Is it the State that is to pay these costs? I would like to assure the House that a considerable amount of confusion is caused at the present time in the collection of annuities and payment in lieu of rent, on account of the habit that tenant purchasers have got into of not paying on the gale day, when they should pay, if they are able to pay. They wait for a demand, or two demands from the solicitor, and then they ignore them. The process arrives. After three or four days, they come to the conclusion that it is not safe to delay any longer, and they send along the money to the Land Commission. The Land Commission could not do business on those lines. The Land Commission have no Department to receive the money. They would have to set up a sub-Department for the purpose of receiving annuities in that way.
There is a regular way of paying annuities. They should be paid on receivable order through the local bank. The amounts would be received then in the usual way by the Land Commission. There would be no confusion, and the matter would be dealt with in the ordinary way. When a large cumber of tenants adopt a different attitude, the whole procedure is changed and things are bound to get into confusion. I will not say that tenants are going to avoid paying costs where processes have been issued by the State Solicitor and the money is afterwards sent to the Land Commission. The Land Commission has to notify the State Solicitor of the receipt of that amount. The correct thing to do, for book-keeping purposes, would be to send it back to the State Solicitor. Where you give the collection of a debt to a solicitor, you must leave the collection to him and deal with the matter in that way. You cannot very well accept payment of a debt in that way and make no arrangements about the payment of the solicitor's costs. That is what is happening in about 75 per cent. of eases.
I admit that with such very large arrears, there will be mistakes made. There will be a certain amount of confusion but, on the whole, that is unavoidable. It is an extraordinary coincidence that the people who complain that they do not get back the receivable ordprs are the same people who have been making that complaint for the last ten years. The Land Commission have their names. The people who arc in arrear with their annuities and who are complaining now that they do not pet the receivable orders are, to a very large extent, the people who always had been in arrear with their annuities and whose cases had to be dealt with through the solicitor. That is, perhaps, a little more than a coincidence, but it is a fact. I am a little bit suspicious about those cases in which people do not receive their receivable orders. There are cases in which mistakes were made. I have investigated them. The mistakes were made either by the State Solicitors, or through clerical errors in the Land Commission. That is bound to occur.
