Before the Minister resumes, might I ask him a question? Would he be good enough to say a special word on the provision in Section 4, which declares that the Minister's certificate shall be conclusive evidence, as to whether he believes there is room for any accommodation with the view that the person against whom such a certificate is issued should have a right to challenge that certificate before some independent tribunal?
Land Bill, 1945—Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I shall try to deal with all the sections of the Bill when I have dealt with the various irrelevancies of the Deputy and his colleagues on the opposite benches. When the Dáil adjourned last evening, I was referring to certain remarks made by Deputy Dillon and Deputy Blowick in relation to the land war and the sacrifices made then. I wanted to stress that the land war was won by the Irish people and not by any section of them, and that the sacrifices made were made by the Irish people and not by any section of them, because Deputy Blowick seemed to desire to claim a proprietary right for his various parties in the winning of the land war and an heirship more or less to the sacrifices that were made then. The Irish people made the sacrifices and won for the occupying tenants of the land those benefits which Deputy Dillon waves like a banner from the opposite benches. The Irish people won the three F's, won security and independence for the occupying tenants of the land who had been subject to rack rent and indignity and who had been reduced to virtual serfdom on the land. The three F's were won for those tenants who occupy those holdings and who not only occupy the holdings, but whose families had been rooted in the soil for generations.
What Deputy Dillon says about the three F's in regard to those tenants of the land war period is not at all applicable to allottees. So far as they are concerned, the three F's are out of date. As to fair rent, they are asked to pay what is, after all, only a very attenuated annuity, which is a purchase annuity, and will end in the year on which the annuity expires and the land becomes their absolute property. They are given fixity of tenure. The land is theirs for ever. No one can disturb them, if they will face up to the written contract which they have signed with the Land Commission. Eventually these lands are vested in them and they can do what they like with them when they are vested. The morning they are vested they can immediately put these lands on the market and sell them in the freest market in the world. They are completely different from the tenants of the land war. These are men who are beneficiaries, chosen arbitrarily by an independent tribunal, secure in its office, protected legally in its acts, independent of any Government or any political Party. They are provided with a valuable gift of the most fundamental property in this State — the land of the country.
Deputy Blowick, the Leader of one of the Farmers' Parties, says that people are in a desperate plight for land. That is true in the Deputy's constituency; I know it. Is not that all the more reason for taking powers to dispossess those who have got a free gift from the State under a signed contract, if that contract is not carried out? Deputies talk about the crowbar brigade and seem to be under the impression that the Minister and the Land Commission want to pursue every man who had got an allotment over all the years. Deputies often complain in this House of the slow motion of the Land Commission, and in this particular case undoubtedly the Land Commission has acted very slowly, has given every opportunity to those tenants, will give them every opportunity and, in cases where non-fulfilment of the contract is due to disability, the Land Commission has never and will never take action against those people.
Deputy Dillon waves his hand benevolently over the Fine Gael benches and says: "We, on this side of the House". Deputy Mulcahy, the Leader of Fine Gael, looks for approval to Deputy Dillon and says: "We, on this side of the House". Deputy Dillon complains very often that information is withheld from the House. I think also that information is being withheld from the House. In view of Deputy Mulcahy's statement and Deputy Dillon's statement, I think we are entitled to know if, during the Recess, there has been a coalition, if the Deputies opposite have all got together again and if the cloak of Deputy Dillon's benevolence extends to cover the orphans of the storm, the various Farmers' Parties in the Opposition Benches.
I said last night that the business of the Opposition was to oppose, to prepare the way for the downfall of the existing Government. That is the business of every Opposition. They should use every legitimate means they have at their disposal to destroy the Government and get it out of office. Pursuing that idea, which should be foremost in the minds of the Opposition, I think they should not only accept this measure but should urge the Government with all their powers to put it into effect immediately. According to Deputy Giles, Deputy Cafferky and some other Deputies, the Government used the powers of the Land Commission corruptly to hand over a huge acreage of the land of the State to their own supporters and these are the people who have proved to be failures in working the land. "Those whom the gods are about to destroy, they first make mad." I suggest that Deputy Dillon should take full advantage of Fianna Fáil's insanity. Fine Gael has no organisation—we are told that at the Fine Gael Árd-Fheis. Fianna Fáil has a magnificent organisation and now the Government, in its madness, proposes to sling out, neck and crop, all the Fianna Fáil supporters to whom they have given land everywhere in the country. Is there a better method of disrupting an organisation, no matter how powerful, than the action Fianna Fáil is taking under this Bill, if what the Deputies say is true? All the Deputies who object to having the present Government in power should utilise this measure for the purpose of smashing the organisation that has put it into power.
I said yesterday evening that there was no political interference of any kind with the Land Commission. I said that it is a duty and privilege of Deputies of every Party to make representations to every Department of State and I insist very strongly that it is the duty of officials of every Department to take particular cognisance of the representations of Deputies, because they are the representatives of the people. I said—and again I say it—that there has been no political interference. But Deputy Cafferky has repeated the statement that migrants from the West have been selected on purely political grounds. There is no truth in the statement and if Deputy Cafferky or any other Deputy will bring to my notice any case of which he has knowledge, I can assure him that the matter will be rectified.
Deputy Cafferky says that the Land Commission has in County Mayo 6,000 acres of land in its possession. The Land Commission has not a shadow of desire to retain land, but land in the possession of the Land Commission is for the relief of congestion, particularly in the West. We cannot try putting any immature scheme into operation, as we cannot stand over the idea of perpetuating the rundale system in the West, which is a great evil. That is the reason we have to retain, over a certain period, a certain amount of land, so as to try to remedy that great economic evil in the West. He also says that there is sufficient land in County Mayo to solve the problem of congestion there. According to Deputy Giles, the supporters of Fianna Fáil are that very respectable portion of the community, the people of no property. Deputy Giles reminds me somewhat of Tennyson's farmer—the gentleman we know is well-off, he has very little use for the poor man. If I have any pride in being a member of the Fianna Fáil organisation, it is because it stands for the man who has very little property, the ragamuffins of Fianna Fáil who never had any land, never had any property, never had any capacity. These are the men that Deputy Giles says are supporters of Fianna Fáil. But Deputy Commons, I think, showed to us a completely different picture: it was the immensely rich men who were backing Fianna Fáil, who were preventing the division of land and the relief of congestion. I wonder which is right? My predecessor in office—a tremendously able man, Deputy Patrick Hogan—pointed out that one of the great difficulties of the relief of congestion was that the land was in the wrong places and it was difficult to deal with it because of the conditions that obtained.
Deputy Cafferky also talks about a five-year plan. Deputy Blowick says "Finish the job; take over the annuities for a couple of years and buy out all the land and straighten it out in a few years." According to my reading of the newspapers, in some of the countries taken over by Russia they have solved the problem by an immediate division of land, but it has been a tremendous mess and no success. Deputies read the newspapers as well as I do. The work of the Land Commission is necessarily slow and those who talk about taking over the land annuities and utilising them for the settlement of the land question have very little idea of the history of the land question in this country. There will always be need for a tribunal like the Land Commission to deal with the question of land and we cannot solve the problem swiftly and easily. Deputy Cafferky used the phrase, I was glad to hear, "we are not land grabbers". Deputy Dillon throws that vile and odious word very often at Fianna Fáil. No matter how powerful a Government is, no matter what majority it has, it has always to take into its purview the question of public opinion. Deputy Cafferky says that we are a very conservative people in regard to land. Any Government or Land Commission that would do unorthodox things about land in this country would very soon hit the snag of public opinion, which is very powerful yet.
Deputy Keyes raised a question about the allocation of land, and he suggested that the distance from an estate about to be divided should be increased. Since I came into this office I have consistently argued that the distance should be lessened. I think the further away a man is from the land which he ultimately gets from the Land Commission, the less likely he is to make a success of his work. I think the distance should be shortened rather than lengthened.
Does the Minister want to make it less than half a mile?
I think half a mile should be the outside. The Deputy also suggested the setting up of a tribunal in relation to decisions about good husbandry. His suggestion is that the county committees of agriculture should be the tribunal to make the decision. I do not know, in my native County Limerick, what kind of people compose the county committee of agriculture; but I do know the men who compose the County Committee of Agriculture in County Cork. Deputy Corry, whose faults are only an exaggeration of his virtues, is a member of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture, but I would not trust Deputy Corry to make a decision in regard to a matter of that sort. Deputy Corry would argue—and he would believe in his argument—that no man who was not a supporter of his was capable of running a farm. Deputy O'Driscoll is another member of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture. Deputy O'Driscoll would never believe that any man who was not a supporter of Deputy O'Driscoll—and he would quite honestly believe this—would be a suitable allottee of a Land Commission holding. I know the Deputies' minds, and they are typical of the minds of members of county committees of agriculture generally, and, therefore, it would be useless to try to put that suggestion into operation.
I am not an expert on rugby, but I remember Deputy Keyes was a very rough member of very virile roughnecks in Garryowen many years ago. Recently we had an international rugby match between France and Ireland. It was not an Irishman or a Frenchman who was the referee. We got a neutral referee, somebody who was aloof from both countries, because no matter how honest or sportsmanlike a Frenchman or an Irishman might be, he would be always the object of suspicion. The Land Commission has been compared here, by implication, I think, with the Irish Rugby Football Union. In the newspapers recently there was a tremendous protest because the Irish Rugby Football Union has slung out on his ear the man that most rugbyites believe is the best three-quarter in Ireland. Nobody has suggested that the powers of the Irish Rugby Football Union should be curbed no matter how much people may disagree with their decisions. We are compared with a completely irresponsible body like the Irish Rugby Football Union. They can do what they like with regard to putting men in or out. We do not do that, and we cannot do that.
Deputy Commons asked for certain figures. These figures are available in the Land Commission Reports every year. He referred also to a certain statement of mine made here some time before he came into the House. Deputy Dillon has been insisting on the three F's, and I agree with Deputy Dillon that the principle of the three F's must be maintained. If a man who owns a piece of land cannot go into the market and sell that land, if he so desires, then it is not really his property. If a farmer with three or four sons wishes to go into the market to purchase a holding for one of them, and if we take action to prevent that, then we shall do a tremendous wrong.
The Land Commission has been set up to help people to do things and to secure things that they could not do or secure on their own strength. But it would be far better for the country if we could do without the Land Commission, if the State had not to purchase land for division, if small farmers were in a position to buy holdings for themselves. If we try to prevent farmers from buying holdings for their sons, if we try to prevent a man, who has earned the money hardly, from setting himself up as a farmer, then, I think, we would be doing wrong.
Deputy Morrissey made a very sensible speech on this Bill. He pointed out that the work of the Land Commission was not directed to the benefit of individuals as such, but was a great social, economic policy, intended to strengthen the social fabric of the State. We in this country are believers in a wide distribution of private property, particularly private property in land, and the justification of the Land Commission is that they have made such an idea possible.
Deputy Cogan said that this Bill was brought in hastily. The Land Commission never acts in haste—that is the charge made against it time and again. The conditions which this Bill is brought forward to remedy have been under observation by the Land Commission for quite a long period, and many complaints have reached the Land Commission from all Parties that men have not been working the land and that the Land Commission has not taken powers to deal with them. Deputy Giles and Deputy O'Sullivan again stressed the idea of the possible dispossession of people who could not fulfil their contracts with the Land Commission because of disability. Again, I want to say that the Land Commission has never dispossessed, and does not propose to dispossess, any person who, through genuine disability, has been unable to fulfil his contract.
Deputy O'Donnell makes very interesting speeches. He is widely-read in history and general literature. I am afraid his wide-reading has made a poet of him. Every speech he makes here is a palindrome—it could usefully be recited backwards.
Poets are born, not made.
But he is truly in the Tipperary tradition. There is an old saying in Tipperary: "You must never say ‘must' to a Tipperary man". We have had from Deputy O'Donnell and from the Leader of one of the Farmers' Parties—how many of them are there, by the way, because Deputy O'Donnell suggested yesterday that he was not a member of any Party?—and from Deputy Giles a certain amount of heroics. Deputy Giles will go to Mountjoy in defence of his whilom enemies and Deputy Blowick, speaking for his Party, whatever it is——
You should know. County Mayo told you with rotten eggs when you had to run out of Balla and Kilcolman. Do not be insulting.
I will not insult anybody.
Order.
Let him not insult this Party.
I am not insulting anybody. I do not know what the Deputy's Party consists of.
You knew when you went to Mayo. The people of Mayo told you and you had to get out.
The Minister must get a hearing.
Let him not try to insult any Deputy.
The Minister must get a hearing from Deputies.
Are we to be insulted by the Minister?
The Deputy is not entitled to speak or rise when the occupant of the Chair is speaking. That is a Standing Order.
We have had enough of it.
The Deputy does not want to be asked to leave the House? I am pointing out to him that the Minister must be heard, and if Deputies have not sufficient self-control to listen to him in patience, they will have to leave the House.
Rather than listen further to him, I will leave the House.
If it is any balm to Deputy Cafferky's soul, I will apologise for any fancied insult, but I think I am entitled to know—maybe Deputy Cogan would tell me—what is the constitution of any of the Farmers' Parties?
There is only one Farmers' Party in the House, if the Minister wants to know.
Deputy O'Donnell is not a member of it, is he? He said so last night.
Surely.
I thought he said he was a member of no political Party. We will deal with the Farmers' Party then. Deputy Cogan argued that the Land Commission had acted hastily. It has not. I was on this question of heroics. Deputy Blowick, the leader of the Farmers' Party, has said that he and his Party would oppose everywhere in the country the operation of the Bill, if it becomes law. Deputy Giles will go to Mountjoy and Deputy O'Donnell, a member of the Farmers' Party, will bring out the guns in Tipperary against it. Now, I know what a four-flush is just as well as anybody else and I can see a "busted" flush a mile off. We have this poignant picture of Deputy Giles in Mountjoy suffering for the Fianna Fáil supporters whom Fianna Fáil, in its madness, is ejecting, and the picture of Deputy Blowick mobilising his forces to prevent a statute from being put into operation and Deputy O'Donnell arming the serried hosts of Tipperary, as if Ballycohey was not ancient history.
The very poignant picture is painted for us by Deputy Giles of the man with ten and 11 children being evicted by the crowbar brigade and a kind of sad picture painted for us by Deputy Dillon of this man with his 11 children leaving the home, in which he never lived, to go back to nurse his poor paralysed father. I wonder is there any relationship between fecundity and paralysis? If there is, I see a tremendous danger to the Fianna Fáil Party. We may hope to see coming here from the Fine Gael Ard Fheis large families of young, virile politicians to look at their paralysed progenitor, the Fine Gael Party; but, in actual fact, 2.8 is the average number of children in County Meath families and the deaths from paralysis and allied diseases in the whole Twenty-Six Counties last year were something around 2,500.
I do not think there is any real definite colour or form in the picture which Deputy Giles and Deputy Dillon have painted for us. The Deputies ranged over every particular point they could think of in relation to the land code and the land administration. They roamed in the gloaming of their misconceptions about the Land Commission and the land code, and I had perforce to follow them. Having done that, I want to say that I had hoped to speak here without insulting anybody, and I do think that, when a man gets up in this House and pokes a little gentle fun, the skin of politicians ought not to be so thin that it is penetrated immediately. I give Deputy Dillon credit for having a very thick skin.
The Minister never got through it anyway.
Not in a million years, except with an atomic bomb. Section 2 of the Bill provides:—
"The Land Commission may, whenever and so often as they think fit, give a direction to the purchaser to reside continuously to their satisfaction in the dwellinghouse, as on and from such date (not being less than three months after the date of the direction) as the Land Commission think fit and specify in the direction until the holding or parcel is vested in him;".
The Land Commission selects an allottee and gives him a piece of land that may be worth £500—it may be worth £1,000—and builds, at the public expense, a house on that holding for the allottee. Is it not reason and commonsense to say that not only the Land Commission should demand, but that the public should demand, that the man who gets that farm and house should live in the house? The Land Commission inspector visits the house. He finds nobody living in it. He finds the grass growing up to the door. None of the people in the locality will give any public evidence in regard to non-occupation. That is understandable. The Land Commission will receive many anonymous letters in regard to non-occupation, but there is only one test and one piece of evidence and it is this: the Land Commission inspector makes repeated visits, at different hours, in the hope of sometime finding the allottee living in the house. Some of these houses are unoccupied. Some of them are actually sub-let. In the case of others, there is the pretence of occupation: a few chairs, a bed and a curtain. But by adding to the administrative cost of the working of the Land Commission, an inspector makes repeated visits to the house and fails to find anybody in occupation. Where are we going to get a certificate of non-occupation, a satisfactory certificate, other than from the Land Commission through the work of their unbiased inspectors?
Section 3 of the Bill provides:—
"(a) an agreement or undertaking to purchase a holding or parcel of land from the Land Commission, whether entered into before, on or after the operative date, contains a condition whereby the purchaser agrees not to sublet or part with possession of the holding or parcel or any part thereof until the holding or parcel is vested in him, and
(b) the purchaser makes, on or after the operative date and before the holding or parcel is vested in him, a letting in conacre or for the purposes of agistment or for the temporary depasturage or meadowing of the holding or parcel or any part thereof."
Deputy Costello, above all Deputies, directed his mind to the terms of the Bill. He pointed out, in regard to the contract, that the contract was void because of the existence of the Deasy Act of 1860. I do not know how the conditions of 1860 would meet the situation of to-day, but I think the Deasy Act was directed towards a different situation altogether. I have a note on Section 3 which says:—
"Though a letting of a holding or parcel in conacre or for agistment or depasturage does not in law constitute a breach of a condition in a purchase agreement against subletting or parting with the possession of a parcel or holding it has never been intended that land provided for allottees should be let in conacre, etc., and I have already said that the policy of the Land Commission never envisaged a mere change-over from big landlordism to little landlordism, but was intended to put genuine working small farmers on the land. I make no apology whatever for the section, although I admit that it alters the law in relation to these allottees in a purely technical way. The letting in conacre year after year of a parcel is, in fact, indistinguishable from subletting, and the section merely makes the law accord with the realities of the position regarding the allottees use of their land."
Now, because we believe in the wide distribution of personal property, particularly in land: because we believe, as I said before, it strengthens the social fabric of the country, we cannot permit any allottee to defeat the purposes of the various Acts. If we are to take cognisance of the attitude of the courts to the existing law, we should have to admit that an allottee from year to year, continuously and for ever, could let all his land in conacre for the purposes of agistment or depasturage or meadowing. A man may live here in Dublin for ever, for his whole lifetime, and hold an allotment from the Land Commission and during all that time he may never see the land, and yet his letting in conacre, or otherwise, is not regarded as a breach of the law or of the intentions of those who framed the law. If there is a contravention in the contract of the Deasy Act of 1860, and if the law needs amendment, this is the Legislative Assembly which is entitled to amend the law. The courts of this country are not a third legislative chamber.
Section 4 provides:—
"Where an agreement or undertaking to purchase a holding or parcel of land from the Land Commission, whether entered into before, on or after the operative date, contains a condition whereby the purchaser agrees to work the holding or parcel in accordance with proper methods of husbandry to the satisfaction of the Land Commission, a certificate under the common seal of the Land Commission certifying that the purchaser has not so worked the holding or parcel shall be conclusive evidence for all purposes of the fact so certified."
Will the Minister agree that if the courts are not a legislative body, then Dáil Éireann should not constitute itself a judicial body?
I will not admit for a moment that this Dáil ever had the temerity to regard itself as a judicial body in that sense. I have tremendous sympathy with the point of view of Deputy Costello. I hear a good deal about bureaucracy and about centralisation. I know the evils of bureaucracy and of intensive centralisation and I should like that whatever democratic powers this State has should be preserved. If men, whether they are members of Fianna Fáil clubs, as alleged, or otherwise, have been given parcels of land and houses built on them in pursuance of a great social economic policy, and if they are not living in the houses, if they are not working the land, is there, on any side of the House, any defence for their action? Must not the Land Commission or whoever deals with them get adequate powers so to deal with them? This again, as I say, is not a punitive measure: it is a reform measure. I am not wedded to the particular words that the section contains but I cannot find any other form of words which will give me the power needed to deal with them. If Deputy Costello, as a brilliant lawyer and an ex-Attorney General, will give me a form of words that will meet the particular case and give me those powers—not even 100 per cent. —if I can get a 75 per cent. cure with the form of words to be given to me, possibly by Deputy Costello, I shall be glad to accept it.
Has the Minister seen the amendments put in by Deputy Costello?
No. I do not know if there was very severe criticism of Section 5 but this section is directed really to secure rights of ownership and rights of devolution. The devolution of parcels of unregistered land on the personal representatives of deceased allottees has never been questioned so far as the Land Commission are aware by anyone, lawyer or layman, and the Land Commission have acted on the assumption that these parcels of unregistered land did so descend, but recently a doubt arose in the minds of the commissioners' advisers as to whether the hitherto generally accepted view was correct and it was considered, in the general interest, advisable to put the matter beyond doubt. I do not think it is contentious.
Sections 6 and 7: A man has a holding of land. It is uneconomic. The Land Commission gives him a further allotment of land to make his holding economic, for instance, to destroy rundale. It does not propose to permit him to pass this on in a divided state. The land given and the land he had must be kept together as an economic holding. You would destroy the work and the purposes of the Land Commission if any other attitude were taken. I think that is very reasonable.
Does not the Minister see the way that works—in reverse? The Minister, instead of tacking the new take on to the old farm, is tacking the old farm on which the farmer had freedom of sale on to the new take which he cannot sell until the new take has been vested, which may be ten or 15 years after the allotment.
That is so, maybe. The Land Commission has been most reasonable in that type of case. I am familiar with the fact that they have dealt in all reason with cases of that sort but we do want to prevent the splitting up of farms that have been made economic into uneconomic allotments again.
That is perfectly right.
I think it is reasonable. The only thing about all the Bill is this—that the Land Commission does act reasonably without pique, anger or impatience, with a desire to be helpful rather than to give any punishment to people, and the Bill, if it is passed, will be administered from that point of view. If, as I said, Deputy Costello or any other Deputy can give me any form of words which will secure the object which the Bill is meant to secure, I will be prepared to accept it. Finally, it hurts me to think that I should be thought to direct insult to anybody in this House. There was not the least shadow of intention in anything I said to be hurtful to anybody.
In reply to what the Minister says, I am perfectly willing to allow this Bill to go to Committee on the words that the Minister has spoken there. He heard Deputy Costello last night and I am sorry that he has not seen the amendments which Deputy Costello put in last night just for the purpose of showing the kind of ideas that were in his mind but, in view of the fact that it has been demonstrated that a problem has to be settled here, I do feel that it would not be right not to allow this Bill to go to Committee. When the Bill has been dealt with in Committee then I feel we will be able to stand back from it and see whether the Bill as it then stands is liable to inflict injustice on anybody.
The Minister's approach has been reasonable to the representations made in connection with Section 4, which contains the principal evil and, in view of the attitude expressed by the Minister of his readiness to consider remedies, I now am prepared to let this Bill go to Committee and reserve our right to vote against it on a subsequent stage if the Minister's concessions in Committee do not meet the objections that are present to my mind.
Question put and agreed to.
When is it proposed to take the Committee Stage?
Would next week be too early?
In view of the type of debate we have had and in view of the things that are at issue with regard to justice, and the difficulty of dealing with these things, I think the Minister would be well advised to give us a fortnight so that there may be full consideration given both to the things that the Minister has said and the things that we wish to say.
Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 20th February.