I addressed a question to the Minister for Lands to-day as follows:
To ask the Minister for Lands if he will state under what regulation of the Land Commission a plot of land on the O'Brien estate, Cromin, Co. Limerick (Collection No. P8712), was recently allotted to Mr. Patrick O'Donnell.
The Minister, in reply, told me that it was allotted by the Land Commission in the exercise of their powers under Section 31 of the Land Act, 1923. I asked the Minister a supplementary question. I asked him to justify giving a plot like this to a man with a valuation of £136, a farm of 126 statute acres, and who has let every year over a number of years 80 acres of the 126 in grazing. The Minister said he was not responsible for the introduction of the 1946 Act under which, apparently, the plot in question was taken from the man for bad user. That was sidetracking the question I put to the Minister and I am raising the matter here to-night to see if the Minister can justify the action of the Land Commission and throw more light on the reallocation of this plot to a man who was already a large landholder and who was letting a substantial portion of the farm he had in grazing.
The history of this case is that the O'Brien estate in Dromin was acquired by the Land Commission about 11 years ago. There was a herd on the estate named O'Brien and he got this plot in question, I understand, as compensation for the loss of his employment as a herd. This is a plot of four or five statute acres. He was found not to have worked the land according to approved methods of husbandry and the Land Commission resumed possestion some time in 1947. They let it then to a cottier who lived across the road from the plot, a man named Burns, and I understood from an answer the Minister gave to another question put to him on November 18th that it was let for revenue purposes under a grazing agreement from the 3rd December, 1947, to the 31st October, 1948. When the 31st October, 1948, came, Burns was dispossessed. His grazing letting, evidently, had terminated. The plot was resumed by the Land Commission and given to this large land-holder with the 126 statute acres and £136 valuation. This land-holder was himself a migrant and when the O'Brien estate at Dromin was acquired 11 years ago he surrendered his own holding in another part of County Limerick and got this place by way of exchange.
I realise quite well that under the circumstances he was entitled to do what he liked with that land. He could either work it as a dairy or tillage or fattening farm or let it in grazing, as he did. I am not quarrelling with that at all. What I am quarrelling with is the dispossession of the cottier who got that on a grazing letting and the handing over to a man who already had a very large holding and who was not working that holding as the Land Commission would expect it to be worked in order to qualify for any portion of land whatever.
According to the section of the Act the Minister quoted—Section 31 of the Land Act of 1923—allotments could be made to uneconomic holders, to a person who entered into an agreement with the Land Commission for the exchange of a holding, to a genuine representative of an evicted tenant, to a person being a labourer who by reason of the sale of any lands under the provisions of the Land Purchase Acts has been deprived of his employment on the said lands, to trustees for the purposes mentioned in Section 4 of the Irish Land Act, 1903, as extended by the 1923 Act, and any other person or body to whom, in the opinion of the Land Commission, an advance ought to be made.
I will direct the Minister's attention to sub-section (2) of the section he quoted. Here it is:
"The Land Commission, in deciding as to the suitability of applicants under this section, shall be satisfied as to their competence to work the land, and their intention to do so and not to sell, let or assign it."
Here we have a case where a man who could not in any circumstances be described as an uneconomic holder with 126 statute acres of land carrying a valuation of £136 and who is actually letting some of his land; yet, this man still gets more land from the Land Commission. At the same time a cottier living across the road who could work these four acres as an accommodation plot is deprived of them. The man who got the four acres is not qualified, as far as I can gather, under any of the regulations of the Land Commission in any circumstances whatsover. How does the Minister justify that action on the part of the Land Commission? I have seen the Land Commission do many queer things in my time but this recent example beats all the others.
