These are general principles and general policy, and now we come to the administration. If the Land Commission want land they can get it in any county in Ireland. Generally speaking, they can get land nearly in every parish if they go into the parish and pay the market prices for it. Why should they not pay the market prices for the land? Why do they not go to the auctioneers' books and buy land from the auctioneers at market prices? They will not. They are not buying land. They are confiscating land.
I do not know, but I would like to hear from the Minister what their policy is when selecting allottees. I take it they start and strip up land, make fences, build houses, and hand over the whole thing as a going concern to men who, as far as I know, have shown no aptitude in the way of farming. I am aware of that state of affairs, and I know as much about it as anybody else. The men who get these Land Commission farms get the whole of the property for nothing. Who respects anything that he gets for nothing? It is not in human nature to do so. These men do not put their backs into the working of the land in the way a man does when he has put his own money into a farm or into a business. If these men do not like the farm they turn round after a while and sell it. If they get only a £5 note for the whole outfit, it is a £5 note for nothing. We were told by the Minister that it costs £950 to fix up allottees. First of all, the Land Commission destroys the credit of the State by taking the land from the original owner at a confiscatory price. Then they give the land to a man who has no aptitude for working it. You put State property in his hand. You give him £950 worth of land. Who would give £950 of his own money for 25 acres of land anywhere? Nobody outside Grangegorman Mental Home would do it. Why, if we are going to have a sub-division of land, not acquire that land in the open market? As it is, we acquire that land at practically whatever price we offer. Why does the Land Commission, with, I suppose, the sanction of the Minister and the Government, acquire, say, 100 acres of land and divide it into four farms of 25 acres each? These farms cost, let us say, £500 a farm. Why do not the Government and the Land Commission say to any prospective allottee who comes along, "That land has cost the State £500 or £600; we will give it to the allottee who we think is capable of working it provided he puts down £200 of his own money." That is what we say to the men who are trying to buy their own houses. Even the State has already dried up in carrying through that operation of advancing money for houses. They did help private citizens to buy their own houses. Why did the State advance £800 to the man who wanted to buy his own house? They did it so that the man would have an interest in his own house, and his own money would be safe. If the Land Commission did the same thing in the matter of farms, a better interest would be taken in these Land Commission farms, and people would make a better effort to make a success out of them. On this business the Land Commission has been losing. But if they insisted on the man who was getting the land putting down some of his own money first, instead of this operation being a loss it would be run to the advantage of the State and show a profit. I cannot understand any Department or any Government in its sound senses handing over, to people who have no qualifications, valuable farms of land. I could show the Minister several allottees who had no qualifications for land, and yet these valuable farms were given to them at a great loss to the State.
The question of mixing up farming with an alleged attempt to propagate Irish in the Midlands is so ludicrous that one would hardly believe it only they know it to be true. I submit that loss should be borne by the Vote for Education. Do the Government think it good policy to bring men into the County Meath for the sake of the Irish language? The Government have given them farms, set them up in houses, given them furniture, hens and chickens, and 30/- a week for a year. Are not the people of the country being robbed by that policy? Is not a policy of that kind as much robbery of the public purse as the robbery of the community of £500 by some fellow this morning? What good is it going to do? Deputy Childers spoke in very general terms. I was waiting to see if he would come down to earth. He did not, because, I suppose, like the parachutist, he did not know where he was going to land.
We talk about increased food production. Are you going to get that from these small farmers? If agriculture in this, as in other countries, is to hold its own, it must keep pace with the advances in the science of production. Does anybody who knows anything about agriculture suggest that you can produce cheap food on a 25-acre farm and give the owner of it anything but slave conditions? Sir Antony MacDonnell, on one occasion, gave a definition of an economic holding with which, I am sure, the Minister is familiar. He said that it depends not so much on its size or valuation as on its position with regard to the track of trade. I know men who are living on a couple of acres in a specially favoured position in the County Dublin, and they are making a comfortable living for themselves. There is a community of over 2,000 of them living comfortably, entirely out of their holdings which, on the average, do not exceed two acres. But they are in a distinctly favourable situation as regards the type of land they hold, in their proximity to a great market, and above all, in the tradition of technical skill that they possess as regards the working of that land. But, taking the country as a whole, that does not apply. The breaking up of alleged ranches of 100 or a couple of hundred acres into 25-acre farms will create for this Government, or for any Government that attempts it, not perhaps a problem for to-day, but one for the future. Where is wheat going to come from off a 25-acre farm? How is it to be tilled, except by the primitive method of spade and shovel? A pair of horses would eat all that would be produced on that farm.
There is also the question of breaking up good grazing land in counties like Meath and Westmeath. You have in these two counties some of the best grazing land in the world. In a particularly favourable year you might be able to till it, but it is such stiff land that it would be very difficult to cultivate it in a wet season. The land in these two counties provides a market for the store cattle raised in the West. Therefore, if you break it up, you may be destroying a very valuable asset. The Minister and his Department are very partial to migration. I have no hostility to migration, but, speaking for my own constituency, I cannot see why a man, whether he is a congest or a landless man outside the County Dublin, should have prior claim to a parcel of land in this county over a County Dublin landless man. Speaking from the national production point of view, no man can farm the land of a county better than the man who has been trained to farm in that county. I can speak from a dual experience. I speak, not as a County Dublin man, but as one who has farmed in a small way and in a big way in this county.
I am satisfied that if a man comes to this county to farm, full of the knowledge that he knows farming conditions here, there is nothing surer than that he will fail. The land in the County Dublin, the nature of it, marketing conditions and everything else have got to be learned, so that if a man starting to farm here is so ignorant that he does not know his own ignorance of the agricultural conditions prevailing in the County Dublin, he will surely be a failure.
Those are the people that the Minister is proposing to transplant to the County Dublin, and to crush out County Dublin men. I, as a County Dublin representative, want to enter my protest against that. Also, as a County Dublin representative, and as the son of an evicted tenant in the plan of campaign days, I want to enter my strong protest against the treatment of the Boylan family in Rush by the Land Commission. I hope that I am not too late to secure for that family their last request. They were evicted out of their farm 50 years ago. The Land Commission have just divided it. They refused to give the Boylan family one inch of it. The family's last request is that they should get the old house in which they were born. They are prepared to buy it. I want to put it to the Minister and to the Land Commission that if they refuse that request it is one which, in my opinion, even Clanricarde himself would not have refused. The family offered to buy the farm back, but the Land Commission would not sell it to them. They have given it to somebody else—to strangers—for nothing. The statement has been made by the Land Commission—I say it is not true—that the Boylans have not got the money to work the land if they got it. I can guarantee that they have. That was guaranteed to the Land Commission, but the family's request has been turned down. I hope the Minister will take a note of that. I hope that if the land cannot be saved for the Boylan family that the house and some of the paddocks around it will. This family was evicted out of over 100 acres nearly 50 years ago when the six or seven members of it that survive were mere children. My recollection of Irish politics has been that every popular movement in this country always put the reinstatement of the evicted tenants in the foremost place in its platform. I know that the present Government have not been backward in making that claim in their political programme, and I now ask them to put it into practice and reinstate the Boylan family.
I have had a large experience of agricultural workers, and I can say that the agricultural worker in County Dublin has no peer in the labour ranks in Ireland. An agricultural worker can be given a pair of horses and told to plough or till a field. He need only be told the field that he is to go into, and he will do it. He is a good worker and a good timekeeper. He will, of course, make you keep to your bargain and he can fight for his rights; he has fought for them both with me and against me. Now, when land is being divided in County Dublin, these men are being turned down and the land is being given to strangers. What claim has a congest from any other county with five or six acres of land which is superior to the claim of the agricultural worker who has worked all his life in the County Dublin? I cannot see how the congest has a prior claim to that land. If there is to be any comparison made, the man who has no land should have a prior claim to the man who has a little land. The agricultural worker knows how to work that land. I will guarantee to the Minister that I will get local agricultural workers to take any land that will be divided in County Dublin. If he puts the cost to the State on the parcels of land, I will guarantee that I will get agricultural workers in County Dublin who will put down 20 per cent. of the cost to the State and work the land. They have done it at Fieldstown. Why then is the Minister going to other counties and bringing people to County Dublin? I hope he will reconsider that matter.
Recently I have been invited to meetings in County Dublin with other Deputies, and I hope these other Deputies will get up and repeat what I am saying, because our unanimous expression of policy at these meetings was that we were opposed to this migration into County Dublin until there were no County Dublin people able and willing to take land and work it. I will go further than any conditions required by the Minister. I will guarantee that it will be an economic transaction for the Land Commission, and that it will cost them nothing to divide the County Dublin lands they have in hands amongst bona fide agricultural workers in County Dublin; that they will put down 20 per cent. of the cost to the State, and pay the remainder in terminable annuities. I hope the Minister will reconsider his policy in that matter.
I know it has been reported to the Minister that certain officials dealing with the division of land in the County Dublin have not been acting fairly. I make no such allegation. I mention it only for the purpose of disassociating myself from any such allegation. Any time I ever went to the Land Commission I found them ready and willing to answer all inquiries in a courteous manner, and it would not be fair that the impression should go out that I attended a meeting where any official was criticised. I am quite satisfied that the officials carry out their orders. I know that when I was an official I had to carry out my orders. It is because I did not carry them out that I am not an official now.
Deputy Childers talked about some system of co-operative marketing being worked side by side with land division. Co-operation amongst the agricultural community in this country has never been a signal success and I do not think it ever will, because, temperamentally, we are not co-operators. If the sub-division of land is persisted in, how are we to deal with the problem which will be created by a lot of small holdings competing in a world where food is being produced by mass production?
Even in a broken season, so long as a tractor is kept in condition it can be kept going. In good weather you can make the most of it and in a day you can do more work with it than an army of men can do by primitive methods. If we are going to produce corn in this country, I see nothing for it but the mass production method. It cannot be done otherwise, unless you go back to the days of potatoes and salt and buttermilk and then burn the land to get manure. We must face modern conditions and consider our competitors. Our competitors in wheat growing are tillage ranchers and we must try and adopt their methods. If we are to grow corn successfully, we will have to adopt their methods. I am not arguing that we should grow it, that is another matter altogether. But if we are not going to till, what living can anybody make out of rearing live stock on a 25-acre holding? The thing would not bear ten minutes consideration. If anybody is going to live out of a 25-acre holding, he must cultivate it. It is so small, that economically he can only cultivate it by primitive methods. Are we going to go back to these primitive days? I do not say that that is the policy of the Land Commission, but it is an agricultural development inherent in the sub-division of land. I would like to see an attempt made to have community farming. It seems to be the only way out, but before it starts I may say that I do not believe it will ever be a success here.