I hope to preserve the calm of this debate despite what I might describe as the semi-provocative innocence of Deputy Beegan. I am going to try to approach the problem in an abstract way. I hope, whether my membership of this House be long or short, that within that period we shall come here to hold a post-mortem on the Land Commission. I am convinced—and I said it when speaking on this Estimate last year—that the time has come for us to devise some new machinery in connection with the acquisition and division of land. I think that the Land Commission is an archaic institution and that there are far too many technical difficulties, far too many artifices permitted in connection with it, to allow any Minister really to tackle the question of finishing land division in a reasonable way or in a reasonable time. I have no hesitation at all in laying a good deal of blame at the door of both native Governments we have had for the chaotic condition of land division at the moment.
I go unhesitatingly so far as to say that I think the Land Commission, owing to an inept and stupid approach to the question of what is an economic holding, have created throughout the length and breadth of this country a number of small farm slums in which there is no living for anybody. The Minister or some other Minister will ultimately have to take the trouble of assessing once and for all what is the amount of land available for division in this country, coming to a reasonable decision in the light of the location of each particular estate or piece of land as to what is an economic unit in the division of that land, and, having decided that, he will have to get down to the job once and for all of distributing all these holdings and of then saying: "The question of land division is now finished. Any land that will change hands in future will change hands under the normal incidence of sale and purchase or under the normal incidence of succession by right of testacy." This problem should be tackled on the broadest national basis and tackled in a realistic way, in which no considerations, no efforts of any Minister and no demands on the Exchequer should be allowed outweigh the consideration that this has become a festering sore with which we must deal once and for all.
Deputy Beegan most probably went very near the truth when he said that there is a good deal, if not of direct dishonesty, then of latent dishonesty in holding out promises to all congests that they will get land ultimately. They will not. We know that in our heart of hearts and the sooner we face it the better. We must solve this problem on a broad national basis and then turn in a more realistic way to finding alternative types of employment and livelihood for those people who will have to survive in the congested districts. I am convinced that no matter what kind of a microbe may infect the Land Commission, one of the most absent ones is the germ of common-sense. A large number of the officials in that Department seem to approach the problem of rural Ireland congestion and land division from fine, comfortable chairs in comfortable offices, without the least conception of the real situation in the area or the real local feeling. I am convinced that, whether the Minister can interfere or not with whatever rule the commissioners employ for the distribution of land, there are many instances where, irrespective of what political reasons might be aired by various Parties, people who are absolutely unsuitable have been given holdings and other people in the very same area, who would be absolutely suitable by virtue of their earnestness at their work and their own endeavours, have been overlooked.
This is a problem about which one may quite honestly say that time is against its solution. If it is allowed to continue in the willy-nilly way it has been continued, the magnitude of the problem increases, because you have more and more demands on whatever reservoir of land might ultimately be there and the normal death-rate or wastage of applicants by demise is not sufficient to take up the increase that comes in the demand. Unless some Government—and I am urging it upon this Government that they might do it —takes this as a huge national problem, there will be no final solution. They will have to get some kind of a Department which will have the right to make a survey of all land that they consider suitable for acquisition and redistribution amongst tenants; and the new Department must do that expeditiously, within a period of 12 months, no matter where they get the staff. They must get the survey done and come into this House and get autocratic powers of acquisition and confirmation of title. Then, in some way or other, by loan or by some other device, they must get the money to deal with the problem, all within a three-year period. Then they must take the pool of land acquired by them and they must start on its distribution. Otherwise, there will never be any headway made in this matter.
I am sure that Deputy Moran sitting opposite me will agree with me that there are too many frills and difficulties and too many artifices that we lawyers can use to defeat the Land Commission as it is operating at present. There are too many ready means at our disposal by way of objections, legal technicalities and even by non-consent of the tenant here or the tenant there, where the whole activity of acquisition and subsequent division can be held up. We have a problem and we must face it and take it in one comprehensive sweep, taking over the ownership and control by the State of all the land that is there, and getting some ready and simple statutory means from this Parliament to make good all title to that land, without having all the various devolutions of title and other title difficulties that arise in many of the estates throughout this country. Unless we can do that and, then by way of loan or otherwise —outside normal taxation, I suggest— buy out all that land there and then and have it ready for distribution, we will never get rid of the problem. There is a tendency towards a growing permanency about the Land Commission, a Department that was designed at one time as a temporary thing; and if it is allowed to continue in its peculiar octopus way, it will be not as one time designed, a method of dealing with a certain land problem in Ireland, but will become a permanent entity within our State.
We must deal with the problem once and for all and reach its solution and then put it by, saying: "There can be no more agitation about land; what has been done is done, we believe, in the best interests of the country; and it is finished." Otherwise, there will be continued unrest, with a certain amount of dissatisfaction in various quarters, a feeling of uneasiness in the people who may own large tracts of land, that they may be subjected to a semi-confiscatory process. Then you will have people all over the place acting as political agitators, as each Party stirs up the flames that can be stirred so readily on questions of land and the ownership of land. You will get waves of uneasiness sweeping through the country, with people demanding and becoming more and more impatient about the land that should be divided. It must be faced in a realistic, national way, as as bad a problem as some of the national scourges we are suffering from, such as lack of houses or tuberculosis. We must tackle it in a fearless way and find a final solution, or some of us who may be fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to be members of this House for a long period will be here arguing, year after year, as to how we are to solve questions of land division.
The Minister has indicated his intention of bringing in a new Land Bill. I hope he will have the courage to get back some of his effervescent enthusiasm, as displayed when he was Deputy Blowick on the other benches. I hope he will get back to the broad outlook that he had then, that this problem must be tackled in a bigger way. If he does that and if he has that courage, there will not be a voice on any side of the House raised in protest. It is the earnest desire of all of us that these problems should be solved as rapidly as possible, so that the people dispossessed by generations of grabbing, generations of settlements, by all the various types of ills and shocks that land ownership has suffered in this country, may be re-established on the land that was once owned by their forefathers and that we now feel should rightly be revested in them. Unless, in his new Land Bill, he has the courage to get away from the clutches of an archaic monster which is rapidly disintegrating—so I describe the Land Commission—unless he gets a new concept with regard to and a new drive into land division, I feel that there will be no future for it, except that possibly, as the years go on, we will have another £100,000 increase. What is a sum of £100,000 in the solution of the problem of land division? It will have to be faced on the basis of its real cost which will run to a figure comparable with that envisaged by the Minister for Agriculture in respect of one of his schemes which is to be spread over ten years.
I agree wholeheartedly with Deputy de Valera for the first time in my life that the time has come for some Minister to lay down a period—he suggests a ten year period; I suggest a five year period—within which this problem is to be realistically tackled and a solution arrived at. I agree that we have reached a stage at which this must be faced, and, if his colleague the Minister for Agriculture can get his £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 for the reclamation of land over ten years, I hope the Minister for Lands will be able to get the £40,000,000 or £60,000,000 which he may need to buy all the land in and divide it out. The Minister for Lands can always press this point of view, that, no matter what he may spend in the solution of this huge problem, it will ultimately be reaped to the Exchequer in a way which will meet all capital expenditure which the solution of the problem may have involved.
I said at the beginning what I really believe, that the Minister will have to get some sensible approach to what is an economic holding. There are some holdings in the country which are alleged to be economic and I should dearly love to see one of the officials who so describe them trying to make an economic living on them. We have reached the stage at which the Land Commission in some of its activities has created virtual rural slums. It is no fault of the people who have got the land. Some of this land is worked in a very earnest and skilful way, with all the energy of a father and his sons, and yet they cannot get a living out of it. How the broad definition of an economic holding is arrived at, I do not know. I have made several efforts to find out from officials the basis on which it is arrived at, but I have failed, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell me what he considers to be an economic holding.
The Leader of the Opposition took a very sensible line when he spoke of an economic holding as being roughly in the region of 50 acres. I am quite prepared to admit, and would be the first person to do so, that, in certain areas, particularly where there is the supplement of glass or a particular climatic situation or the proximity of a large market, on a very small holding such as those in Rush and Lusk, it is possible to make a successful living—it depends on one's enterprise and energy —but taking it by and large I, representing as I do a congested constituency, feel that the very minimum you should fix in places such as West Cork, parts of Kerry and, I am sure, in Mayo and in Galway, is a 50-acre farm, because, even on that basis, every 50-acre farm will contain at least onethird scrubland. The time has come, to my mind, when this problem of land division must be faced on the basis of a quick and finite solution, so that we can get down to the problem of building our whole rural economy on the foundation that our land problem is solved. The situation at present in rural Ireland is that with everybody in expectation of getting a farm, nobody can put his mind down to working out his own salvation in the knowledge that he is not going to get it.
I want to go further into Land Commission activities and to suggest that the Minister in future should, in co-operation with the Minister for Agriculture, direct that the various land reclamation schemes, and, in consultation with the Minister for Local Government, the various drainage schemes, should be concentrated on getting as soon as possible the land which may be waste on certain of the big estates now awaiting division cleared up, so that, in the very near future, these big estates which are lying dormant, which are lying as blue prints and archaic files in the Land Commission, will be made capable of providing the biggest possible holdings. I have no criticism to offer of the administration of the Minister's Department or of his own administration, but I want to express the hope that he will not fall into what I consider to be the error of all the Ministers for Lands, without exception, which this country has had of trying to make an obsolete, pulse-less and decaying system the means by which the problem of land division is to be solved.
It may be well said that people of my and Deputy Moran's profession might have found things much more difficult in the years gone by, if there had not been all the various legal intricacies and various steps from lay commissioners' courts to judicial commissioners and ultimate appeal to the Supreme Court, by which we were able to delay Land Commission acquisition, and, in many cases, to defeat it. If all that had not been there, things might not have been so easy for us; but I say that the time has come when, with the 25 years' experience which the Land Commission has had, he should be able to sit down and devise a simple, ready way himself.
There are only three problems to be solved. I am speaking now in the spirit of giving advice which may never be accepted, but which is given in the best possible way. The first problem is easy of solution—that of getting enough money. The second is getting an immediate knowledge of all the land which is available. He has his engineers and I do not think he should have any difficulty in coming back to this House after 12 months and saying: "We have carried out a complete survey of Ireland and there are 1,000,000 acres of land available for sub-division." Then bring in a very simple little Bill to put the question of dealing with titles right, and I and Deputy Moran may then start to whine a little about what we will lose but it will get my support. Having done that, ostracise all politicians and get down to the problem of distributing land once and for all. When that is done, turn around and tell the people that they have to find another solution for their difficulties because the land is distributed and congestion, in so far as land division will solve it, has been dealt with, that in so far as there is any land in the various counties, it is now distributed and that in future land will be obtainable only in the open market by buying it unless one is lucky enough to inherit it from an uncle or a first cousin.
