very poor use of them and in a short time sold them.
Finally, under this section of the 1923 Act—I should like to make this clear—the classes whom the Land Commission can consider when dividing land include "any other person or body to whom in the opinion of the Land Commission an advance ought to be made". Therefore, under existing law, without any amendment such as this, the Land Commission are quite free if it is so decided, or if it is decided as a matter of national policy to give land to landless men where land is being divided. It would be completely unrealistic, however, not to point out that if you bring in any new classes and get away from the fundamental job which the Land Commission have of relieving congestion you are going to slow it up and perpetuate the land slum problem which it is our duty to try to solve.
For every landless man, farmer's son, tradesman's son, cottier, or all those other classes which it has been suggested should be provided with land, that you accommodate you are going to leave three or four people in the congested areas in misery and want. That is what Senators should realise when debating this problem. I know it is very nice to suggest for public consumption that we can be all things to all men and I am sure it is quite popular to go down to some crossroads, as suggested by some Senator, and propose that everybody in the area from the cottier's son, the farmer's son and the labourer's son, are all entitled to land when it is going. That, however, is being completely unrealistic in dealing with the problem we have.
Some Senator, I think it was Senator Quinlan, suggested we have 80,000 congests. I do not quite accept that figure. We are trying to get an accurate figure because many of these people have other occupations. Indeed, some of these cottiers are tradesmen or have other occupations and do not derive their livelihood solely or mainly or even at all from land usage. I would suggest that the figure is more in the region of 50,000 because Senators will realise that a lot of consolidation has gone on down the years. In many instances the one farmer has three or four demand notes on different sections of land and in many instances a lot of people in the category that statistics show as having between one and 15 acres or under 30 acres are shopkeepers or tradesmen and are not, in fact, uneconomic holders as a casual or uncritical look at the statistics would lead one to believe. Even assuming that the figure is approximately 50,000, that would indicate that if we are going to solve the problem it is completely unrealistic to suggest that there is land or a hope of getting sufficient land not alone to deal efficiently with these people but to provide for all other categories.
I might also remind the House that there have been, and rightly so, millions of pounds devoted to the solution of this problem down through the years and at present we are providing approximately £3 million a year to try to make an impact on the problem and enlarge these holdings. There are good social reasons for that expenditure but when you come to the farmer's son, particularly the substantial farmer's son, there is as much reason in my view for presenting him with a State gift of £7,000 or £8,000 worth of land at the taxpayer's expense as there is for providing for the shoemaker's son, the small shopkeeper's son, the small tradesman's son or people in many other occupations.
Those who say that there is an exodus from the land and that we are arriving at the stage where nobody is interested in getting it should have my experience for one week in my Department. There is a fantastic love of land ingrained in our people, a fantastic demand for land and for additions of land, day in, day out, week in, week out. Exodus from the land occurs only where the units are so small that the people could not possibly survive in this day and age on those units. It is true, of course, that you have people up and down the country who are in many cases not farmers' sons yet who do succeed in making a living by taking land in conacre for grazing and so forth even after they have paid high rents for that land.
There is no doubt that there are many landless men who would make good use of farms if they could get them. Such people are not confined to the south, the east, the west or the north: you will find them all over the country in every county; you will see them in every parish in rural Ireland.
It depends on the individual, on his drive, initiative and skill. Just as you would see the young man, born on a little holding whose valuation is no more than £2 or £3, by his efforts and ability enabling himself to acquire the land of his neighbour—the type of person whom we in my part of the country call the western lachico— becoming comparatively wealthy by our standards, you will see in the same parish, perhaps, a man born on a hundred acre holding ar seachrán and in debt, without the sign of a spud or a head of cabbage within miles of his home.
Those of us who live in rural Ireland know it depends on the individual concerned, on his ability to work the land intelligently and make a living in that way. The only place in respect of which a special case for landless people exists is Donegal where they have a peculiar system which, to my knowledge, one does not come across in any other part of the country. I suppose the people in Donegal are genuinely allied to each other: they will not migrate even from one side of the county to the other. Many of them, down through four or five generations, have existed by taking lettings of land and intensively cultivating it. Generally speaking, they would not be tempted to avail of the Land Commission's migration schemes in the same way as people would be in other congested areas.
In the Dáil and elsewhere very strong pleas have been made to me to deal with such cases in which the Land Commission were concerned. In principle, those people come under the subsection of the 1923 Act to which I have referred—the provision dealing with labourers who have been deprived of employment because of the acquisition of the estates on which they worked. That idea could be applied to the people in the Lagan Valley who, down through the generations, have been taking lettings for intensive cultivation.
In other counties, in many isolated instances, you will find communities of people in the same situation, and in the Dáil some Deputies made a strong case for such people, particularly in the southern dairying areas where, traditionally, families have been keeping a number of cows on land taken in lettings for the supply of milk to creameries and who have for generations been making a living in that way.
At all events, I hope I have made it clear that as the law stands there is nothing to prevent the Land Commission from giving land to landless men but, as Senator Yeats pointed out, a question of priorities exists if we are to solve the congestion problem. The Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission were established to deal with the congestion problem down through the years and Land Acts have all been sincerely aimed at dealing with that problem. It is for the same purpose that this Bill is before the House.
In my view it would not be only unrealistic but dishonest on my part to suggest that there is a hope of providing holdings of such a scarce commodity as land for all the categories which, it has been pleaded, should be dealt with. In the congested areas, where one person is dealt with several others will be left unrelieved. The Land Commission have no rule entitling cottiers to five acres, to three acres or to two acres: they are entitled to get only as much as the Land Commission have to give.
There have been some instances in the past and up to quite recently of cowparks being provided. That does not work nowadays. Cowparks are provided now only where county councils are prepared to take over their management. In other instances accommodation plots have been given to cottiers, to labourers and to others in different walks of life who live not too far away from the land to be divided. Generally speaking, while some of those people who get such plots may make good use of the land, in the vast majority of cases they are people whose way of life is not associated with the utilisation of land.
As time goes on, this question of land user—it is not a proper subject for debate here—will come more and more into play in this country. Already, where migrants are concerned, the question of their ability to use land and their records on their own holdings are taken into consideration by the Government. In these days the question of sending young people to agricultural colleges and of the tie-up with the agricultural committees' advisory services arises. Where land is being divided in an area the person whose record for land user is good will get priority over his less industrious neighbour.
The farm apprenticeship scheme was not turned down by the Government, as I understood Senator Quinlan to allege. It was accepted and I happened to be on a sub-committee which had discussions on it with the NFA. It was accepted by those concerned, including Dr. Duffy, that it was completely wrong to expect the Land Commission to provide holdings for that scheme. Dr. Duffy realised that if you had the son of a farmer with 150 or 200 acres getting a holding from the Land Commission at the expense of local congests, such an individual, as we say in the west, would be eaten without salt. They themselves accepted the scheme, to which the Government are contributing, for farm apprenticeship. I wish them every success with it.
If some other Minister or some other Parliament decides we can wipe out the primary concern of our nation by the solution of the congestion problem, then that Parliament can provide that it should be national policy to take over land for the purpose of giving it to landless men, farmers' sons, trades-men's sons, cottiers, cottiers' sons and all these other categories. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must realise that the sole problem of the Land Commission is to relieve congestion and we must cut our cloth according to our measure. Our national aim must be to deal as quickly as possible with the relief of the remaining congestion in the country. That cannot be done if we widen the scope to include all the categories it is suggested should be considered for land by the Land Commission. Without any amendment of this kind, the law is there, should some Minister for Lands in his wisdom decide that the Land Commission should give land to the categories advocated by the mover of this amendment.