asked the Minister for Fisheries whether he can state under what headings he estimates savings to have been effected to the Exchequer by the abolition of the Congested Districts Board, and the amount of such savings.
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. ORAL ANSWERS. - CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD SAVINGS.
The charge to the Exchequer prior to 1923 for grants-in-aid to the Congested Districts Board was £189,750 per annum. These grants-in-aid are not now paid from the Exchequer, but the amount thereof cannot be regarded entirely as saved to the Exchequer, seeing that the Votes for the Land Commission and the Department of Fisheries have to bear the cost of such members of the Board's staff as were transferred to these departments and of the expenditure on improvement and resettlement of estates, and in carrying on work of the Board's fisheries and rural industries branches.
Since the dissolution of the Board, the staff transferred to the Land Commission has been assimilated with the staff of the Land Commission, and the conjoint staff is engaged on the work of land purchase and resettlement and relief of congestion generally throughout the country, and the Land Acts, 1923-27, have since been passed and added considerably the powers, duties and functions of the reconstituted Land Commission.
These altered circumstances obviously render it difficult to compare in figures the cost of the Land Commission as at present constituted with what the cost might be if the Land Commission and the Board were now operating as separate departments, but there are considerable advantages and economy in there being, as now, a unified administration instead of separate bodies dealing with land purchase and the relief of congestion throughout the Free State. In the recent debates on the Land Commission Estimates, I pointed out that the present combined staff of the Land Commission is smaller than that previously employed in 1912 by the Land Commission and Congested Districts Board as distinct and separate bodies, notwithstanding the great increase in the work now performed.