I move the Second Reading of this Bill. The Bill is intended to provide for the better control and management of workhouse lands and buildings formerly vested in the Local Government Board and held by it for the purposes of the Poor Relief Acts. Clause XI of the Constitution secured that State lands could not be alienated, and that they would have to be controlled and administered by the Oireachtas. The State Lands Act of 1924 laid down the procedure for the regulation and control of these lands. For a time it was not clear that workhouses were State lands within the meaning of that clause in the Constitution and within the meaning of the State Lands Act. It was subsequently decided that they did come under that clause of the Constitution and under the State Lands Act of 1924. The procedure, as the result of that, has been that the workhouses are vested in the State. The letting and the renting of them is controlled by the Minister for Finance and the proceeds of the lettings are brought into the Central Fund. A rather elaborate procedure dealing with lettings was introduced. While taking the control of these lands and their rents into the Central Fund, the responsibility for maintaining these lands and other property still rested on the local body.
This Bill proposes that the workhouses will be taken from under the operation of the State Lands Act, that the Minister for Local Government, who has administrative responsibility for administering the Poor Relief Acts, will take the position of the Minister for Finance in the State Lands Acts, and that the lettings of land and property in future will be on the following lines: it will still be impossible to alienate these lands, or to grant a lease or a licence to anyone for their occupation for more than 99 years. Proposals to lease or to let these lands for a period of more than five years will be tabled in the same way as such proposals have been tabled up to the present, but it is proposed that the Minister for Local Government be given powers to make regulations under which the local body, in whose functional area the workhouse is, can grant a lease or a licence for a less period than five years at a rent and subject to conditions that will be in accordance with regulations made by the Minister and subject to his consent. The Minister for Local Government will be given power as well to make regulations under which lettings for a shorter period than twelve months can be made by the local body without reference to him at all. A large number of small lettings of lands for plots and other purposes are made annually. The present machinery is too complicated very often, so that the period of a letting has expired before the Department is in full possession of the particulars which, according to the State Lands Act, ought to be laid before the Oireachtas before the letting becomes effective.
Moneys to the extent of about £1,100 have already been paid into the Central Fund as a result of these lettings. It is proposed that these moneys will be returned to the Minister for Local Government. It is also proposed that the annual lettings, which at the present moment amount to about £707, be handed over to the Minister for Local Government, and that these moneys will be used for suitable purposes in connection with poor relief in the functional area of the authority from which these moneys come. Generally the purposes of the Bill is to simplify the procedure for dealing with these lands. The local authority was responsible for the upkeep of workhouses formerly. As a result of the passage of the State Lands Act there has been a doubt in certain cases whether the local authority was responsible for the upkeep of workhouse buildings or not, and in many cases a certain amount of serious neglect has taken place. The Bill proposes to make it the duty of the local authority to keep and maintain in good tenantable order and repair the buildings that are involved in the matter. The State Lands Act was passed in August, 1924. Previous to that, in August, 1923, an agreement for the making of a lease was entered into by the Minister for Local Government with Messrs. Watt and Co. with respect to certain parts of the workhouse in Letterkenny. There was no statutory authority at the time to do that, but that was not then understood. This Bill proposes to make valid and good the agreement for a lease then entered into and to authorise the Minister for Local Government to enter into the leasing for twentyfive years as from August, 1923, at a rent of £100 to Messrs. Watt.