For the Senator's information, in many of these cases where it was found that there was vulnerability, under the powers being sought in the Bill in respect of where lands can be used or where it is desired they should be acquired for the relief of people in congested areas, there is a method of dealing with them in the Bill, which has been hung up by the Senator's Party in the Dáil since July, 1963. At all events, we have here in these sections provision for the first time to deal with this great national problem.
We have been warned by Senator Fitzpatrick and his friends that this Bill is a dangerous weapon. All this shadow-boxing has gone on by Senators and Deputies outside the House, pretending, on the one hand, to be concerned with the problem of the relief of congestion and, at the same time, suggesting that the powers being sought in this Bill would not be sought by a Hitler or a Khrushchev and designating me as the mover of the Bill as being in the same category.
The people concerned in the congested areas will realise where the sincerity lies—whether the Senator and his friends are suffering from political schizophrenia, whether they are trying to use the Bill as a bogeyman for the farmers in the east, or whether they are saying to the congest in the west that they can do things through the Land Bill which will benefit them. The real position came out when we had the appeal during the debate on the Schedule to the Bill to include a number of areas not set out in the Bill. That, I think, really let the political cat out of the bag.
Senator McAuliffe is concerned about what he calls the "double annuity". I dealt extensively with this matter on Committee Stage. It is incorrect to say that this is a double annuity. The proposition is that, in the non-congested areas, those benefiting as a result of the division of land should be prepared to pay the economic price. In other words, their annuity, stretching over a period of 60 years, will reimburse the taxpayer for the additions they get.
The Senator may not appreciate a very good point made by one speaker in relation to this proposition. It is that land will now be acquired by the Land Commission which they might not otherwise be able to acquire. When there was keen competition in a non-congested area in the past, and the Land Commission were not so concerned in the non-congested areas as they would be in the congested areas, they were frightened off because the price was too high, with the result that someone else got the land and the local people did not benefit. With the distinction made now in this particular section, many farms in the non-congested areas will be purchased by the Land Commission.
As I have told the House, I have received repeated representations from people in the congested areas, and also in the non-congested areas, telling me how happy they would be if the Land Commission would acquire lands in their particular areas and allow them, as they put it, to purchase the lands by way of annuity. These are people who assured me they were paying up to £20 and £25 for conacre. They assured me they would be very happy indeed if the Land Commission purchased whatever lands were available and divided them amongst them, thereby obviating the necessity to pay the high prices they were paying for conacre, to say nothing of its being made possible for them to purchase these additions to their holdings through the Land Commission.
I believe there is no comparison between the conditions in relation to people in the eastern counties and those in the land slums located in the counties set out in the Schedule, from the point of view of market, of value and living standards. I have put it on record that in the past there were two different standards for the people in the west and the people in the east. In the west the aim of the Land Commission was to build up towards £10 valuations. In very many instances they vested the small intermixed holding with a valuation of £3, £4 and £5 with holdings of £10 valuation and they wrote off the individual for all time for any further improvement or any further addition. There was a different standard in the counties which do not appear in the Schedule. In their case the Land Commission would help in relation to holdings of up to 30 or 33 acres of reasonably good land with a valuation of £30.
All down through the years, therefore, these people were in a far better position as compared with those with whom we are primarily concerned here. The people in the non-scheduled counties benefited and, generally speaking, I do not think that they should expect the same help now as those in the traditional land slums. On the other hand, where there is a really bad pocket of congestion in any of these non-congested counties, the remedy for that evil is contained in this Bill. There is provision to enable the Minister to apply the same schemes for the relief of their lot.
I pointed out earlier the danger of being misled by statistics, statistics which have been trotted out here. Exaggerated statements have been made about the decline in the farming population. One Senator did not hesitate to assert that the object of the Government is to reduce drastically the number of persons on the land. Where he got that idea I just do not know. It is also true that some people in the west seize on statistics in relation to the decline in numbers on small land units and they seek to imply that an equivalent number of families have left the land or gone abroad. I want now to show up the weaknesses in some of these arguments because they are, I feel, calculated to spread despondency everywhere. These statements are not, in fact, correct.
There is no doubt, and I do not seek to deny the position, that there has been here a movement away from the land, just as there has been a movement away from the land in other countries. When we are dealing with statistics, however, we should at least try to get as near as we can to the truth when interpreting them. The Land Commission have been working away steadily in an endeavour to keep our people on the land in a practical way by making it possible for them to earn a decent livelihood on the land. Everybody must realise, and I think it was Senator Sheldon who made the point, that you just cannot compel people to remain at anything if they do not wish to do so. It is a fact that in some cases people who have no economic reason for doing so go away from the land, just as they go away from other occupations. In this Bill the Government are seeking to give the Land Commission power to press on with the vital work with which they are concerned in the congested areas. Let me point out here that we are concerned with real people and not with mere statistics; we are concerned with small farmers.
I want now to give an example to show how misleading statistics can be. Any recent volume of the Statistical Abstract of Ireland can be used to demonstrate that there are about 350,000 agricultural holdings in the State, but that summary does not give any indication whether these units are residential or whether they are owned by farmers. In actual fact the number of farms occupied by persons whose main occupation is farming is only a little over 200,000. That figure has been established as a result of a special survey carried out in the last census of population as a result of a question inserted at my instigation. There is no point, therefore, in people talking about 350,000 holdings as if they represented 350,000 families. That is the interpretation broadcast by some people who, deliberately or otherwise, misinterpret the figures.
In very many cases, as has been pointed out, the land units have long been non-residential. In other cases, no doubt, they are held by townsmen, villagers, cottiers and others in receipt of non-farming incomes. Unfortunately very many of the holdings occupied by genuine farmers are still substandard and these must be assisted by the Land Commission to achieve a satisfactory status. By that I mean a status which will satisfy them and convince them they should stay at home. This is a slow and expensive business but it does achieve results.
In a typical year the Land Commission's work results in 100 new holdings, 500 re-arranged holdings and 1,000 enlarged holdings. By 1,000 enlargements, I do not mean bog additions; I mean genuine substantial enlargements. In some cases the Land Commission cannot give as big an addition as they would like, but in the great majority of cases I have mentioned, totalling 1,600 per year, the particular farming families concerned have been advanced or promoted from uneconomic to economic status. There is a real hope that these people will survive on the land. It is for the purpose of allowing them to survive on the land that this Bill is before Seanad Éireann.
Now I must refer to those people — well meaning no doubt — who complain of the loss of 600 small holdings per year in my own county of Mayo. This piece of statistical work is readily traceable to the figures given in the Statistical Abstract in relation to the years 1955 and 1960. It is clear to me that these people have made no adjustments for the number of holdings too small to be seriously counted as farms, £2 valuations and so on; the number occupied by non-farmers, which would be quite considerable; and the number vacated many years ago but only recently sold. There is also the number of cases in which several of these units — this is shown in the statistics — are in the ownership of the one individual. If such adjustments were made, we might be able to get this matter into proper perspective. It is desirable that we should do so.
On the positive side, I should like to draw attention to the change which took place in the number of medium-sized holdings in my own county of Mayo in the same statistical period, and indeed throughout the country. In my own county in the 30 to 50 acre group, there was a rise of nearly 400, and in the 50 to 100 acre group, there was another rise of the same order. In Mayo 50 or 60 acres of land could be included in that group which in Kildare or Westmeath would not be regarded by the people there as land at all.
Allowing for some private consolidation, I still assert that these increases represent the solid achieivements of the Land Commission in bringing real smallholders up to real economic status. I firmly believe that these enlarged farms will survive and, indeed, are surviving. In addition, it must be remembered some of the smallholders of Mayo are migrated each year to new holdings in the east. They drop out of the smallholding statistics, not because they have failed, but because they have been advanced to full economic status elsewhere. You have to take these factors into account when studying these statistics. If anybody swallows them without digesting them, they can easily arrive at some fantastic results.
The object here, however, in the congested areas is to create units that will sheet-anchor, if we can, a contented population on the land and also to achieve the very necessary objective mentioned by Senator Sheldon — to get the land back into production. Some people have been good enough to suggest that the Government's motive behind this Bill is to clear the people off the land. The people are coming off a lot of the land that will come into the Land Commission machine under this Bill, but it is not this Bill that is driving these people away, nor is it I. These people have gone because of the utterly hopeless task of endeavouring to survive on the small, uneconomic units they held in these areas.
For many years, where these people have gone, these pieces of land have been left. Everybody knows that possibly the worst system of land user in the world is achieved through our 11-months letting system, which is designed to encourage what I would call the lessee to take everything out of that land and put nothing into it. He fears, if he makes any improvements, that in 11 months or next year or the year afterwards his neighbour may get the benefit of these improvements. He knows that his neighbour, because of the land hunger in the area, may endeavour to get at the owner in England or America to get hold of these vacant acres. Anybody driving through any of the congested counties can pick out many of these holdings by their very appearance. It does not take any expert or any CAO to recognise that these are lands that have been neglected for many years. I hope in many of these cases these lands will now come into the land pool of the Land Commission and will be brought back into productivity, into good heart, and will enable those people who are prepared to work their land to live at home in at least frugal comfort.
Unless we are able to achieve something of that kind in the congested areas, there will indeed be very many more vacant holdings there. I am not persuaded in any way here, nor have I changed my mind, in regard to some different form of land user which, where you have such small units, would enable these people to survive or would entice them back. I have said, and I repeat, that those who say these people, no matter what jobs they are in in other parts of the world, will come back and live in the congested areas in poverty on valuations of £3 or £4, are simply fooling themselves. They are utterly divorced from the reality of conditions in rural Ireland. Our conditions and standards of living here are rising year by year. Indeed, I believe the tendency will be, unless somthing unforeseen happens, for these standards to go higher.
In the congested areas today, they are not prepared to accept the standards of living not alone of their grandfathers but even of their fathers. Many of the holdings to which I have referred originated in the Famine times. The fragmentation that went on resulted in a system which forced them to exist at starvation level. These units are utterly unrealistic as units upon which to live or survive in modern conditions. Anybody who does not recognise these fundamental facts is not familiar with conditions in the congested areas nor indeed with conditions in rural Ireland as a whole.
Senator Quinlan suggested that Land Commission activity is merely a fringe activity. If that is the Senator's view, it is the best indication of how little he knows of the work of the Land Commission in the congested areas and in rural Ireland generally. Everybody knows that there is no greater demand on Deputies, Senators and public representatives than to get the Land Commission to move quickly to come to the aid of the people concerned in these areas. We hope, under the new provisions of the Bill, to revolutionise the precedent we have in the Land Commission for the purpose of increasing the land pool and bringing quick relief to those concerned. With this in view, and in preparation for the new powers sought to enable the Land Commission to meet the challenge in this day and age, the Dáil and Seanad have already passed the Land Bond Bill of 1964 providing an extra £10 million in land bonds for this purpose.
In reply to suggestions by some Senators that there should be a quick movement in their particular areas when the Bill is passed, the provision of £10 million in land bonds for the purpose of the acquisition of land is over and above the annual provision of approximately £3 million which is passed by the Dáil to cover such things as cash purchases, improvement works, revision of annuities, travelling, and all the multitudinous things that come under the Department of Lands.
There has been a vast increase in the activity of the Land Commission in recent years. I have put the figures for this vast increase in Land Commission activities on record here in dealing with allocations made on the Committee Stage of the Bill. The fact is that a vastly greater amount of money is being provided today than used to be provided; a vastly greater amount of activity and expansion is going on and a vast amount of more land is being acquired than ever was acquired for the purpose we have in mind. It is my hope, and these sections are designed to ensure, that there will be a still further very substantial increase in Land Commission activities in future years.
The new provisions of the Bill, upon which there has been so little comment outside, and so little understanding, should have a most significant impact on increasing the land pool and in providing for the relief of congestion, particularly in the congested areas. There are also the new self-migrant loans to enable landowners to solve their congestion problems, the new life annuities as an inducement to old or incapacitated landowners to part with their land for the good of the neighbours and the new social welfare inducements whereby Land Commission payments will be exempt for old age pensions purposes. There is extension of the cash purchase facilities to enable the Land Commission to buy land for cash at any auction, not in the restricted sense as the law was under the 1950 Act, and a new speeding up and streamlining to enable the Land Commission to move in quickly where there is a viable holding for the purpose of relieving local congestion.
All these powers and new inducements should have a quick effect and an impact on the solution of the land slum problem in the areas scheduled here and should generally bring the Land Commission machine, its powers and responsibilities up to date. These are the powers Senators in this House and Deputies in the Dáil have been criticising. While suggesting that this is an urgent problem and, as some Senators said, perhaps measures of this kind have come 30 years too late, I do not think that cock will fight any more outside the confines of this House. Some Senators have tried to represent that the powers being sought here are being sought for one purpose and for one purpose only, and that is, to harass the working farmers. I think the people are now getting wise to the game that has been played on this Bill.
At all events, this is the Final Stage of the Bill and I have no doubt that, irrespective of what Minister for Lands may occupy this office, any Minister for Lands will be enabled with these powers to make a substantial contribution to the relief of congestion throughout the length and breadth of this land, and not alone in the congested areas. The congested areas are the first mentioned in the Bill. The Land Commission staff must be increased and the Commission machine must be geared to operate the new powers provided under the Bill. All that will take organisation and time. I have, at all events, indicated to the House that this organisation is going on. I have shown that the Government were not afraid to tackle this admittedly difficult problem — be it late or early — and we have, in fact, already made the financial provision to enable this great national work to go ahead. I trust the fears created outside the Dáil and Seanad in the hearts of susceptible and credulous farmers will quickly be buried once the Bill comes into operation. I trust also those concerned in the congested areas will place the blame squarely where it should be placed and where it should lie in regard to many of those farms which escaped the Land Commission in one way or another since June, 1963.
I am satisfied that the Bill will have a dramatic impact. It will alleviate, at least, if not relieve, the lot of the people in the congested areas. It will go some distance, at least, so far as Government help can go, in consolidating a solid rural population on the land in the congested areas and throughout rural Ireland.
