Before we proceed with the debate on this Vote, I should like to know whether the various Votes under the Minister's Department are being taken together or separately?
Committee on Finance. - Vote 52—Lands (Resumed).
Separately.
That is what I understood.
We are taking Lands first, next Forestry, and then Gaeltacht Services.
When speaking last night, I was endeavouring to be constructive rather than destructive. I was endeavouring to help the Minister out by putting before him constructive suggestions as to what should be the future line of policy in regard to land division generally. The Minister, I think, will admit that the whole policy of the Land Commission has got itself into a hopeless muddle. Neither the Land Commission nor the Minister appear to know what way they are heading, and I think it desirable that the Minister should get these guiding principles firmly implanted in his mind: first, that fixity of tenure in land must be legally established by the repeal of the Acts which give the Land Commission power to acquire land compulsorily.
The Deputy may not discuss legislation on Estimates, nor advocate fresh legislation.
It is very hard for the Minister to plan future policy generally, without having in mind what legislative lines he intends to proceed upon.
The Minister would not be in order in discussing legislation, any more than the Deputy.
He would at least be in order in thinking about legislation.
If the Deputy confines himself to thinking, he will be quite in order.
Having made perfectly clear that the farmer will in future be secure in his holding, there are various small readjustments with which the Land Commission can deal. There may be small areas where it may be necessary to make special provision, but for the nation at large, it must be clearly recognised that once a farmer has purchased the landlord's interest and obtained a certificate of ownership, he must not be disturbed for the purpose of giving his land to some other farmer. I quite agree that there are legislative powers which enable the State to obtain land for various big development schemes, for drainage, afforestation and matters of that kind, but we ought not to have a position in which land is taken from one farmer compulsorily in order to give it to another. Land may be taken, and I think should be taken, by voluntary agreement from any farmer who wishes to dispose of it to the Land Commission, and it may then be handed to deserving applicants, but let us get away from this definite attack on the farmer's right of ownership.
Various statements were made to the effect that the land question is not settled, that no attempt has been made to settle it, and I referred last night to the fact that the position in Denmark in regard to the distribution of land is very similar to the position here. I was speaking from memory at the time, but I have since referred to figures in this connection. The figures I have discovered are those produced by Professor Beddy in the course of a paper which he read to the Statistical Society some years ago. He pointed out that in Éire 22 per cent. of the total agricultural land is divided into holdings of less than 30 acres, while in Denmark 21 per cent. of the land is divided into holdings of less than 30 acres. Thus, we see that the position here is almost identical with the position in Denmark, and I have never heard any outcry that land distribution in Denmark is faulty or needs to be completely revised. We know that the system operating in Denmark has worked efficiently inasmuch as production from the land is very high. That, I think, is the fundamental guiding factor, or one of the fundamental factors, which must be taken into consideration in regard to the distribution of land: is the land producing its maximum output? The aim of good legislation should be to ensure that the land is producing its maximum output, and if we could get as far as Denmark has got in the matter of increased production, we would be doing very well. In that connection, there is no need to redistribute the land in order to get to the position which obtains in that country.
I quite agree that, having got away from compulsion, there are many useful things the Land Commission can do in order to make the position better, so far as agricultural holdings are concerned. There is, as I mentioned last night, the case of homesteads which are left derelict, the houses on which are not occupied, homesteads that are held by people living outside the country. It may be necessary to take some action in regard to these to protect the existing homesteads and to prevent them being merged in the other holding, or allowed to remain derelict or sub-let. On the question of sub-letting, there is also need for very considerable investigation, because the right of the farmer to sub-let is not disputed, certainly where he is living on his holding. A farmer may, through ill-health or some family circumstance, be unable to work his land fully, and everyone will agree that it is only right and proper that he should be permitted to sub-let his land, but when we come to the case of a man living in another country who sets it from year to year, we come up against a social problem which requires to be tackled, because the man who sub-lets his lands annually for profit is in very much the same position as the landlord who formerly let his land to tenants. There is certainly a case there for investigation and, if necessary, for action.
That man is not entitled to regard himself as a farmer and to enjoy security of tenure and all the other rights to which the residential farmer is entitled. In addition, the man who rents land annually from some absentee owner of that type is in much the same position as the people who formerly agitated to obtain ownership of the land. He, by taking the land annually, obtains a certain definite right which must be recognised, and I think there is a serious social problem there which requires to be investigated. The number of cases of that kind which arise is fairly large, but not enormous. A good deal of the sub-letting of conacre and so on which takes place is very often of a temporary nature. Old people holding farms find that they cannot work them themselves. Some-times young people purchase farms and cannot work them for a few years until they get established. All these people are entitled to facilitate themselves by sub-letting portion of their lands until they are able to work them economically and efficiently themselves. Last night, I referred to another figure— the cost involved in the distribution of land by the Land Commission. Some time ago, I put a question with regard to a specific holding. I asked what the acreage of the holding was and was told 246. I asked the number of allottees and was told 13. I asked the total purchase price of the holding and was told £3,553. I asked the cost of improvements and was told £2,365. I asked the price charged by the Land Commission to the allottees and was told £3,308. I understand that that sum is not collcted from the incoming tenants or allottees but is subject to a revision and is reduced by 50 per cent., except so far as it relates to improvement of houses. That means that it cost the taxpayers almost £4,000 to acquire and reallocate that holding. Knowing the district and the farm, I think that, if encouragement had been given to have that farm divided into three separate holdings and sold to any farmers around who came along, a better solution of the problem would have been reached without any expense to the public purse. Three new holdings would have been established and, having regard to the nature of the land, I think they would not have been more than an economic size. They would have been of the size and type that could be worked efficiently, because there was a good deal of inferior land on the holding.
That raises the question whether the enormous expenditure involved is justifiable in all cases where land is acquired. Would we not have just as good a system of distribution by providing some little inducement to people to purchase land. If you had a scheme to provide assistance for the purchaser of a holding, on which there was no housing accommodation, to enable him to provide a house, you might get voluntarily a better system of distribution without intervention by any officials or inspectors. If any holder of a farm up to a certain valuation was eligible for assistance in the building of a house on a holding on which there was no house, the division of some of the larger farms would be encouraged. Suppose a man has a farm of 100 acres. He divides it into two portions of 60 acres and 40 acres. If the man who purchases the 40 acres knows he will be entitled to a grant to assist him in building a house, you will have encouragement to the farmer to divide the land and encouragement to the right kind of buyer—the farmer's son who has a little capital and who can come along and purchase the holding. I think that that is what is wrong in regard to land division. The farmer who saves money and who has a little capital wherewith to assist his son to purchase a farm gets no help from the Land Commission. The man who, in many cases, is not thrifty is given a holding at considerably below the rent which it should carry to repay the cost. If these things were taken into consideration, we would avoid the waste of public money involved in investigating claims.
I do not know if the Minister has ever kept count of the applications he receives for parcels of land from every part of the country. Some portion of the Land Commission must be chock full of these applications. They are not confined to any particular county or to any province. It is inevitable that people who hear that land is being given away will apply for it and try by every means to get it. I do not think that that is good policy or that it makes for agricultural progress. I have listened to the various demands for redistribution of land. I think it is a thing that should not take place. Stability of ownership is one of the most important things in regard to land distribution. Even if you had all the land divided into holdings of equal size to-morrow, in 15 or 20 years you would have to redivide it because some of the more thrifty occupiers would have purchased the holdings of their neighbours. In addition, you would have to provide for the agricultural workers deprived of employment by that piece of administration. Therefore, I think that the sound policy is for the Land Commission to confine themselves to the really serious problems of congestion—to the places where you have agricultural slums. Try and deal with those in a definite way and let the ordinary laws of supply and demand and buying and selling regulate the ownership of other farms. Let us not have the position in which you have Deputies from all sides of the House inquiring whether so-and-so's farm is about to be acquired and, if not, why not? It is a serious injustice to any farmer to have questions about his property raised here so very frequently. If the Land Commission had not the compulsory powers they have at present, those questions could not be raised. I have known cases of decent farming people with not very large holdings and in some cases aged women owners of farms who have read in the papers where questions were asked about the acquisition of their holdings and they have been thrown into a state of very great uneasiness and fear that the Land Commission would come down and acquire their holdings. That is a position which ought to be brought to an end. People who are living on their farms and working them to the best of their ability and paying their way should not have this interference with the right of ownership.
Before I speak at all on this Estimate, I would like to congratulate Deputy Blowick on his very able contribution yesterday evening on land division and acquisition. The attention of every Deputy, and in particular of those who come from country areas, should be focussed on this Department. In to-day's speech in relation to the Budget, we have heard Deputies complain about emigration and about the fall in production. Naturally enough, when they complained about the fall in production, the one industry in which they were interested was the farming industry, that being the only staple industry we have and the principal industry on which every other industry depends. That being so, we would have expected that, for the past 25 years since the establishment of a native Government, some headway would have been made towards a settlement of the land question.
I do not consider that, by advocating a settlement of the land question, I am advocating anything that is illegal or anything that would be to the detriment of this country or the community within it. When I hear speakers and members of this House tell us that to advocate the settlement of the land, the division of the land, the placing of more men upon the land, is wrong, I cannot understand what type of mind or what kind of outlook those speakers possess. I cannot understand a speaker who talks about emigration or about the fall in production and at the same time condemns the division of land and the migration of tenants from the West of Ireland, where you have congestion, into the fertile valleys of the midlands so that they may utilise the fertile fields in order to increase production. The only way in which production can be increased is by migrating those tenants and placing them upon the land, thus giving them the chance they longed for to work, increase and produce. I cannot understand the Deputies who condemn that policy, or why they condemn it and at the same time condemn the decrease in production and the flow of emigration. It is not reasonable, it is a contradiction in terms, and to my mind they have not the foggiest notion of what they are advocating.
Before this Government secured a sufficient number of people to elect them to office, one of the main points on their platform was the acquisition and redistribution of land, so as to place the people upon it, together with the removal of congestion and the prevention of emigration. It is an old saying and a true saying that, on one occasion when the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Government was touring the West of Ireland in an election campaign, he remarked that if he threw his hat out of the car it would be bound to rest on some chimney, as it could rest nowhere else. That was an admission of the congestion existing in the West of Ireland, not merely in the constituency I have the honour to represent but in every one of the five counties of Connaught. What has the Head of the Government done since he took over the responsibility of administration? How far has he advanced? How much has he encouraged the Minister who occupies such an important position as the head of the Department of Lands.
The Deputy must deal with the Minister.
It is Government policy and while I admit that the Minister is responsible for the administration of this Department I also maintain that the Minister's attitude towards this Department is part of Government policy.
There is a Ministers and Secretaries Act which lays it down that Ministers are in charge of their different Departments and responsible for them to this House. The Minister responsible to this House is the Minister for Lands and the Deputy must deal with him. That is according to law.
Very well. If the Minister who is the head of the Department of Lands is acting in keeping with his policy, which I assume is Government policy, then I maintain he is not living up to that policy advocated and on which he secured the suffrages of the people who returned him to this House with a majority to rule and govern this country.
We have from time to time addressed questions to the Minister in relation to acquisition and division and on every single occasion the Minister told us he was looking into them. I can take one small holding of 66 acres in my own parish. It is over two years since I first mentioned it in this House and was given to understand then that it would be seen to at the earliest possible moment. The Minister might say to me in reply that the difficulty which prevented him from acquiring this land was that he had not the material or had not sufficient staff. Now, regarding the raw materials such as would be necessary for houses, that does not arise, as the houses were there in and around that particular holding. Surely the Minister is not going to tell us it was a shortage of engineers, or that there was a shortage of inspectors? Is there not an inspector with eight in staff in Castlebar and another in Ballina who has done nothing during the past five or six years as regards the division and acquisition of land in the County Mayo?
What explanation has he to give me in relation to the many questions which I have addressed to him as regards certain estates and holdings in that county? In view of the fact that he has failed to acquire and divide them he has no excuse. Neither can he make the excuse that he was short of materials and housing equipment, owing to the war. Neither can he plead as an excuse a shortage of inspectors or engineers because some of our finest engineers are leaving the country every day to seek employment in Great Britain. Why were not these men employed? The Minister may tell me that they would need to have special experience for this work. I do not think that any such experience is required in order to divide a holding of 66 acres. I have had no experience either as an engineer or as an inspector, and I could do it if requested by the Minister. In Castlebar there is a staff of eight. Will the Minister, when replying, tell me what these gentlemen were doing during the last six or seven years, and what contribution they have given to the country for the salaries they received during that period? I want an explanation from the Minister in regard to them, and also in regard to those employed under another section in Ballina.
We have been accused in this House and outside of acting unconstitutionally, of hampering the Land Commission, of intimidating people and of all kinds of things. Does the Minister deny that we went about our action constitutionally, and that time and time again in this House we implored him, by speech and question, to take an active interest in the division of land in the County Mayo, as well as in the relief of congestion, in order to stop the drain that is going on through emigration? We have too many of our young men leaving the county every other day to seek a livelihood abroad. During the week I travelled up to Dublin by bus with a young man who was leaving the County Mayo for Britain. He said to me, when we were passing near Mullingar: "I wish I had 30 acres of that land instead of the passport that I have in my pocket." The young men who would be an asset to the country and who would be able to plough and cultivate the land are leaving it. The Minister and the Government would prefer to see thousands of young men, like the young man I speak of, leave the country to help to build up the British Empire, or to sacrifice their bodies on some European front or other front in fighting imperialistic battles, instead of employing them here to increase production and provide more butter, eggs and bacon and the other necessaries of life which we require so much for our own people. Unless we are able to increase production how are we going to close the gap that exists between our imports and our exports? The Minister for Industry and Commerce last week said that that gap represents a figure of £30,000,000. How is it to be closed unless by increased production, and how is that to be brought about if great numbers of our young men are leaving the land and going to other countries, all because the Minister and his Department, and Government policy in general, have no interest in these young men or in the division and acquisition of land?
On the 16th April last I asked the Minister if he had yet formulated a more comprehensive policy for the relief of congestion in County Mayo. I had asked a similar question some time before that, when the Minister told me that he was preparing a comprehensive policy. I put these words into the question that I addressed to him on the 16th April and his reply was:—
"Every feasible opportunity is being and will be taken to relieve the remaining congestion in Mayo and the other congested counties. Land resettlement operations have been proceeding in those counties and will be continued and the Land Commission will undertake all necessary acquisition and resumption proceedings as circumstances permit."
If the Minister really believes what is in that reply, why is it that we have to ask on dozens of occasions, and that other Deputies have to ask on dozens of occasions, such questions, and why is it that he deliberately refuses to move? Why is it that Deputy Commons and I had to make representations in relation to Cottage holding which 30 tenants had been cultivating and grazing during the past 25 years? It was a non-residential untenanted holding. We told the Minister of the seriousness of the position and warned him beforehand. We even went to the commissioners and put our case in black and white before them. We implored them to act. We gave them one year's notice in advance and yet they deliberately refused to take the necessary action until we were forced to go there and protest against the inactivity and failure of the Land Commission. Arising out of our protest, we were landed in gaol, where we had to do one month.
Is that a policy which the Minister is now prepared to stand over? Is that the policy which gave him the right, and gave his Party the right, to come in here to rule and govern the country? It was not. I say that they politically deceived the people when they told them that they were going to have the land divided, land resettlement brought about and congestion removed. Apart altogether from the question of emigration and the removal of tenants from the County Mayo to the Midlands, if all the land in the County Mayo that should be acquired was acquired and redistributed, that would go a reasonable distance in helping to remove the suffering and hardship that exist in many parts of Mayo to-day. The Minister may say that Deputy Commons and myself were foolish in going to Cottage to protest, in view of the fact that the Land Commission have powers under the 1933 Land Act to acquire land, no matter who buys it. Here is a non-residential holding that had been cultivated and grazed by the tenants for 25 years. They are law-abiding citizens. They paid £8 an acre for that land in conacre and suffered a great many hardships. They have lived according to the teachings of the Church and within the laws of the State. They made no move until it came to their information that the owner of the lands, a professor in Cork University, was about to sell it. They then came to their representatives and asked them to make the necessary representations. They organised to acquire it. They had lived there peacefully for 25 years. When the day came that this gentleman had made up his mind that he no longer desired to hold on to the holding and was going to sell it, they made up their minds that they were the nearest heirs to it. Will the Minister deny that there was any nearer heir? Will he say that the gentleman who did buy it had a more perfect right to it than the tenants who had been cultivating it, grazing it and utilising it in the interests of food production during the six years of the war, and, as Deputy Blowick reminds me, for 20 years before that? The Minister may say: "I will acquire it and give it to them when I please myself".
I recognise that the Minister is now faced with a greater handicap. There is the young man who bought it. I have nothing against the gentleman who bought it. I say all credit is due to him, but there is plenty of other land in Ireland to buy where congestion does not exist, and where the sacrifices would not be so great if he desired to buy land. I do not advocate here that any Minister should prevent a young man from purchasing land so long, of course, as the purchasing of the land does not mean the infliction of hardship upon a number of tenants such as happened in this particular case. The Minister may say, "I can purchase it through the powers I have under the 1933 Act." The Minister will be reluctant to purchase it from this man. The Minister will not see his way to turn this man out. Who will cultivate it and utilise it and make it pay? He knows this man has paid the market value of it and if he intends to acquire it in a year's time or two years' time he certainly will give him the Land Commission price. Was not the Minister deceiving this young man and leading him into a trap? Did not he know that and why did he not take action in time so that this young man would not be led into a trap or be deceived? Apart from leading the man into a trap and deceiving him, the Minister had a greater duty to the tenants than to any individual. The greater good of the community must always be taken into account. We are told, if we agitate about the division of land, that we are doing something which is not Irish and not in keeping with the wishes of the people. I know of no land being acquired except through agitation and representation. I know of no progress being made, no rights being secured by any section of the working class in this or any other country except by organising, demanding, requesting, agitating. I have yet to learn of the Government of any country or the employer of any section of the community coming cap in hand to tell their employees that they are about to increase their wages. I have yet to learn of the Minister for Lands coming cap in hand and telling a section of the community in a congested area that he is about to acquire a holding. That has been done only when pressure was brought to bear. The Deputies who say that to agitate, to make representation, to fight and to organise for the acquisition and division of land is un-Irish, are themselves un-Irish. The very beginning of land agitation had the effect we see around us to-day of helping to bring back the bold peasant to his rightful place, the peasant that was destroyed many hundreds of years ago. The agitation that we carry out to-day is to take up where the Land League movement left off and to complete the task of restoring the bold peasant to his rightful place, which is on the land.
I have here a resolution passed at the Mullingar County Council condemning the interference by tillage inspectors in the county and they stress that the people are doing their best to meet the tillage requirements. Deputy Kennedy said in this House a short time ago that the greatest enemy of this country was the 500-acre farm and he appealed to the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, not to have pity on the owners of such farms because their failure to fulfil the quota would be a greater crime than would be committed if 20 or 30 small farmers in Connemara failed to comply with the regulation. In fact, there would be a greater disparity between a 500-acre farm in the midlands and 20 or 30 small farms in Connemara than would be indicated by acreage alone because there could be no comparison between them in fertility and productive capacity.
How is it that a Government back-bencher should complain of the existence of 500-acre farms in Westmeath? Who is to be blamed?—The Land Commission; the Minister for Lands. There would be no need for compulsory tillage or for tillage inspectors or for all this paraphernalia, this waste of the tax-payer's money, if the land of this country were equitably divided and if the real farmers were placed on the land, not persons who have more interest in racing and greyhounds than in the cultivation of the land that they possess.
On the 16th April I asked the Minister for Lands the following question:—
"Whether he is aware of the speculative buying of land here by non-nationals; whether such speculative buying is unfair to potential Irish purchasers whose capital resources are limited; and if he will make a statement on the policy of his Department in relation to the purchase of land, in congested and non-congested areas, by non-nationals."
The Minister tells me he is not aware. Surely the Minister is well aware. Every day he picks up the paper he sees where Lord So-and-so, the Honourable So-and-so, Major So-and-so and General So-and-so and Lady So-and-so are buying up large tracts of land from 17,000 to 25,000 acres, for fabulous sums. I was speaking to a young man in a certain bank a short time ago who spent a considerable part of his time going around the country with non-nationals, advising them as to whether it would be wise or unwise to speculate in the purchase of land, and the best areas in which to buy land. A lady who had come to this country was very interested in a large ranch and wished to pay a deposit of £500. She went into the nearest branch bank and asked for the £500. The bank were informed, when they phoned headquarters, that they could not merely advance her £500 but could advance her £5,000,000. That is the type of person that the Irish people have to compete with in the purchase of land. We have to fight, in a public market, people who are prepared to come in here and purchase land at fabulous sums and to acquire estates at the Minister's behest, without any protest or any interference, and the Minister will tell me that he knows of none of those non-nationals, that he has never heard of them.
I have no objection to colour. I am not a narrow-minded individual. I am not an extreme nationalist. I am a nationalist. I do not use my national ideals for a wrong purpose. I say that Irishmen should come first, that the young man who has saved £1,000 should not be asked to compete against a woman who has £5,000,000. If there is an Irishman who is prepared to buy a place for £1,000, it is unfair to him that Lady So-and-so should be allowed to put down £2,000 against him. That is sending up the price of land far in excess of what the potential Irish purchaser can afford to pay. The Minister may say: "Does the Deputy want me to interfere or to fix a standard rate or a market value for land?" I want no such thing. I do not want the Minister to interfere and fix the market value for land but the buying should be left to the Irish people. I do not mind meeting competition within the country but I am not prepared to fight competition from outside, created by multi-millionaires and people who made their money soft during the war period, in Great Britain and elsewhere, who wish to settle down in a quiet atmosphere in the hope that they will not be disturbed for the next 50 years under a Conservative Government with an Imperialistic outlook, that has no interest in the working class. So long as a sufficient number of them leave this county every year to seek their livelihood elsewhere, they know they are secure, they know they need not be afraid of revolution, they know that the working-class of the West of Ireland will not march on Dublin and demand bread and butter, as the working people have marched from Glasgow on London. The workers of this country have gone in their thousands to Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool and to the potato and harvest fields of Great Britain, there to sell their body to a foreign employer, there to work in some of the worst forms of employment and here is an Irish Government, which talked about the land for the people and the bullock for the road. Now it is the land for the grabber, for the foreigner, the man who has the most money, and to hell with the Irish worker, let him go and clear out. Is that the policy of the Government? Is that the policy of the Minister for Lands? Is that what we are asked to tolerate? How long are we expected to tolerate this state of affairs? I want to tell him that it is at an end. He should abdicate. Somebody should be put in his place who will be more active, not so lazy, intolerant and determined in refusing to move or in ordering his Department to move. I asked the Minister for Lands on the same day, the 16th April, 1947:—
"If he will state the number of applications received from persons in County Mayo for allocations of land outside that county."
The Minister replied:—
"Since 1938 some 500 residents of County Mayo have written to the Land Commission applying for transfer to other areas; many additional applications have been made verbally to inspectors."
That is a simple proof of the conditions in the West of Ireland, yet we see that the Minister stubbornly, ignorantly, lazily——
Personal abuse is not argument.
He is lazy from the administrative point of view. I say that and I stand over it. He has nothing to offer. He has nothing to show for his years in office. Notwithstanding the fact that these people have applied for lands, either outside or within their own county, he has deliberately refused to accede to their request. I ask Deputies who come from the Midlands, from Westmeath and other counties and who were worrying about the fact that we advocate the migration of tenants to take a cab and travel through the Midlands. I was talking to Deputy Captain Giles this afternoon while we were having a cup of tea and he admits that there are thousands of fertile acres of land going to waste. You can travel for miles and miles and there is not a house to be seen, not a chimney-stack, only an odd tumble-down herd's home. This arable land is in a state of decay—growing weeds, furze or whatever you like to describe them, covered over with furze bushes, all for the want of being cared and worked and utilised. If that land were divided up into parcels of 40 acres or 50 acres and young men placed on them, things would be different. Is not that a sufficient condemnation of Government policy and the Minister's policy which is part of Government policy? Is not that sufficient to bring any Deputy from the west of Ireland in here to say the things I have said here in the heat of this debate? I did not desire to say some of the things I said but we see no other way to move the Department but to say what I have said here. But the Minister has made no effort and we expect no effort from him. His Party made no effort. Does Deputy Captain Giles or any other Deputy who represents the Midlands, really think in their minds that the people of Mayo, of West Galway, of West Roscommon, of West Sligo, of Donegal and other counties want this congestion. Do they really think that they have no right to the land of Ireland? When we say that the 500-acre and the 1,000-acre farm should be acquired and allotted, do we not know full well that if we want to have stability, if we want to have a sound country, if we want to have increased production, if we want to have a surplus for export, we must place these men upon the land? Those who have the 500-acre and the 1,000-acre farms have failed miserably to utilise the land to produce, to find the necessary food for consumption, not alone to make up the gap between our exports and imports.
We find in the last census which was taken that the population has decreased. We find that in County Mayo the population has decreased by thousands. Does the Minister feel ashamed about that? Does the Minister feel ashamed that the flower of Ireland, the real Gael, the real Irishman and Irishwoman have to leave the country and go out, when he could save thousands of them if he only worked as he ought to have worked? I have no intention of interfering, as I told Deputy Captain Giles, with a man who has 500 acres of land and employs ten, 15 or 20 men to work on it. I have no intention of interfering with men such as Deputy Hughes who is a very good farmer and who gives employment and who helps the general poor. I have no intention of interfering at all with that type of man, but there are thousands of others who are not like Deputy Hughes, who do not give employment. There are other farmers in the Midlands who give employment and in whose cases we would not talk of interference. I am talking about the idle farmer, the man who has too much land and who is not able or desirous of working it. I am talking about the land that is untenanted. I am talking about the land that goes up for sale and speculative buyers from outside buy it in competition with the Irish people. I am talking about the land in the west of Ireland which has been untenanted for years and years and years. Nobody to claim it and still it is there. I am talking about the land, Sir, where tenants have been migrated out of the west of Ireland, and it is still undivided for over 25 years. That is the land I am talking about.
I have listened to Deputies saying in an indirect manner that we are opposed to free sale and fixity of tenure. I have read the official organ of the Fine Gael Party, The Forum. In it I am described as “blue”, Deputy Commons as “red” and Deputy Donnellan as some other colour. If a conservative organ, a Tory paper, expressing the die-hard Toryism of Fine Gael desires to call us “blue, red or black” that does not upset me in the least. We are young men elected to this Assembly with the duty and responsibility of trying to prevent emigration and trying to place young men of this island on the land which is theirs by birth, right and justice. If the Deputies of the Fine Gael Party object to that the sooner they go out and tell the people of Mayo and elsewhere that they do not believe in land division the better. If they prefer to see buyers from England, Czecho-Slovakia or Yugoslavia, if they prefer to leave 1,000 acres in the hands of a man who has no interest in working the land, they should tell the House that that is their policy, instead of trying to ridicule it through the columns of their weekly or monthly paper. The very fact that we believe in free sale was indicated in our action at Cottage, because we did not even interfere with the sale. We protested against the failure of the Land Commission. We allowed the sale to carry on—there was not a word about interference — a proof, if Deputy Mulcahy or Deputy Hughes or Deputy Captain Giles or any of the Deputies on the Fine Gael Benches want it. It is in the Official Reports of this House, when questions were thrown across the floor of this House to me, when they thought I might make a mistake or a slip and say something, they got an immediate reply to their interjection as to what I thought about the sale of land, the fixity of tenure.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.
There is no one who would defend the public sale of land more than I would, but I do not believe that land should be sold to the detriment of the common good. His Holiness Pope Leo XIII teaches that in the Workers' Charter. Deputies must have read his address to the nations of the world and what he taught about the accumulation of wealth or property to the detriment of the common good. If, in order to alleviate distress, to prevent emigration, to remove congestion, we advocate the one thing which will help towards that end and which will give a means of livelihood to thousands of young men who can take to themselves wives and rear families and become an asset to the nation and increase the purchasing power and wealth of the nation, I ask Deputy Mulcahy, are we advocating anything un-Irish? Are we advocating Communism, or Socialism, or anything but true, honest-to-God Christianity and Catholicism in keeping with the teaching of the Church? Why do these Deputies not come out into the open and tell the people that they do not believe in the Irish people living in their own land? Why do not Fianna Fáil do the same? They believe in making this country a happy hunting ground for the few and a paradise for the rich and letting the Irish worker get out. When you travel rural Ireland to-day and see the many homes that are closed, the many houses on small farms that are shut up, the large tracts of land which are going wild, the thousands of acres of land covered with water, and the millions of acres which could be planted, you realise that the Government have failed and that the Party which used to sit on the Government Benches have failed with them. That is why I believe there is an immediate necessity for a change of Government and a change of policy and outlook.
If I advocate something which, according to the Fine Gael Party and the Fianna Fáil Party is un-Irish, I am glad of it. If I am a Communist because I advocate the rights of the workers or because I say that the Irish people have a better right to the land of Ireland than some Jews from Czecho-Slovakia or some major from India, I am glad I am a Communist, if that is Communism. If that is Communism, then I do not understand the philosophy of Communism; it is something new to me.
You have also in County Mayo the rundale system, a system which is 1,000 years behind the times. Does the Minister really understand what the system means? I doubt if he has the foggiest idea of what it means. The rundale system is a most deplorable system. It is a system which is causing trouble between neighbours, is responsible for court cases, and keeps children from going to school because they must remain at home herding cattle. One man has a patch of potatoes here and another man has a patch of oats there and so on. They have to keep continual watch on these patches of land. The Government have allowed that system to continue through their administration, as the former Government allowed it to continue. The Government did not make any move in the matter until within the last 12 months when I exercised pressure on them and then they made a small move towards the elimination of that rotten and deplorable system. There is the Dickens estate to which I referred, the conditions on which are deplorable, and which you will find referred to in the Official Report. I am sure some officials have taken a note of that, if they are interested, which I doubt very much. I am of the opinion that they are just as bad as the head of the Department, that they have no interest in it. Naturally enough, if the parent is lax, the children will be lax. If the head of the Department is not interested in the division or acquisition of land or in the removal of congestion, it is hard to expect the officials to be interested. You can hardly expect them, and I would not blame them.
The Minister is responsible to this House, and only the Minister, for the administration of his Department.
I am merely vindicating the officials, because I would not like the officials to think that I am blaming them for incompetence, for laziness, or for failure to solve the problems in relation to land division, land acquisition and congestion. I am blaming the head of the Department, blaming the Minister for Lands, the man who should get things going and see that they are got going. The only thing I am pleased with in connection with the Department is the improvement made in connection with the vesting of the land in the tenants. The Minister has made a slight improvement over last year in that matter. I think that is all he can really boast of for the year—that he has vested land in 10,192 tenants.
I must protest, and I should like it to be recorded, against the miserable sum of £40,000 provided for land division and land acquisition. As I say, the sum is a miserable one, because it would take about £300,000,000 to settle the land question, and when I say settle the land question, I mean settle the land question, no matter what other Deputies may say. They say that if you settle the land question now it does not follow that it is settled for all time. They say that some farmer will buy up two other holdings belonging to farmers who failed to make the land pay. I say that legislation could be introduced to prevent that. These Deputies put forward any excuse they can in order to keep the peasant in the west of Ireland where he is. They say that the land problem cannot be settled, because if we did settle it now it would be in a similar position in 50 years, because one farmer would buy the holdings of two other farmers and thus have 150 acres of land which would give rise to a clamour for a further division of land. That is nonsense. Can we not introduce legislation which will prevent such a man from acquiring that land? Will we not have young men who can be put into it? Will not the Land Commission be there to purchase these holdings from the people who failed to make good and give it to two young men, sons of farmers, who will gladly work it?
There is no occasion for a repetition of the landlord system. There would be a repetition of it if you had an inefficient Department of Lands and a Minister who shuts his eyes to what is happening or a Minister who can only come to the House and tell you that he vested the land in 10,000 tenants and that that was all he did. If you had that type of man at the head of the Department, anything could happen. We hope that by the time the land question is settled there will be a man at the head of that Department who will not be of the type I have described, but who will be alert, active and prepared to see that the duties which are expected of him, the duties allotted to him to fulfil, will be fulfilled and that he will not be ashamed to come here to give an account of his stewardship at the end of each financial year.
We on these back benches have been accused of being rather dumb and when we address the House the assumption is that it is something serious that makes us speak. The fact of the matter is that it is the call made by some of our constituents in relation to these matters that prompts us to speak.
I would like to refer particularly to land division. I am afraid that Deputy Cafferky has been rather severe on the Minister. The Minister answers here for the work of his Department throughout the year and it is his lot to be pilloried for the sins of omission and commission of those under him. During the rest of the year, when we put anything to the Minister all he can do is to refer our representations to the Land Commission. I suppose that every year I receive many dozens of replies indicating that the matters with which I was concerned have been referred to the Land Commission for favourable consideration. Very often that consideration is slow in coming. I make full allowance, and everybody must make full allowance, for the difficulties that presented themselves in the past few years. Anybody with common sense must make allowance for these things.
I have been very dissatisfied with the work of the Land Commission during the past year—the slowness of it. There is no use in trying to get away with the idea that the Land Commission in years gone by have not done great work. One would almost think, listening to Deputy Cafferky, that there has been very little done in the matter of land division. That is not at all true. I come from County Roscommon and I am proud to say that great work has been done there by the Land Commission for many years. So much work was done that most of the bigger estates are divided, not always perhaps as well as we might like to see them, but the division was done as well as the Land Commission knew how to do it and as far as the facts at their disposal led them to do it.
During the past year some of the excuses that were present during the war did not exist. In the war years there was a depletion of staff and it inevitably followed that the work of the Land Commission had to be curtailed. In the area from which I come I find that in the past year the staff in the local office is about normal, but the work is not anything like normal.
Comparatively little work was done during the past year there. Perhaps the inspectors are doing some work of which I am not aware. No doubt a lot of work was done in the matter of vesting, making inquiries and carrying out adjustments, things that the ordinary person would not observe. But, as to the division of land proper, I must say that there is scarcely anything apparent in County Roscommon for the past year. I do not think that state of affairs should continue.
There has been a certain amount of improvement work carried out, and very useful work it is. The improvement of bogs and the making of roads are among the most important jobs the Land Commission could be engaged in. They did a fair amount of that during the war, but a great deal more could have been done. What we are mainly concerned with is that we should have the resolution to do more than we have been doing. I think the Minister admits that the Land Commission staff is rapidly reaching normal, that the inspectors loaned to the Department of Agriculture and elsewhere are coming back again.
The difficulty of securing housing materials is still present and while that difficulty continues the work of the Land Commission must necessarily be held up. I am prepared to admit there would not be much sense in taking over tens of thousand of acres and allotting them to the people who also require houses if the Land Commission are not in a position to erect the houses. On the other hand, there is quite a lot of land on their hands for a long time. I have knowledge of a great many farms and estates in that position in my county, but I will not go into any details now. I know, however, that many of them could be allotted to uneconomic holders without any necessity for building houses, and where that can be done it should be done. I am not satisfied that as much has been done by the Land Commission as ought to have been done.
I was listening to Deputy Blowick yesterday and I have a great deal of sympathy with many of the things he said. As a matter of fact, many of the problems that he seeemd to think are peculiar to Mayo are present also in County Roscommon and, while I do not agree with the violent methods that some people propose, I think that where it is obvious that large farms will be on the market—in other words, where the heirs of these farms have gone away—the Land Commission should interest themselves and be locally informed about these farms and matters should not be allowed to go so far as to give rise to violent agitation. I am quite satisfied on this point, that where there are numbers of uneconomic holders and a large farm is available, that farm should be taken over and divided and there should be no need to allow any violent agitation to arise.
The Deputy ought to mind himself; he might be stuffed into jail if he goes on like that.
I did not say that at all; I have not advocated violence and I am not now doing it.
Who did? The Deputy should acquaint himself of the facts before he starts talking like that.
As a matter of fact, I am trying to help you.
You might influence the Minister to lend a hand, too.
I think some attempt should be made to acquire these farms which are about to become derelict. That would give a great deal of satisfaction. I have made representations about farms, and Deputy Cafferky is not the only Deputy who has made representations. If it is thought that the people on these benches are not making representations just as well as Deputy Cafferky, then that is a big mistake. We have been doing that for years and, while we may appear dumb, we are not as dumb or as inanimate as some people think—very far from it.
We have that impression.
Then it is time to get it out of your heads. We have been doing as much and more than most other Parties to hasten land division.
God bless us!
The Land Commission have had a good deal of land on their hands for some years past—I see some of the senior officials of the Land Commission here and I would like to draw their attention to this matter— and it is a mystery to me that although they possess these farms and inspectors call again and again, apparently with the object of allocating them to uneconomic holders or landless men, they have not been given to anybody so far. I cannot understand that and I do not think it is a right attitude. When a man is dispossessed because he is not working a farm properly, it should not take five years to re-allot it; it should be done promptly. People have been coming to me for many years asking me to make representations and recommendations in regard to a particular farm. All I can say to them is that I cannot do anything about it and that I have been mentioning the matter to the Land Commission for years. I am not exaggerating. Where there is land available in that way it should be allotted at once.
I cannot quite understand why everything has to be referred to the Land Commission in Dublin. In County Roscommon and in County Mayo there are divisional and senior inspectors who are perhaps better informed than almost the whole of the officials in Dublin with regard to local holdings, yet it does not seem to me that the local officials can do anything on their own. In the days of the Congested Districts Board the local officials, I understand, were able to make decisions. Now they do not seem to have any power to make decisions. That is a big loss, a big waste of time, and the sooner we decentralise in this respect the better. I am not mentioning any names, but I know senior inspectors of the very highest standard who can be trusted to make decisions just as well as the officials in Dublin or the Minister himself.
There is one matter in connection with the division of land to which I should like to draw the attention of the Minister. In most cases, of course, roads have to be made and it is a common practice of the Land Commission in making roads into farms to leave them in the form of culs-de-sac. These roads are a terrible eyesore in County Roscommon and I am sure the position is equally bad in other counties. Where you have a large number of such roads, they are put down year after year for repair on the county council list but when the county council puts them up to the Local Government Department, they are told that they cannot be legally made. The result is that many of these tenants—a big number of them have been taken in from other counties —are left with no roads into their houses. In a few years, the roads which have been made are a mass of big holes and nobody can repair them. I may be told that recourse can be had to farm improvement grants and the rural improvements scheme for such purposes but I do not think that is fair, because all these tenants are paying rates—in many cases very high rates—and I think these culs-de-sac should not be left in that condition. I know cases where a few hundred yards' extension—in some cases 100 yards' extension—would connect these roads with one another. I would ask the senior official of the Land Commission, who is present, to take a note of this matter and to get rid of these culs-de-sac.
As the Minister has admitted, there has not been a great deal of activity during the year on the part of his Department. I must say that I am a bit disappointed. I know there are reasons for that inactivity but I hope that we shall have more activity in the coming year. There is one form of activity on which I should like to compliment the Minister and his Department and that is the provision of playing pitches in different places. In County Roscommon a good deal of land has been made available to provide such pitches. I am very glad to be able to compliment the Minister and his Department on doing their very best to provide local G.A.A. clubs with playing pitches and I hope that policy will be extended and continued. Such amenities make life more pleasant and bearable in country districts. In many places new clubs would be formed if there were more playing pitches available. I hope that the provision of such playing pitches will be extended to schools wherever that can be done. I think every encouragement and sympathy should be given to the provision of playing pitches for schools. If it entails an exchange of land—in many cases it can be done by an exchange of land—I think the Land Commission should consider that also. There are many areas where there is no land to be divided but if we lose the opportunity of providing such playing pitches for these schools now, it will be lost for ever. I would advocate strongly that wherever it is possible to provide playing pitches, by an exchange of land or otherwise, the necessary steps should be taken to that end.
I do not think there is anything further I have to add. Anything I say is not by way of violent criticism of the Minister or of his Department, but I believe that the Department should be active. It is one of the most important Departments of State and the division of land must come to an end some time. We know very well that the amount of land left for division is not very great and, notwithstanding the fact that in the Midlands there is still a considerable area of undivided land, when you come to divide an estate you will find that it does not go very far in the provision of holdings. There were thousands of acres near the town of Boyle available for division at one time. These were divided in record time. Indeed, the Land Commission acted with great promptitude in dividing the land in the vicinity of Boyle but the number of families provided for on these thousands of acres is still not very great. I think that Deputy Cafferky is not quite correct in assuming that there are still thousands of acres available for distribution, if we are to provide a decent standard of living for those to whom the land is allocated.
There is no use in thinking that a family can live on a few acres of land nowadays as they did 100 years ago. The standard of living of the people generally has risen considerably both as regards food and dress, and every effort should be directed towards enabling those who have to live on the land to derive a decent living from it. One way of doing that is to try to enlarge holdings wherever possible. I know that is the policy of the Land Commission and the sooner that policy is put into operation the better. Every effort should be made to speed up the division of the land and then whatever "grouse" the people have will not be against the Department. I suppose as long as people are in this world they will always have some "grouse," and one of the greatest "grouses" we hear at the present time is against the Land Commission. How far it is justified I am not prepared to say. I can say personally that I have never tried to foment agitation or anything like it. I have tried to make people see reason. There have been certain attempts at agitation in my area, but I have tried to get the people to realise that what was possible before 1939 was not possible during the war. The people accepted that situation, I think, but I do not know that they will continue to accept it for very long. They expect the work to go ahead and my advice to the Minister and to the Land Commission is to push it ahead.
I should like to take this opportunity to urge on the Minister to adopt a suggestion I made by question yesterday with regard to certain estates in the neighbourhood of Cahir, County Tipperary, namely, the Bradshaw, Denny, Kennedy, McCrae-Blakeney and other estates. I asked then that he would arrange that a representative of the Land Commission should meet representatives of the local Land Security Tenants' Association for the discussion of some matters that are sources of misunderstanding and dissatisfaction. Some of these tenants have been vested while some are unvested. Earlier to-day we pointed out that there are fewer people working on the land now than in 1929-30. In 1929 there were 566,000 men working on the land while to-day there are only 530,000. Nevertheless, we are asked to spend four times as much through the Department of Agriculture as in 1929-30, although production from the land is less than it was then. As Deputy O'Rourke has said, a considerable amount is spent by the Land Commission themselves in dividing land but nevertheless the position as regards production and employment is as I have stated. While there may be a problem involved in putting more people on the land to be divided, the people already on the land have a very important job to do and anything that prevents them doing that job should be removed if it can be removed. Where you have a number of estates together, as in the instance I mentioned, and where you get men to cooperate and to form associations of one kind or another, that is an opportunity of which any Government Department should be glad to take advantage. If they were met in the association by representatives of the Land Commission who would discuss matters with them and even out difficulties, I think it would make a more general approach to the problem easier. In that way you would get in matters of production a co-operative spirit which, if it develops, will make the settlement of certain grievances possible.
The Minister said that if the tenants' association would tell them what exactly they wanted to discuss, he would consider the matter, adding that he had already fully explained the position with regard to these matters in a certain number of replies to me on 25th March last. I should like the Minister to understand what the position is in a general way with regard to these replies. In connection with the Bradshaw estate at Carrigataha and the Denny estate at Ballybrado, there was a question of boring two wells, and the Minister indicated that there was a delay because of the shortage of essential boring equipment. He added that the Land Commission would continue their efforts to have the wells completed with the minimum of delay. The attitude of the local people, so far as I can understand, is that, in the first place, they do not think boring is necessary, and, if boring is necessary, they do not understand why, on lands which have been allotted in the past 12 years, it should take so long to provide two pumps. They consider that boring equipment is not required, that what are necessary are blasting operations so that a two-stroke pump may be installed. Otherwise, they consider it would be a waste of money. That is their line on it, and it is a matter which surely could be more easily understood and more effectively discussed, if it were discussed locally.
With regard to the same two estates, there is also the position that the Land Commission built sod and sand fences to the river bank, but after the first flood, no fences remained. Quicks were then put on a few fences, but none on the rest, and there are also fencing difficulties there because by reason of certain rights of the Cahir Anglers' Club, the tenants are not permitted to fence their land against the river bank. The result is that any stock put on these holdings cross the river and tenants are liable to prosecution for trespass and in many cases there has been loss of stock through injury. The tenants on that estate want a discussion locally, so that all these matters can be pointed out and so that any misunderstandings they may have will be cleared up. As Deputy O'Rourke says, the local inspector can very often settle things which cannot be settled from headquarters, and perhaps many of these things could be settled locally.
On quite a number of the other estates mentioned, there is the position that a certain number of tenants have been vested, while a certain number have not. Some of the tenants do not know whether they are vested or not. With regard to Knockeeran, the Minister says that 12 tenants have been vested, but, if that is so, the tenants have no information to that effect. In reply to Question No. 4 on 25th March, the Minister said it was not possible to say when the remaining cases would be vested, but there would be no avoidable delay. He suggested that inquiries and reports as to how the lands were being worked would be necessary. The Minister for Agriculture was answering for the Minister for Lands at the time and he suggested that until certain inquiries and reports had been made, vesting would not take place. Deputy Blowick intervened to say that these holdings were allotted on the understanding that they would be vested within seven years, but the Minister expressed the opinion that it would be foolish to fix any time limit in a matter of this kind. Some of the tenants on the McCrae-Blakeney estate point out that some of the holdings in the area that are best worked are holdings which have not been vested, and that so far as they know there was no investigation of any kind before the vestings which have now taken place took place.
On the Loughlohery estate, 17 tenants are supposed to have been vested recently. No other tenant had any information about his having been vested and they feel that it is possible that they were vested without getting any information or any report about it. They are very anxious to have the whole matter cleared up and also anxious that certain difficulties with regard to fences being built across natural water courses should be examined and possibly dealt with, because at present some of the farms allotted are being turned into swamps due to the way in which some of these fences were arranged. They ask that any three members of any county committee of agriculture be sent to look at the place and say that they would be satisfied to abide by the decision of three men of that type. Many estates are without water, and on the Donoughmore estate at Lisronagh, Clonmel, no tenant has been vested and the place has been left without any domestic water supply.
On the O'Neill estate at Lisronagh, there are four holdings. None has been vested and there are three allotments which are not vested either. There is no water supply, and I submit to the Minister that these are matters in regard to which there is very little use in asking the secretary of the local people to write, once they have communicated in a general way with the Minister already. There are definitely things that require to be talked over and perhaps looked at on the spot, and, the position of the farmer being so difficult at present, any kind of face-to-face assistance which can be given by any Department should be given, without any unnecessary sending of long letters or long explanations through the post.
I ask the Minister not to depend upon the answers he gave me on 25th March with regard to these matters. What I have quoted to him are the comments of some of the local people on these answers—that the answers the Minister gave me are somewhat wide of the mark. In so far as the Minister says they should send him further reports as to what they want, he has all the reports he wants at present. The position is that it is held over them that they will not be vested until there is some further investigation as to whether they are using their lands properly and getting the best they can out of their lands. As they point out, some of the best farmers and best-kept holdings in the place have not been vested yet. They point out also that some of these holdings are without water of any kind and that, where the Land Commission are engaged in providing water, it is not apparently being done on the lines the local people think best, and that, in any event, they are very slow in providing that water supply, compared with the speed with which people who have provided it themselves have been able to get their pumps.
I ask the Minister to take steps to see that a representative of the Department will, at the earliest possible moment, get in contact with representatives of this committee at Clerihan. I feel that it will have the effect of easing the Department's work and will be a great consolation and help to a very large number of farmers in the area, who are only anxious to concentrate on their work, to do it to the best of their ability, forgetting any misunderstandings and getting rid of any dissatisfaction that may have arisen. I feel that personal contact would do a lot to help. Increase of agricultural production and the harmonising of the life of the people who are working the land would dictate that the Minister should leave nothing undone to improve the situation by local, personal contacts.
The policy of this Government in relation to land division is fairly generally known and understood by the public. Last night, Deputy Blowick, leader of Clann na Talmhan, asked on several occasions during his speech what the policy of the Land Commission and of the Government was in that connection. As I understood it, the policy of the Government prior to the outbreak of the recent war was to acquire and divide what was regarded as surplus land. The prior concern of the Land Commission under the Land Acts was the relief of congestion. In prosecuting that policy, the Land Commission and the Government were anxious to create in the areas where congestion did not exist a suitable atmosphere so that they could migrate people from areas in which farmers had been living on holdings so low in economic value that they could hardly be described as economic at all. I come from an area in which land was and is available. I have never at any time opposed the policy of migration. I believe that the policy pursued by the Land Commission is a national policy and that the policy pursued by this Government is a policy put into operation for the benefit of all the people of this State.
At present, there is an agitation in County Mayo, where congestion is acute. People have organised themselves to demand that certain action be taken by the Land Commission and the Government. The pressing need in the area may be responsible for such action but the reaction to that organised demand is that, in the Midlands, men are beginning to say: "Why not we organise and demand that the land in our districts be reserved to ourselves; why not we start an agitation, continue to agitate and get our public representatives to voice our demand that nobody should be allowed to obtain land in this area until local needs are satisfied?" That is the reaction which is gaining ground in the Midlands. The settlement of the land question, which is now a long time on the tapis, will not come to a successful conclusion without the co-operation of the whole people, regardless of any divisions of opinion on political matters.
Deputy Blowick seems to think that this Vote of £1,500,000 does not go a step further in the solution of the land problem. This Estimate is a Vote out of revenue and it is news to me that land purchase is financed out of revenue. I have not the figures available to me as to the amount of public money which is sunk in land purchase. This Vote is a Vote for the establishment within the Land Commission. It is mainly accounted for by the salaries of officials and of the inspectorial staff. Very little of this money goes to the redemption of any of the land loans or funds of that nature. Land purchase in Ireland is financed out of the land of Ireland and out of the hard work of the people who live on the land and who are honouring the commitments the farmers took upon themselves when they accepted the first Land Act passed in the British House of Commons.
Land purchase has, of course, a history. It has arisen out of the history of the country. The land of Ireland was seized by invading forces and re-seized again and again. We who live in the Midlands have as much interest in land division and in securing that a larger number of people live on the land as Deputies from any other part of Ireland have. I want to know what is the policy of Clann na Talmhan in relation to land division. Is it the policy of Clann na Talmhan to limit private ownership in land to 50 acres? That statement was made in this House by Deputy Cafferky and it was never contradicted. He stated here that he would endeavour to limit private ownership in land to 50 acres and that what would be regarded then as surplus land should go to the smallholders from his constituency. If that is their approach to this problem, then it would be better not to have an approach at all.
On a point of explanation, if the Deputy would permit me——
If the Deputy gives way, Deputy Cafferky can raise his point.
I give way.
Will the Deputy quote me and state when and where I made that statement?
That is not an explanation. The Deputy has simply asked a question.
I shall look through the official record and, if I am wrong, I shall apologise to the Deputy.
Were you here when I referred to Deputy Hughes and other large farmers who work their farms properly?
To-night?
Yes.
I was not here then.
You should have been.
If that is the policy of Clann na Talmhan, we had better get some other type of agricultural economy. Regarding the size of the standard holdings, I am not and never was an advocate of the 22-acre farm, and neither is Deputy Blowick; but the larger the farm made by the Land Commission, the less families can be placed on the land. The Land Commission, in pursuing the policy laid down in the Land Acts, regard it as their job to give to a man a space on which he could guarantee to his family at least frugal comfort. It is not the policy of the Land Commission to enable people on land to become any richer than their neighbours; their job ceases when they provide a place upon which a man can get the necessaries of life for himself, his wife and family. In pursuing that policy, the Land Commission is pursuing a policy which will give us eventually a rural population that will be the making of our country.
It is not true to say that the people living on these 22-acre farms—even though they are small and, in my opinion, too small—are living in an uneconomic rural slum. Anyone who has occasion to visit those farms in the ordinary course of business or as an interested spectator shall find that the people on them are fairly comfortable, that they are living a fairly normal life as led and lived by the people generally in rural Ireland. No doubt, they cannot find a place on the farm for the whole family, but that applies to every farm, be it large or small. Once a family is raised on it, they all must go, except one or two. Even on the 50 or 100-acre farms in County Meath, as long as I remember, such a process has been taking place. The fact that the family of a 22-acre farm has to leave and find work outside or emigrate, as the case may be, is no sound argument that the farm is not capable of producing the necessaries of life for a man and his wife and family.
The Land Commission, in dealing with division, does not take into consideration any such thing as specialised farming. They deal solely with the question of providing a farm upon which mixed farming can be carried on. In the east portion of County Meath, there are specialised farmers, men who have a tradition of fruit-growing down the years and in any land division no consideration at all seems to have been taken of the specialised training which those people have acquired, from constant practice of this most necessary branch of the agricultural industry. People who specialised in fruit-growing tell me— I am not competent to make a definite statement on it—that five or ten acres of land is an economic holding. I do know, from my own experience, of one particular case where an old age pensioner, who lived in a labourer's cottage with an acre of land and had one rood of that land sown to raspberries, received from the firm of Williams and Woods the sum of £66 as one year's profit. People who have specialised knowledge in any area where land is being divided should be facilitated by the Land Commission.
The question of security of tenure was mentioned during the course of this debate. I do not know what obtains in other counties, but I do know that, during the period of agricultural depression which followed on the 1914-18 war, security of tenure was used very effectively by financial institutions and banks to put people off the land. It was the only method those institutions had to secure to themselves the land those people and their families had lived on for generations. Through no fault of their own, but through the actual situation created by the manipulation of financial individuals on the other markets outside this country, the people who were living on large tracts of land were reduced almost to beggary. Security of tenure was the only hold that those institutions had on such farmers.
I thought that since I become a member of this House I would hear from some Party someone advocating the co-operative management of land. I think the Land Commission missed an opportunity of demonstrating, or at least trying out, how far we as a people could get by the co-operative management of some of the estates that were taken over. People may say that co-operative management of land might be the thin end of the wedge of Communism. I have letters from several parish priests in the diocese from which I come, asking me to press on the Land Commission the absolute necessity for allowing the co-operative working of land by smallholders around estates, during the war years when it was impossible for the Land Commission to divide land, owing to the high prices and because of the fact that building materials and other materials were so scarce. I do not intend to pursue that point any further. I am only expressing my own opinion and not expressing the opinion of the Government and I will carry my own opinion on it in my own way. I want to deal with several items of business in regard to Land Commission activities in the County of Meath.
The Land Commission has pursued a policy of internal migration within the County Meath over a number of years. I do not know how many families were migrated. It may be news for Deputies to know that there was congestion in the County Meath, and that the Land Commission took families from one end of the county to the other and, having settled them on new divisions of land, divided the land which they left behind amongst local uneconomic holders. The Land Commission, in doing that, did an immense amount of good work, while the tenants they migrated to new holdings in the county satisfied its requirements as regards the working of those holdings in a proper manner. With regard to dwelling-houses on divided portions of land, under the 1923, 1926 or 1927 Land Act, no houses were provided on the small holdings created by the Land Commission. Speaking from a long-term point of view, I am of opinion that when materials become available and cheaper, and when it is possible to provide in a larger and better way houses and buildings, all such lands should be provided with a house. I do not think it is right to leave a small holding of 22, 23 or 25 acres without a house. The same applies to people who live in very bad houses on registered land. Some of these were built 100 years ago with mud and stone and the other materials that were used by our grandfathers, or maybe our great-great-grandfathers, in the building of a poor type of house.
There is the question of roads which was referred to by a number of Deputies. In Meath, the county council has taken over 18 lengths of roadway laid down by the Land Commission over the last nine or ten years. It has taken over in all 36 miles of roads. The estimated cost of bringing those roads up to county road standard, according to the figures given to me by the county manager, is £21,100. The approximate yearly expenditure for upkeep is £2,040. With the permission of the Chair, I propose to read an extract from the report of the acting county engineer in relation to those roads. It is dated 22nd April, 1947:
"I attach a list of the more important Land Commission roads taken over, giving in each case the length and a rough estimate of the amount required to bring them up to the county road standard. On a few roads this work has been done. In the majority of them the improvements have still to be carried out. All that has been done since they were taken over is to do some repair work to keep them passable until such time as the county council is in a position to make financial arrangements to have them properly improved. Until these improvements are carried out the yearly expenditure for repairs will be necessarily higher and will be in the region of £80 per mile. When brought up to county road standard the annual cost of their maintenance will be about £20 per mile. All these roads when taken over were in a very bad condition and were in many instances almost impassable. The surfaces were invariably very bad, the foundations in many of them defective, while their alignment left very much to be desired. Some of them were insufficiently drained and were water-logged in places. The improvement and upkeep of these roads will cast a very heavy financial burden on the county council. Before any more of these roads are taken over—several applications have already been received—I think the Land Commission should put them into such condition as to bring them up near county road standard."
I do not think it fair that the local authorities should be asked to bear the cost of putting those roads into a reasonable state of repair so that the county council could maintain them. I have no objection to the local authority and the rates bearing the cost of maintenance. No rational or reasonable man would. I am not casting any reflection on the engineering staff of the Land Commission. The Land Commission itself seems to forget that these roads are expected to last for a long time. In my opinion the Land Commission did not give their engineering staff a sufficient amount of money for the making of those roads.
Recently I asked a question in the House in connection with four other roads. It is estimated that it will cost £980 to put them into a reasonable state of repair. The estimated cost of rolling them and bringing them up to county road standard will mean the expenditure of a further £2,850. I think that in future, when the Land Commission proposes to make this class of road, its engineers should consult with the local authority engineers in regard to the laying down of them, their alignment and future use and allow the county council to take over the roads immediately after. If that were done the roads could be maintained by the local authority. Another point is that you would not have people living on such roads as have been described in the document I quoted from. I have not taken into consideration the number of culs-de-sac we have in the County Meath. In fact one might say the county is full of them. I have travelled over them when going on business to people's houses. In my opinion, it is not conducive to good farming to have such roads.
I think I have dealt as fully as I possibly could with this local question of Land Commission roads. I repeat that I am not casting any reflection on the engineering ability of the officials of the Land Commission. I am aware that the roads are in the condition described because sufficient money was not given to its engineering staff to lay down proper roads.
I should like to join with other Deputies in asking the Minister what policy the Land Commission intend to pursue in connection with the division of land. I said here before, and I repeat it, that the system already pursued by the Land Commission in acquiring land should cease. I believe that it is detrimental to one of the three F's—security of tenure. While such a practice is pursued by any Department of State, particularly where land is concerned, it places the holder of the land in the position that the Land Commission may at any time acquire his land if there is a demand and a greed for land in a certain area.
The best practice for the Land Commission to adopt in a case where there is a holding suitable for sub-division, and where it is offered for sale in a locality, would be to go on the open market itself and purchase it for sub-division. Then the tenants should be selected from any part of the country or from the immediate locality. In that way, all question of taint will be removed. The land would be bought in the open market and would be given to the particular allottee selected. That would be the proper course for the Land Commission to pursue.
Comment has been made in this House from time to time that the allottees selected are members of Fianna Fáil clubs and so on. I would not say that. I know allottees who were not Party supporters even of the Government. Selection should be made by an independent body and there should be certain qualification laid down. The first qualification should be experience of farming. Many people seem to think that farming is a low trade or no trade and needs no skill. I contend that the man employed on the land, whether he is a farmer, a worker, or a farmer's son is the most skilled man in the country. Therefore, that is the first qualification that should be taken into consideration in the selection of allottees. The second qualification should be financial position. I do not believe in giving land to a man who has no experience of farming or who has no financial backing, because if he is working in a small way he will not be in a position to meet adverse conditions or fluctuating markets and will be a burden on the State.
I do not want to confine it to farmers' sons or to any particular section of the community. It is quite possible that young men associated with agriculture, agricultural employees, may have saved over a long period and may have sufficient money to start off in a small way in a suitable holding, but I do assert that the qualifications I have mentioned should come first in the selection of allottees by the Land Commission.
In my opinion, in some areas, the parcels of land allotted were too small. The overhead costs and the provision of equipment for the small farm of 20 or 25 acres are just as heavy as they are in the case of a 35 to 40 acre farm. A great deal would depend, of course, on the size of the estate that has been acquired, but I maintain that a holding should not be less than 40 to 50 acres, if a man is to make a living on it. Of course, if the land is adjacent to a good market town where the farmer can sell milk, vegetables and so on, then, and only then, should the parcel of land be of a size that has been adopted by the Land Commission.
Other Deputies have pointed out that in every constituency there is a demand and a greed for land. In County Waterford, just as in Meath, Westmeath and Mayo—where Deputy Commons and Deputy Cafferky got into trouble—there is a demand for land. In Waterford there is an association known as the Land Settlement Association in which there are farmers' sons and young workmen who are as anxious for land as are the men in Meath and Mayo. When suitable holdings come on the market the Land Commission should acquire them. They could do that through an agent. It need not be known that he is acting for the Land Commission. If it were known that the Land Commission were in the market, the price would go up. The Land Commission could take steps to see that they would not pay more than the current value of the land in the particular area.
The vesting of holdings has been unduly delayed but I suppose that during the emergency period the Land Commission staff were engaged in other more important work, but I am sure that the Lond Commission, in the near future, will take steps to vest the holdings. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction because holdings are not vested and some of the allottees are unable to dispose of their holdings. A man who was selected for a holding 15 or 20 years ago may have changed his ideas as to the vocation he will pursue and may not wish to engage in farming any longer. The Land Commission would do well to vest the holdings and to give the allottees an opportunity of disposing of the holdings. People may say that they are disposing of a gift they got from the State. That may be but if they are not suitable allottees and are not in a position to carry on it is only fair that they should get the option of disposing of them.
A great deal has been said about the provision of roads and the maintenance of roads. That criticism is not confined to holdings that have been taken over by the Land Commission in recent years. There are people living in mountain areas who have no hope of having a road provided for them by the local authorities because of certain restrictions imposed by the Department of Local Government. Where the Land Commission are collecting moneys by way of annuities they should make some provision to enable the people concerned to dispose of their produce and to market it at the proper time. It is well known that in mountainy areas and culs-de-sac there is no hope of getting local authorities to expend even small sums of money on the repair of roads.
An Ceann Comhairle took the Chair.
I think the Land Commission should make provision for repairs or make certain allocations of money to those people in order to carry out repairs. We will be told that we have the farm improvement scheme and that we have the rural improvements scheme, but those people are not in a position to contribute to the extent that they are expected to contribute under the rural improvements scheme. If they get an engineer down from the Board of Works to estimate a job the cost is, to my mind, tantamount to the price of a motor tractor. That is not what the people want. All they want is an ordinary repair job. The Land Commission is the most suitable authority to meet the demands and the requirements of the people who live in remote areas. It is no fault of their own that they live in remote districts and it is no reason why the Land Commission should not come to their rescue and make some provision by way of grant so that they may have some type of road leading into their holding. At the moment, I suppose due to the recent bad weather, a lot of people are making complaints as regards the flooding of certain areas of land. I am afraid we will be waiting for a very long time for the Drainage Act to become operative throughout the different counties. I would say to the Minister that, if possible, his Department should make provision for small drainage schemes in order to bring the land back into production or that, where the lands are flooded, they will be exempt from rent and rates.
I got a letter to-day from a friend of a Deputy in this House who has 32 acres of land practically submerged in water since last October. That is a great hardship on the owner of a small holding. The owner of these 32 acres has, in all, only 55 acres of land and it is a great hardship to see 32 acres of a small holding submerged since the month of October last. The owner has asked me in his letter to get in touch with the Minister or with the Land Commission so as to have an inspector sent to investigate and to determine the best course to adopt in order to deal with this flooding. Surely the Land Commission should have an engineering staff that would be able to give advice in dealing with such cases as I have just mentioned. These are two particular cases and the strange thing about it is that the two men concerned are out-and-out supporters of the Government. I would ask the Minister to see that something is done in this matter. They, like everybody else, have a right to a living and a right to protection by the particular Department which is responsible for such protection. I believe that the Land Commission should have an engineerng staff available for the tenants throughout the country to give advice if and when it is needed.
There is another matter to which I would like to refer and that is the question of buildings. During the very bad weather in the autumn and the winter time I got in touch with the Land Commission in connection with a grant towards the protection of a dwelling-house. Apparently the ground beneath that house slipped, but the Land Commission, because of the valuation, could not do anything to protect the interests of that tenant. Surely that is a case where a member of the engineering staff of the Land Commission could render valuable advice to a tenant who is, in fact, paying his annuities to the Land Commission. There should be a first-class engineering staff in the Department to offer advice to those who require it and in such cases the advice should be available to every tenant irrespective of valuation.
I come now to the old, old story of embankments. Since I was elected a member of this House, four years ago, I have been dealing with a particular case down in the Ballymacarbery area. There are also other cases and other tenants who are suffering very considerably because of the neglect of the Land Commission to carry out repairs to embankments. Long before we ever had a national or a native Government we had men who advocated the rights of the tenant farmers of this country—men who lost all they had in fighting for their rights, in defending the interests of the tenant farmers of this country and in placing them in the position of being the owners of their own land. They fought not only here but in a foreign Parliament to protect the interests of those people and, having fought in a foreign Parliament, they paved the way for our own Government to be in a position to protect, if they would protect, the interests of the tenant. At the moment they have failed and failed badly. In their days they forced the landlords to protect the tenants. They got that protection in the court and outside the court. When the Land Purchase Act, the 1923 Act, came into force moneys were withheld in many cases from the landlords of the day to protect the interests of their particular tenants as regards the repair and maintenance of embankments. That was the protection they had, that was the protection they were entitled to get, and that is the protection they are entitled to have from the Land Commission even to-day. They are not getting that protection. In this particular estate, and not only in this particular estate but in the Ashtown estate, £500 was withheld by the Land Commission for the protection of the tenant and the maintenance of embankments. To my mind the Land Commission whether under the present Government or under the previous Government took money on false pretences because they did not and they have not protected the interests of the tenants in those particular areas.
In this particular case, even yet, the lands are not vested. I hold that it is the opinion of others who know more about land law than I do that the Land Commission are liable and that the tenants would be well within their rights to take the Land Commission into court. But what good is it, when the tenant has only 40 or 50 acres of land, and has, maybe, very small financial backing? He says to himself, and naturally and rightly so, that he may as well hit his head against a stone wall because the Land Commission is part of the Government and the Government is the law. Why is it that the Land Commission which has taken money, as I say, under false pretences to protect the interests of tenants does not do so? Furthermore, what about the annuities which are being collected year after year by the Land Commission? A few years ago this money was being paid to a foreign Government. At that time we heard a lot of talk about the annuities and the payment of annuities but why is it now that the Irish Land Commission is collecting the annuities and withholding that money, that those tenants in the particular areas I have mentioned and in other areas not referred to are not protected by the Land Commission? That is as important a question as the division and sub-division of land, because, as I pointed out during the passage of the Drainage Bill, there are in that county 136 miles of embankments to be maintained in order to protect the holdings of the tenants. These tenants are at the mercy of deteriorated and decayed embankments and of the Land Commission which is failing to carry out its obligations to them.
What is the position of these tenants? Over a long period of years these tenants and their forefathers have been paying rents for these lands and to-day they are at the mercy of the waves because these embankments have gone into decay, and the Land Commission has failed to carry out the necessary repairs in order to afford protection for the tenants. Here is one letter from the Land Commission:
"Estate of Lord Ashtown, County Waterford.
A Chara,—With reference to your letter received in this office on 19/3/47 regarding the prevention of the flooding of your holding in the townland of Creggans, on the above estate, I am desired by the Land Commission to state that they are not prepared to take any action in the matter."
There is a case where the Land Commission refused to carry out its obligations to the tenants after withholding £500 at the time of the passing of the Land Act. I should like to hear from the Minister what his views are in the matter or what he intends to do in connection with that particular case.
I have here particulars of another case near Clashmore, County Water-ford, in which, some years ago, the Land Commission failed in its duty because of the lack of expert engineers when carrying out repairs to an embankment. On this particular estate 80 acres of the best land in County Waterford have been submerged for a number of years owing to the failure of the Land Commission to carry out proper repairs. Over a period of years the tenants of these lands have been paying rent and they have asked the Land Commission periodically to have the lands exempt from rent and rates.
Then there is a holding on the Huntingdon estate which is not very far from the one I quoted a moment ago. The Land Commission, in a letter dated October, 1944, stated it was estimated that the necessary work on the embankments would cost £335. A certain amount of money was withheld at the time the estate was sold, about £100 and, at the time of writing, there was a fund amounting to £159 9s. 5d. The Land Commission letter stated:—
"As a contribution towards the cost of the repairs now required the Land Commission will be prepared to direct that a sum not exceeding £100 should be made available from the accumulation of income at present to credit of the fund and from future dividends, and will also be prepared to make an advance of £85 to the registered owners to be repaid by them by means of an additional annuity of £4 0s. 9d. to be charged on the holding, subject to the owners agreeing to contribute in cash, the balance required, namely, £150."
Is it not unfair that a tenant who has been paying rent over a period of years should be asked to make a contribution of £150 to the Land Commission to carry out the repairs and also to pay an annuity of £4 per year? I do not mind the annuity being added on if the repairs are carried out and the lands give a return for it, but I do object to the Land Commission asking for a contribution of £150 towards the cost of the work. How many £150's are we paying out in doles throughout the country and getting no return for? How many £150's could be usefully employed in that area in carrying out that work? If application was made to the Department of Finance for more money to repair the embankments it would give plenty of employment and keep men off the dole and away from the street corners and the betting houses. That would prevent a lot of the unemployment that is rampant in the country.
There need not be any unemployed persons in the country. There is plenty of work on the land for men provided the money is put up by the State. Year after year hundreds of thousands of pounds are provided for unemployment assistance. There is plenty of work for any men who are able to work, and any man who is able to work should be made work, even if he is only shifting stones from one side of the road to the other in order to keep him fit. There is another holding near Dungarvan, the tenant of which was asked to carry out a repair job for which he was offered a sum of £40. Before the job was finished a storm in the winter period destroyed the work and the man was left without his £40. There was no compensation given to him. If that land was properly protected it would be a national asset. The position to-day is that the man is paying rent for land which is submerged and unproductive.
There is another matter in connection with certain parcels of land that I dealt with before in this House. Many of us thought that with the passing of the Land Acts all land ceased to be the property of landlords, but that is not the case. The position to-day is that there are certain tenants who, after buying the goodwill of the land, have received notice to quit from landlords if they do not pay an increased rent. I have particulars of a case here in which the rent has been nearly doubled. The landlord has asked the tenant to contribute towards his income-tax, his insurance, and his rates. The Minister should see that in these cases the tenants get the protection that other tenants enjoy under the Land Acts. The Act should be amended in order to give all those tenants protection.
The Deputy may not advocate legislation when discussing the Estimates.
I am sorry. At any rate, it is no harm to draw attention to that matter. I hope the Minister will see that the interests of the tenants generally are protected. I hope that he will make provision for the protection of the people to whom I referred. For the past four years I have advocated their protection here. These are the people who are at the mercy of the waves because of defective embankments due to the neglect of the Land Commission.
I take it there is to be a separate debate on the Forestry Department?
That is so.
What strikes me, listening to the debate on the Land Commission Estimate year in and year out, is that there is very little change in the type of complaint which is made and one would almost imagine that nothing had been done by the Land Commission in the past 20 years. I would like the Minister to put us in a position properly to face this whole question of land division and see exactly how far we have got in 23 or 24 years and how far we have to go before we reach something like finality. Is the Minister in a position to tell us how many estates are left which are suitable for acquisition and division? I take it that by now the Land Commission must have in their offices a complete survey of the estates which are suitable for acquisition and division. If that is so—and I do not see why it should not be—that is the sort of information that should be put before the House to enable us to discuss this question of acquisition and division in a reasonably intelligent way.
This House has to make up its mind as to what is meant by an estate and by a farm, and what is to be acquired and divided. Is it to be the policy that, to the man who has 40 acres, the man who has 60 acres is a rancher, because that seems to be where we are tending? I hear Deputies from various parts of the country talking as if they would like to see all the land divided into 25-acre farms and their idea is that if we had that we would have perfect peace, prosperity and a contented and enlarged rural population. That is all bunkum. Might I ask Deputies, particularly those from the counties where they tell us the land is of poor quality and the holdings are small, what would be the position if the Land Commission to-morrow decided to divide the whole of Meath, Limerick, Tipperary and Westmeath into 25-acre farms? Who would buy the cattle, or who would want to buy the cattle, that are brought to a certain stage on the poor, uneconomic holdings along the seaboard? And, if they were bought, by whom would they be bought, and where and how would they be finished and got ready for the home or the export market?
There is one thing that puzzles me about land division. Deputy Cafferky may not believe this, but I have heard this question of land division urged both inside and outside the House before Deputy Cafferky urged it, and I remember the time when the popular cry in this country used to be: "The land for the people and the road for the bullock". After 24 years of activity by the Land Commission we have fewer people on the land and we have fewer bullocks on the land or on the road. The extraordinary thing about it is that it is 24 years since the 1923 Land Act was passed and, notwithstanding the fact that hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired and divided and tens of thousands of people have been allocated either holdings or parcels of land, there are fewer people on the land to-day than there were 25 years ago and there is less production.
I do not know if anybody will challenge that statement, but I would like to hear it explained, because I cannot explain it. If the result of land acquisition and division year after year is to be that we are to have fewer people in rural Ireland and less production, it is about time we examined the position and realised what we are doing. That is the position as I see it.
I do not think the Deputy is right about less production.
The Minister, in his Budget statement to-day, admitted it. He said the volume of agricultural production is less this year than it was last year.
If it is, it is not on the divided lands.
I am not suggesting anything in that connection.
That is what you want us to infer.
Surely I am entitled to point out that amazing thing? The Deputy is, like myself, old enough to remember the time when we were denouncing the place where there was nothing but a man and his dog. Surely I am entitled to say that where hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired and divided amongst tens of thousands of people, people who had no claim on that land before, there ought to be more production?
On these lands, decidedly—I know them well.
The Deputy is not as dull as he would like us to believe. The Deputy can see this as clearly as I can. He knows quite well that if there are tens of thousands of people placed on land to which they had no claim before, and out of which they have to support themselves, apart from producing for sale, there ought to be, not merely on those lands but on all other lands, increased production.
You cannot make the allottees responsible for the whole country, can you?
The Deputy wants to score petty debating points.
The Deputy will have his opportunity in the course of the debate.
He had it and—I say with all respect—the devil a much use he made of it.
It is Deputy Morrissey's opportunity now, and he must be permitted to speak without interruption.
But he was addressing Deputies.
He was addressing the Chair.
And I am addressing him through the Chair.
And you are out of order.
I am not surprised when an awkward point is put up that it is sought to misrepresent it. That is one thing in which the Party opposite is absolutely consistent. I am asking the Minister—perhaps the Deputy could do it, but apparently he does not want to—to explain—and we are entitled to know it, because all this business is costing the taxpayers and landless men like myself a fair amount of money— why such an amazing position should arise. I know one has to have a bit of courage as a landless man to poke his nose into the middle of a debate such as this. As I say there are a few things about land acquisition and land division which certainly puzzle me, but unlike Deputies opposite, I am always seeking enlightenment. I am always open to enlightenment, and I hope the Minister will be able to enlighten me on that point.
With regard to the question of Land Commission roads, I wish the Land Commission would either make roads or drop the thing altogether completely. I agree with Deputies from all sides of the House who have spoken on this Vote, that the Land Commission roads are an absolute disgrace. What happens? They take over an estate, divide it and make roads—19 times out of 20, culs-de-sac. Sometimes a road is made well, and very well. Sometimes they build it the whole way, but not always, and then it becomes nobody's child. In about 12 months' time it would be easier for you to travel down the bed of a river than to travel some of these roads. Mark you, the unfortunate people to whose holdings these roads lead are in the position—and I know this from personal experience— that they will not get a man with a threshing machine to risk his threshing machine in trying to travel over such roads. If they succeed in getting their corn threshed, they will not get a Córas Iompair Éireann lorry to go up the road to remove their corn to the mill. I think that there should be some change in the local government law——
Now!
I am not advocating legislation, but I say there should be some change. I do not know whether it requires legislation or not. Whatever impediment there is which prevents the local authority from maintaining a cul-de-sac should be removed. Until such time as that is done, whatever money is included in this Estimate for the making of Land Commission roads is money wasted absolutely and completely. Any Deputy who has seen Land Commission roads will subscribe to that, no matter on what side of the House he sits.
I should like to touch on another matter, and I know I am going to tread on very dangerous ground. I think that a lot of the trouble that arises in connection with the Land Commission and its work is due to the fact that there is too much interference with the Land Commission and its officials by Deputies. I have, perhaps, less than any other member of the House, troubled the Land Commission or its inspectors. They have a divisional headquarters in my constituency, but I was never inside the door.
It is time that you made a start.
It is not and I am not going to start now because I have sense enough to recognise that these men know their business far better than I do. I have sense enough to realise also that the average Land Commission official wants to do his job fairly and squarely. I want to pay the tribute to them that, generally speaking, so far as the activities of the Land Commission in my constituency are concerned I have no fault to find with them—I mean with regard to the fairness with which the land was distributed. If there was less interference I think it would be perhaps better for Deputies themselves. Certainly it would be better for the Land Commission and in the end perhaps it would be conducive to a more equal and more fitting allocation of an estate and you would find that people who were best qualified and who would make best use of the land would get it. None of us is a child and we know that this question of land division and land acquisition has been made a Party battleground for years. I think, as I say, that there has been too much interference. I think if all Deputies were absolutely barred from access to the indoor and outdoor staff, the Land Commission would get through their work as quickly and they would do it at least as efficiently, as with the assistance or suggestions from Deputies from any side of the House. I know there are many of my colleagues in the House who will not subscribe to that but that is my view.
I do not suppose that we shall ever see the end of this question—certainly not in our time. We shall certainly never see the end of it if our decisions are going to be determined by the number of acres which each holding should contain. It simply cannot be done. You cannot decide that you must have uniform holdings all over the country. There are parts of the country where one acre of land would be equal to 15 acres in other parts. I should like to see the Land Commission concerning themselves mainly with the functions for which they were principally established. Mind you, we are too often inclined to forget these functions and the Land Commission in recent years have forgotten them themselves. The main function of the Land Commission was to make uneconomic holdings, as far as possible, economic. That was their main function, their first duty. Instead of that the Land Commission in recent years have been concerning themselves with creating a whole host of new uneconomic holdings. I am certainly giving these allotments a dignity they do not deserve when I use the word "holding".
In my experience I do not know any drudgery greater than the drudgery of a man trying to rear a family in this country on an uneconomic holding. He is always working, dragging from morning until night, always pulling the devil by the tail and he is never one penny better off at the end of the year than at the beginning. It does not matter how able he is, if the soil is not able to produce sufficient food for man and beast then the family living on it are hardly making a living. Is it not an extraordinary thing—we have got to face up to it—that after 24 years of having this land question entirely in our own hands, to deal with it as we thought fit, the one striking result that one can see is that there are fewer people in rural Ireland than there were 25 years ago and that there is apparently less production?
The discussion on the land question here this evening and on every other occasion on which this Estimate has been before the House illustrates one thing very clearly. We have general demands made on the Land Commission for further and further expenditure—expenditure for the maintenance of embankments to prevent flooding, the building of roads, the general improvement of land, as well as a strong advocacy for the division of land at the expense of the State, the creation of new holdings and the enlargement of holdings generally. Is there any other business in the country where representation is again and again made that the individual interests engaged in it should receive from the State such and such subsidies? I think it illustrates one thing which is very important, that is, that the principal industry of the country is not able to stand on its own feet, that it cannot exist as ordinarily every other business and industry must exist, as a self-contained entity. It is entirely dependent on the taxpayer being asked to contribute towards its maintenance.
Is there not something peculiar in that? If we view it from that aspect, is it not the duty of the Government to examine seriously the reason why this major industry is always in a bankrupt position, pleading for doles and for the taking of more and more revenue, not out of the industry but from the taxpayer? The primary purpose of the Land Commission is to establish the ownership of the land available in individuals. That is our plan. We believe that ownership in the land should be vested in the individual and not in the State and, if we aim at that objective, we should establish what is an economic holding, how much land we have from which to create an economic holding, and how many such holdings we can create. We should not hold before the public the illusion that we have unlimited resources of land which we can call upon without check to make available new holdings and enlarge those which are uneconomic. It is the duty of the Land Commission to discharge that function to the extent to which land is available, and I have no hesitation in saying here that the Land Commission and the policy of the Government for the past 24 years have been entirely wrong, in so far as they have failed to recognise that the first claimant on the land is the person with the uneconomic holding.
The congested areas would, naturally, morally and on the basis of any test which can be applied, have the first claim upon the land available for distribution. The aim should be to bring our farms up to a standard size, to a size which will enable the requirements of a family to be provided. If we fail to do that, we are going to have, in perpetuity, the position in which those engaged on the land will be paupers, pleading intermittently for doles and increased grants merely to keep body and soul together, in a position in which the farmer will not be able to provide an existence for himself and will never reach the level of decency which prevails in ordinary industry. We are going around spasmodically dividing land, while failing to recognise that the fundamental thing is to establish ownership in holdings of an economic size. Put it on a business basis and get rid of this pauperism which owners of land are compelled to suffer and by reason of which they have to plead year after year for doles, grants and benefits. Give them an economic-sized holding.
If the Land Commission face their responsibilities on that basis, I have no hesitation in saying that their whole policy on the division of land will be changed and that they will reserve whatever land is still available for distribution for the enlargement of uneconomic holdings and the elimination of the congested areas which are the equivalent of the slum areas in the cities and towns. The taxpayers have been called upon to make vast contributions towards the removal of slums in the City of Dublin and other cities, and we are told that it is good business, that it creates healthier conditions and enables children to grow up into healthy men and women. If that is sound business from the point of view of health in the cities, surely it is equally sound to remove the slums and slum conditions under which young boys and girls in rural areas can see no prospect for them but that of remaining in poverty and pleading for doles and assistance. Bring up the uneconomic holding; remove the slums which have been created by conquest in the past.
One of our grand theories, in the days when we were revolutionists, was that, when we got control of our own affairs, those things which had been forced upon us, and which had made us paupers in the past, would be removed and that our people would be brought back to a position in which they would be independent, self-respecting and prosperous. That promise has not been kept, and the congested areas are crying: "Shame on this Government and on past Governments because of their failure to meet the reasonable demands which justice dictates should be met by any Government in this country". Remove the slums created by the conquest of the past. Any land available for future distribution should be utilised towards that end.
Deputies have advocated that the Land Commission should go into the open market and buy land for the purpose of enlarging holdings. I entirely disagree with that proposal. I can see nothing surer than that course to destroy one of the fundamentals which the people fought for in the old Land League days, one of the three F's., free sale. When a farm is offered for sale and the State is one of the bidders, what individual will buy against the State and who is to fix the price to which the State will go? Who is to determine its value, and, if there is to be no determination of the value, who will pay the extraordinary price which we all know may be manipulated, a price which may represent black marketing in land? Does it not follow that the individual cannot succeed in buying against the State? Does it not follow also that the individual will cease to be a buyer and that there is then no free sale?
Such a course cannot be adopted unless you want to destroy any rights the individual farmer may have in the sale of his holding. You cannot put the State in as a buyer, because ultimately the State will be the only buyer and when that condition arises, the State will be the only buyer at its own price. Alternatively, you can have the price of land going skyward, and who will pay that price? In the ultimate, free sale will be destroyed and I cannot agree with that suggestion. I agree that there are many farms offered in the market for which there are few buyers, and buyers at bad prices. These lands probably could, by negotiation—not at public auction—be bought by the Land Commission at a reasonable price, for distribution. Such interference, I should say, would be in the interest of the owner of such lands. I know of several such farms in my own county. I have advocated their purchase in a direct way by the Land Commission from the owners. The owners are willing to sell and the land could be easily bought and transferred with advantage to adjoining owners.
The delay by the Land Commission in carrying out that programme is, to me, unreasonable and unaccountable, particularly in a county where there are no large estates and where congestion is extreme. I must charge the Land Commission with delinquency in that respect. I have personally brought to their notice not a great number of such holdings but a good number, and there is considerable delay on their part in proceeding to purchase those holdings or even to negotiate for them. The Land Commission are very slow in undertaking and carrying out matters which, as ordinary business matters, should be carried out with a reasonable degree of expedition.
Complaint has been made here that the division of land has not been well carried out, and that interference by Deputies and political organisations has not brought the best results. I say here emphatically that I have known no instance in which political influence or bias or any degree of unfairness has been applied by any of the officials of the Land Commission, from the highest to the lowest. Political influence has never, to my knowledge, been successfully applied or recognised by those responsible for the division of land. I pay that tribute to the Land Commission and to their officers throughout the country. I want to emphasise, as one coming from a congested area, that the primary purpose of the Land Commission is to destroy those slums which are a crying disgrace to the community. I hope that, in future, in the division of land, the Land Commission will not be carried away by enthusiasm for creating new holdings but will recognise that those with the first claim on the lands available for distribution are those whose ancestors were the victims of past conquests. I trust that those wrongs will be rectified so far as it is possible to do so.
When Deputy Seán Moylan became Minister for Lands I, for one, believed that a considerable amount of headway would be made in the acquisition and division of untenanted, unoccupied and unproductive land. Coming into this House from the same constituency as the present Minister for Lands, it is rather hard to have to stand here to-night and state that we have still in that constituency a considerable amount of untenanted, unoccupied and unproductive land. Time and again, pledges were made to the people by the present Government, especially back in 1932, when it was the principal plank in their platform, to divide untenanted and unproductive land amongst the people. Joining with other Deputies who have contributed to the debate here to-night, I can say that we have to-day in north Cork, in and around the town of Mallow, 3,000 or 4,000 acres of untenanted and unproductive lands. We find that we have still in existence in this country a system of landlordism. The people who own those considerable tracts of land have on them persons who are compelled yearly to pay them enormous sums in the form of rent.
I have put questions to the Minister time and again as to what exactly are his intentions about acquiring a certain estate convenient to the town of Millstreet—the McCarthy-O'Leary estate. I have drawn attention to an estate near Mallow and to the Preston-Cross estate near Buttevant. There is a considerable demand in these localities to have those lands immediately acquired and distributed amongst the people. In the event of the Land Commission taking over these holdings in the near future, I should like the Minister to take into account, when selecting tenants, the claims of those living in cottages and small holdings. I remember two years ago, in the course of a reply to the debate on the Department of Lands, the present Minister pointed out, after I had raised this question, that you would not find the right or proper type of people to take over the care of lands standing at the doors of the labour exchange.
I say here to-night that, if some of these big estates never existed, perhaps we would not have some of the people who are at the doors of the labour exchanges standing there. Some of the people standing at the doors of the labour exchanges are descendants of those who owned some of those tracts of land. Those who went before them were evicted from them. I should like to have a reply from the Minister as to whether it is his intention to acquire those tracts of land in the near future. I trust that, when he decides upon acquiring the lands, he will take into account, in the selection of tenants, the descendants of the evicted tenants. There is no use in anybody saying that the descendants of the evicted tenants are being settled on the land. In days gone by, Parnell, when leader of the Irish Party, pointed out that there would be no solution of the land question until such time as the descendants of every evicted tenant were reinstated. I can tell the Minister here to-night that we have still in north Cork a considerable number of those people who would be classed as the descendants of evicted tenants. I have communicated with the Minister and with the Land Commission on this subject. It is a sad state of affairs, in view of the fact that a considerable amount of agitation was carried on in the dark and evil days by the men who were evicted, that their descendants who fought the land war, who fought for the land of Ireland, should be deemed not fit or suitable to live on that land at the moment. I want the Minister to take these things into account. Surely, from his own experience, he will agree that, as far as sympathy for those in the national movement was concerned, no sympathy ever came from the people to whom I referred in my address this evening. The Minister knows that himself and I am sure he will take those things into account. I hope that, in the course of his reply, he will give some guarantee that, in the near future, the various individual holdings around Mallow, Millstreet and the town of Buttevant will be acquired by his Department.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.
I happen to be one of those Deputies elected in 1943, and I have had four years' experience in this House. During those four years, I think I heard this Estimate being discussed threadbare year after year, and I have been listening to the same old grievances being unearthed by different Deputies on many occasions. I have listened to these things so much that they have become monotonous to me and they must have become tiresome to the Minister and more or less obnoxious to the country in general. Repeating these things year after year makes one feel that, instead of making progress, we are moving backwards. I am afraid we are more or less on the downward trend. If we are not static, we are moving backwards, and I attribute that to the inactivity of the Land Commission and the desultory manner in which their work is being done. They are not putting their shoulder to the wheel and facing this problem of land business—I say "business", because not alone does it embrace land division but many other grievances connected with the land. They are not moving fast enough and not putting enough energy into the work and, as a result, there is a certain amount of discontent in every county.
I do not believe there is a Deputy representing a rural area who has not some kind of grievance in regard to land. The grievances in some parts of the country may be more marked and more serious or more neglected than in other parts. We western Deputies, particularly from Mayo, have grievances of very long standing and they should be redressed with all expedition. Take the position in Mayo, as it stands at the moment. The amount of land in the hands of the Land Commission is ample evidence that in the western counties there is more demand for it than there is in any other county in Ireland. On the 27th November last, in a Parliamentary Question, I asked the Minister for Lands if he would state the number of acres of (a) arable land and (b) non-arable land held by the Land Commission in each of the Twenty-Six Counties. It is essential to note that in the western counties they have much more than in the midland or eastern counties.
In Galway, the Land Commission has a total acreage of 18,492; in Mayo, 11,100 and in Roscommon, 12,983. A large percentage—I would say even 90 per cent.—of those lands is in the hands of the Land Commission for quite a number of years and some of them for the last 20 years, I understand, in the case of Mayo. In my own constituency, I do not think they are on hands so long, but I know there are areas on hands for the last seven, eight or ten years, where nothing has been done. In those particular areas where the land question is so acute and redress is more urgent, the Land Commission should take up the work of division with more vigour. People may say that agitation may retard land division. I am not by any means an agitator: I believe in peaceful and constitutional means as the best for acquiring land and preserving the peace and stability of the country; but very often people become exasperated and that exasperation may have led to undesirable things in many counties. As a matter of fact, that exasperation has led to one event happening in my own county which may not be classed as undesirable but which I would not recommend or stand for. In those counties where the position is so acute, such as Mayo, Roscommon and Galway, the Land Commission should concentrate and send in its full forces, so as to have the position reviewed once and for all, with a view to its settlement.
I do not see that a complete settlement of land division can be effected during this generation and perhaps not during the next generation, as I realise we may not have enough land to go around. It has first to be determined by the Government and by other people what an economic holding is. I am yet at sea on that point and have not the authoritative advice one would expect from the Land Commission officials as to what an economic holding is. I would assume myself that it should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 acres of good land—not 40 acres, of course, of the wet and barren lands we have in the west. I would say 40 acres in County Meath, Westmeath or parts of Longford. I would say that that would afford a moderately decent living to a man and his family.
I understand this question of division is one of very serious magnitude but it is very urgent and important and should not be let drag on. I hold that there is only one solution to it, that is, migration. That may not go down very well with Deputies living in Meath, with Deputy Giles or Deputy Hilliard, and Deputy Morrissey may have some objection, though I am not so sure about that. I believe that, as there is not sufficient land in the west of Ireland or in the neighbouring counties, the only possible chance of effecting a complete settlement and disposing of this question, partially, if not entirely, is through migration. To migrate people, you must first find the land for them, and that is a problem also. No matter what any Deputy may say, neither I nor my Party stand for confiscation. We stand for the principles of the old Land League days, the principles of Davitt—free sale, fair rent and fixity of tenure. We stand four-square behind them and let no one be perturbed about that. It is embodied in our policy and will be so while we are members of this House.
I would say that many estates which have been put up for sale could have been purchased by the Land Commission. On Saturday's papers in particular we see a number of farms and estates in the Midlands and in other counties, including my own, offered for sale. They are for sale in the County Sligo and, as Deputy Maguire said, even in the County Leitrim as well as in Galway and Mayo. Some of these are estates of 200, 300, 400 or 500 acres. Evidently the owners want to sell them. I say they are entitled to the full market value for their land. So far as I am concerned, I do not want anything in the nature of confiscation or even semi-confiscation. Those owners are justly, morally and legally entitled to the full market value for their land. The policy of the Land Commission heretofore, under the Act of 1933 or 1934, denied owners of land full market value. I did not approve of those tactics. I know of farms which, in those days, were taken over at prices entirely below the market values prevailing then.
The Minister seems to be perfectly satisfied that the Land Act passed last year was a great accomplishment and was one deserving of unstinted praise from every Deputy. I do not agree with him. I think it was a rather harsh and severe measure. I think that the question as to whether a man has been guilty of bad husbandry is one that should be determined by an impartial tribunal. I have a few cases in mind which I can cite for the information of the Minister. The first I take is that of a newly-married man who got an allotment of about eight acres. The man himself was slightly deformed, but through illness in his family he was not able to work the land. He had been getting on his feet nicely and I was proud of him. If he had been given a little more time he would have made good. This year the Land Commission officials came down and relieved him of his land. I say that was highly unjust and unfair. If the man, as I say, had been given a little time he would have made good and would have been an asset and not a liability to the country. He started off by having one beast, a little cow as he used to say, and in time would have another one. He was getting on gradually, but then he was retarded by this interference on the part of the officials of the Land Commission. In my opinion exceptional cases of that sort should first be investigated. The Land Commission have acted in a rather high-handed way in some of these cases—acted more or less on impulse or, as they say of the Quakers, as the spirit moves them. As I have said, I do not approve of such tactics. There should be a thorough investigation of the circumstances of each case before such drastic measures are resorted to.
We all know that land which has been in the hands of the Land Commission for a number of years has not improved in fertility. Some of it has been let in grazing and some for tillage, with the result that every man who takes it for either purpose takes his full pound of flesh off it. The stocking of these lands has not been carried out in a proper way either. I know of farms in my own area which are now being allotted, I am glad to say, and they were carrying five times as much cattle as they should carry. The stock masters took in cattle as long as there was a beast to be got. Exorbitant prices were charged for the grazing of the cattle—in fact they were black market prices. As I say, they continued to take in cattle as long as there was a beast to be got, with the result that in the month of November the cattle were in an unsaleable condition. They could not be sold at any price. That, in my opinion, is a bad precedent to adopt. It looks to me a sort of selfish business on the part of the Land Commission. It is really too small a thing for a body such as the Land Commission to do—to be over-stocking the land and charging too high prices for grazing. I would not be surprised if some hungry or greedy individual did a thing like that, but the Land Commission should be above it—taking in excessive numbers of cattle, charging exorbitant prices for the grazing of them and then returning them to their owners in November in such a condition that they are unfit for sale. I hope that such a thing will not occur again.
In the case also of those farms the numbers of tillage lettings are very moderate. As a matter of fact, I think the Land Commission is very lucky to get any tillage taken on them at all. Every Deputy is aware that, even though we try to do our best, tillage in our county is a dead loss. The land on these farms which is being let for tillage has gone out of fertility due to the fact that three or four crops are taken off it in succession.
So far as I am aware, no root crop or potato crop has been put in on these lands at all. Eventually, when these lands are allotted the unfortunate owner discovers that the portion given to him has been deprived of its fertility. That should not be the case. The Land Commission should have some plan in mind before the division of those farms takes place. It should stipulate that in the year prior to the division grass seed or clover would be sown so as to try to bring the land back to fertility. If that were done it would give the new occupier some chance of being able to make a decent start. I hope that some steps will be taken to remedy what I have complained about with regard to these barren tracts of land. They are entirely unproductive. You can see the red clay staring you in the face. No man, no matter how greedy he might be to get land, should be placed on a holding like that.
Another matter that has been brought to my notice is this, that in pre-emergency days grants were made available for the erection of houses on Land Commission holdings. I know of three or four cases where small grants were made available in pre-emergency days, say, in 1939, when prices were at a normal level and building materials were available. I will put one case to the House. I do not remember the exact figures but I will give them approximately. A man received an allotment of land on which he was expected to build a house, in respect of which there was a grant of £130. War broke out in 1939 and prices began to rise. It was physically impossible for the man to build the house at that time. The building of the house has not yet been undertaken because, with rising prices and scarcity of materials, he was unable to avail of the grant. He made application through me to the Land Commission for an increased grant to meet the rising cost of materials. It was refused. That should have been a small matter from the point of view of the Land Commission, and I think the man should get sufficient accommodation to enable him to build a house such as he would have built in 1939. I consider that the grant should be increased by £70 or £80, although that would not altogether compensate him for the increase in the cost of building materials.
There is a number of these cases and I would like the Minister to review them sympathetically and to increase the grant. These people are at present living in houses that are unfit for human habitation and they have not the finance to build a house. In prewar years they could build a two or three-roomed house with a grant of £130 supplemented by whatever small amount they could put into it themselves but at present prices they could not possibly do it. I would impress upon the Minister the vital necessity of considering these cases. If he were to grant the increases asked for he would be doing a good day's work for the Land Commission and the tenants and would be creating an atmosphere of prosperity and providing people with small amenities that they should enjoy. Every man is entitled to a good house if it can be provided for him, even at State expense.
There is one question to which I would like to get a reply from the Minister. What is the present redemption value of land? Has the redemption value of land fluctuated very much in the last nine or ten years? There is an impression abroad throughout the country that the redemption value ten years ago was much less than it is to-day. If that is so, I do not know by what mathematical contrivance that has been brought about because the ten years' rent paid should be taken into account. That is a very important point and I hope the Minister will not overlook it. I should like to hear from him what is the present redemption value and how it compares with the redemption value of ten years ago.
My colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, more or less congratulated the Land Commission on the expeditious manner in which they handled land division in the Boyle area. I am sorry that his ideas and mine in regard to land division do not coincide. I live in close proximity to the lands mentioned, commonly known as the plains of Boyle. There was a certain amount of expedition, due to elections or something else, but it was a case of the more haste, the less speed. I have received numerous complaints from the tenants who were transferred to the divided lands on the plains of Boyle. First, I have received complaints about the houses. I have seen the houses. There was no proper supervision of the building of those houses. The side walls are cracked, the floors are crumbling, the tiles on the roofs are shaky. I happened to be there on one particularly stormy day and you would be much better off in the open than in one of those houses. I cannot congratulate the Land Commission on their activities as far as these houses are concerned or as far as the general amenities there are concerned. There is no water on the plains of Boyle. The nearest drinking ponds for cattle are about three miles away. Day after day I have seen cattle being driven to water into the town of Boyle or to a lake about two miles away.
I have repeatedly made representations to the Land Commission to sink a pump in that area but up to the present my representations have fallen on deaf ears. I have been promised that when boring operations are resumed this matter will be dealt with. It is a case of live horse and you will get grass. That has been going on since I was elected in 1943 and before that and I am still hammering at the Land Commission, asking, every two or three months, what has been done. People should be provided at least with water and there should be some sanitary arrangements. We are very primitive in that respect. Again I appeal to the Minister to do his utmost to provide these amenities.
In various parts of Roscommon there is a number of derelict holdings in the hands of the Land Commission. These are holdings that were designated at some particular period for certain allottees who failed to turn up and they are still unoccupied. There are houses on these holdings. I know two or three cases of houses on holdings on the plains of Boyle, where the doors and windows are rotting. The Land Commission are slow in selecting other allottees for the holdings. I have made repeated representations to the Land Commission to select tenants. I have recommended several people, not for political purposes. I do not care what the politics of the particular man selected may be. The Land Commission should get tenants for these holdings. The longer they wait the worse the houses will be and the more expense will be involved in putting them into a proper state of repair. It is false economy for the Land Commission to hold them for such a length of time even though they may get a decent price for the letting of the land. That consideration should be negligible in the eyes of the Land Commission.
Quite recently a farm of 42 Irish acres was divided near where I live. I was entirely dissatisfied with the manner in which it was divided. It is not that I had any serious objection to the selection of allottees. Everything was in order in that way. There was nothing political in it. The holdings were entirely inadequate. Imagine a farm of 42 Irish acres being divided into 13 allotments. We are not quite that land-hungry that a three-acre farm will satisfy anybody. Most of those farmers, I admit, had a few acres of land but when you divide 42 acres by 13 and make ditches, I wonder how much you have left. It is an eyesore. It is ridiculous and shameful and the amount of money involved in fencing is colossal in proportion to the value of the land. These are wrong tactics. If you want to solve the land problem in this country, you must migrate the people but this kind of land division is only a joke. It looks more like a graveyard than an allotment of land. It is waste of public money and is an insult to the people who get it.
From time to time we have heard of the flight from the land. That is a reality. There is a flight from the land. Our cities and towns have become overcrowded. Our population is dwindling every day. We had some cross-fire a few moments ago between Deputy Morrissey and Deputy O'Rourke, my colleague from Roscommon, regarding the flight from the land and our dwindling population. Deputy Morrissey stated here that in spite of the land division we have carried on for the last 25 years, the problem is not settled yet, that with all that we have less people on the land. That is strange but it is a fact and I will indicate causes that contribute to that. First, we are not providing the amenities on the land to which the people are entitled.
If you want to stop the flight from the land, which is dangerous and bad for this country, if you want to keep our population at home, you will have to provide water and good sanitary arrangements. I would recommend the Minister to concentrate on these things in connection with the future building and construction of houses and to get away from the primitive ideas we had 50 or 60 years ago and to conform more with conditions in the towns and suburbs than we have heretofore done.
In conclusion, I desire to refer to the wages paid by the Land Commission. I understand that the standard rate of wages is something in the neighbourhood of 44/- a week. I think that in these times 44/- a week is a poor wage to pay to any man. I think there should be some alignment between the wages paid to Land Commission workers, bog workers and agricultural workers. I would recommend to the Minister that the wages of the Land Commission worker should at least be brought up to the same rate as the bog worker. If I am correct in stating that 44/- a week is the wage prevailing at the present time, I hope the Minister will reconsider the matter. No approaches have been made to me on this subject but I feel myself that it is an injustice. I feel that the men working on those ditches are entitled to as much pay as the men working on the bogs. I would say they should be brought into line with the men working on the bogs because the work is just as strenuous and hard. That is all I have to say on this Estimate. I would like again to put before the Minister that point of wages, and I hope that it will receive immediate and earnest consideration by him and his Department.
Mo ghraidh iad na hAirí agus mo thrua é an tAire Tailte. Ba dhóigh le duine a bheadh ag éisteacht le cuid de na cainteoirí gur i gcoinne na ndaoine atá sé ag tarraingt. Is beag talamh réidh atá le roinnt againn i gCiarraidhe acht tá ceist eile le socrú ann— ceist roinnt na bportach. Cuirtear níos mo suime sa cheist sin i gCiarraidhe Thoir ná in aon cheantar eile. Tá trí céimeanna san obair sin—ar an gcéad dul sios, é do roinnt i gceapacha agus píosa do thabhairt do gach iarrthóir a mbeadh a ainm curtha isteach aige chuige, annsan dígeanna do dhéanamh chun é do thriomú, más gá, agus gan aon dabht, bóithre do dhéanamh isteach ionta. Dhein an Teachta Ó Moirisí agus Teachtaí eile a lán cainte anseo mar gheall ar dhrochbhóithre. Sin é an rud atá ag déanamh buaidhrimh do chuid de na Teachtaí ins an Tigh seo ach easba bóithre ar fad atá ag déanamh buaidhrimh dúinn se. Is dócha nach mar sin atá an scéal ins gach aon áit ach tá mé cinnte go bhfuil mórán portach roinnte agus an chéad chéim togtha iontu le blianta acht cad é an mhaith é sin gan na dígeanna agus na bóithre a bheith déanta? Cad é an mhaith dúinn na portaigh do bheith roinnte agus áiteanna na mbóthar do bheith marcálta gan iad do chriochnú? Tá sár-obair á dhéanamh ins an cheanntar ag ceann de's na h-oifigigh is fearr atá ag obair faoi aon Roinn. Tugann se cuairteanna cúpla uair sa bhliain agus déarfainn ná bhfuil oifigeach chomh macánta ná chomh dúthrachtach leis ag obair faoin Roinn Tailte ná faoi aon Roinn eile, agus muna mbeadh gur duine ciallmhar atá ann ní bheadh an scéil fé mar atá sé, mar, do réir mar a thuighim é, ta an cuid is mó de's na daoine sásta le'n a chuid oibre acht cad é an mhaith é gan na bóithre do bheith déanta chun an obair a chriochnú? Iarraim anois ar an Aire an obair sin do thógaint suas agus na bóithre do dhéanamh i dtreó is ná beadh an gearán atá againn i mbliana againn an bhliain seo chughainn freisin.
I have listened, as the Minister has listened, very patiently to this debate on this Vote for Lands. This debate takes place every year because the Estimate for the Department of Lands is a very important one and while the amount of money we would like to see given to this Estimate has not been given this year nevertheless we feel that it is our duty here to criticise whatever needs criticism and to encourage whatever sub-heads on which we think the Minister deserves encouragement. Now, Sir, the plight of the uneconomic holder and the tenant who lives in a congested area has been bemoaned by almost every Deputy who has spoken in this House. In spite of the fact that some members of this Dáil are in sympathy with large land holders, nevertheless there has not been any, shall we say, antagonism to the opinion that congested and uneconomic holders should be brought up to valuations which would give them a means of livelihood. We have travelled over quite a lot of ground. We have heard all about the three F's—Free Sale, Fair Rent and Fixity of Tenure. We have talked of the great days of the Land League. We have talked about the bad conditions of roads built by the Land Commission. We have talked about the slackness and of the failures of officials. Up to date we have left out only one thing which we introduced in this self-same Estimate of last year—a great favourite of the present Minister—the name of Oliver Cromwell. We have left that out and I will not bring it into this debate at this late stage. When a Department of State is set up under a democratic Government it is the duty of the head of that Department to use his entire knowledge and to use everything he can to bring about better conditions in the running of his Department and to see that everything that can be done is done to make a success of the work which he has to do.
There are two systems by which a Department can be run well. One is if the Minister is capable and competent and has a thorough knowledge of the work he has to undertake. With such knowledge at his disposal he will, with the help of officials under his control, be able to make a success of the work he has undertaken. If, on the other hand, the Minister is not a master of his job, he should have an advisory body or a group of officials thoroughly conversant with the work they have to do who will advise him and treat him as a sort of figurehead. In that way a very great amount of suscess could be achieved, but not as great as if the Minister was really capable of carrying out the work in his own way with a certain amount of help from his officials. Nevertheless, either of these systems can lead to a Department giving satisfaction.
Since the Department of Lands was established, and especially since the present Government got into power, I would say that not a single Minister or a single member of the staff, especially of the senior officials, knew the slightest thing about the work they had to do. In fact, I regard the whole lot of them as the roundest set of pegs that could be put into the squarest set of holes. They have brought the Land Commission to the state of chaos, incompetence and worthlessness to which it has been reduced.
No Department could be proud of the fact that, after 25 years of native Government, we have still lands unacquired and undivided and congestion and congested areas. I know that is something which will not bring a blush to the cheek either of the Minister or any official who happens to be listening. But if they have any consideration for the work which they were appointed to do, they should get something done. Now that the last excuse they had for delay, namely, the war and the emergency, has passed they should get into their stride and do a lot more to help the people in the congested areas by relieving the congestion, which is the main work that confronts the Land Commission.
The Minister, in introducing his Vote, told us very solemnly and in a few crisp sentences that his Department demanded an increase of £44,910. Anybody who understands what the Land Commission has to do or the amount of money it would take to bring about a settlement of the congestion problem alone, would realise that £44,900,000 should be the sum asked for. The unfortunate individual, who for 25 or 35 years has waited hopefully and patiently in expectation that a few coveted acres which would mean so much to him will come his way, can say to himself that this year will bring no improvement whatever so far as the acquisition or division of land is concerned. We were told that there will be no decrease in the activities of the Land Commission in the coming year. If the Land Commission is active, I have failed to see any of its activity.
I can speak for the congested areas better than any other Deputy who has spoken in this debate, because I live right in the heart of a congested area. In that area the people have never asked for doles, bounties or gifts from the State. The people are willing and eager and anxious to work economic holdings if they got them. They have struggled on for the past quarter of a century in the hope that some day there would be some improvement made in the size of their holdings, because there is as much land available in the locality as would satisfy the claims of the congests in the immediate vicinity. While I realise that the deaf ear will be turned to anything coming from this side of the House and that any representations made to the Minister or to the Land Commission will be treated in a casual manner, nevertheless I must continue to criticise them as I can find no grounds on which to praise them.
In introducing his Estimate, the Minister congratulated the officials of the Department for the splendid work they did during the last harvest. I think it was very foolish of the Minister to take up even a few lines of the Official Report with such a nonsensical statement. Excuses come very readily both from the Minister and the officials under his control, but the best of them all came from the Minister when he told us that last year's trying weather was one of the causes for slackness in the work of the Land Commission.
All of us in this House have come to the use of reason: we are all over 21 years. I happen to be one of the youngest Deputies here. I think that the Minister's statement, if delivered to a crowd of schoolboys, would be laughed at, and laughed at very heartily. Anything will do as an excuse. It was the war for the past five or six years; it was the scarcity of building materials at another time; next it was the scarcity of officials, and then we were rather busy bringing about a settlement with regard to the vesting of tenants. Now the weather has intervened and, by the general look of the weather, we can safely rule the Land Commission out of existence for 1947.
We were told that unfinished work leads to waste and that next year the Land Commission will push on as hard and as truly as they possibly can. We know well how they will push; we know well what they will do. It is much easier, and possibly a far better policy, for the Minister and the Land Commission to take good care that a land settlement will not be brought about in five years' time. It would be a very wise idea for them to allow land settlement to drag on for many years because they would have all the time under their hands a nice, easy, comfortable means of livelihood and let the man with the congested holding carry on as best he may, rear his family and see them sent across the Channel or to other countries just as has been done for the past 200 years.
We are told that close attention was paid last year to the congested areas. There I am in entire agreement with the Minister. So close was the attention paid to congested areas and the tenants who live there, so great was the effort made by the Minister and his Department for their betterment, so much anxiety did he display over their welfare, that in two congested areas in Mayo he came to their rescue with two or three dozen Civic Guards, with the creation almost of martial law in the locality, and several uneconomic holders and men who are justly entitled to land were dragged into the barracks and interrogated by police and detectives as to their activities. They were asked where they had taken conacre; where, when and how they had grazing taken from any individual; how many stacks of oats they had in their gardens; how many cattle they could rear on their land. This had nothing whatever to do with the policemen in that locality, but I will say this in all fairness to the Gardaí, that it was a duty which they disliked; still they were forced to do it because of the inactivity and the worthlessness of the commissioners and the Minister.
The commissioners are really and truly the bosses of the Irish Land Commission. Deputies may stand up to criticise the Minister and, while we may be unduly harsh, there are some of us who have pretty good reason to be harsh with him. Anybody who studies the Land Acts will realise how powerless the Minister for Lands is and what little control he has over the Department. In Part II, Section 6, of the Land Act, 1933, there are seven paragraphs set out. They are as follows:—
"(a) the determination of the persons from whom land is to be acquired or resumed;
(b) the determination of the actual lands to be acquired or resumed;
(c) the determination of the price to be paid for land so acquired or resumed;
(d) the determination of the persons to be selected as allottees of untenanted land;
(e) the determination of the price at which land is to be sold to any such allottee;
(f) the determination of the new holding which is to be provided for a tenant or proprietor whose holding has been acquired by the Land Commission;
(g) the determination whether or not a holding has been used by the tenant thereof as an ordinary farm in accordance with proper methods of husbandry."
Those could form a Land Act in themselves. The Minister is giving the power to determine all those things to the lay commissioners. Those seven paragraphs are referred to in the Act as excepted matters and they are therefore controlled by the commissioners and not by the Minister.
I think it is a pretty foolish policy for any Deputy to say one word here to the Minister as regards what he is going to do with land, the policy he has in mind to deal with the land question in the future, what type of allottee he will select, what price he will pay for land, what type of land he will resume and from whom he will resume it. It is an absolute waste of time to ask the Minister such questions when the power is taken completely out of his hands.
The Minister is a peculiar man. In volume 103, column 1857 of the Parliamentary Debates, he states:
"Now, the commissioners are entirely independent of the Minister and of the Government. Under certain conditions the Government may decide to disemploy them, but so long as they are employed in the capacity of commissioners the Government may not interfere with them in their work..."
While that state of affairs exists in the Minister's Department we can have nothing but chaos, because neither the Minister nor the commissioners have the slightest idea of what should be done or how the acquisition and division of congested areas should be dealt with. I move to report progress.
Progress reported; the Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 8th May.