Deputy Corry spoke about a number of large holdings with considerable arrears of rates. He referred to the county council of which he is a member, and created one very wrong impression. He left the impression on my mind that there was something lacking in the way in which the county council had done its business, that these lands were being left derelict, and that there was no hope of recovering rates from them. In all cases where arrears of rates were over the sum of £40, the county council obtained and registered judgment mortgages against these holdings. That is as far as the county council could go. Once they obtained judgment mortgages they were, at least, protecting the ratepayers as far as the arrears went. They were in the position that they could scarcely do anything else. They could not very well go into court and ask for an order to sell the lands, for the reason that what happens in the case of forced sales, by banks or anyone else, would arise. I think Deputy Corry was wrong when he said that the county council was in the position that when the lands were sold they would only recover two years' arrears of rates. That only applies where there are not judgment mortgages registered, and where the incoming purchaser is made liable for the rates. Where judgment mortgages are registered the county council would be protected, and the incoming purchaser, for his own safety, would see that the entire amount due was cleared up. With regard to Deputy Corry's reference to the county council, I want to ask him what he wants to have done. Apparently he blames the county council for allowing arrears of rates to accrue, but all they did was to get judgment. Apparently the Deputy also blames the Land Commission for doing nothing, but he did not give the House any idea how he proposed to rectify the position. Deputy Corry considers himself to be an expert on land division and on Land Commission work. He is also a member of the Cork County Council. He blames everyone, including the county council, for what is happening about these estates, but he does not make the slightest suggestion as to how the position is to be dealt with. When he spoke about the division of land and the anxiety to put people on land in his part of the country, he made two most extraordinary statements. As far as I recollect, one was that there was a certain division of land into small holdings and that the annuities and rates put upon these holdings were so high that the people ran away from them, and only looked behind to see if the land was following them. The second statement was that around his area were the best farmers in Ireland, and they were so anxious for more land that there was weeping and gnashing of teeth because estates were not divided. I would not dream of hurting Deputy Corry's feelings, but if those farmers around Cobh junction have such anxiety for land division, and to get more land to work, it is a remarkable fact that there are so many farms for sale in that particular area that are being bought by people from the mountainous districts of West Cork every day.
I would be inclined to think that a lot of those people in good areas who fancy themselves as great farmers are not the great farmers they think they are. I do not know anything about the migratory system, but when a small mountainy farmer from Kerry or West Cork invests in good land, he will teach the men from other parts of Kerry and all the others how to work that land. I do not think there is the slightest justification for saying that there is any great anxiety for land in that portion of Cork to which the Deputy referred, because they would be buying land if there was, whereas we are sending men over to buy land every day in the week. Deputy Ryan referred to the question of sub-division. I find it very hard to blame the sub-division department for delay. They seem to have great pressure of work, and they are one of the most obliging of departments. That is a department which does not seem to have increased its staff for a number of years, and the work has increased beyond all knowledge. One of the principal reasons for the increase was the operation of the grants for the building of houses. When the £80 grant came into operation, a number of people on the edge of the towns and at cross-roads in the country bought half an acre or an acre for building purposes. They qualified for the full grant of £80, but they had to show title, get a sub-division, and register a proper transfer. That must have created an extraordinary amount of work in the sub-division department. Every solicitor in the country who does this work has cause for complaint regarding delay in dealing with these matters, but the explanation seems to be that there has been no increase of staff despite the increase of work. It would be a great benefit to a lot of people who are held up if something could be done to expedite these subdivisions.
Let me cite a common case. A worker has a little bit of money—say, £100—and he decides to build a house. He qualifies for the £80 grant. He buys a rood or so of land. It is purchased land and must be sub-divided. He builds his house and deposits the money to buy the land long before the sub-division is effected. He is actually in occupation of his house, and he owes the contractor who built it the whole of the £80 grant. He is being pestered for the £80, but he does not get the grant until the sub-division is completed and a new folio has been opened. That is really a great hardship, and something should be done to expedite matters.
An amusing thing happens in connection with the Land Commission. They are very slow when dealing with applications under the Acts of 1931 and 1933 on behalf of people who hold under fee farm grants or long leases which have more than 60 years to run. About a year or two years elapse after the application is made before these cases come to the court of the Land Commission. One would not mind that if it did not give rise to awkward situations. When application is made, there are generally arrears of rent due to the head landlord. If the application succeeds, the applicants come in on the same terms as other purchasers—that is to say, the annuities are halved, three years' arrears are funded, and the rest is wiped out. If they owe four years' arrears at the time of the application, the matter may hang over for two years, and they then owe six years' arrears. There is nothing to prevent the landlord issuing an action of ejectment or an action for non-payment of rent against these people. The mere fact that they have lodged an application is no protection to them, according to a decision of the High Court. The landlord may be quick off the mark and issue an ejectment for non-payment of rent, or an ejectment on the title after they make their application. Simply because they have made the application, he may "put them on the spot". He may not make any effort to recover the arrears until they make their application to the Land Commission. There should be some machinery for speeding up the hearing of these applications.
The Land Commission deal with these applications in an extraordinary way. You wait six or nine months or a year and you hear nothing about the application. Then, some morning, you get a query sheet, divided up so as to give space on one side for the query and on the other for the reply. In red ink across the head of the sheet, you are told that the matter is urgent and that a reply should be furnished within, say, 14 days. After waiting perhaps for 16 or 18 months for a reply to your application, you suddenly get this query sheet with a request for a reply within 14 days. You comply and then the matter fades out, probably, for another period. After waiting for a reply for 18 months, it is sometimes difficult to remember what the matter was all about. It is very hard to convince people in the country who make these applications either for sub-division or under the 1931 or 1933 Act that there is not some carelessness somewhere. It is very hard to convince a person who has a job which he wants to get done quickly that there is not some neglect. There is no use in explaining that the unfortunate Land Commission is snowed under and harassed by 138 people who are concerned not with the division of land but with staving off the sheriff in many cases and that merely prosaic matters, where people want to bring their lands within the meaning of the Land Acts, must wait.
Deputy Ryan also referred to the question of fencing. I was glad to hear him mention that. I know of two instances where an already small field was divided in two by the Land Commission who built a most magnificent bank down through the centre of it. A large amount of earth on each side was taken up for the purpose of making that bank. Looking at it, the only useful purpose it could serve, because it would not be a good fence, would be for training horses to jump over. It would be ideal for that, but as a fence it would be a pure waste of time and money.
I think it was Deputy Hickey who referred last night to co-operative farming in Wales. I doubt if that would succeed here. It might and it might not. I think there would be one great disadvantage here. The small farmers in this country, when they are on good terms in the neighbourhood and decide to work together, work very effectively and help each other to a very large extent. They would be doing that voluntarily and there would be no pressure about it. I do not think, however, that bringing in a number of men, already small farmers, men who would be taken out of uneconomic holdings, and putting them into co-operative farming, possibly under a manager and overseers, would be satisfactory. I do not think it would work at all. There would be always this danger, that the Irish farmer, quite naturally, would be independent-minded and might like to carry on and work out his own livelihood. In these circumstances I do not think he would react very favourably to that system. I do not like the idea myself. It might be to some extent successful if it were developed for landless men, if they had the feeling that they were doing something to benefit themselves and their families, but as regards any man with an independent type of mind, you would find it hard to get him to work in co-operation with other men. I do not know what Deputy Hickey thinks of the small farmers of County Cork, but I imagine that you would find it hard to dragoon them into co-operative farming.
There is one matter upon which I would like an explanation. It has been said, ever since the passing of the 1933 Land Act, when the Land Commission annuities were halved, that the liability of the farmer was halved completely. I think the Minister and his colleagues have always maintained that that was so. For instance, let us say a farmer was given an advance of £1,000 for the purchase of his farm and, paying the annuity for 10 or 12 years, he reduced the capital liability to £800. If the capital liability was £800 on the passing of the 1933 Act, and I accept the Government's interpretation as correct, then his capital liability would be £400 instead of £800. It would mean, when his annuity was halved, that in order to wipe out his total liability he would pay only the half annuity for the same time as originally he would have paid the full annuity.
Where I am worried about this matter is that there have been conflicting statements made about it. Government speakers have always maintained that the liability is halved, that the halved annuity will be paid only for the same length of time as the original annuity would have been paid. I shall be glad if the Minister will point out anything in the law, either as amended by the 1933 Act or otherwise, that would show that the capital liability of the farmer is definitely halved and that there is legal ground for assuming that he will pay only the half annuity for the same time as he would be paying the whole annuity.
I should like to put a few questions to the Minister in order to elucidate this matter. When a person buys a farm and he is subject to a Land Commission annuity, there is a stamp duty revenue together with the redemption value of the annuity. When certificates of redemption value of the annuity are being issued, do they represent the entire liability of the farmer? At any rate, that is what they purport to show. What I want to know is, does the figure that appears on the certificate of the redemption value of the annuity on any given date represent the halved figure, or does it merely show the normal reduction in the redemption value of the annuity after deducting the amount of the annuity paid and the portion of the annuity that went into the sinking fund?
There is one important reason for making that point. The title deed of any farmer to his holding is his land certificate. Nine times out of ten the land certificate remains in the possession of the Land Commission unless it is taken over by a bank or a mortgagor as security. It is set out on the certificate that the Lands are subject to a charge by the Land Commission for the sum of, let us say, £1,000, in respect of an advance repayable by an annuity until the advance has been repaid. If you get the land certificate of any farmer you will find, on the face of it, not a 50 per cent. liability but a 100 per cent. liability, and the land certificate shows, so far as the ordinary individual can see, and so far as any legal or lay man can see, examining the man's title, that his land seems still to be subject to the original liability, less whatever he has paid off in annuities. There is no reference to show that the 1933 Act or any other Act amended the position and halved his liability.
This is an important thing and it bears very much on the position of any landholder. There are people who purchased under the 1885 and earlier Acts. Under normal circumstances, particularly where they did not take the decadal reduction, the termination of the annuities should be very near at hand. They would be very interested to know, when their annuities were halved, how far was the period of repayment extended. Do they merely continue paying the halved annuity for the original time, or do they pay the halved annuity for double the period? That is a matter that is agitating the minds of many people. If the Minister states, as his predecessor did, that the halved annuity will be paid only for the same length of time as was originally set out—if that is the Government's interpretation of the law — would he point out to me where there is anything in any Land Act to show that that is the correct interpretation of the law? I failed to find it in the 1933 Land Act, and other people have failed to find it.
This is a most important matter. If any Deputy owns a farm on which the original advance was £1,000, and it appears on his land certificate that the charge is for £1,000, if the Government's interpretation of the law is correct and if a note could be put on the certificate indicating that owing to the operation of the 1933 Act that charge has been reduced to £500, or whatever the amount might be, it would be a decided acquisition to the owner from the point of view of the value of the land, and it would indicate that there is no danger of the halved annuity creeping along for a far greater period than people believed when they took the Government's viewpoint as to the meaning of the 1933 Land Act.
Another point with which I should like to deal refers to warrants for seizures. The sheriff operates on a warrant from the Land Commission which gives him authority to do certain things. The relevant section dealing with that is Section 28 of the 1933 Land Act, which provides that the Land Commission can issue a warrant to the sheriff of a county entitling him to levy. It is provided that a warrant issued under the section shall have the same force and effect as an execution order under the Enforcement of Court Orders Act.
I want to put this point to the Minister. I wonder if the sheriffs and the Land Commission have been collecting a little bit of extra money illegally over the last seven or eight years, because it appears to me that there is no power under the 1933 Land Act, or anywhere else, to entitle the sheriff when issuing a warrant to put down at the bottom of it 5/- and 1/-. He usually puts in 6/-. The Enforcement of Court Orders Act would not give him any authority to do that. The section says that a warrant under this section shall have "the same force and effect", and so on, but it does not say that the regulations dealing with the costs of a warrant, or anything like that, shall apply to this warrant of the Land Commission. The section provides that it shall be lawful for the Land Commission to issue a warrant in the prescribed form and so on, and authorises the sheriff to levy "in accordance with this section the money aforesaid". The "money aforesaid" is the money due by the defaulting annuitant. If my interpretation of the section is correct, I think the sheriffs have been illegally collecting these 6/-, 8/- or 11/- from defaulting annuitants over the past eight years. They have been doing that without, in my opinion, any power given to them under the 1933 Act. The warrant issued from the Land Commission simply entitles them to collect "the money aforesaid", and the money aforesaid is the annuity that the person owes. The Enforcement of Court Orders Act does not, I submit, entitle him to add costs or other fees. It is provided that a warrant issued under this section "shall have the same force and effect as an execution order" under the Enforcement of Court Orders Act. I think in that context the words "force and effect" mean that the sheriff will be entitled to execute in the same manner as he would an ordinary decree of the District Court, or an order for the payment of moneys by instalment under the Enforcement of Court Orders Act. I would ask the Minister to give his attention to the two points I have raised—first, the halving and funding of annuities, and, secondly, this question of the sheriffs' fees. If he does, he will help to clear the air of some rather vexatious matters which are agitating the minds of a number of people.
We have had very little experience of the division of land in my constituency, or at least in the end of it in which I reside. Only one estate has been divided there. There is not very much land available for division. I want to say in connection with that estate that the inspectors who divided it and allotted the land did a very good job. That, I may say, is the opinion of everybody. Deputy J. Ryan, when speaking, objected to what he called land settlement committees and various other committees holding meetings at cross-roads and deciding who were going to get farms, and so on. I would not object to that at all. As a matter of fact, I do not think any Deputy on this side of the House should object. I think it is one of the best things that could happen. What really happens is that some of our friends on the opposite side of the House have, in order to save their own faces, to hold these meetings. There is a meeting held for the division of, say, 300 acres. You have about 500 people attending it, all looking for some of the 300 acres. You have to send them all home hoping that they are going to get some of it. So far as my own constituency is concerned, I would be very sorry to see these little meetings fall through, because, mind you, the attitude of the people who are expecting to get some of the 300 acres and do not get it is going to be very marked. Therefore, I say that I do not object to those meetings at all. I think they are perfectly harmless. In my opinion, they are not going to influence in the slightest the people sent down by the Land Commission to divide an estate. I have had only one experience of how they do their job and, as I have said, they did it well. I do not think they could have made a better division. One remarkable feature of it was that no one could have any grievance from the political point of view. The mixture was so good that no one could quarrel with it.