I move:
That it is expedient to authorise such payments out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas as are necessary to give effect to any Act of the present Session to amend and extend the Land Purchase Acts.
Committee on Finance. - Land Bill, 1949—Money Resolution.
Does the Minister not have to say anything?
That is not for me to decide.
I assume it is normal parliamentary practice to bring in a Money Resolution for a piece of legislation that has not been thoroughly discussed. Before the Minister seeks to secure the finances for the Bill that is being discussed in the Dáil, we should really have a lot more information about it. The Minister brought in the Bill in a tremendous hurry. He wanted the Committee Stage a week after he got the Second Stage. Strangely enough, he has been bringing in his own amendments since then in very great spate. Before the House would agree blindly to offer him a blank cheque, it would be advisable for us to get a good deal further in the discussion on the Bill.
Both in his opening and closing remarks on the Second Stage, the Minister spoke about the price of land and market value. While the House is in a great measure in agreement with him, yet, I think his definition of market value as he gave it leaves the thing as much in the air as it was before he introduced the Bill. Then again he brought in what is a very broad and very difficult proposal and one that requires a good deal of consideration, that is, the question of the reorganisation of the Land Commission. The proposals of the Minister are such as completely to upset all preconceived ideas of what Land Commission procedure ought to be.
That is hardly related to a Money Resolution. The market price would be, not reorganisation of the Land Commission. The question of market price arises on an amendment submitted by the Deputy himself.
There must be salaries paid to the commissioners and to the staffs and surely the Money Resolution would be related to the money that has to be voted to pay the commissioners and the general staff of the Land Commission. I may be wrong, of course. Am I in order?
A Financial Resolution deals with the financial structure of the Bill. That is the normal course.
The commissioners' salaries are already voted since this time last year.
Naturally enough. But the Minister proposes to make very definite changes in the structure of the Land Commission and, therefore, it can hardly be said that money that is already voted for the present position will be available or should be utilised for the position visualised in the new Bill. Anyhow, Sir, if I may proceed, the Minister's proposals for the reorganisation of the Land Commission make a very decided change in procedure. The Minister is always responsible for the policy of the Land Commission, financial and otherwise; the staff is always responsible to the Minister but there were certain specific points that, for the Minister's own safety and so as to maintain his position in a regular way, he had to surrender to the commissioners. By the proposals made in this Bill, while the Minister does insist that he is in fact widening the powers of the commissioners, he is completely taking out of the hands of the commissioners any powers they have.
Again, Sir, there is this question of market value. While the Minister has not settled the market value, while he has not decided what the market value is to be, and while his statement on the matter is such that it leaves the position exactly as it was, yet, if we do accept the point of view that market value is to be paid, there is also to be paid compensation for disturbance and compensation for consequential damages. These are very wide and very important proposals and, if I interpret the views of certain members of the House in relation to the Bill, these proposals tend to hold up the work of the Land Commission rather than to facilitate it.
There is, of course, an exceptionally dangerous, certainly an unfamiliar, proposal embodied in the Bill and that is the purchase of farms as going concerns. I am sure that would be included in the Money Resolution because it may mean the expenditure of a tremendous amount of money and completely cuts across the economics of land at the present time. I do think that we ought to have a much longer and more adequate discussion on that particular point before we start to vote any moneys.
I mentioned also to the Minister in the debate, hoping that he would take some notice of what I said, that there is embodied in the Land Acts a clause which limits the advance to Land Commission tenants to £3,000 and in some other cases to £5,000. It is my belief that in a great many cases, happening particularly during the war, that limit of advance has been very much passed, and I do think that it is wrong to the State and wrong to the taxpayer that such huge advances should be made to certain individuals, particularly moneyed individuals, because they are the ones concerned.
I am rather at a disadvantage in speaking on the Money Resolution as I envisaged that we might have a general discussion on the Bill.
A Second Reading of the Bill all over again?
Mr. de Valera
What about all the amendments?
The Minister was in too great a hurry.
Surely there are Standing Orders dealing with this matter that the Deputy ought to be aware of. You have to deal with the Money Resolution before dealing with the Bill in Committee.
Of course, we are not all as enlightened legally as Deputy Sweetman.
It is not as a legal person but as a public representative that I refer to the matter. The Deputy has been here a long time.
I do not think the Dáil and the Minister should be treated in such a cavalier fashion. I think we are entitled, when we are discussing an important Bill like the Land Bill, to full time for it and not to have it piecemeal every ten minutes that the Department of Industry and Commerce business is adjourned.
I had no intention of saying anything but the speech of Deputy Moylan leaves me with no other alternative. The Deputy has been a member of the House for a very long time. He started off his speech by an attack on the Minister because the Minister was taking the Money Resolution. The Deputy would have been better advised—unless of course it was because he was taken short and had not time to consider the matter, as he suggested at the end of his speech— to have taken an opportunity of referring to Standing Orders, which are so easily phrased that even those who are not legal gentlemen can understand them. He would have found that it is a provision of this House that Money Resolutions must be dealt with before the amendments are discussed. He would also find, if he wished to advert to it, in the annals of the House that it is the general custom that the Minister never does anything more on a Money Resolution than to move it, and that he leaves the case to be made against the Money Resolution before he intervenes. I am surprised that a person of Deputy Moylan's experience should have taken the note which he adopted in this regard.
I am surprised, too, that Deputy Moylan, who was Minister for Lands for a considerable period and, during that period had, no doubt, to refer on many occasions to the provisions of the Land Acts, 1923 to 1939, dealing with the resumption of land, should be in any difficulty with regard to the phrase "market value". If the Deputy is in difficulty with regard to that phrase, I wonder how it was that, when he was Minister, he had no such difficulty, because the phrase was there just the same in regard to resumed land and it must have been operated during those years, if the Land Commission and the Deputy, when Minister in charge of it, operated it at all, and I presume they must have, during these years.
I was even more surprised when Deputy Moylan said that the Minister in this Bill was taking away the powers of the lay commissioners. The Deputy started a hare on the Second Reading and he was followed nobly by one soldier after another on the other side.
Is it not true?
We will have an opportunity of discussing it on Section 10.
The Deputy, apparently, wants to discuss it now, and, as he has made it quite obvious that he did not understand the provisions of the section, it might be as well to correct him now.
Perhaps the Deputy now on his feet would deal with the Money Resolution?
I am merely following Deputy Moylan.
The Deputy is spending his time attacking Deputy Moylan, which may be legitimate enough in brief form, if he does not agree with him, but getting up to speak on a Money Resolution and doing nothing but attacking Deputy Moylan is scarcely in order, to say the least of it.
I am inclined to agree. The Money Resolution provides specifically that moneys are to be provided under the Act for the purposes of Section 10, amongst other sections, for the purposes of the excepted matters left to the lay commissioners. The money is required for that purpose, and, so far as I can understand, the objection Deputy Moylan has to the Money Resolution is that any money should be provided for the purpose of paying the lay commissioners to deal with excepted matters. I do not know whether the Deputy intended that money should not be provided in this way or not, but it would have been much better if the Deputy—it would also have enabled me to do so—had dealt with these matters on the various sections. We would then get much more clearly from the Deputy and from the Minister what the purpose of each particular amount required was and could deal with it on the basis of the details and merits of the reasons for which the individual amount were required rather than try to have, as Deputy Moylan tried, and as perhaps I tried, to have a rehash of the Second Stage.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolution reported and agreed to.