I know you are not, but you are showing quite understandable amazement that such a thing should happen in this country. I quoted one case on Friday last—I had the letter before me and I had, and have, in my possession the demand notes—where a man's rates were increased from 13/- to £39 12s. I want to emphasise that, if there is a legal right to do this in Tipperary, there is an equal right to do it in any other part of the State, and I presume that the county managers, backed by the State, having initiated this step, will carry it out in every part of the State. Therefore, this is a motion which is, or should be, of deepest interest to every Deputy, and particularly every Deputy representing a rural constituency.
So far as I know, and I was present at a discussion of this matter by a county council, the justification given for this action was that the county council took over part of the turbary during the emergency—in some cases, with consent and at a price agreed between the local authority and the owner, and in many cases, compulsorily, under the powers conferred by Emergency Powers Orders, in spite of the owner, and at a price fixed by the local authority in which the owner had no say whatever. But mark you this: the county council in many cases entered upon a bog, proceeded to cut turf and then tried to save that turf— and this, of course, was quite understandable, particularly in the beginning of the campaign when very few people hardly knew anything about turf or about the cutting or saving of turf— and then found that in a great many cases it was hopelessly uneconomic for various reasons to cut and save turf on that particular bog. They finished there that year, having got the turf out at a very high cost, and did not go back there any more. In many cases, far from conferring a benefit on the local bog owner, they actually did considerable damage.
I quoted a case—and I could quote a number of others which I know of my own personal knowledge—of three acres of a good callow field with running water bounding it on one side, a field that was valuable at certain periods of the year to the owner for the grazing of cattle and a field on which neither in his memory nor that of his father, which went back for a long period, had even an attempt being made to cut turf.
The county council went in on that long, narrow field and they dug trenches this way and that, and then left it there, having discovered that it was a hopeless proposition from the point of view of producing turf. They left it there also as a completely hopeless proposition for grazing, and, as a matter of fact, that same man was unfortunate enough to lose one of his best working horses valued for £40 or £50 in the boghole and he found that he had no case in law and that there was nobody from whom he could recover.
I could give several other cases, but I suggest that if we are to countenance the adoption of the principle that if on part of his farm—and in many of these cases the bog was part of his holding—a farmer once in centuries, gets an opportunity of making a few shillings or pounds, or, if you like, a few hundred pounds, out of a property which was up to that time of very little use, beyond perhaps producing sufficient fuel for his own requirements, the valuation officials are to be sent in to value it on the profit which it is alleged he is making from it, surely the next step is that if he experiments with some crop, hitherto ungrown, on an ordinary field on his farm and instead of making £50 or £5—take any figure you like—profit out of that acre of ground in the year, he makes five times that amount, the same principle will be put into operation and the valuation of that part of his farm increased. It seems to me that that is the principle.
I am not a lawyer, and do not presume to know anything about the law, but, whether I misunderstood or got the wrong impression, I have always heard—and I say this particularly in view of the fact that it is now stated that it is the intention, when the county councils are finished with these bogs, either to reduce the additional valuation or to wipe it out altogether— that there is no legal power to increase and certainly no legal power to reduce the valuation of land in this country. I may be completely wrong in that, but that is what I have heard. If there is any legal authority for what is now being done, and is apparently to be done on a much wider scale from this onward, I think we ought to have the section and the Act. Even if there is legal authority for it, I suppose they will have to go back a long way. It is a gross injustice.
I think it will be admitted by Deputies who know rural Ireland fairly well that the most impoverished section of our agricultural community was, generally speaking, those who live close to bogs. I think I would be safe in saying that the five or six years of the emergency was the first time that they ever got an "even break" or an opportunity of raising themselves, if I might put it so, above the bog level. There were many valuable contributions for the welfare of this State and its community by various sections of the people during the last six or seven years. I am not so sure that one of the most valuable was not made by the people living by and near bogs. If the county councils went in on these bogs, if they made roads to these bogs and drained these bogs, it was not for the sake of the farmers who owned the bogs. The roads were not made in their interest, but in the interest of the community. So far as I know, the community has no reason to complain.
I want to go further. If we are to get down to this question of getting back for the community, as it is put, some of the profits which certain people got; if we are to get after the profits that were made out of turf in this country, let us start at the right end where the big, easy profits were made. Every Deputy knows that as well as I do. Those of us who are acquainted with bog areas and live near them know that they certainly are not the most cheerful parts of our countryside, or that they are not the most valuable or productive, notwithstanding the fact that the people living there are often more industrious than those living on the good land. Perhaps they had to be industrious in order to eke out an existence.
I suggest to the House that it is their duty to be satisfied on this matter before they allow it to go any further. Up to the present, apparently, it has been a happy-go-lucky sort of affair. There has been no co-ordination about it. It just depended on whether the county manager wanted to do it or not. In some counties no action has been taken. It is notorious that where the greatest amount of turf was cut by local authorities no action was taken. In some counties it was only taken against two or three individuals. In others, like the northern part of my county. some 40 or 50 individuals have been penalised so far. If there is legal authority for it, and if there is to be any justice in it, why is it not being applied all round? Why are certain people being picked out? All people are supposed to be equal before the law. If it is the law that is being administered, it ought to be administered in a just, fair and impartial way. I do not know what case the Minister may make on this matter, but I think he will find it extremely difficult to justify what is being done.
In conclusion, I want again to warn Deputies that the inquisition forms have already gone out to bog owners in every one of their constituencies.
They should not waken up to this matter when it is too late. We have tried to put the position before the House as it has been given to us by constituents who have been affected. We have gone to some trouble to check as many of these statements which we received as we possibly could. It is a very serious matter. I hope the House will give it serious attention. I hope the Minister, if he insists on seeing this matter through, will be able to satisfy the House (1) that he has legal authority for it, and (2) that it is either wise or desirable to do it.