When the debate was adjourned last night we heard the concluding words of the speech of Deputy Little. He appealed to Deputies on this side of the House to examine their consciences and ask themselves which Party represented most truly the friends of the small farmer. The inference of Deputy Little's remarks was, I think, fairly obvious, but I am not going to take it as an example and suggest that the Cumann na nGaedheal Party has, in this matter, any monopoly of virtue, or indeed that it is, in any sense, a Party matter. It is very much more, I think, a matter of the area from which Deputies come rather than a question of the Party which they follow. The question which has been pressed by the Fianna Fáil Party during the last few weeks is one which is particularly favourable to the poorer farmers of this country. I confess, too, that I view with very considerable apprehension the new policy, so far as it is a new policy, which has been announced by the Government. We have been told that it is their intention henceforward to pay more attention to the vesting of holdings and less attention to the distribution of land. We know also, from the Estimate before us, that the improvement grant has been already very severely cut down. I said a moment ago that in my view—I do not think it will be disputed—such differences as exist among us follow not so much a Party line as a line of area. That is, I think, the necessary result of the economic conditions of the different parts of the country.
It must be fairly obvious that where farms are of a considerable size, where substantial sums are paid by way of interest in lieu of rent, where there are no considerable tracts of land for distribution, where communications are good, and where the standard of living is, at any rate, relatively high; that in all such areas the greatest benefit which can be done under the Land Purchase Acts for the average farmer must be the early vesting of his holding, because, in such a case, there is a considerable immediate saving to the occupier in the difference between the amount he pays every year in lieu of rent and the amount which he will pay as soon as the vesting takes place by way of annuity, and that apart from the fact that the period in which he is to continue paying, in order to become the full owner, of his holding, is materially lessened. But there are other districts in which that consideration is relatively of very small importance indeed. There are, for example, as Deputy Brodrick reminded us yesterday, districts in County Galway in which the main preoccupation must necessarily be the distribution, of untenanted lands. Where you have considerable tracts of unoccupied land, of grazing ranches, undoubtedly there the greatest benefit that can be done to most of the people lies in the distribution of these lands and in the creation of economic holdings. But there is a third section, of which my own county, Donegal, might be taken as typical. There the farms, except in one particular district, are exceedingly small and the rents are almost infinitesimal. I do not know of any, what you might call elsewhere, grazing ranches, and there is not any considerable quantity of untenanted land of any kind. The rents, as I have said, are very small. If you exclude one particular area, I do not suppose that the average rent over great tracts of County Donegal would exceed two or three pounds a year. Deputies can easily see how little improvement can be effected in the condition of people of that kind merely by reducing payments by twenty per cent. I suppose it would not mean more than five shillings, eight shillings, or ten shillings a year, if that is all you are going to do for the congested areas of County Donegal. I imagine very much the same thing will be true of not only west, south and north Donegal, but of various parts of Mayo; it would also be true of districts beyond Spiddal, Ross and Carraroe. I imagine-it would be true of parts of County Kerry, and I am almost certain it would be true of parts of West Cork.
If that is all you are going to do, then you are going to do nothing worth doing at all. From that point of view, I do very much regret the diminution in the amount of the grant. I want the House to visualise one feature in the lives of the people I am talking about. I know that scores of families in my immediate district have to go six, seven, eight or possibly ten miles to get turf cut, and after the terrible labour of cutting and saving the turf they have, in very many instances, to carry the turf, perhaps, a mile on their backs before they get to the road. That turf has to be saved often in the face of very adverse weather conditions. The result of having to bring the turf to the road is that the most all these people are able to get home is one load of turf in the day. Even by rising early and working late, that is the most they can do. Just consider how important it is to people of that sort that advantage should be taken of the period in which the land is still in the hands of the Land Commission to make permanent improvements. The making of an extra bit of road to enable these people to bring their carts to the turf bank is of infinitely greater value and importance to them than any advantage they can ever expect to be given by a reduction in the difference in the interest paid in lieu of rent, and the payment of an annuity. That is giving one out of a dozen instances in which permanent improvement in the condition of whole areas might be effected under the Improvement Votes of the Land Commission. But remember, as the law stands at the present moment, after the holdings are vested in the tenants the power of the Land Commission to effect these permanent improvements disappears. It is a matter for consideration whether the law ought to stand, but I am speaking of the conditions as they are now, and I must assume that these conditions must remain.
I, therefore, very earnestly, put it to the Parliamentary Secretary that whatever is done elsewhere, the Land Commission, in working out their policy in the Gaeltacht, should not lose sight of that aspect. In a great part of the country, in the richer counties no doubt, there is much to be said in favour of the policy of the speedy vesting of holdings in the tenants, but when you come to deal with the Gaeltacht you have an entirely different set of circumstances, and these obviously require the application of a different policy. Otherwise, I do not see much hope for the economic up-lifting of the people of the Gaeltacht so far as matters at present go.
There is one other point to which I would like to refer. It is a minor matter, but it is of some importance. That is with regard to the expenses involved in Land Commission processes. I am not going to defend the people who are able to pay their annuities and who refuse to pay them. These people are a scourge to the country. They area direct injury to their neighbours. But, after all, there is such a thing as sickness, bad weather, or unmerited misfortune of one kind or another. In these poor districts, once a family goes down and gets into arrears nothing is so hard as to get things straightened out again. Very often the last cow, or the only cow, is lost, or in order to pay pressing calls the cow has to be sold, and the health of the children is sacrificed so that the arrears may be made up, if, indeed, they are made up at all.
Apart altogether from that, I have been very painfully impressed by what I have seen of the documents connected with these processes which from time to time have come into my hands. I have noticed what appears to me to be an extraordinary disproportion between the amounts due and the costs incurred. Deputy White yesterday cited one such case where there was a total amount of £9 realised by the sale of the cattle. The sum itself would suggest the apology sold for cattle. Out of the amount realised, the whole was. swallowed up in expenses of one sort or another with the exception of a sum of 50/- which was credited to the Land Commission——
