Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Friday, 10 Jun 1960

Vol. 182 No. 8

Committee on Finance. - Vote 42—Lands (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—

That a sum not exceeding £1,287,740 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1961, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Minister for Lands and of the Irish Land Commission.

Captain Giles

I had been dealing with the giving of farms which are waterlogged to people who have no means of availing of land reclamation schemes. It is the duty of the Land Commission before allocating such land to see that it is drained. If it is not, it should not be given to anybody unless he can avail of a land reclamation scheme. It is disgraceful for the Land Commission to expect a family to come a long distance and try to earn their living on 27 acres of land, half of which is waterlogged and two-thirds of which is covered with rushes. They should give that family a holding upon which they can live. It should be remembered that these people are not getting something for nothing. They have to pay their rents, rates and taxes over 60 years and I can tell Deputies that will be a dear little farm at the end of that period.

Part of the Land Commission estate at Summerhill is being held back for a number of years and I cannot understand why they are not allocating it. Some of the estate is in forestry and some has gone to local people, but I cannot understand why a scheme was not introduced long ago whereby all this land could be utilised. There are two cottage tenants with families who have been living within that demesne for the past 30 or 40 years and who have ways and means of working the farm. They had cows on an adjoining farm, but they had to sell them when the Land Commission took over the farm and divided it. They did not get an acre; surely they are entitled to the land left on the estate. I would ask the Minister to consider the position of these people. They had a cow or two, but the Land Commission came in and dispossessed them. They tried to hold the cow on the road but failed and had to sell it and the result was that now there are only two old goats on the road. That is not fair to people of this type, people who are able and willing to work and to remain on, and who have sons to follow them.

The Crowley Estate, which is near the town of Trim, is also a very important estate and one which has very good quality land. People came from America, Europe and several other places to see the type of soil on that land. That land will be allotted some time, but I should like to see a proper scheme worked out so that it will not be cut up into small patches. I hope the people put on the holdings, which should be of a decent economic size, will get a proper living from them.

The Murray Estate at Tanderagee is an estate to which four large migrant families were brought last year while at the same time all that was allocated to a neighbour were five acres of scraggy land miles away from anywhere. At the same time, there was a man who had 25 acres of land, taken for the best part of 20 years, which he had stocked and worked himself. He was ignored and thrown on the side of the road. He had the ways and means to work it but the Land Commission saw fit to leave him high and dry and he had no land, not even on the eleven months system. More consideration should be given to people of that type.

It is the very same in the Slane area. Three or four Meath men were asked to sign forms some years ago and were practically told by the local inspector that they would be suitable men to get land elsewhere. They signed the forms under the impression that they would get holdings somewhere in the vicinity but they were left high and dry. It is not fair to leave such cases on the long finger. If a man is told: "You are eligible and suitable for land; sign this form and we will look after you," it is not fair to do nothing for three or four years, leave him in suspense all the time, and then bring in somebody from outside and throw him aside.

In regard to pumps on Land Commission holdings, I think we should work in conjunction with the country councils. We do not want to see the Land Commission putting up a pump on one side of a holding and the county council putting another one up on the other side. There should be joint consultations to spare money and let the pump serve everybody. At present the Land Commission sink a pump 15 to 20 feet on the farm and regard that as being enough. When May or June comes along, the pump runs dry and there is no water for three months. It is most essential that holdings should have water, no matter what the cost, and a proper pump should be sunk if there is no water supply on the farm. There is no point in giving out farm land which has no water because it is a big task to have to draw water all the year round.

I should also like to see proper co-operation between the Land Commission and the county councils in regard to making roads. In the past, there was very little co-operation but in the past two years there has been more. In county Meath, we have embarked upon a scheme of making public roads out of lanes which are of considerable public utility, and even out of culs-de-sac. When the Land Commission make a road, we should like to see them making it a reasonable size and in places which will suit the county council, so that when the Land Commission step out, the county council can step in. There should be co-ordination between the county council and the Land Commission in all these schemes.

It is unfortunate that, in 1932, 1933 and 1934, we started off on the migrant scheme by giving 19 to 20 acres of land to allottees. That was the greatest number of acres they got. I once heard the Taoiseach say that 12 acres were sufficient for any man but he did not worry very much about the land. We have hundreds of people of this type in the county Meath with 19, 22, or 24 acres of miserable land and these people are expected to live off that land. Then we come along to give up to 37 or 40 acres of land with a better type of house and two new outoffices, whereas in the past we gave a rotten type of house and one poor outoffice.

If times get slightly worse for these people, they will sell out and I know many of them who are contemplating doing so at the moment. They are put to the pin of their collars to live there at all and they have a cruel existence. When an estate is being divided up, people will go a reasonable distance, three or four miles, to get a number of acres. People just cannot live on 20 statute acres and they have not got the slightest hope of getting land on the eleven months system. As I said, if times get bad, they will sell out and we shall be back where we were 40 years ago. We shall have the big land holder coming back again and the small men being squeezed out. I should like to see those people who received small holdings at the commencement of land division being reconsidered for common grazing of 20 or 50 acres on an estate.

I am glad the Minister is looking into the position of game preservation. I hope he will be slow to bring in any scheme that will infringe on any individual's rights. A man is fully entitled to his farm, to his home and to his shooting rights and I would not support any enactment which would deprive the individual of those rights. We should do what we can to preserve game by the destruction of vermin. If we can destroy the vermin which are detrimental to game, we shall be going very far. People have been waiting scores of years to own their own shooting rights and in most cases they own them now. They should be left with the right to sell the shooting rights to anybody they like. If we can agree on the destruction of vermin, we can bring in something which will be satisfactory to all, but let us not infringe on the rights of the individual.

I am a member of the game preservation committee in Meath and the farmers there are afraid we shall infringe on their rights. They must be told clearly that we shall not. If they know that, they will join in the organisation and help it in every way they can. In the past, very few people had shooting rights even on their own holdings. They are in the happy position now that they can shoot over their own land or their neighbour's land with his goodwill. What we want is the goodwill of the people, and we can have it if it is properly explained to them that we do not intend to infringe on their rights.

We shall then be in the position that we can destroy the vermin which is so destructive and dangerous. It is the vermin, and not the poacher with the gun, that do the most damage. It is no harm for us to rid the country of the scaldcrows, the foxes and the magpies. They destroy thousands of eggs and young birds in every county. When they have gone, the game stocks will go up by leaps and bounds. Nowadays meadows are cut around 5th June to 12th June. We used to cut them between 12th July and August, when the game were strong and fit to fly, but now with the early cutting of the meadows, a hen pheasant or a partridge can be killed in the nest.

I appeal to the Minister to take into consideration some of the matters I have mentioned in connection with the grievances we have. I ask him to give us more consideration when he is sending migrants. We welcome migrants when they come. That is a national and social problem and we have no objection to them when they are good, decent hardworking people. I want the Minister to try to devise some scheme which will be of more advantage to the people in the locality. The cottier with a family is entitled to have a cow. A cow is most essential in the rearing of children. In the past, the Land Commission embarked on a scheme of giving seven or eight acres to people, but they did not consider the type of people to whom they were giving the land. They did not envisage that the moment it was vested in them, it would be sold. Land should be given to men of character and ability, who will have families coming after them, and they have also a right to be able to keep a cow and some calves. If a man is respectable, works hard, and takes on some other work when he can, he will not think of emigrating. He should be given a chance to settle down in his own country. If there were co-operation between the migrants and the local people, many grievances could be avoided. If we could have a 50-50 bargain, we would be satisfied.

Mr. Johnston

I am afraid my arguments will be very similar to those of my colleague, Deputy Giles. This Estimate affects my county very considerably. Meath appears to be the Mecca of the land-hungry people.

Mr. Sweetman

Not all of them. Kildare does not do too badly.

Captain Giles

Kildare, Meath and Westmeath—the Deputy is right.

Mr. Johnston

I have seen numerous cases of hardship where estates were divided and people had to leave land which their forefathers had worked before them, and look for work. They had a moral, if not a legal, right to some portion of these holdings. I have known people who had land taken from them, people who with conacre, or otherwise, had built up a small head of stock over the years. The land was taken and they were told: "You must get out. We cannot accommodate you any longer. This land is to be divided up." That is a case of hardship.

A person who is prepared to work hard to accumulate capital, invest it in livestock or in land and is really desirous of getting a holding, big or small, deserves at least consideration. I do not believe everyone who applies for land should get it. That would be completely unrealistic in relation to the people themselves and to the State. I hold that people who have shown themselves competent to work land, whether in conacre or otherwise, should be considered when estates in their counties are being divided. They would make excellent tenants, indeed, in many cases.

Again, it is hard to pinpoint what an economic holding is. Like my colleague, Deputy Giles, I remember injustices which occurred in Meath when small holdings were foisted on unfortunate tenants. That is entirely unrealistic. I have known cases of people who suffered absolute hardship, indeed agricultural slavery, and certainly if estates in their county are being divided, they should have first preference to enable them to enlarge their holdings. They are deserving of that consideration because they have shown themselves to be industrious and hardworking. They have built up small stocks and they are the people we want on the land.

The Minister suggested that half the uneconomic holdings are in the western counties. That may be correct, but I can assure him that in Meath there are plenty of uneconomic holdings, particularly in the northern portion of the county. I ask the Minister in future land division schemes to give these people every consideration. They have shown they are capable of living and working hard on small holdings and if they were given more land, they would make a success of it. They are deserving of any facilities the Minister is prepared to give them.

I am glad to see the Minister has under review the position of non-nationals buying land in this country. I believe that is a complete defeat of the intention of our Land Acts.

Captain Giles

It is too late now. They are in.

Mr. Johnston

This matter of stressing free sale can be pushed too far. It was never envisaged that our land would be sold wholesale to foreigners at the expense of our own people. I am prepared to accept the view that excessive buying of land should be kept under review. Very often, large tracts of land are bought and later on thrown back to the Land Commission. That should not be encouraged.

Another matter I am concerned about is the undue delay in allocating land taken up by the Land Commission. I hold that in the matter of the 11-months letting, there is undue delay. There are people with bits of land, and so long as land remains with the Land Commission, they will live in hope. They should not be kept on a string for such a long time. The Land Commission, perhaps, set land for a few years in order to get back some of the purchase price, but it is entirely wrong that there should be undue delay. It gives a bad impression to the local people and it gives the impression to the incoming tenant that the land is less valuable when he gets it than it was when the Land Commission took it over.

My colleague has dealt with most of the matters that affect county Meath. I appeal to the Minister to give consideration to what I have said. We have many cottiers in Meath who are quite capable of working the land, if they got it, as they have shown by their thrift and industry. They are entitled to at least as much land as will support a small head of stock, a cow and a few calves. Some of the biggest families in Meath started as cottiers and some of our finest people are living in cottages. The cottage scheme was an excellent one but it was a bit too liberal. Everyone could get seven or five acres, but everyone is not as thrifty or industrious as he might be. If a cottier has shown himself capable of work and willing to put some capital into stock, he should be considered for a plot of five or seven acres, or whatever the Minister thinks fit.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

At Question Time just now, when I was asking a question with regard to the taking over of land for forestry purposes in my constituency, the Minister said I did not want them to get land for forestry. I am glad he said that. It brings up the very point I want to make here. I can never understand why there should be these interminable delays between two sections of the Minister's Department.

I do not want the Forestry Department to get arable land. I have always objected to the planting of arable land; it is a waste of good land. We have not sufficient land to go around among uneconomic holders and those who require it. That is why I have always objected to its acquisition for forestry. The Minister and his officials know quite well that when another section of the Department has taken over tracts of land I have made representations on behalf of my constituents who are interested in the tillage portion of the land. That is where the interminable delay takes place. Is it reasonable? You have the same Minister over both Departments and the same controlling secretariat and surely it should be an easy matter, if a Deputy goes to the Land Commission and says that the Forestry Section has acquired 50 or 60 acres and that contained within that estate are 20 acres of arable land, for somebody in the Department to pick up the telephone and ask that some official of the Land Commission should inspect that land. One might reasonably expect that could be done within a few weeks.

I ask the Minister when replying to explain why there must be these delays. Why is it necessary, when one makes such representations, to wait three or six months before getting a decision? Further, I have waited three or six months and I have gone back to the Department and I have been told that the matter is under consideration. Is there any reason for that? In Land Commission administration is that any benefit to anybody? Is it satisfactory administration if, as has been said by successive Ministers, it is their desire to have the land divided and utilised for the purpose of greater production? I take it that is the purpose of the Land Commission and what it was originally created for many years ago. Yet, in spite of the fact that there is less land, fewer estates to be divided, we still have this enormous staff in the Department. No doubt they carry out the procedure of a trained secretariat but it seems reasonable to expect that there would be much more rapid division of land than heretofore. I would ask the Minister when replying to give the House a clear and lucid statement about what happens when a Deputy or, indeed, an ordinary citizen, makes representations to the Department that another section of the Department has acquired arable land. What happens then and why are there these seemingly unnecessary delays?

Deputies have spoken—Captain Giles was one—on the problem of the farmer's son. I thoroughly agree with him; it is a very serious problem. I conceive that the Land Commission was created for the purpose of trying to give land to those who have not got land or to provide a living for people who have not land by settling them on the land. I cannot conceive that it exists for any other purpose but, with the archaic laws we have and the administration that is going on, one finds that the landless man cannot get land. It is perfectly possible within the existing law for landless men to get land.

When I first became a Deputy I found many cases of sons of farmers whose parents were not sufficiently well off to provide them with land and who had no opportunity whatever of getting it. One asked a Parliamentary Question as to whether a landless man could get land and one was told he could but I have known no instance of a landless man getting land, except occasionally in the case of a herd employed over a great many years on an estate. Some of them have got allocations and that was absolutely just. Even in cases where a fairly big estate was divided and where the smallholders had been accommodated in the district and there were perhaps ten or 15 acres left over, I have not known of a case where the Land Commission allocated that extra land to a farmer's son to enable him to stay in his own country.

I ask the Minister to look at this from a reasonable point of view. I have no doubt that he desires as a new Minister to do his best to see the Department properly administered. What chance have the sons of a farmer say, with 50 acres of land, of staying at home unless the father has saved sufficient money to buy farms and stock and equip them? He cannot reasonably be expected to do that because he has not the funds and, naturally, they turn to the Land Commission. That poses the question: what is the policy of the Land Commission? Is it their policy to put people on the land who have done well on the land, people who have proved they like farming and rural life and want to stay on the land in the districts where they have worked on the land since they were reared?

There are many other cases. I was very impressed with what the Deputies from Meath said. It is absolutely true and it is an indictment of the administration of the Land Commission. The Deputies gave examples of people whose forefathers lived in Meath, perhaps in cottages, and who have taken land, perhaps sons of farmers, living on small farms. Land was available there and they saw people brought in from the West of Ireland and dumped there. I am glad to say that the Land Commission are not doing that in Wexford.

Captain Giles

They would bring out the pikes again.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

Yes, we would stand up for our own rights. I know the difficulties that existed in Meath and in Kildare some years ago and it seems to me that we are brought back to the old question: has the landless man who is fond of land any rights with the Land Commission? The question can be answered in various ways, but I know the position in the Land Commission is that a person who gets land is, in the first instance, someone living close to the estate, within one mile. If there are not people within one mile the Commission sometimes go to people within three miles. After that, smallholders come in for consideration and then landless men.

I know many estates that have been offered to the Land Commission since I appeared in Dáil Éireann. I know of estates that were not small holdings, and I know of some quite decent-sized estates. There were many farmers' sons in the area and I know the pressure put on the Land Commission to take over those estates and divide them among those farmers' sons. I want to be fair; that was not in the time of the present Minister.

There was an estate in the neighbourhood of 600 acres, which, had it been taken over, would have set up the whole countryside which was comprised of small farmers. The Land Commission would not take that estate in county Wexford because of some administrative quibble. Since then, people have emigrated from practically every homestead in that district. They were forced to do so. What else could they do in the circumstances?

With increasing costs and increasing competitive conditions, the small farm does not go as far nowadays as it did at one time. In the past, it might have been possible for farmers to save. There is also the point that in those days they accepted a lower standard of living. Land was cheaper at that time. It might have been possible for some farmers' sons, with the help of their fathers, to buy farms. That day has gone and the problem is far more acute now than it ever was.

I can only tell the House of my experience in my constituency. If the Minister thinks I am not giving a true picture, he can refute my statement when he comes to reply. An estate is usually taken over because it is constantly being let in conacre. I know of estates in my costituency which were let for a considerable period. These estates, when taken over by the Land Commission, are in poor condition. They are run down as a result of being let in conacre for many years. That is not the fault of the Land Commission. However, they do not divide the estate in some cases for up to five years. I do not say that that is the usual thing but it has happened in quite a few cases.

Very often, people who take land in conacre, as Deputy Giles said, are hard workers. They love the land. They want to stay in Ireland and own land of their own. Others are farmers' sons. The Land Commission lend the land and subsequently divide it, according to old, stereotyped rules. I am afraid it is bureaucracy. They divide it into small holdings. I have no objection if they do this but would it not be reasonable and to the ultimate benefit of the people who have been taking the land in conacre for years, maybe for ten years or so, to say: "We shall give you a five-year lease of that land"? I should prefer to see them giving a ten-year lease of the land. The Land Commission can do that within the present rules. They could then say to the people concerned: "If we are satisfied, at the end of that time, that you are improving that land and farming it properly, we shall renew the lease." In other words, the Land Commission would then be a beneficient landlord.

The Land Commission originally came into existence to divide land, the major portion of which was in the hands of landlords here. Surely my proposition is reasonable? If they worked the land well, as no doubt they would if they had a reasonable security of tenure, surely it would be an improvement on the system of taking land in conacre from year to year? If the Department know anything about land, they must know that if it is let in conacre, it will become less fertile and poorer than if it is let on a ten-year lease. Persons taking land on a long lease can build it up. They can set a programme for themselves and prove they are worthy of the land.

If the Minister would agree to do that, it would alter the whole complexion of the problem as it exists to-day. It would lessen the dissatisfaction that exists in every area. As Deputy Giles said, with all the frustrations and annoyance in relation to land to-day, we are a most law-abiding community. If people ask to be allowed to lease land for a certain period of years, they are told that it is not the policy of the Land Commission to do so—because that policy is one they have had for 40 or 50 years. It is frustrating and is not achieving the object it was intended to achieve.

Here is a factor which, I think, militates greatly against the Department getting land. Recently—I think since the time Deputy Blowick was Minister—the Land Commission have been empowered to go into the open market to buy farms. They have been able to get more land and, to a certain extent, the system has made the transaction more of a free sale. Within reason, I believe in the free sale of land. I do not want to see the land of Ireland bought out by foreigners. I do not want to see rural Ireland made up of farms owned and occupied by non-nationals. However, when the Land Commission come to buy a farm, the auctioneer who has the farm up for sale finds that if the Land Commission buy it, he does not get his auctioneer's fees.

Human nature being what it is, it is only reasonable to assume that, even though the auctioneer will get a fairly reasonable competitive price from the Department, he will not let them know that the land is available. He will try to sell it to some outside interest, where he may be assured of his fees. It is very simple and a small thing for the Minister to make it possible in these cases for the auctioneer to get his fees. I have known several such cases. The Land Commission could have got farms and an easy sale, provided they were prepared to go into the competitive market.

What happens is that if someone wishes to sell a farm—maybe someone who has worked the farm very well but for some reason or another, cannot carry on and wants to sell it—and puts it up for auction, instead of the Land Commission bidding for the farm, they can send somebody else to bid for it, and nobody knows. The Land Commission say: "The sale may go ahead but it is sold subject to the Land Commission deciding whether or not they will take the farm." That is not a free or satisfactory sale. It does not seem equitable or just. I think the Land Commission are losing a lot of money on that. I have said much of this before—perhaps in a different way—in regard to giving an opportunity to people to get land who appear to be entitled to it.

I fear the Land Commission are not moving with the times. We must bear in mind that we are in a changing world. Everything is different from day to day. There is no use in trying to administer the Department on the basis of the same old laws and rules as existed 40 or 50 years ago. That is my principal complaint against the Land Commission. My other complaint, which I cited at the outset, is that I fail to understand why it should take weeks in the same Department to decide which section will take the land. That is a matter to which the Minister should give his very earnest consideration. If he does, he will achieve a great deal more efficient administration of both sections of the Department than is the case at present.

Mr. Killilea

I do not blame Deputy Esmonde for not being acquainted with the problem of congestion but I certainly think he should at least have an idea of the purpose for which the Land Commission were established. As I have pointed out here before, the Land Commission were established not for the purpose of looking after landlords or any type of person other than congests, but to deal with the problem of congestion in cases where people try to eke out a livelihood on six, eight, ten or 12 acres of land of £3, £4, or £6 valuation. They were established to relieve those people in the circumstances in which they found themselves.

When a survey was taken of this country many years ago, a Congested Districts Board was established. That was the one and only problem we were confronted with. It was only when the bigger areas of land were taken over and divided and when the amount of land for distribution at a later period became much smaller that we seem to have pushed into this question of the landless man.

Another point he made was that a person who is selling land should get the market value for it and that the Land Commission should be entitled to go into the open market and bid for it. We had a Minister in Office representing the Coalition Government who brought in an Act covering that very point. What did it do? It created a racket which prevented the Land Commission from purchasing an acre of land, again because if somebody had a farm of land up for sale and the inspector of the Land Commission was prepared to bid, there was a puffer, or call him what you will, brought in immediately and whatever price the Land Commission inspector was prepared to bid, this individual was prepared to go higher because he thought the Land Commission would buy it at any sort of price.

The Land Commission always find themselves in the position where they must halt. They are not purchasing the land for themselves. They are purchasing it for the relief of congestion and they must get the land at what they term a reasonable price for the purpose of allocation to whoever may get the land at a later stage. We do not seem to realise these things in this House and they are things which we should study.

Deputies talk about the delay in the provision of land. I am fairly well acquainted with the problem. There are very many cases where the Land Commission take over parcels of land here and there which they have to hold because they hope day after day they will be able to acquire some more lands in the locality in order to bring in a scheme to cover the whole area in a satisfactory manner. In that effort, they have my sympathy.

In the main, there are two offices in my constituency. One is the Galway office and the other is the Castlerea office. I am delighted to pay a tribute to the people in these offices. We have in those places nowadays staffs who are of the people, who understand the people and who know how to deal with the people. In that way, they are getting over the difficulties at a much faster rate than in the case of their predecessors who were not acquainted with the problem and did not understand the people.

One of the things I find it hard to understand is the type of people getting land. One man gets 35 or 40 acres of land and by way of rearrangement, gets an additional piece of land. It is very hard to get the people living on 10 or 12 acres to understand why that happens. It should be explained to them why this is done. Rearrangement at the present time is going on very satisfactorily and the Land Commission are doing a good job in that direction. I should like to pay tribute to them for the work they are doing in that regard. It will take quite a long time.

Some 30 years ago, when people got land, they did not mind very much whether it was five, six or eight miles away from them. They did not realise that, when they went to plough or work this land, if the weather broke and it was a wet day, they would have to go home. That has been changed by the Land Commission. The sooner we have compact holdings made, the better it will be for all.

In my constituency, there are a number of cases where pretty large tracts of land are being sold without Land Commission interference. In any place where there are 60, 80 or 100 acres of land for sale in the west of Ireland, every effort should be made by the Land Commission to take them over. That would be one of the ways in which we could relieve congestion.

In regard to migrants, they do not like going into strange territory. They did not in former years get a céad míle fáilte from Deputy Giles. I am very pleased that he has changed his mind.

Captain Giles

I never changed it.

Mr. Killilea

There was a time when Deputy Giles could not possibly believe that the man who came from the west of Ireland was a human being. It appears, now that they have settled down, that they have made their presence felt in many different ways. The first time our people came to Meath, you could not get anybody there to believe it was possible to till the land in Meath—you would only destroy it. In debate after debate here, we heard of all the racketeering going on, the lands that were being broken up and the number of wheat racketeers who were coming in. Those people learned a lesson from the migrants from the west of Ireland.

Captain Giles

The migrants learned it from the Meath people.

Mr. Killilea

They showed them how it could be done. They also showed how a man could rear a family on 23 or 24 acres. I think Deputy Giles has wakened up to the fact that these people are good citizens. The Land Commission should give those people a further opportunity of showing how the work can be done by making more and bigger holdings available to them in Meath. I remember Deputy Giles asking how a man with seven or eight growing sons could make a living on one of those holdings. I ask Deputy Giles how any man with a large holding of 300 acres could keep seven or eight growing sons on his holding?

Captain Giles

A 200 acre man is all right. Does he not buy holdings for his sons?

Mr. Killilea

Why, then, did Deputy Giles tell the House ten minutes ago that the men in Meath were not able to buy land, that it was the foreigners who were buying the land? He cannot have it both ways. That is what he said ten minutes ago.

Captain Giles

The Deputy is talking through his hat.

Mr. Killilea

I do not know what way the Deputy was talking. It must be a sunbonnet he wears. I ask the Minister to continue to give the Land Commission every opportunity to purchase land in the midlands and anywhere else, to try to thin out the thickly populated areas and give our people an opportunity of living on the land. Nowadays, it is not easy to make a living on many of the holdings in the congested areas and every effort must be made to increase the acreage of these holdings as quickly as possible.

Recently there was a farm in Blind-well offered for sale. The Land Commission were asked to take it over but they did not touch it, because, as they said, there was not very much congestion in the area immediately convenient, that if they were to make a couple of holdings, there might be a row locally. These rows fizzle out and the Land Commission should make the effort. There was another farm in Carranseer. In that case, it was suggested that the land was not very good. Nowadays, there are land reclamation schemes and the Land Commission should avail of them to put these lands in good shape. They should carry out the necessary drainage and other work to put the lands in good condition. That can be done quite easily.

It was only when I heard the speeches made that I was tempted to intervene in the debate.

Mr. Dillon

Is it not a ghastly thought that in the past three years over 100,000 people have emigrated from this country and of those 100,000 the vast bulk are men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 and the vast majority of them have been driven off small agricultural holdings? It is a source of astonishment to me that Deputy Killilea, who has represented Galway for as long as he has, finds himself constrained to intervene in a debate of this kind and, beyond poking some fun at Deputy Giles, to the manifest discomfiture of Deputy Johnston who was sitting beside Deputy Killilea, has not a word to say—not a word to say—of what he sees every day around him in county Galway and what all of us who live west of the Shannon see—the derelict holdings out of which entire families have moved in the past two or three years. Those of us who know the west of Ireland have always known that on a small holding where there is a large family, it was illusory to imagine——

Mr. Killilea

Do you hold that this happens only on small holdings?

Mr. Dillon

——it was illusory to imagine that the whole family——

Mr. Killilea

I am asking the Deputy does he maintain that this happens only on small holdings?

Mr. Dillon

——it was illusory to imagine that the whole family should remain on the holding.

Mr. Killilea

I know big holdings where that happens.

Mr. Dillon

I know Deputy Killilea's conscience is now at him and I do not blame him that his conscience is at him. He is supposed to represent Galway and the people of Galway here and he is ashamed because he is afraid to speak for them now. But, it is illusory, as all of us who know the west of Ireland well know, to believe that a family of seven or eight can live permanently on a holding of 20 acres and we have been accustomed to see the sons and daughters of that holding in the old days mainly moving into the towns and villages and getting employment amongst their own neighbours and some of them emigrating. It is an entirely new phenomenon to me, as I believe it is to the Minister for Lands —and our memory goes back quite a considerable time in the west of Ireland—to see whole families leave, close the home and abandon the holding. I know one road in East Mayo and there are seven adjoining houses which have been closed down in the past two years, the whole families having gone out of them. I wonder is there a Deputy representing any constituency in the province of Connaught, in Clare, Kerry and West Cork, who cannot recall, of his personal knowledge, one family gone and a house closed in a townland of which he knows.

What is the reason for that phenomenon? What has happened to the people? Why is the whole land settlement of this country being undone by this catastrophe? That is something this House ought to ask itself when the Estimate for Lands is under consideration.

I did not think Deputy Killilea would long stand this examination. We must praise him for the delicacy of his conscience that drives him out of the House when I rebuke him for his failure faithfully to report the facts as he must know them and as we all know them who come from the west of Ireland. It is a very tragic thing.

The land settlement in this country was something of which we were legitimately proud. There has been much adverse criticism of the Land Commission, but those of us who have had contact with foreign governments know that they have looked with admiration on the work done in Ireland by the Land Commission and have wished that they had evolved as early as we did so effective an instrument for the land settlement as we have employed in Ireland.

I look back with pride on the work the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board did for our people because it settled on the land of Ireland a vast community of property-owning farmers who lived in dignity and security in their own homes and it shocks me to see that pattern being shattered as it is being shattered at the present time.

It often strikes me as odd that a Minister for Lands who was born in Mayo, who knows Mayo, can reconcile himself to the task of presiding over the operation of the resettlement of rundale estates and the enlargement of holdings in the congested areas, while he sees, at the same time, the evacuation of holdings going on. I often ask myself how is it that he does not pause in his labours and say: "Is this not like sealing one of 20 holes in the bottom of a bucket? For every area I settle, ten other areas are producing derelict holdings, with nobody living on them".

That is, I think, one of the most grievous problems of land settlement in Ireland at present because, quite apart from the personal sense of loss any of us feels in watching this evacuation of our neighbours from their own country, there is the economic disaster that each of these small holdings, whether it be 10 or 20 or 30 acres, begins to decline the day the family which owns it leaves. The reason is that what actually happens, when a family goes to England, is that the holding is set in conacre and anybody who has any experience of it knows that a holding built up by the labour of a family over two or three generations requires to be in conacre for only two or three years to see its output reduced by one half, and within five or six years it is a miserable rush-infested property grazed by a few store cattle, well on its way to reversion to marsh or bog.

That is the problem the Land Commission ought to be excogitating and that is the real problem this House ought to face. They should ask themselves why it is happening and what if anything can we do to reverse the trend which is proceeding. I know why it is happening because I live amongst those people and incidentally I am one of the thousands or tens of thousands who get my living out of those people. I see employed between 50 and 60 people, all of them depending on these small farmers for their living, all of whom will lose their employment if the present trend continues, and that is reproduced in every country town in Ireland.

People in this House habitually forget—they are so accustomed to residence in the City of Dublin—that if you compare the total number of persons employed in our cities on work not connected directly or indirectly with agriculture, with the number of persons employed on small holdings, in the service of those who live on small holdings and in the production of goods purchased by people who live on small holdings, it is the small holdings which are carrying all of them or the vast majority. If these small holdings are not only abandoned but cease to produce, the reaction on people living in towns or cities will be catastrophic. So long as full employment obtains in Great Britain and the United States, the consequences of that are largely concealed from immediate perception because, instead of accumulating in a mass unemployment situation here, they pass out of the country at the rate of 100,000 young persons in three years.

I do not think that rate of emigration, or that type of emigration, has been known here since the Famine. Catastrophic as the emigration was economically in the Famine period, there were always left at home people who kept the land in production. That is not happening now and this whole problem is extremely complex because emigration in the last century was attended by destitution, hunger and poverty and our people were going out as unskilled labour of a very poor kind with the result that they were cruelly exploited in the countries to which they went. They excited indignant reaction at home and immense exertion to eliminate the evil which was causing this desperate type of emigration. That is what precipitated the Land War and all the effort that was put into getting rid of landlords and making people secure in their holdings. That element is not in the present situation. With the state of full employment obtaining in Great Britain and the United States, that atmosphere of destitution, woe and misery that used to attend emigration has disappeared.

There are no American wakes. There is now no desolation, or weeping at the railway station. There is no feeling that when your children go you may never see them again because they are going so far away that they cannot come back. That is the way it used to be 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, in rural Ireland. But today these people can go more readily to Birmingham and come back from thence than their fathers and grandfathers could have gone to Dublin or Mullingar. There is proceeding this desperate— and it can only be described as desperate—disaster of a steady efflux of the most productive elements of our community and in a form which is not only depriving us of their potential effort but which is leaving after them land which was producing and which is directly heading for a period of progressive dereliction until, in effect, it is producing nothing.

That is the problem with which the Land Commission is confronted and when I see the amount of money we spend every year and the apparent indifference of a Deputy like Deputy Killilea to these developments or the apprehension perhaps in Fianna Fáil Deputies' minds that it is not tactful to mention such matters in Dáil Éireann at this time, I am sometimes tempted to despair of our Government.

There is a terrible danger in complacency. One of the dangers of a Government getting a clear majority in this House is that they simply, as we say in the country, sit on their sash, do nothing, and so long as they do nothing they are unlikely to come in for very serious criticism from their supporters and they feel that in the last analysis, no matter how stringently they are criticised from the Opposition, the Whips can be put on and they get their majority and stagger on.

However, I think Deputies, to whatever Party they belong, have a duty to bring the facts of which they have as much knowledge as I have to the attention of the House. Maybe they do it behind the closed doors of the Fianna Fáil Party room and believe that, having done it there, they have done their duty but I think that is a mistake. This Parliament functions not only as a legislative body but as the sounding board for public opinion in this country and we have all got a duty if an evil exists to expose it here and to urge on the responsible Minister speaking on behalf of the Government to tell us what plan, if any, the Government have to meet the problem we know exists.

What is the problem? One of the problems is that we used to believe, and I think it was at one time true, that on a 30-acre holding in rural Ireland an Irish family could get a modest standard of comfort, and there were a sufficient number of people in our country who preferred the security, the dignity of life, the peace of their home and the right to call themselves their own masters, to maintain a steady supply of Irish families who would prefer to live on the 30-acre holding than to go and earn a high industrial wage over in America or in Great Britain and accept the position of a paid servant living in a flat or a rented room.

Thus you would always get a minority who would want to get back, particularly young people who would want to see the world for a while, but they would tend to return home as soon as the opportunity offered. That certainly was the case in rural Ireland. It was the way in places like the Rosses in West Donegal, and it was very striking to see how, in that desolate area in West Donegal, you would see a house rising up in what seemed even to me, coming from Ballaghaderreen, a very arid area. But, as surely as you inquired, you would be told: "That fellow was in America and he came home as soon as he had enough made." His yearning was to come home and very often it looked as if the house was out of all proportion to the resources of the farm for which it was built to cater. Yet one watched with admiration when American money was invested in a holding of that kind; what looked like a derelict farm began to thrive and prosper, and little families grew up. This was because they wanted to come home, and they wanted to come home because they made their choice.

They preferred the limited income in the atmosphere of home and Ireland to the larger income they could get elsewhere. I remember once standing on the end of the Mullet of Belmullet, on a winter's day, speaking to a man and it struck me that he had an American accent. I said: "Were you in America?" and he said: "Yes; I was in Providence, Rhode Island." I asked him: "What brought you back to the Mullet of Belmullet from Providence, Rhode Island?" and he said: "I will tell you. There were four or five of us in Providence and we could not get work. We would sometimes have a job and we would sometimes be out of work, and we put our heads together and made up our minds we would come home to Belmullet to improve ourselves."

It struck me that that man was a very wise man. When he was in work in Providence, Rhode Island, he was relatively affluent but he had always hanging over him the apprehension that he would again be unemployed, and when he came home to Belmullet and bought a small holding he felt then, though he might never know the periods of affluence he enjoyed in Rhode Island, yet he would never know the periods of destitution involved in unemployment. Here is the kernel of this matter. His experience had taught him that in Belmullet from Binghamstown down to the end of the Peninsula, he could get a modest living. Sometimes he would do well, sometimes not so well, but he would always have a living.

Do you realise what you have done? I think through sheer incompetence and inadvertence you have created a situation in which you have rendered 80 per cent. of the holdings west of the Shannon uneconomic. You thought when you were raising the cost of living on everyone in the country that it would all be set right by raising more taxes for recompensing the civil servants and white collar workers, and by arranging for consultation between the Trade Union Congress and the Federated Union of Employers whereby employees would get ten or twelve shillings a week added to their wages.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister for Lands would have no responsibility for these matters.

Mr. Dillon

The one category of people who were forgotten were the small farmers living on the farms for which he is responsible. The Minister for Lands is now faced with the position that the farms on which he settles the small farmers will not now produce the wherewithal to raise a family. Their income is going down. The price of what their land produces is going down but the price of all they have to buy is going up, and they have no organisation to speak for them but that army of 100,000 people who have marched out of Ireland in silence. They are the silent demonstrators. They are the strikers of rural Ireland, but instead of picketing their homes they are picketing the mailboat and the transatlantic aircraft. I do not believe you have realised what you yourselves are doing; the frightful problem is how can we undo what you have done.

You have wrecked and disrupted the whole economy of a vast countryside and to those of us who were born and reared in that countryside it is very dear to us. The more one sees of this House the more it is borne in on me how little do those who live and get their living in this part of Ireland understand the problems of the West, the South-West and the North-West. I say quite deliberately—and I know whereof I speak—that the time now has come to face the problem of helping the small farmers in the areas for which the Minister for Lands is primarily responsible. You cannot any longer run away from the consequences of your own actions in that part of Ireland. You have been forced by organised labour to make the adjustments which were the inevitable consequence of your decision to allow the cost of living to rise. You have now to pay the piper in the West of Ireland or see that whole area abandoned. Even if you steel your hearts to let them go, that does not solve the problem because the economy of this country will not function; the economy of this country is not viable without the output of the land upon which those people live. If they are suffered to go and if that land is suffered to become derelict, there will ensue, albeit not without some delay, economic consequences which will roll up to the thresholds of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, as certain as we are in this House.

If those people are not there to buy boots, to buy clothes, to require transport, then those who are producing these services and goods will feel the draught and feel it soon, because not only is the purchasing power of those people disappearing but the wealth produced from their holdings is going too. One of the remedies for that, and it had better be faced—I think the Land Commission must face it—is to come to the West of Ireland and look at the derelict holdings. They have an obligation now to pay the full market value for these holdings because I do not think we can afford to let them go unproductive. There are too many of them. Their present owners are getting a miserable conacre rent, whether they are in Birmingham or Newark, New Jersey, and of course living so far from home they get these rents very irregularly.

I think there is a great deal to be said for at least acquiring as many of these holdings as we can get their owners to agree to sell to us, and divide them amongst the neighbours so that where we had a 30 acre holding in the past, and it is abandoned, we can buy it and add 10 acres to three neighbouring holdings of 30 acres and on them restore the people's ability to survive. If we do that, I think we shall find sufficient people prepared to make the effort of holding on to their homes rather than accepting the alternative of emigration.

I was in my own home not so long ago, within the past month, and a man of 70 years came in to me. In fact, I wrote to the Land Commission in connection with the episode. That man said to me: "Mr. Dillon, could you get me four or five acres on to my holding?" I think he had a holding under 20 acres. I asked him the circumstances of the neighbours around about him, and he had not the smallest holding in the area. I said: "You will find it hard to persuade the Land Commission to give you an enlargement, if there are smaller holdings in the area." He said: "This is the position. It is hard for a man of 70 who has raised 10 children on a holding like mine when the tenth comes to him and tells him, in his seventieth year, that he wants to go away." I asked him why the tenth wanted to go away; he was the last one left and would normally get the place. He said: "He does not want the place, Mr. Dillon. It will not give him the kind of living the young fellows will accept now." I could not deny that.

I know where he comes from. I know young lads who went from that area and they came home for a holiday from England; they were able to flaunt money; they were able to show new clothes; they were able to demonstrate that they were having a relatively good time. The disparity had grown so wide that the fellow who was offered the home place—remember, 40 years ago, it was a matter of anxious inquiry amongst the members of the family as to who would get the place—did not want it. His reaction was that he would sooner go away.

I think the only solution for that situation is to face the fact that these holdings must be further enlarged, to face the same fact in respect of agricultural holders in the west of Ireland as we were forced to face in respect of civil servants, the Garda, the Army, the white collar workers and organised trade union workers: if you deliberately increase the cost of living, you must make corresponding adjustments in remuneration. The only way you can do that in respect of the small farmers is by enlarging their holdings because their problem is further complicated by the fact that the average price they are getting for their output is going down.

It is as simple as this: a man with 28 acres may have four, or maybe, five cows; two years ago, he would have had five calves, which were worth £100; this year, they are worth £50. I could go over each particular item, whether it be turkeys, pigs, or fowl, and demonstrate that, in respect of each item, there has been a substantial reduction in the money value of the same volume of output. The small farmer just cannot carry on. Certainly his children will not face the task of carrying on. The only way you can meet that situation is to do for the small farmers what has already been done for the industrial workers, and every other section of the community, and the only way you can do it for the small farmer is by expanding his holding.

I tried to do that through the Land Project. I remember standing on the side of the road near Killala and looking over the hedge at a holding there, and asking myself: "What can we do for these people? We have not got the land to give the enlargement we should like to give them." I remember thinking to myself: "Well, if we cannot give them 30 acres where they had 20, the next best thing we can do is to try to make the 20 produce as much as the 30." Remember, they are hardworking people. There is a lot of trivial city talk in this country suggesting that farmers will not work hard and comparing them with the farmers of Denmark and elsewhere, to the disadvantage of our own. That is all cod. Any man who rears a family on 20 or 25 acres works hard. If he does not, he will starve. The vast majority of our people, if they were sent down to live on these holdings, would be dead of starvation in six months. Nobody could live on them without working hard. You cannot make bricks without straw and, if you have not got the land, it does not matter how hard you work because you cannot produce more than the land is capable of producing.

I tried to remedy that by simply helping them to make the land more productive than it was, thus increasing the return for their labour. Granted we do all that, and make the land as productive as we possibly can make it, we shall have to enlarge the holding. I see no way out of it except by purchasing the abandoned holdings. Mark you, this is an urgent matter because, if this haemorrhage of humanity from the west of Ireland continues, it will become an irreversible process. If it is allowed to go on to the point where the towns and villages break down and begin to close up shop, then these areas will become uninhabitable. The whole life of that part of the country is a parochial pattern and, if you disrupt that pattern, it will collapse and disappear.

People will not live now out in a deserted area where there is no town and no centre to which they can come in from time to time to see a picture, go to a dance, meet the neighbours, attend a market, or do their shopping. If the towns and villages reach a certain stage, they will disintegrate. To me, it is one of the most exasperating experiences that I see these things happening before other people are prepared to face them and, though you implore people to see what is coming into being, while there is still time, nobody wants to face problems of this kind; they turn their backs and let things drag on until the time comes when one can do nothing about them at all. I do not think we can calmly accept that the whole of our country west of the Shannon is to be virtually abandoned. I do not accept that. It certainly is not necessary. It can be prevented. Quite possibly, this catastrophic development of the past three years is largely the result of inadvertence on the part of the Government. I do not think they realised what they were doing; I do not think they thought about it. They thought that the traditional pattern of the small farmer in the west, tightening his belt and lowering his standard of living would meet the situation. They forgot the pull of full employment in Great Britain and the United States of America.

I heard some Deputy here—I think it was Deputy Giles—speak of people being given holdings which were a mass of rushes. That shocks me. I did not think that was possible. I did not think the Land Commission would ever put a man into holding in that condition. I know that cases may arise in which there is an economic holding of 28 acres and the Land Commission may throw in a couple of acres of bad land for the purpose of determining the viability of the holding, but I never heard of the Land Commission giving people land which was covered with rushes. I shall suggest to the Minister, if we are all here alive and well on Tuesday of next week, that a far greater degree of collaboration between his Department and the Department of Agriculture is requisite, if this problem is to be effectively tackled.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 14th June, 1960.