Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 19 Jul 1961

Vol. 191 No. 8

Committee on Finance. - Vote 39—Lands

Minister for Lands (Mr. Moran)

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £1,352,080 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, 1962, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Minister for Lands and of the Irish Land Commission.

I shall begin by commenting on the more important subheads of the Estimate, with particular reference to those which show substantial changes from the amounts provided last year. This will be followed by an account of the main activities of the Land Commission during the year ended 31st March last and, before concluding, I propose to refer to some matters of a general nature associated with this Vote.

The net total of the Estimate, viz. £2,327,880, exceeds by £95,940 the corresponding amount provided last year. The overall increase in the current Estimate is spread for the most part over four subheads, namely D, G, I and L. I shall deal in detail with these four subheads as I go along.

Provision in subhead A for salaries, wages and allowances, is at about the same level as last years's figure.

Subhead B relates mainly to travelling expenses incurred on inspections and surveys under the Land Acts. This subhead also provides for the incidental expenses. There is an increase of £4,500 this year, mainly for an anticipated increase in travelling expenses on acquisition and resale inspections.

Subhead D represents the taxpayers' contribution in the current year towards the service of Land purchase debt, accumulated on both tenanted and untenanted land, since 1923. This year, the contribution comes to £905,000—and of that about £750,000 is required for the purpose of making good deficiencies in the Land Bond Fund arising from the statutory halving of annuities conceded in 1933. The moneys in subhead D are in the nature of statutory commitments. They account for almost 40 per cent. of the whole Estimate. The increase of £15,700 this year is almost entirely due to the halving of purchase instalments which become payable by new allottees as the Land Settlement programme moves ahead.

Subhead G, under the general title of "Purchase of Interests for Cash", provides an amount of £105,000 in respect of two distinct items, namely:

(a) £100,000 for purchase of lands for cash in the open market under Section 27 of the Land Act, 1950, and

(b) £5,000 for compensation payable in cash on the resumption of tenancy interests on the small outstanding residue of estates of the former Congested Districts Board.

The amount of £5,000 proposed for this residual activity is unchanged from last year. In respect of purchases under Section 27 of the Land Act, 1950, the provision of £100,000 proposed this year constitutes a record sum for the purchase of land by the Land Commission in the open market.

For a few years after the passing of the Land Act, 1950, the funds available for these purchases did not exceed £20,000 annually. This provision was increased to £30,000 for 1956-57, but it will be recalled that operations under the Section were brought to a standstill, as an economy measure, in July, 1956, the total expenditure for that year being £18,000. Activities were recommenced in April, 1958—a sum of £25,000 being authorised for 1958-59. A progressive increase in funds has followed each year since then.

Last year, expenditure on cash purchases amounted to almost £75,000 —the total area purchased for cash being 1,296 acres, compared with 1,032 acres in the previous year. Substantial new cash purchases are being entered into this year, on the strength of the record increase in the subhead provision: and, on latest prospects, it seems certain that the provision of £100,000, now proposed for the first time, will be fully utilised in the year. It is scarcely necessary to remind Deputies that, by the Land Act, 1950, these particular funds are confined to the purchase of lands required for migrants' holdings or to facilitate the rearrangement of fragmented holdings. The bulk of land purchase continues to be financed in land bonds issued under Land Bond Orders made by the Minister for Finance.

Subhead H relates to gratuities payable, pursuant to Section 29, Land Act, 1950, to persons displaced from employment on lands being taken over by the Land Commission for division. The charge to Subhead H necessarily depends on the volume of land acquisition and the circumstances of individual displaced workmen. Any displaced employee, who is deemed competent to work land, is automatically considered by the Land Commissioners for an allotment in the ordinary way, and, indeed, it is manifestly right that such a person should enjoy high rating on a priority list. But if a displaced workman is considered unsuitable for an allotment, he is alternatively considered for a cash gratuity, depending upon the length of his service and the availability of other suitable employment. Last year, 21 ex-employees received gratuities totalling £3,134, or an average of £149 each. From the passing of the Land Act, 1950, up to 31st March, 1961, gratuities totalling £25,642 have been paid to 224 workmen—an average of £114 each.

The funds required to carry out improvement works on estates allotted by the Land Commission are provided under subhead 1. Such works comprise the erection of dwelling-houses and out-offices; the provision of access roads fencing and drainage; turbary development; repair and maintenance of embankments and so on. All of these improvement works are indispensable in land settlement operations and the expenditure incurred on them inevitably constitutes a significant portion of the funds made available to the Land Commission each year.

During the year ended 31st March last, the total expenditure under the improvements subhead amounted to £632,500, more than half of which was incurred on building works. The current provision of £690,000, amounting to almost 30 per cent. of the entire nett Estimate, represents an increase of nearly £60,000 on the amount expended last year. This increase has been proposed so that the tempo of the allotment programme may keep pace with the expanded acquisition programme. Having regard to the social importance of the projects for which this money is required and the employment potential of these works, I feel confident that Deputies will readily agree to the proposal to provide additional funds this year.

During the year ended 31st March last, the total paid in wages of workmen employed by the Land Commission on improvement works amounted to £227,000. The average strength of the labour force was 940 workmen. During the past year, an Incentive Bonus Scheme, similar to that being operated in connection with State afforestation, was extended to Land Commission improvement works with the general acceptance of the workers.

The provision in subhead L this year is a new item. Deputies will recall that in September, 1958, responsibility for the administration of the Game Preservation Act, 1930, was transferred from the Minister for Justice to the Minister for Lands. On the debate for this Estimate last year, I welcomed the keen interest which was being taken in the potentially valuable game resources of the country, as demonstrated by the formation of voluntary associations for the development of game resources. I also mentioned that the subject of game promotion was under consideration with a view to settling lines of longterm practical policy.

As a first step in this direction, subhead L of the current Estimate makes provision for initial expenditure of £7,500 this year. It is proposed to devote this sum to making grants for the preservation and improvement of game resources, in accordance with schemes to be approved by the Minister for Lands. At the outset, such grants will be confined to local organisations which are representative of all appropriate interests. Regional Game Councils are invited to send their particular proposals as soon as possible to my Department, so that they may receive timely consideration in this year's allocation. Such proposed schemes should include details of objectives and methods of implementation, together with an estimate of expenditure within the current year and a firm proposal as to local contribution. Grants will be made, within the total subhead provision, to assist schemes which hold out promise of worthwhile practical results and are backed by efficient local organisation. With these grants now available from my Department, the financial assistance hitherto provided by An Bord Fáilte, as an interim measure, will no longer be necessary. I would like to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the assistance given by Bord Fáilte towards game promotion generally.

Before passing on from this matter, I should like to say a few words about organisation for game development. I have already expressed the view that the game movement, like our inland fisheries, is primarily intended to benefit our own people. This being so, if the movement is to have prospects of wide success, it is essential that it be grounded on local initiative, that it be as widely-based as possible and that it should afford maximum flexibility in the matter of membership. It would be quite unrealistic to contemplate the development of game resources in this country without the co-operation of the farming community. It would be also unrealistic not to enlist the co-operation of the various people who— either individually or in groups—have devoted considerable time and energy down the years towards conservation and improvement of game stocks.

I appeal, therefore, for full co-operation of all interests—agricultural, rural and sporting — to ensure the success of the game movement. What form this co-operation should take is best left to be worked out between the parties, all of whom are fully organised. My immediate concern is that a spirit of harmony should be inculcated among all groups concerned in the development of the country's game resources. Without harmonious relations, progress will be needlessly slower than it otherwise might be.

I attach great importance to the emergence of a countrywide network of successful local game councils, successful in the sense that each will have substantial practical achievements to display in terms of improved game resources. The achievements of some local game councils in the preliminary matter of vermin control have been quite impressive. The main phase of development of game resources has yet to be widely tackled. It would surely be unwise to accept methods which may not have been adequately tested in practice. A testing period necessarily involves organisational flexibility. For my part, Regional Game Councils may be assured that every possible guidance and support, in dealing with the practical problems affecting vermin clearance and game restocking, will be forthcoming from my Department.

Having explained in some detail the salient features of the Estimate, I think I need not elaborate on the remaining subheads which are, in the main, either unchanged from last year or self-explanatory token provisions. I propose, therefore, to turn now to a comprehensive review of the activies of the Land Commission during the year ended 31st March last. Some of the statistics are as yet provisional but it is not expected that they will differ to any significant extent from the final returns.

I shall deal first of all with tenanted land. It may not be generally known that the number of tenancies which fell to be dealt with under all Land Acts exceeded 400,000. Of these, some 300,000 were on estates purchased under Land Acts prior to 1923, while approximately 112,000 consisted of tenancies on estates which vested in the Land Commission under the Land Act, 1923, and subsequent Acts. At 31st March last, all but 2,500 of the pre-1923 cases —entirely on the estates of the former Congested Districts Board—had been disposed of; the number of post-1923 holdings awaiting revesting was less than 8,000. Thus, the aggregate number of tenancies, under all Land Acts, remaining to be dealt with at 31st March, 1961, has been reduced to about 10,500.

These residual cases, which are concentrated mainly on acutely-congested estates in western counties, in no way represent a survival of landlordism; the tenants enjoy all the benefit of land purchase, the mere act of final vesting being but the ultimate and conclusive symbol of ownership. However, because they are often small and badly inter-mixed, rearrangement and enlargement of these holdings, together with general improvements, are invariably essential before they can proceed to final vesting and thus their disposal is inevitably a slow and tedious process.

In these circumstances, I consider it a very creditable performance that such a steady rate of vesting has been maintained by the Land Commission in recent years. The number of holdings revested last year was 1,583. With some 10,500 holdings, in all, awaiting vesting at 31st March last, we may be said to have reached the final stage of tenanted land purchase. Indeed, this essential work has already concluded or virtually concluded in fifteen counties, viz., Carlow, Cavan, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Meath, Monaghan, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow.

Turning to untenanted land, it will be recalled that when last year's Estimate was under discussion, I informed the House that the amount of land bonds made available for land acquisition for the financial year ended 31st March last had been increased from £500,000 to £750,000. This was, in fact, the highest amount provided for the purpose for upwards of twenty years. I am glad to say that, as a result of this provision, there has been a pronounced acceleration in all aspects of acquisition activity during the year and, equally important, the prospects for the immediate future are also very bright.

On the inspection side, which is, of course, the starting point of all proceedings for land acquisition by the Land Commission, an aggregate area of 70,300 acres was investigated during the year with a view to considering the initiation of acquisition, purchase or resumption proceedings: the corresponding figures for the two preceding years were 52,200 acres and 39,400 acres. In the course of the year, proceedings were instituted in respect of some 35,300 acres—compared with 24,200 acres in 1959/60 and 12,890 acres in 1958/59. The total area acquired, purchased or otherwise taken over during the year, for land settlement purposes, was approximately 34,400 acres, the corresponding areas in the two previous years being 29,500 acres and 31,500 acres, respectively.

Moreover, at 31st March, 1961, the aggregate area in the acquisition/resumption machine—in other words, at various stages of proceedings, prior to being taken over by the Land Commission—was in the region of 36,000 acres: the comparative area at 31st March, 1960, was 27,500 acres while at 31st March, 1959, it was 22,500 acres.

I think the foregoing figures speak for themselves. The marked increase in acquisition activity during the year is, of course, reflected in the land bond issues for the year. During the year ended 31st March last, bond issues totalled £712,690: the corresponding figure for the previous year was £543,602, while, for the financial year ended 31st March, 1959, bond issues amounted to £410,686.

The additional funds provided last year facilitated the purchase of several large properties—including the Oranmore & Browne and Brigadier Browne estates in Co. Mayo, the estate of Lord Kildare in Co. Kildare and the Oakpark estate in Co. Carlow, to name put a few—all of which could not otherwise have been taken over by the Land Commission in a single year. This significant advance on the acquisition side, coupled with the parallel expansion of cash-purchases, to which I referred to earlier, is designed to ensure that intake of land by the Land Commission will be maintained at a level which will make possible an expanded land settlement programme. I think that rural Deputies, and especially those from the Congested Districts, will welcome these encouraging developments which were made possible by the Government decision to provide additional finance for the acquisition of land by the Land Commission.

On the land settlement side, the past year was one of solid achievement. The total area allotted during the year amongst some 2,180 allottees was approximately some 36,000 acres. In addition, about 1,300 rights of turbary were provided during the year —the total expenditure on turbary development being £58,681.

In the 5-year period ended on 31st March last, a total area of about 192,000 acres was divided amongst some 10,300 allottees, compared with an allotment of 161,600 acres amongst 9,350 allottees during the previous five-year term. Total allotment of untenanted land under all Land Acts to date is upwards of 2¼ million acres; of this total, 1½ million acres was allotted in the period since 1923.

The migration programme for the year was exceptionally good. In all, 148 migrants were resettled on new holdings—the highest recorded number of migrations by the Land Commission in a single year since the war. As a result of these migrations, an extremely useful supply of land was made available for land settlement purposes in the congested areas where, as a general rule, the scope for acquiring land through the normal process is very restricted. It can be said that for every tenant who is migrated, two or three of the remaining congests have their position improved.

Five hundred fragmented holdings were rearranged during the past year, a result which is well up to the average. Since 1950, more than 5,200 rearrangements have been effected by the Land Commission. While the number of holdings awaiting rearrangement is being progressively reduced, the major concentration of the outstanding cases is in the most acutely congested and intermixed areas and intensive effort will be necessary to maintain the current rate of progress. The full co-operation of the participating congests is a vital factor in the successful implementation of rearrangement schemes formulated by the Land Commission. I must again appeal to any Deputies, who may have an opportunity of doing so, to impress on tenants that it is in their own interest to co-operate with the Land Commission in this work.

I have already dealt with the revesting of tenanted land by the Land Commission. On the untenanted land side, the vesting of allotments in allottees is an important feature of the year's activities. Satisfactory progress was made during the year. Altogether, in the case of both tenanted and untenanted land, some 5,200 properties—comprising holdings, parcels and rights of turbary—were vested in tenants and allottees during the period.

As regards housing activities, during the year ended 31st March last, 219 new dwellinghouses and 330 new out-offices were erected and 16 dwelling-houses reconstructed by or with financial assistance from the Land Commission. In addition, advances were made by the Land Commission, in 37 cases, to supplement grants made by the Department of Local Government for the erection of new dwellinghouses.

Advances ranging from £100 minimum to £200 maximum, related to twenty times the unrevised annuity, have been available from the Land Commission to supplement Local Government Department grants for the erection of new dwellinghouses. I have now decided to step up the advance to £200 in all cases, irrespective of the size of annuity.

The evaluation of the prototype houses of new design, erected by the Land Commission in Laois and Westmeath, is under active consideration with a view to the preparation of a range of acceptable new building plans of modern design for Land Commission operations. This important matter of farm building design will be of long-term significance. It requires adequate consultation and consideration before a final decision is taken, but the matter will be brought to conclusion as soon as practicable.

Water supply for rural homesteads is a very topical subject just now. The provision of water supplies for farming and domestic purposes, on or adjacent to newly-created holdings, is not neglected in land settlement operations. For some years past, the Land Commission have been successfully using their own machinery for well-boring. Water supply commitments, however, are numerous and urgent and well-boring contractors have been engaged to supplement the work of the Land Commission machines. During the past year, a total of 114 wells was provided. Every effort is being made by the Land Commission to expedite the provision of water supplies for allottees.

I should like at this stage to refer to the Land Commission scheme for amelioration of conditions in the flooded areas of the Shannon Valley in Counties Roscommon, Galway, Westmeath and Offaly. Perhaps I should point out once more that this is not a scheme of flood control; rather is it aimed at affording relief, as far as practicable, from the hazards of flooding, by the erection of new buildings on safer sites, the reconstruction of existing buildings in suitable cases and the provision, where necessary, of dry stands for stock in times of abnormal flooding.

In all, 109 farmers are concerned in this scheme, which has progressed very well during the year. The cost of the scheme is being borne by the National Development Fund. Up to a recent date, total expenditure under the scheme has amounted to £96,000, of which upwards of £50,000 was spent in the past financial year.

Work already done or in progress may be summarised as follows: 34 new dwelling-houses and 43 new out-offices have been completed. Nine further dwellings and 3 out-offices are being built at present. Five dwelling-houses and a similar number of out-offices have been substantially reconstructed and repairs are currently being carried out on another dwelling-house and out-office. In addition, approach roads and yards have been raised in 24 cases. Dry stands for stock have been provided for 31 farmers. The provision of these dry-stand allotments necessitated the migration of six local landowners to new holdings elsewhere.

For the majority of participants in this important scheme, the approved works are now concluded or nearing conclusion. A few eligible participants are still holding back from full co-operation, possibly in expectation that they may get grants for building on sites below flood level. As I said on previous occasions, it is hopeless to expect the Land Commission to give assistance to build on sites which are liable to flooding. The point of principle involved in this should by now be fully realised by the participants in question. In their own interest, it is earnestly hoped that they will agree to move to suitable building sites above flood level. If they persist in their attitude, they will only have themselves to blame for any unfortunate losses that may occur through future flooding.

The position regarding payment of land annuities continues satisfactory. Since 1933, out of a total collectible amount of over £68¼ millions, the amount outstanding at 31st March last was £147,438 — less than ¼ of 1 per cent. The provision of adequate agricultural credit is to-day a matter of major national importance. This remarkable record of annuity payment is a reliable index of the creditworthiness of Irish farmers and of their willingness to meet their obligations.

The question of property purchases by non-nationals was debated at some length in this House very recently. The Government's approach to this matter, as expressed by me on that occasion, is on the records of the House, and I do not now propose to cover the ground in detail again. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a brief reference to the problem, in so far as one exists, and to a summary of the measures which are being taken to deal with it.

As Deputies have already been informed, provision is made in the current Finance Bill to strengthen the existing 25 per cent. stamp duty legislation so as to bring within its scope certain procedures which have made it possible for non-nationals, acquiring agricultural land here, to evade payment of this duty—especially the device of purchasing property through the medium of pre-1947 companies. In addition, the Bill provides that the Revenue Commissioners will keep the Land Commission informed of purchases by non-national interests so that reliable information regarding the extent of such transactions may be assembled.

I am satisfied that these measures will be adequate to seal off the tax evasion loophole which has hitherto existed and also to provide the Land Commission with all requisite information on property purchases by non-nationals.

In the course of the debate on this Estimate last year, I dealt with the concept of the economic holding or, in more up-to-date parlance, the viable farm unit. My view then was —that, while it is not possible to —and nothing has since occurred to cause me to alter that view— reduce the definition of an economic holding to any dogmatic formula in terms of acreage alone, there is no reason why a compact Land Commission standard holding comprising 33 acres of good land—or its equivalent in land of varied quality—should not be fully rewarding in the hands of a competent owner, willing to work his acres intensively, with up-to-date expert guidance from the local advisory service. Here let me say that over the last decade, the Land Reform movement introduced in Italy made available on average no more than 17 acres per family. In West Germany, over 90 per cent. of the holdings are less than 50 acres and in oft-cited Denmark, about half of the holdings are less than 25 acres.

That many of the smaller holdings in our country are models of what efficient husbandry should be, is certainly undeniable. Indeed, if proof of this were needed, it has been provided conclusively, even during the past twelve months, by the results of various competitions, sponsored by rural and agricultural bodies, in which industrious small farmers, extracting the last ounce from their limited acreage, often carried off the top prizes. Small farmers, with the initiative to specialize and having sufficient courage and adaptability to avoid sluggish adherence to the farming pattern followed on larger holdings, are demonstrating in many districts that high cash returns are not incompatible with low acreage. I know it will be contended—and, I suppose, with some validity—that these farmers are the exceptions: but, perhaps, it may not be too much to hope that their exemplary industry and up-to-date approach will generally inspire that vigorous spirit of enterprise which is vital so that the small farm may continue to survive as a viable unit, capable of affording the economic security and yielding the cash returns which the occupier is entitled to expect in present-day conditions.

Our aim is to take all practicable steps to improve the standard of living on the smaller farms, which have for so long been such a typical feature of the Irish scene. A great deal has already been done or put in train towards providing amenities for the farming community generally, in the form of improved housing, better roads, electricity, piped water supply and so on—all of which are designed to make life on the land easier and to keep those of our people who are wedded to that life from falling too far behind the ever-improving standards to which other elements of the community nowadays aspire.

It goes without saying that the availability of the facilities I have mentioned is just as important to the small farmer as to the more extensive landowner. However, the small farm gives rise to difficulties which are not generally encountered in the economy of the larger type of holding. For that reason, something more than the mere provision of these amenities is essential if a higher standard of living on the small farm is to be secured and maintained. The answer seems to lie in increased productivity, coupled with improved marketing. At present, the Government is carrying out a systematic examination of the possibilities of increasing the output of the smaller farms—an examination which will include a study of the technical and marketing possibilities and also of the organisational changes which may be necessary in various small-farm areas. Meanwhile, the Land Commission, within the limits of its resources, will press on with its measures for alleviating rural congestion wherever it exists.

The recent Census of Population questionnaire contained a query aimed at the compilation of up-to-date statistics of holdings in the various size-groups in the occupation of farmers. When the census returns are analysed, it should be possible to discuss the incidence of current congestion on a precise statistical groundwork. In the meantime, however, the existing information suffices to show that the congestion problem is still far from being solved and that the claims of those already on the land in an uneconomic way must take precedence over other aspiring groups of applicants for land which becomes available to the Land Commission for division.

Farming competence will continue to be an important determining factor in the selection of allottees. The objective must be to put Land Commission land into the possession of allottees of proved agricultural ability, whose experience and competence give clear promise that their allotments will be intensively worked to the advantage of the community as a whole.

The past year has been one of sustained progress on the part of the Land Commission, with record-breaking results in some spheres. It is only fitting, therefore, that, before concluding, I should express to the staff, both indoor and outdoor, my appreciation of their good work. The moneys provided under this Vote will be devoted to a continuation of this important work. With confidence, I recommend the Estimate to the House.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I move:

That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.

I should like to take this opportunity of saying that, having listened very carefully and attentively to the Minister's speech, I could find in it no new proposals. It contained no declaration of future land policy. It did not convey either to the House or to the country any suggestion of any serious effort to eliminate the many grievances prevailing.

I compliment the Minister most sincerely on his conversion to the usefulness of the Land Act of 1950. In his statement he referred to the fact that last year expenditure on cash purchases amounted to almost £75,000. The total area purchased was 1,296 acres as compared with 1,032 acres in the previous year. He said substantial new cash purchases are being entered into this year. In 1950, when the inter-Party Government were piloting this Act through the House, there was a great deal of opposition to it from the Fianna Fáil Party. That Act has proved one of the most progressive pieces of legislation ever passed by this House. It was provided in that Act that employees would receive certain gratuities and compensation if they lost their employment as the result of the taking over of any farm. It was provided that the Land Commission could purchase land on the open market and pay the full market value for it.

The 1950 Act is alone responsible for whatever degree of progress the Minister now claims the Land Commission made over the last two years. The Minister referred to the increased acreage acquired, to the increased number of allottees, the increased number of purchases, the greater purchase of land on the open market. It must be borne in mind that none of these would have been possible were it not for the 1950 Act. For a long number of years the Land Commission was known as a very big body that moved very, very slowly. It certainly moves slowly still but it now has machinery available to it to enable it to move more quickly.

I want to impress on the Minister the importance of buying land on the open market. When a large farm comes on the market and there are uneconomic holders, cottage tenants, farmers' sons, old I.R.A., that farm should be purchased on the open market by the Land Commission under the 1950 Act and those applying for land should be given it. I cannot understand why the Land Commission has failed to act more effectively in such purchases. The payment of the full market value encourages owners to dispose of their land.

In this country we have a number of very extensive farms. In close proximity to them there are many small and uneconomic holders. The Minister must be aware that many large farms are set in conacre. Under the conacre system many people in the Midlands are ekeing out an existence and paying as much as £25 per acre for conacre for tillage. Small farmers with a valuation of £12 to £15 take land under this system. Generally, when they have paid for the seed, the manure, and the cultivation of the land they are very often poorer in the Autumn than they were when they entered on the land in the Spring. I suggest a special survey should be made by the Land Commission of all land let under the conacre system and a close examination should be made of the system. They have the power and the right to do so.

There are many young farmers who would be prepared to lease a farm at an annual rent. The Land Commission should put such a scheme into operation so that any capital these young men would possess could be available for stock and equipment. Many of them may or may not have done farm apprenticeship courses but there must be a large number of them born and reared on the land who want to stay on the land if they can do so. The farm on which they have been reared may be available for only one of them unless it is an exceptionally big one. Many farmers' sons are leaving the land today not because they are eager to do so but because it will not provide a livelihood for them.

I strongly recommend the Land Commission to carry out an up-to-date survey. The present activities of the Land Commission must be considered out of date. Many of our land problems in rural Ireland call for efficient and speedy action. I have often said, and it is no harm to repeat it on this Estimate, that the Land Commission is bound up in many legal entanglements. The Minister should endeavour to release the Land Commission from these entanglements and from the many old Land Acts and regulations which hinder them from bringing about greater progress. An up-to-date land policy should be formulated to resolve our land problems.

Very many of our smallholders have to seek other employment with Bord na Móna or working on roads with the various county councils throughout the country, the reason being that they cannot get a living on their holdings. In parts of my own constituency and elsewhere there are many cottage tenants who would be anxious to work land. Many of them have to take land on conacre. Many of them cannot get the grass of a cow. The attention of the Land Commission has been directed to the fact that many of these smallholders have to graze their cows on the high road.

I would like to refer the Minister to the report of the Investment Advisory Committee which recommended that lands held by the State should be rented where suitable and short leases made available to promising young men. I would like to ask the Minister if the Land Commission has studied the report of the Capital Investment Advisory Committee and whether they have given that recommendation serious consideration. It is no harm to remind the Minister that in Economic Development, Mr. Whitaker recommends some form of State aid by which aspiring young farmers would be enabled to rent land. That is the idea I expressed a few moments ago. When a first-class economist, such as Mr. Whitaker is, with a knowledge of rural Ireland and its problems, makes that suggestion it should be given serious consideration. However, the Minister for Lands neither this year nor last year has made any reference whatsoever to the recommendations made by Mr. Whitaker in Economic Development or to the wise suggestions contained in the Capital Investment Advisory Committee's Report. The one way in which the Minister can achieve some progress is to give serious thought to those documents.

This is a problem which must be tackled. It cannot be said that we have not got the land available. We have the land available. That brings me to the point with reference to the statement made by the Minister concerning the purchase of land by aliens. No matter what the Minister may say, that has become a national problem. We know very well that there are aliens purchasing large tracts of land here and we also know that there are many young farmers and creditworthy farmers' sons —"the aspiring farmer" as Mr. Whitaker referred to them—who would be only too glad to rent or lease portions of those lands. The Land Commission must know when an extensive holding is on the public market and it should be much easier for the Land Commission as a State-backed organisation to enter into the market competitively even with the Germans or any group of aliens, and to purchase the land to relieve congestion—to give it out to the aspiring farmer either on a rented or leased basis.

I am sure the Minister has heard of Fintan Lalor. One of the phrases commonly associated with Fintan Lalor was that the land of Ireland was for the people of Ireland, to have and to hold from God who gave it. We are now reaching the stage when fine farms of good agricultural land are being bought up by people from the four corners of the world and we are told here now by the Minister, just as we were told when Fine Gael brought in a Private Members' Bill which was introduced by the Leader of the Opposition to deal with the buying of agricultural land by foreigners, that it was not a problem.

Deputies who represent rural constituencies know that there has been a great deal of comment from the general public, even from some of our Bishops. Quite recently the Bishop of Cork referred to the fact that Ireland was becoming a country in which there were land hungry aliens. The Fine Gael Party introduced a Private Members' Bill which merely required the Land Commission to establish a register in which would be kept a record of the nationality of persons buying Irish land. The Land Commission did not see that such a register would serve any useful purpose. All the details to be kept in such a register would be details relating to the area of the land, the valuation and the purchase price of the land so that such details would be available. I fail to see why the Government, when asked by the main Opposition to accept a Bill of that kind, which was merely to keep a very accurate account of the manner in which the land of the country was being bought up by aliens, would not immediately agree that this was a problem which they could not allow to go unchecked. It is a strange state of affairs, when there are young creditworthy farmers' sons, smallholders, small farmers, paying up to £25 to £30 per acre for conacre and the Land Commission receiving numerous applications for land, to see that a non-national's chequebook will purchase the finest of agricultural holdings in this country.

It is entirely wrong for any Government to allow the main source of wealth—and the main source of wealth in any country is its land — to be bought up in this way. As a result of the Land Reclamation Scheme we now have a million more acres of land in this country than we had some years ago. This area has been converted from waste land, rocky land and land growing rushes, etc. But while we have a million acres reclaimed, how many acres have we now lost to foreigners? I feel that the situation is very serious and one in which the Government are not in touch with the people. The policy of the Government in this matter should be reviewed and some practical steps taken to deal with the problem.

Many tributes were paid in this House to the wise statement which the German Minister to Ireland addressed to his own countrymen. I think the German Minister deserves to be congratulated for the wise words of advice which he gave to his countrymen. We know very well that nobody is more welcome to industrial sites; foreigners will be facilitated in acquiring industrial sites, but there is a limit to such facilities and when it comes to first-class agricultural land, some steps should be adopted to prevent such land falling into the hands of non-nationals. If it is on the public market, the owner should be given the benefits of the laws that we have and the full market value paid to him. The State should acquire the lands and give them out on a rented or leased basis to creditworthy farmers' sons or to those who are at present paying very high prices for land on the conacre system.

It has been said many times on this side of the House and I want to repeat that we must have private ownership of land. The Christian community is based on private ownership. Private ownership must have the right of free sale. God forbid that we should ever experience in this country a denial of the right of a man to do what he likes with his own property. Free sale has been cherished and established in this country. No matter what Government reigns or rules in future I hope free sale will be maintained and safeguarded for all our people who own private property.

It is only right that we should show respect for this principle and anxiety to preserve it but we have coming on the market holdings such as those to which I have referred and it is not outside the bounds of possibility to have some institution, if not the Land Commission, set up by the Department of Lands, for the purchase of such lands. I should like to direct the attention of the Minister for Lands to the article Rural Problems and Possibilities by the Most Reverend William J. Philbin, D.D., Lord Bishop of Clonfert. I do not know if the Minister has read it. If he has not, I recommend that he should read it.

The Bishop of Clonfert deals wisely and honestly with the problem which we are now debating in this House and also refers to the fact that it is not outside the bounds of possibility that there should be some institution, perhaps in the nature of a land bank, to which people who want to dispose of land can have recourse and from which people who want land on a rented or other basis can obtain land.

I have often wondered why in formulating land policy the persons who sat on the Capital Investment Advisory Committee, such as Mr. Whitaker and the Bishop of Clonfert, were not consulted and their advice sought because they are in touch with the many evils associated with the land problems in Ireland.

The Minister for Lands should give this country a practical progressive land policy that would end the agitations, that would secure people in their land, that would prevent aliens from making a happy hunting ground of this country and living on the fat of the land while small farmers were paying the last halfpenny they possess for conacre land. Even in this, his last year of office, he should have endeavoured to give the country an idea of what the future land policy of the Fianna Fáil Party would be. He comes into the House and gives a preamble of the achievements under the 1950 Land Act, which was sponsored by Deputy Blowick and backed by the inter-Party Government. If you take away the 1950 Land Act the Minister would not have been able to present to this House today a single achievement.

I want to advise the Minister for Lands to get down to realities in this matter. Life is completely disappearing from rural Ireland. Parish schools are closing down. Parish halls have closed down. Many small farmers have put padlocks on their doors and galvanised iron on their windows and have gone away. The disappearance of the parish is becoming a source of anxiety and worry to many people in rural Ireland. Investigations and enquiries are being held in a number of dioceses into the causes of the disappearance of parish populations. It must be known to the Minister for Education that parish schools are closing down for want of pupils. That is due to wrong distribution of land. It is the aim of all of us and it is laid down in our Constitution that as many families as possible should be established on the land. The most serious problem facing the country today is the fact that the population of rural Ireland consist mainly of young children and very old people. The in-betweens have gone.

When the general election campaign opens up many Deputies who sit behind the Fianna Fáil Government will have their eyes opened. They will notice that the audiences at their meetings will comprise the very old and the very young. The problem can only be remedied by proper distribution of the available land.

We are all concerned with the drift from the land. It should be the concern of any Government. It is the concern of every Deputy. The land of Ireland should be capable of increased production and of maintaining a higher population. The decline in the rural population due to emigration and to the movement of complete households should have the serious consideration of the Government.

What functions will a Government have if there are no people to be ruled? There are many parts of the West of Ireland and the Midlands to-day from which the rural population is disappearing and is being replaced in many instances by foreigners who are buying up land. Our policy should be to increase the number of economic small farms and to have as many families as possible living and getting a living on the land.

Let us consider for a moment the policy of the Land Commission with regard to the economic holding. Every Deputy knows that the Land Commission are giving out portions of land insufficient in size to provide a livelihood for the allottees. I should like to hear from the Minister what he would consider the size of an economic farm should be. Most people favour not less than 35 acres. I feel the size of an economic farm should not be less than 45 acres. If a man has between 45 and 50 acres, he can have a certain amount of tillage, his own hay, his own grazing and his own meadow.

When the Land Commission are considering relieving congestion they should take into account that many of the people to whom they have given land still have to take land on conacre in order to supplement what they have obtained from the Land Commission. That shows, of course, that the right type of people were selected, because they have worked the land well and wisely. But it also shows that in the division of a big estate it might be better to allocate one or two farms less, in order to give those receiving the land a holding large enough to live out of. In that way they would be independent of work on the bogs and on the roads and they would not have to take land on conacre.

A man who takes land on conacre will never make money out of it The land may be worked by somebody else next year. The man taking it on conacre may lime it and manure it, work it in the best possible way, but he is merely working for the person who owns the land and the auctioneer who gives it to him. I have great sympathy for the people taking land on conacre. It is high time this whole policy were reviewed in the light of an up-to-date and progressive land policy.

We must appreciate the difficulties of the Land Commission. It is very easy to criticise. Deputies know from the volume of callers and post they receive that there are more applicants for land than the Land Commission have land to give. Naturally, a sharp sense of grievance and disappointment is felt by those who apply for land and do not get it. If the Land Comsion have not sufficient land to respond favourably to all applications, may we suggest from this side of the House that when land comes on the public market, the Land Commission should buy it at the full market value and that it should be used either to relieve congestion or given out on a rental basis to creditworthy farmers' sons?

I agree that the improvement works carried out by the Land Commission, to which the Minister referred, works such as drainage, fencing and the erection and repair of out-offices, are works of very great importance. But further schemes of improvement should be undertaken by the Land Commission. Have the Land Commission obtained the advice of their engineering staff in relation to the question of the proximity of out-offices to the dwelling-house? References have been made to the modern Land Commission residences erected in Westmeath and Laois. No wonder the Minister singled out these modern designs for mention in his Estimate speech. The plan and lay-out of the houses are certainly a great credit to the Land Commission, and it would be well worth while for Deputies to visit these new holdings to get an idea of their modern design. We would be unreasonable if we did not pay a tribute to the ability of the architectural section of the Land Commission in providing such attractive residences.

In the experimental houses erected in Westmeath and Laois the out-offices are a reasonable distance away from the dwellinghouse. That cannot be said of most of the other Land Commission houses. It can be an advantage to have all the out-offices within a stone's throw of the house, but it can also be a great disadvantage. The out-offices should be a reasonable distance from the house. The holding should also be provided with a reasonably large farmyard in which stabling, cowhouses, haggard, grain store and hay and straw ricks can be kept together at the rear of the house but a reasonable distance away. I should like to place on record the appreciation of the general public for the up-to-date design of the houses to which I have referred.

The Land Commission have a lot of work to do in regard to roadmaking. It is very little use to provide a holding unless you can provide a right-of-way into it. We had the disgraceful spectacle of the Dowling estate at Castlefleming, near Errill, County Laois, where it took the Land Commission several months to come to a decision to provide the allottees with a right-of-way to their lands. Eventually, the problem was solved. The Land Commission did their best, and I admit that everybody in the locality was not 100 per cent. reasonable. In cases where the Land Commision are dividing large holdings, they should first consider the legal difficulties in regard to the provision of rights-of-way. The right-of-way should be safeguarded first. It is extraordinary that a man can be provided with land but that it can be within the power of a group of neighbours to prevent him from entering thereon.

I want to refer to the Minister's statement in regard to game councils and the provision of grants. I welcome this as a step in the right direction. There is a great source of wealth in the preservation of our game. Wonderful progress has been made by the Inland Fisheries Trust, but we can deal with that on another Estimate. I want to suggest to the Minister that it would be a very wise move to establish a National Game Council similar in responsibility to the Inland Fisheries Trust. The wonderful achievements of the Inland Fisheries Trust should encourage the Minister to take this step in regard to our very valuable game preserves.

In this country we are blessed with the finest inland fisheries in the world. We can offer them with pride to tourists. We also have some of the best game preserves in the world and I now want to pay a special tribute to the regional game councils set up throughout the country. I am glad that the Minister is providing certain grants to help them. As I said, the Minister would be very well advised to establish a national game body who would be responsible for the allocation of the grants the Minister says will be made available for game preservation. Such a body could have similar responsibilities in respect to game preservation and cultivation as the Inland Fisheries Trust has in connection with our rivers and lakes.

Committees of agriculture in many counties have provided substantial grants to local game councils. Bord Fáilte have also been responsible for financial help to such councils, but now it is proposed that Bord Fáilte grants should no longer be available having regard to the grants which will in future be forthcoming under this Vote. I know that Bord Fáilte did very good work in this regard and I realise very well the amount of money they have contributed towards game preservation in different districts throughout the country, but I cannot agree that they should not continue to do this work apart altogether from the money that would be made available by the Department of Lands.

I hope the grants the Minister will give will be sufficiently generous to enable the game councils to perform their duties efficiently and effectively but at the same time I would advise the Minister to co-ordinate the work of these councils under one national body. Many Deputies may not realise the importance of this work. They do know, however, that next to agriculture comes the tourist industry. It has been built up by the attractiveness of our scenery and by our fisheries. It could be added to by first class game preserves. The matter is too important to be handled by the Irish Land Commission alone. Courageous and scientific steps are needed and that is why I suggest the work should be in the hands of a national game preservation council.

The Minister dealt with the vesting of holdings and said that the number vested last year was 1,583. He went on to say that there were 10,500 still awaiting vesting on March 31st last. I know that vesting must be a very tedious process but I would ask the Minister to try and get the vesting section of his Department to wipe off the arrears as soon as possible. The vesting of those holdings has been going on for a considerable number of years and I think it is time that all the energies of the Irish Land Commission were turned on the matter. To accelerate the work I would advise the Minister to get the legal section and the vesting section of the Department to work together on this job.

The Minister says there has been great progress in land resettlement during the past year. That is very good news but I think that a greater effort could be made in this regard. In the course of his statement the Minister says that up to March 31st last 219 new dwellings had been built, 330 new outoffices had been erected, and 16 houses had been constructed. One of the great problems in rural Ireland to-day is the poor housing of small farmers. The Department of Local Government provide grants, County Councils provide supplementary grants but when you come to the holdings with a valuation of above £20 you will find the owner is unable to find sufficient money to build a new house. Very often he cannot obtain a loan under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act because his title may not be in order or there may be other difficulties. The sanctioning of a loan may be a managerial function and County Managers are very careful that repayment is guaranteed. Consequently, very many small farmers in Ireland are to-day living in mud-walled, thatched cottages. Young families are being brought up in these very small, mud-walled thatched cabins.

The Land Commission should formulate a scheme whereby small farmers can be provided with houses and, as at the time when Section B of the Land Project was operating, the cost should be repayable over 30, 40 or 50 years and put on to the rent. The Land Commission are only providing houses on holdings they now allocate and their failure to provide houses for small farmers up to that is notable. They have a responsibility to all the tenants. They give loans—very seldom grants—of £100 or £200 in cases where the Department of Local Government have already sanctioned a reconstruction grant or a grant in respect of a new house. That does not go far enough. Our biggest problem is properly to house the small farmer for whom the local authority can do nothing, the man without means dependent on what he gets from the harvest. Such families are severely handicapped and the Minister who represents a rural constituency must be aware of this problem which is a cause of great discomfort and embarrassment.

The Land Commission should provide houses for small farmers. Let the next generation pay. Why should one generation toil and slave since the house will be passed on to the next? This would be a good, long term investment. We are too anxious for a quick pay-off. We want our cash and credits balancing and our accounts in order. That may be good book-keeping but is of little use to those with no house and no means of getting one. That is why we need long term planning. The Land Commission should provide every small farmer who needs a house and cannot provide it himself with a house and let his sons or his successors pay for it. The Minister for Finance and his advisers may not think that is very sound but I feel it is a policy that will eventually pay because it will keep the people at home and, above all, ensure that those needing houses will get them. Local authorities cannot provide these houses: they have no means of getting money for them. The Land Commission is the only body that can come to the rescue and I beg the Minister and the Land Commission to consider the matter seriously.

The Minister referred to Shannon flooding. Those who represent constituencies adjoining the Shannon are well aware of the problem existing there for many years. A considerable amount of money has been spent and valuable work undertaken but that will not prevent lands in the area from being flooded. I have often wondered why the Land Commission, in conjunction with the Board of Works or with the Forestry Section of the Minister's Department, did not give the Shannon valley question more prominence from the points of view of drainage or afforestation if either is possible. Now we find the people will still be living on those holdings, still dreading the horrors of floods, of livestock being lost, of being marooned for weeks. I hope the efforts of the good people in the Shannon valley when funds had to be put up by voluntary subscription and the aid of the Army had to be obtained to bring the livestock and sometimes the owners to dry land will not be forgotten. The problem should be tackled more courageously by the Department of Lands. They should not wait for some disaster to take place in the Shannon valley but should be fully prepared for it.

After one very serious flooding, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, I was sent by the Minister to that area for a considerable time with a view to submitting a report to the Government. There are many obstructions on the Shannon which should be removed. If the Minister has responsibilities in this respect—he has referred to it in his speech—it is of concern to his Department particularly in view of the amount of money already spent. The Department should consider spending some money on removing the islands and obstructions. I believe the weir at Meelick is responsible for a good deal of the distress the area has experienced. According to the oldest inhabitants of the area it is the weir that is doing all the damage. Now that we have electric power turf burning stations and so on it is impossible that the weir at Meelick has not gone out of date. Has the Department examined the possibility of removing the weir and allowing the water held back from Meelick to Athlone to have a free run? The Land Commission would be well advised to examine the possibility of removing the weir and replacing it by some modern device, at the same time allowing a free flow of water.

I wonder if it would be wise to spend a considerable amount of money removing islands in the Shannon or whether, if that were done, the current would reconstitute these islands after a period of time. It would be foolish to expend substantial sums removing the islands if results proved negative in the long run. I know islands near Shannonbridge and some between Shannon Harbour and Banagher that could be removed. An effort should be made to have that work undertaken.

I represent a constituency intimately concerned with the Shannon. The problem is one which concerns the county councils of Leitrim, Westmeath, Roscommon, Galway, Offaly, North Tipperary and, in some instances, Clare. A permanent board should be set up charged with responsibility for relieving the plight of those in the Shannon area. It must be a considerable strain on departmental funds to have to provide aid frequently. County councils should have some responsibility in this matter. There should be a contribution from the councils so that there will be funds available to meet any emergency. There should be representatives of the councils, of the E.S.B., of the Shannon Navigation, on the board. At the moment the E.S.B., the Shannon Navigation, the Board of Works and the Department of Lands all have some responsibility. The moment the floods hit responsibility is shelved by all of them.

Now is the time to plan when there is no immediate problem to be tackled and when the position can be examined coolly and calmly. The problem has existed for the past thirty years. There is nothing in the Minister's speech which gives any hope of an early solution. Some people have higher farmyards and some have new houses, but there are still many in the flooded areas. They have been offered alternative accommodation, but they will not leave. One should not blame them for that. Generations before them were born and bred in these houses and it is not easy for people to pull up roots. The Minister as the responsible Minister should give a lead and not just lipservice when an emergency arises.

I can never understand why certain areas in the Shannon Valley were selected to receive benefits while other areas were excluded. Lusmagh has been excluded. The lands there are continuously flooded. The people have received not one penny piece. I appeal to the Minister to include Shannon Harbour, the district around Shannonbridge, Banagher, and the parish of Lusmagh. A very small portion of Offaly is included. It is hardly fair.

There was nothing new in the Minister's speech. He is probably facing this House for the last time in the lifetime of this Dáil. I had hoped we might have had an Estimate which would give some hope of a revival in relation to land and which would contain practical proposals. There was nothing practical in the Minister's speech. The Minister blew his own trumpet. He patted himself on the back. But all the achievements of which he boasted were made possible by the Land Act of 1950, the Act he opposed in this House.

Mr. Blowick

That is right. The present Minister and his colleagues, including Deputy Killilea, opposed that Act every inch of the way.

Mr. Killilea

And would again if it were before us.

Mr. Blowick

The Deputy is in Government now. Why does he not repeal it? He cannot have it both ways.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Blowick will get an opportunity of making his speech.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

I am keenly disappointed at the lack of policy, the lack of foresight and the lack of understanding shown by the Minister's speech in relation to the problems that exist in rural Ireland. Indeed, his speech carries in it something of political mourning because, if it were not for the 1950 Act, which was so strenuously opposed by Fianna Fáil, and which they would oppose again tomorrow if they had the chance, nothing could have been achieved. The Minister was honourable enough to refer to the Act on at least four or five occasions in the course of his speech. Because there is so little hope for the future, I am filled with a certain uneasiness. The land problem is not being tackled as it should. The Minister holds out no hope of implementing a policy based on the principles enunciated by Fintan Lawlor: "The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to have and to hold from God alone who gave it."

Mr. MacCarthy

I am sure Deputies appreciate the very comprehensive statement of progress and solid achievement by the Department of Lands under the direction of the present Minister. The speech of the Deputy who has just sat down is amazing in many ways. The number of contradictions in it are stupefying. Land was being divided in this country long before 1950. In his statement the Minister has divided his programme and policy on two lines. One part referred to what was being done for the people who had already got allotments and the other referred to what it was proposed to do for them and for those who in future would get divided lands. The Minister set out the amenities that were being provided, water supplies for the homes and roads.

I intend to speak particularly on those topics. The county council in Cork has decided that where roads are brought up to the standard of local roadways they will take them over and maintain them. Where there are through roads which can be classed as of general public utility there is not a very serious problem but many cul-de-sac roads undoubtedly present a problem. That should be tackled and any arrears of work there should be dealt with as soon as possible.

Proposals are usually sent to the Special Employment Schemes office of the Board of Works and under a new system where a smaller local contribution is involved these holders make a contribution towards improvement of these roads. However, in many cases there are only three, four or five towns; consequently their resources are very small and the contributions are beyond their capacity to pay. In some instances the Board of Works is agreeable to spread the work over two years so that all the charges will not come upon them altogether. That is very wise, but if the Land Commission would come to the assistance of the land holders in these divided estates by making a contribution much good work that is waiting to be done for years could be accomplished. The work needs to be done urgently. In some cases creamery lorries will not enter these roadways unless they are improved very speedily. It is really a great hardship on the people living there and depending on them.

The provision of wells and water supplies of a modern kind to suit the holders of these lands is also being undertaken and I hope that progress will be continued and that these amenities that are a feature of modern life will not be denied to these small holders by reason of financial difficulties. Every encouragement should be given to the provision of shelter belts which would act both as a protection and as a scenic attraction.

Deputy Flanagan also spoke about free sale and at the same time suggested that the Land Commission should acquire land and enter into the open market for this purpose which is hardly compatible with free sale. We cannot embark on a policy which will upset the traditional life of our community and deprive them of the opportunity of purchasing land that suits them when it becomes available.

The Land Commission sometimes can acquire big holdings or holdings offered to them by the owners without upsetting that general principle and I think they are working on those lines. Very big holdings beyond the capacity of modern farmers to work and pay rates on, including very big, cumbersome houses and all the rest, are the types of holding the Land Commission should acquire for the local uneconomic holders.

The last speaker also mentioned—and I think it should be borne in mind— that farmers' sons who have shown initiative in taking conacre demonstrated their capacity to work it and cottiers, who show a progressive spirit, should receive consideration. Of course the Land Commission is tied by certain rules and regulations which often cause local anxiety and contention. However, I am sure that the Land Commission will from year to year amend the regulations to meet the changing circumstances.

Those who have been deprived of their employment on holdings acquired by the Land Commission should get consideration. Sometimes they get a little portion of accommodation land. They might have a few sheep or a poultry run on the land. When the land is taken over by the Land Commission they are deprived of it and while they are waiting to have that land divided the scheme of things is entirely altered for them. Those who have been deprived of their employment on this land should be the first to receive consideration.

I do not wish to cover all the points raised by the Minister. His statement dealt adequately with every aspect of the land problem, the drainage of the land and its improvement, the planting of trees, the improvement of dwellings and so on. I would ask the Minister to bear in mind the few points I have raised.

Captain Giles

I am sorry I was not present to hear the Minister's statement in connection with land division. I am sure it was a reasonable statement and that the Estimate got full discussion because it bears on the lives and fortunes of many people. I have spoken here during the past 25 years about land division and I believe splendid work has been done by the Land Commission under all Governments. The whole face of the country in many places has been changed, particularly in my own county. I am satisfied that the work done will leave lasting benefits. The one unfortunate thing about it was that in the earlier years the Land Commission thought fit to make the holdings too small and that is a problem which is left with us. We made holdings of 22 or 23 acres of land on which a family cannot be reared. There was a time, perhaps, when that was good enough but you just cannot do that today. I am glad that the Land Commission has changed its hand and is now bringing the holdings up to 27 or 30 acres. I am satisfied that if a man gets 30 acres of land he is getting a foundation on which he can live and rear a family decently.

Many people in this country hold that there should be no land division and that it is a terrible thing to divide up the big estates. I hold that what we require is to plant as many people on the land as we possibly can. That is the duty which devolves on the Land Commission and that is what they are doing. We are quite satisfied that the benefits of that work will be found in later years when those people get properly established. It is the duty of the large landowners in this country to realize that they have a duty to the underdog. They have a bigger share of the wealth of the country and, when they find that people around them are in poor circumstances, it is their duty as Christians to look around them to see what they can do. If they have too much land, it is not alone the duty of the Land Commission to take it from them but it is their duty to offer it to the Land Commission, to make restitution in many cases for the wrongs of other years.

In arranging new holdings I find that many men get bad holdings, the tail end of estates, while the large man who may be brought in from the West of Ireland, because he had a big holding there, gets the cream of the land. He can almost come in and point out what he wants. We get other men, perhaps from County Meath who get rushy, watery, sedgy wasteland. That is unfair. I know some of the land that some men in my county got and it is a public disgrace to give them such land. They would hardly be able to find one of their cows in the morning in fields of rushes and sedge. They see right beside them a man who may come from Galway getting all the good land and perhaps all the water facilities that go with it. Each man should get his fair share of good and bad land.

We heard a few years ago, and we hear even still, that farmers' sons who had no hope under the present Land Act of getting land would come under some scheme, and that the Minister, the N.F.A. and other organisations were trying to work out a scheme. There is no use working out a scheme if it comes into operation only in their old age. We should know where we stand—whether the farmers' sons are to get a chance or whether they have to emigrate. I think it time that that scheme was formulated. As far as my own county is concerned, there is no hope at present of a farmer's son getting land or no hope of a farmer's son being able to buy land because there are big men from other countries, and our own country, who can offer twice the amount.

I am satisfied that the Land Commission have changed their hand in recent years in connection with the type of houses being built. There was a common pattern of house in this country for a number of years and we were sick and tired of it. Over the last few years, however, a splendid type of house is being built. I want to see in those houses water, sewerage and light. There is no reason why those should not be put into them now. In the past, and even up to the present, there is no such thing as worrying about sanitary arrangements. The Land Commission do nothing about it. They do nothing about electric light. Those are things which should be part and parcel of a new home and people are entitled to get those things.

The Land Commission have now thought fit to consult with the county engineer in the different areas in connection with the making of new roads and I am satisfied that the Land Commission are making reasonably good roads now. As far as my county is concerned, where a road serves 4 or 5 holdings we take it over and make it a public road—even if it is a cul-de-sac. We have taken over practically all the culs-de-sac in the County Meath which serve 3 or more families and made them public roads. We have done it with the ratepayers' money but they are satisfied that it is money well spent.

We hear a great deal of talk about large tracts of land being purchased by foreigners. I am one of those who have no narrow or mean view about those things but I am satisfied that in a country like Ireland, where we are only emerging from a revolution before which for hundreds of years our people were denied their rights, it is only right that we should have the necessary finance and control to see that any large holding that comes on the market is purchased by the Irish Government and re-allotted to Irish-men in the interests of our own people. I am not against outsiders; they are perhaps as good in their own country as we are in ours but at the same time, we should do what Nigeria and other young countries are doing. No foreigner is allowed to purchase one acre of land but land can be leased to foreigners on fair terms. We should do likewise. If we allow foreigners to come in they should be permitted to get a lease of land but should not be allowed to purchase land outright. There are too many Irish people who are forced to emigrate and who have no hope of settling down and rearing a family in their own country.

Some people point to what foreigners do with their big money in this country. I have no regard for their big money. The Irish people must come first. What did we fight for? Was it to allow foreigners to come in and purchase the land which had been confiscated and which we would not have if we had not fought for it?

It is the Minister's duty to purchase any holding that comes on the market. The market value should be paid for it but the Land Commission should get control of it and divide it amongst our own people. That is good, sound, national work. I hope the Minister will see to it that the Land Commission will purchase holdings that come on the market or even those that do not come on the market. There is a hidden way of doing these things. Sales can be put through overnight by auctioneers who are able to contact persons in England or other countries, perhaps India, before the Irish people know that the land is on the market. Foreigners should not be allowed to purchase land without the consent of the Land Commission.

There is a drift from the land. I do not blame the Fianna Fáil Government or the Fine Gael Government for that. In all the countries of the world there is a movement away from the land because men will not live on small holdings which involve hard labour when they can earn much more money in the cities. If I were a young man trying to live on 20 acres I might be attracted by the easier living and higher wages I could get in the city.

It will take a long time before the rot is stopped. We must do everything we possibly can to place as many people as possible on the land. The first step is to acquire any land that becomes available and to parcel it out to decent men of the right type and give each one sufficient land so that he can rear a family in decency and comfort. If that is not done the position will deteriorate to the stage where we will be back where we were 40 years ago and the rich will buy all the land and the system of keeping a herd and a dog will reappear. This House has the right to prevent that happening and should prevent it. The Land Commission are in the best position to prevent it. They can purchase the land that comes on the open market, pay a decent price for it, give satisfaction to the owners, and parcel out the land to families. I do not mind whether it is given to families in my county or in other counties if it means the relief of congestion. The men who should get the land are men who will take off their coats and work hard, not fly-by-nights who come in here and purchase land and upset the whole balance of our farming economy and, after four or five years, having got all the grants and subventions they possibly can from the Government, leave the land in a worse state than it was before they came in.

I heard the Minister for Agriculture saying yesterday—I do not think he meant a word of it—that he would receive with open arms those who would come in and take over the big houses. Those old houses should be blown sky-high. They were built with slave labour and the blood of decent men. Two or three of them were blown up by the Land Commission in County Meath and I was delighted. When they were levelled, fine young families came in and took over the land.

The Minister may suggest that we are talking too much about foreigners coming in here. We are not. Ours is a Christian civilization and we want to maintain that position. If other types of people are allowed to come in and buy land, in 40 or 50 years the nation will be as materialistic as a country can be and the next stage is Communism and then the country will be in the melting pot. We can safeguard against that.

I am speaking as an individualist. I am leaving this House. This may be my last speech. I am retiring from public life. I believe that there will always be enough of the right type of people in this House on all sides to ensure that progress will be made on the right lines. I have been as critical as anybody else of the Land Commission. I was critical of the policy of bringing migrants to County Meath, because I believed in looking after my own people first but I am not narrow, mean, or despicable. I like to see people being taken from a congested area and placed on good land. That is good work and I want to see that proceeding side by side with the distribution of land to persons living in my county. I should like to see land being given to farmers' sons.

There is the Montgomery Estate in Ballivore, County Meath which was on the list for sale for a number of months. I do not think it has been sold as yet. Were the Land Commission interested in that estate? They should have been. That estate should belong to the Irish people. I hope the Land Commission will take it over and that decent people will be planted on it and that the old house on it will be blown sky-high.

The Minister has promised that he will bring in a Bill in the not too far distant future in relation to the game preservation laws. I would ask him to go slow because he must remember that the small farmers were exploited for generations and had no shooting rights or game rights of their own or on their neighbour's land. They were not allowed to go outside their own boundary. Things have changed now. We hear a lot about tourism and all that it is doing for the country, but we should think of our own people first and the tourists second. If we thought of our own people first tourism would fit itself in in a proper way. We must think of the Irish people first.

The Government must be very cagey and very wary about bringing in game protection laws. I find throughout the country that the sons of the exploiters are forming game protection associations in many areas. That should be curbed. Today the simple Irishman owns his own holding of 30, 40 or 100 acres and he is the man we are really concerned with. We should brush aside those people who try to exploit us as we were exploited in the past. If we bring in game preservation laws let them be decent Irish laws for simple people.

We always try to ape the stranger. One of the weaknesses of the Irish people is that we ape the stranger. Whether it is a rajah from India or a prince or princess from Britain we bow and scrape and we sit and listen with our mouths open to what they say. It is time that we stopped taking our hats off to them and bowing and scraping. Our game laws should be in the hands of the Irish farmers and not under the control of the exploiter. We should have a little better Irish back bone and with decent laws for the Irish people we could do good work.

I should like to say in conclusion that the Land Commission have done splendid work over the years. Even before we ever had a native Government land division was going ahead under the Congested District Boards, and good work was done. Good work is being done today. I would ask the Minister to see that that good work is not stopped until every large holding is divided, until Irish farmers are planted on any holding that is too large, where they can live in decency and comfort in a good house with a good entrance to the home. A foundation will then have been laid of which we can all be proud.

This is not the place for playing the party game of whether Deputy Blowick or Deputy Moran did more as Minister for Lands. They are both the same to me. Good work was done under the present Minister, the previous Minister and his predecessor. Good work was done over the years and as Act succeeded Act better work was done. We have learned from our mistakes. We put them right and we now have decent Irish homesteads of 37 or 40 acres with a good house and a few good out offices. That is glorious and splendid work. God grant that it will continue until the Irish people are planted on the land which belonged to their ancestors in days gone by.

Mr. Moloney

I am very pleased that the Minister has found it possible to introduce a new subhead in his Estimate this year. I want to congratulate him for showing earnestness in providing a sum of £7,500 in connection with the game preservation problem. The last speaker exhorted the Minister to be rather conservative and to go slow in regard to any legislation that might be necessary to bring the game laws up to date. I do not propose to go into that aspect of the matter at the moment.

I feel that the present game preservation laws, and particularly the 1930 Act, are sufficient to enable us to build a good structure. The game potentialities of rural Ireland have been neglected for many years. Fishing and other sporting activities have come into the limelight by the publicity which was given in recent times to the sporting attractions of the country which were left in the background for far too long.

The sum, which is a modest sum but at least something to generate action, is in my opinion a good start. With regard to the suggestions that have been made in connection with the way the money is to be spent, I hope the Minister will not mind if I offer one or two suggestions for his consideration. I appreciate that the Minister has asked the regional game councils and other bodies connected with game rights and game development to make suggestions. That was highly desirable, and I am sure there is very little need to impress on the Minister that the first thing we want is the general co-operation of the people who own the land to which game rights are attached. As Deputy Giles said the landowners treasure very much the game rights on their holdings.

In my opinion that attitude of mind is due to the fight which had to be waged for many years to get the landlords to pass over the game rights to the tenants. We all know that prior to the Land Acts the landlord was the prime property owner and he reserved his game rights for himself and his friends. That applied to fishing as well as to other types of game, and it was only after a very strenuous fight that the tenants won the battle and were awarded the game rights with the land they purchased.

The position as I find it is that game rights have very valuable potential. It should be brought home to the landowners that it has a cash dividend attached to it. If that were done it would be quite easy to get their co-operation. By and large the game rights, particularly the shooting rights on moorland, were of little or no value and the landowners usually gave them free of charge to their friends. The same applied to river fisheries. Now the tide has turned the other way. These amenities are now on the market and can fetch good rents where there is a proper scheme of protection. Once the Minister can deal with the property owners he will find that a general scheme of co-operation will be more readily forthcoming.

Those voluntary game protection committees which were set up in recent times are to be highly commended for the work they have undertaken and the measure of success they have achieved in the course of a short few years. The main difficulty in this country is to get that appreciation of the necessity of the preservation of game in all its forms. A good deal of destruction of game has taken place, not so much by vermin but because of fires in moorlands and other types of mountain lands which lend themselves very readily to damage from that source at certain periods of the year. I do not know if it is a serious offence at the moment to cause a fire in that type of land, but I take it that provision will be made for that abuse in any legislation that may be introduced.

I would respectfully suggest to the Minister that in any scheme he is considering for game preservation an amount of money might be spent as a bonus to people who will discover fires and without reporting them to the authorities take the initiative and put them out by voluntary effort. What is important in the case of a mountain fire is immediate action. The usual procedure seems to be to report it to the local Gardaí or to the property owner, but I feel that our people should be educated to the necessity of taking immediate local action and controlling the extent of damage which might otherwise be very considerable.

There is no doubt that the best way to run a voluntary game organisation would be on similar lines to the Board of Fishery Conservators at the moment and there is a lot to be said for the voluntary spirit which can still be got among sporting organisations. Deputy Flanagan suggested to the Minister that this problem was one that could best be handled by a Government or a semi-Government board similar to the Inland Fisheries Trust. I do not agree at all. We want local co-operation, local initiative, and that could best be got from the type of organisation already set up in various parts of the country to take care of this problem.

The division of land has been dealt with very fully this evening. The Land Commission is generally charged with lack of foresight, lack of appreciation of the wants of our people. I do not admit that is true at any time. If it were true it would not be the fault of the Land Commission but of the legislators, of this House, who make the policy. I think under the circumstances the Land Commission is doing a wonderful job. I have some experience of its work in my constituency and in other parts of the country and any operation of theirs is well done. It is done expeditiously and as cheaply as any other organisation would do it. There is not the slightest doubt that they are doing their work to a very high degree of perfection and at the most economic cost possible. I feel, however, that a slight change is necessary in the general land settlement policy of the Government and some Government will have to initiate that change. I would exhort the Minister to have this examined—if he has not already done so.

The question of congestion and migration has been dealt with for years and we must be reaching saturation point in either one aspect or the other. I feel that the congestion problem has been eased to a very great extent by now. We have been trying very actively to relieve congestion for the past 30 years and for that reason it is quite obvious that sooner or later we will get to the end of the road. We have got quite a distance at the present moment. I would submit very respectfully to the Minister that in future years it should be practicable to make available to a certain type of allottee a small proportion—I will suggest ten per cent. for a start—of whatever land is acquired. Speakers have suggested that sons of small farmers should be lined up for parcels of land under the system of Division of the Land Commission as it is at the moment. I agree with that suggestion and I am inclined to go further.

There is a type of person who must get consideration in the matter of land division and that person is the agricultural worker. With the deplorable flight from the land and the difficulty experienced by farmers and landowners in getting hired labour to remain on the land and work on it consistently for a fair period each year we have a position at the moment that is anything but satisfactory. For large landowners and large farmers the provision of labour is a very serious problem. Every inducement by way of cash-wage payments, and certain other perquisites have been introduced but nevertheless they do not seem to be enough to get over the difficulty. This difficulty arises from the fact that agricultural workers have no incentive as they would have in industry and we must start at some stage to provide that incentive.

I suggest that the answer to the problem is to consider the worker who has served for a number of years in continuous employment on a farm or in any agricultural activity for an allotment of land under some scheme or other. I appreciate that it is difficult to do it. At the same time I submit that people who have no land have a very real grievance when their application for a settlement cannot be considered. I know that it would be a rather drastic change of national policy but I feel it is a change which would find general acceptance.

While the change might affect to some extent—maybe not to a very appreciable degree—the prospects of settlement of existing landowners, I feel, however, it is better to have some land, even bad land, than no land at all. It would be good policy to make provision for the landless man who is working on the land for years and who would probably serve in his task much more effectively if he had some hope of getting out after a certain time. I feel that the change I have just advocated will have to come sooner or later and it would be better if we did not allow that development to remain outstanding too long. I am sure the pool of land for division could be increased now that the additional financial provision has been made to the Minister. A start should be made by giving small quotas, say ten per cent. of the total area acquired, to those people I have referred to and it would have a very satisfactory effect.

Housing has been referred to in a general way. Deputy Flanagan, I think, suggested that the Land Commission should provide houses for certain types of land holders whom he described as small farmers and medium farmers. I feel that is not the function of the Land Commission and I am certainly opposed to the Department of Lands entering too extensively into that field. Housing the people of the country is primarily the responsibility of the local authorities through the Department of Local Government. The Land Commission are already assisting in a very appreciable way and I am glad that the Minister has now indicated that the degree of assistance will be even greater. Now through Land Commission borrowings, loans from local authorities and local government grants, any person who has any backbone at all can afford to build a house without too much difficulty. Most local authorities have made provision for housing for small holders up to £5 or £6 valuation so I do not think there is any real problem there.

I would like in conclusion to make one point in the time at my disposal on the size of holdings allocated by the Land Commission. The policy of the Land Commission in that regard seems to be to step up the size of the holding from 18-20 acres to 35 or 40 acres. As far as we can understand, the quality of land being acquired in recent years seems to be a better type. I feel that a holding of 35 or 40 acres is quite sufficient for the average family. Nowadays with the labour problem, to which I referred earlier, I feel anything more would be a burden. If that area of land is worked successfully, and worked on the lines advocated by the Land Commission, it can give a very good living to the holder and he can live in comfort. After all, his holding generally has been developed. He has got new fences and a new dwelling house and new outoffices handed over to him in apple-pie order and I see no reason why he cannot carry on. In any event, the quantity of land available, related to the numbers, does not make it possible to give larger units. Modern trend is to work the smaller units more scientifically and as the Minister stated, the experience appears to be that smaller farmers can show a greater return per acre for their work.

By and large, I feel the Minister has reason to pat himself on the back, as Deputy Flanagan said, and at the same time pat the officials of the Department of Lands on the back for the very successful year that the Minister is now reporting. I hope that trend will continue next year. I hope the Minister will do something about the very important problem to which I have referred, the question of trying to settle certain types of landless people who have been associated with the work on the land for years and have no prospect of getting land any other way.

Mr. Blowick

I cannot help reflecting on the time when I was sitting where the Minister is and on the attitude then of Fianna Fáil whenever the debate on the Department of Lands came up. I remember one occasion when 27 Fianna Fáil Deputies spoke, not that there was an ounce of sense in what they said, but they were all jumping up to speak and breaking their necks to get in. To-day only three or four Fianna Fáil Deputies have contributed so far and there does not appear to be any more. They are not even in the House.

The Minister made a very tame speech. It was just a repetition of what has happened over the last three or four years. There is no improvement good, bad or indifferent, although he tries to give a gloss to the work of the Land Commission. There is a slighly increased expenditure under a few heads but those increases are due to the increased costs for material and labour. The actual figure remains the same. There is an increase under Subhead I, the principal figure for expenditure for the Land Commission where improvements are carried out in regard to fencing, drainage or road making, but that increase is swallowed up by the increased costs for labour and materials. The figure remains unchanged since I was responsible for the Department if we look at it from that point of view.

On the other hand, there is nothing for the Minister to be ashamed of, because the Land Commission is one State body that has done a terriffic job of work since it was established. It is continuing to do a good job but it should be borne in mind that as the years go by the hard core that is left is getting harder to solve. In that way there should be a certain amount of sympathy for the officials of the Commission who are trying to break up that hard core. According as the shell is being peeled off, the remaining core is getting harder. The time has come to take a new look at the work of the Commission.

The work done in the past was excellent and it was very difficult work and not very spectacular work for the reason that changing the title of land is not something that can be seen. If the Forestry Department plant the side of a mountain, or plant a valley, then in a few years you can see their work and it provides a very pleasing sight. The Commission, of course, is mostly changing titles on paper amongst the tenants. There is not much to be seen by a stranger in a locality after the Commission has put in many years of good work in a particular area. The work of course, is known to the local people. They have new houses, better fences, drainage and so on, and the work is known and appreciated by these people.

I myself, although I was used to the work, could not see what had been done in various places except in regard to the division of a big farm. Since they were formed they have taken over 400,000 holdings from the various landlords who owned the country. In a great number of cases they have improved the holdings out of all knowledge, compared with what they were in the landlords' time. I feel the time has come to take a completely new look at the work of the Commission for this reason, that since the cost of living rose so steeply, as it did in the last few years, and the income from the land dropped so much, the old £10 valuation level is now a thing of the past. The Minister knows that there are many people on much better holdings than those with a £10 valuation who are deserting them, locking up their homes and going away. In many villages in Mayo, holdings of from £15 to £18 valuation have been deserted.

Some years ago, when the present Minister for Transport and Power, Deputy Childers, was Minister for Lands, he removed a ceiling on the valuation but that was just said here in the House and had no effect on the work of the Commission. I think it was Deputy Flanagan who said that all the young people had gone in the country places, particularly from small holdings, and that there was nobody left except children and old people. That is perfectly true. What is happening is to be deplored but it is something for which the Land Commission should not be blamed. It is more the responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture and the Government for allowing it to happen than of the Minister for Lands or the Land Commission.

In regard to rearrangement, the rearranging holdings of £7, £10 or £12 valuation is just a joke and a waste of money at present. None of the tenants of such holdings will be able to get their sons to carry on when they get too old to work them. For that reason, the work the Commission is doing in rearranging is miles behind the times. The time has come when we must forget the £10 valuation and go up to £20 or £25 so that we will produce a holding that will induce a young man to stay on it. Everyone knows that any country fellow who goes to England at present can quite easily get employment there at from £20 to £27 a week. All my neighbours in County Mayo can get that in England. It would be an injustice to ask them to stay on a holding at home without reasonable reward while they have these wages to get. If we do not provide a fairly decent holding to attract them to stay at home we will lose the youth from the land and the land will go derelict or into big ranches.

The time has come when reasonably substantial holdings should be purchased in large numbers and given to farmers' sons who have a good training on the land. I think that is the way to go about it. Otherwise we will lose the foundation stock of our small farming community. The time has come to purchase holdings on a large scale, not purchasing an occasional one here and there. At least up to 1,000 holdings of 40 acres or more of fairly good land should be purchased per year and given to farmers' sons. That would maintain what I would describe as the foundation stock. Over 100 years ago Oliver Goldsmith deplored conditions in a village with which he was familiar in his poem entitled "The Deserted Village." Today, in the West, village after village is becoming deserted through the failure of the Government to provide a livelihood for our farmers there. While an excellent job of work was done up to a few years ago in the rearrangement of townlands the position at present is pathetic. It is a case of locking the stable door when the horse has gone.

The Minister gives a figure of 10,500 holdings of tenanted and untenanted land to be vested yet. Do the Land Commission consider it necessary to improve all of these holdings before vesting? The Land Commission, in reducing the total number of vestings down to 10,500 all over the whole country, has done a magnificent job. As Deputy O.J. Flanagan pointed out, it is a most difficult job. Straightening out title, rights of way and the hundreds of objections raised by tenants when about to be vested is a most difficult job for the section of the Department dealing with it. I know something about that. Last year, 1,583 tenants were vested. Untenanted and tenanted total vestings came to 5,200. I suspect that many of them were additions to holdings plus turbary rights.

Although it does not come strictly within the work of the Land Commission I would point to the high valuation imposed on demesne lands under the Valuation Act, 1849. At that time it did not affect the ordinary tenant farmers but since then a good deal of these demesnes have been taken up by the Land Commission and been allotted. In most cases the valuation per acre, regardless of the productivity of the land, is upwards of £1.5s. There are not many such cases but, in the few that exist, the tenants who got them are absolutely unable to pay the annuity and the rates at present. In connection with the allotment of demesne lands the Minister should take it up with his colleague the Minister for Finance under whose bailiwick the Valuation office comes. I know that the question of valuation in any shape or form is a very touchy problem but my point does not affect many tenants. The amount of dislocation or objection that could be raised to it would be very slight. Otherwise tenants who either got additions or holdings of what was formerly demesne land are in a bad plight due to the disproportion of rates they have to pay compared with their neighbours who did not get such land.

A great deal has been said about game and fishing rights. I can never understand why the Land Commission, having purchased the game rights from the landlords in most cases, did not allot them to the tenants when they were vesting. It might be argued that the tenants will not look after game, or will not preserve them and keep a stock of game going or improve them. I do not think that is the case. Many vested tenants at present are getting pretty sore, and rightly so, over the fact that people claim the right to walk their land in the pursuit of game. They do not mind that so much, but they do mind the cutting of wire fences, the knocking of walls, the damaging of fences, the scaring of stock by dogs, and so on. The game rights should be vested in the ordinary tenant farmers.

I had a Question to the Minister on fishing rights on portion of the Palmer Estate in Beltra lately. I think a co-operative, in a case like that, of the farmers who own the land under the waters of the lake or whose holdings adjoin it should be granted the fishing rights. I think that, particularly when the streams that hold the spawning beds for the fish to keep the lake perpetually stocked run through their land, a co-operative should be formed and the fishing rights vested at least in such co-operative, if not in the individual farmers to ensure that the fish stocked to a particular lake or river would not be damaged or diminished or allowed to be reduced through carelessness or want of attention.

When the Minister is replying I should like to hear how much of the 36,000 acres allotted last year was recently acquired. Figures can be very misleading. I suspect a good deal of that 36,000 acres allotted last year was a long time on hands. Some of it could be on hands stretching away back to the days of the Congested Districts Board before the passage of the 1923 Act.

I come now to some purely local matters affecting my constituency. What progress has been made towards the finishing and rearrangement in the Sligo and Moore estates? The Minister will probably be able to get that information from his officials before he replies. I also want to know about the Kilmaine estate, portion of which is on the left-hand side between Castlebar and Balla. In that case, two villages are perched on a mountain and not many of the tenants are now left. I made a proposal—the Minister knows about it—that these people should be given holdings before they vanish altogether. There is not much arable land in the two townlands. The greater portion of the land is suitable only for forestry. In cases where lorries or cars cannot approach because of the elevation of the land and where it is impossible to make a road into the place the six or seven families in it should be taken out and new holdings purchased for them before they vanish. The youngsters will certainly not continue to live in a place like that. It is nothing short of a crime to lose those families.

I should like if the Minister would tell us what exactly the position is in regard to the remnant of re-arrangement in Mayo. In the course of his speech the Minister compared holdings in Ireland with the average holdings in Italy, Germany, and if I do not make a mistake, in Denmark. There is no comparison between life on the land in this country and life on the land in the countries to which the Minister referred. He might as well have quoted examples from Mars. The climate is completely different in those countries. The productivity of the land in the three countries is completely different and the soil is richer. In addition these are huge industrial countries with a market at their doorstep in their own cities and towns. We have not such an internal market for our produce as the farmers in Italy with a population of 36 million or as the farmers in Western Germany with a population of over 40 million. The situation in Denmark is the same. There is no point in quoting examples such as these. They are merely examples to mislead and have no other purpose.

The Minister went on to refer to farming competence. There was never a greater piece of codology than this. We take migrants and send them for a fortnight's course to some agricultural college but the conditions in an agricultural college in most instances will not compare at all with the conditions of the holdings these migrants will occupy if and when they get them. Very often an almost illiterate farmer is the most progressive farmer. If the Minister is going to test a farmer's ability because he spends a fortnight in an agricultural college, I should like to ask him how many holdings belonging to migrants transferred from the west to the midlands were sold or changed hands? I know of only one case. These men brought up in those days on an 18 acre or 20 acre holding were not required to test their farming competence in a college. That is an absolute waste of time and a piece of codology. Any farmer who gets a reasonable sized holding will do a good job of making a living there and here is the proof.

How many of those who got holdings in the past have sold their holdings or deserted the land? It would be very interesting if the Minister could tell us that. I made enquiries into that when I was Minister for Lands and all I could trace was one case. In every other case they were happy and comfortable and were doing well until the past three or four years.

There is a change in the type of house provided for migrants. It has not been done in time. The old Land Commission house was just a glorified outhouse—a bare stark naked building. You would know that it had the stamp of the Land Commission on it. At the same time, in nearly every case they were good houses and all that was required was to spend a few extra pounds to give a finish to the outside. I made an effort to change the position in my time.

The time has now come to instal water and sanitation in each house that is being built. Every house that I know of which was built by people on their own holdings with the aid of grants are provided with water and sanitation. That is a very necessary amenity. It is certainly a big step forward since 1946. When I asked that water and sanitation be installed in the Land Commission houses, the Minister for Lands of that time replied that the old method was quite good enough. If there is difficulty between the Department of Local Government and the Land Commission, the matter could be quite easily resolved in relation to the few houses which the Land Commission would build. The Department of Local Government could pay them.

The Minister is making great capital out of the benefits of the 1950 Act. The 1950 Act was introduced in November of 1949 if I remember correctly. The present Minister and all the Fianna Fáil Deputies opposed that tooth and nail. They have been in power twice—from 1951 to 1954 and from 1957 to the present day, and if that Act was such a horror, as was then pointed out, and such a danger there is no way to describe the action of Fianna Fáil but to describe it as criminal in not having it repealed.

I remember that every single section of the Act was contested. I remember bringing in an innovation—the purchase of land for cash for the purpose of rearrangement or migrants' holdings. Every trick in the bag was used by the legal men in the Fianna Fáil benches— they were then in Opposition—to delay and hold it up. It was not until their own supporters began to complain at the hold-up of the Bill that they finally gave way to it.

It is time to change Section 27 of the Act. Under Section 27 of the Act the purchase of land for cash in the open market or by private treaty can only be used for re-arrangement and for migrants' holdings. In many cases it suits in the course of a re-arrangement scheme to purchase a holding quickly from a person in a townland. I think that this section has got a fair test during its 11 years in operation. No abuses have resulted from the pasage of that section. It is high time to put land purchase under that section on the same footing as land compulsorily acquired or resumed. I know several townlands where the quick purchase of a holding or two would have expedited the rearrangement of the townland. The Land Commission go through the cumbersome procedure of compulsory acquisition and in most cases do not succeed in acquiring the land, thus leaving the townland without rearrangement. It is high time to change all that and it should be looked into.

I can understand the caution with which it was handled up to this. Every innovation, particularly legislation, requires careful handling. But it is ten years at least since section 27 came into operation and, as far as I know, no abuses have come to light in regard to the purchase of holdings or the granting of powers to inspectors to fix the price and buy land at a public auction or by private treaty. It would be a great benefit to inspectors rearranging holdings to be able to buy certain pieces of land on the spot. The average small farmer is afraid, first, of the compulsory acquisition powers of the Land Commission and, secondly, he does not want to be paid in Land Bonds—he wants cash. He is afraid he will not be able to cash the bonds or, if he does, that he will not get the full value of them.

There is a townland named Tooreen in which I am interested. I should like if the Minister would tell us briefly in his reply how that townland stands. I want also to throw out this warning to him. Land that has come into the hands of the Land Commission in a nearby townland should not be used for the rearrangement of that townland. There are two or three of the 12 tenants in Tooreen quite willing to migrate. Any land in the nearby locality is needed by those round about, unless we want further flight from the land. There are two or three people willing to migrate and that should give reasonable scope for a fair rearrangement scheme. We ought to be able to rearrange at £12 or £13 and the tenants would be satisfied.

The Minister's speech was a bit down in the mouth. He knew quite well he was just carrying on the policy laid down by me. During his term as Minister for Lands he could have stirred himself and devised some new approach to the problem of trying to stop the flight from the land and to keep the young people at home. I know of no young fellow, except a few who are married and cannot very well go, willing to stay on in a small sized holding. Every place I go, the complaint of parents is that they have reared families and cannot get even one of them to stay on the land. The reason is obvious. The small farmers have been hopelessly neglected for the past three or four years. Their incomes have been cut down for the past two years. Up to last spring you could not sell cattle, sheep or lambs. At the same time, the Government allowed the cost of living to creep up and up. One of the most important factors in that was their removal of the food subsidies shortly after their return to office. That has helped to banish the young men from the land, increase the cost of living and make life on an average size holding impossible. They were right to go, even though it is hard and cruel on the parents who reared them to think that they cannot hold even one.

The time has come for bold action— to purchase a huge number of holdings and to allot the land without having any of this farming competence nonsense about it. It would have been much more to the Minister's credit if he had purchased some of the 8,000 acres recently purchased by non-nationals in counties Kildare, Dublin, Meath and Westmeath—big farms of anything from 100 acres to 400 acres—and settled some of our young men on them. It seems a bit ironical to think that our own people must fly from the country, be forced out by a native Government in a clearance worse than anything ever effected by the most brutal of the landlords, when at the same time foreigners can come in and buy up the land for which their fathers and forefathers fought so hard to get possession of from the landlords.

That is the Fianna Fáil record for the last four years. They forced out 200,000 youngsters from the country. They could not give them employment or anything to supplement their living. They did not even go to the trouble of providing a market for their produce. The result is nothing but gloom and despair, particularly among the younger element. The old people are in similar despair seeing the youngsters gone and looking at an empty hearth stone. The old man and old woman have to sit at each side of the fire without having even one of their family to comfort them in their old age and carry on the family name.

The Minister mentioned at the end of his speech that the action taken by the Minister for Finance in this year's Finance Bill to curb the purchase of land by foreigners was ample and that the Government were keeping an eye on the situation. If the Minister thinks he is pulling the wool over the people's eyes in that, he is merely pulling it very successfully over his own. The Minister for Agriculture told us yesterday that he would welcome foreigners with open arms, or words to that effect. That certainly is a most damning statement. Did he not make that statement? He said he would welcome foreigners into his own constituency with open arms.

Mr. Moran

To deal with derelict land.

Mr. Blowick

We have a land Commission to deal with derelict land. We have schemes under the Department of Agriculture to improve land if it has become derelict. The people who should get first attention from a native Government are the people who helped elect this Dáil. But, instead of that, they are being bundled off in train-load after train-load to England, America and the far ends of the earth. The first duty of the Government is to give power to the Land Commission to acquire such land and to prevent the unfair competition which such purchases provide for the Land Commission by driving up the purchase price.

Mr. Killilea

The Deputy has been a fairly good competitor himself in recent years.

Mr. Blowick

For what?

Mr. Corish

He said you are a land grabber.

Mr. Blowick

Deputy Killilea is thinking about the good times of the last four years when a Fianna Fáil Minister was in power and he was fooling the people in his own constituency. It is no harm to describe Deputy Killilea's method of dividing the land. He would get a crowd into the house he was visiting and divide the land with the tongs and ashes. The Government should not allow foreign competition to drive up the price of land. The land allotted has to be paid for by the taxpayer and the losses incurred would have to be paid by way of increased annuity by the tenant. Therefore, the time has come for us to do as Switzerland and several countries have done and prevent——

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Blowick

It was announced by the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture that he, for one, would welcome foreigners with open arms. At last the claws of Fianna Fáil have appeared in this respect. The small farmers and their families are regarded by Fianna Fáil as blooming nuisances. Their policy is that the sooner the country reverses to a few large ranches the better they will like it. I do not think the Irish people will be fooled by that. I think they will give their answer in the General Election when we will see what they think of the Minister for Agriculture and his colleagues who are prepared to sell the land of Ireland to foreigners.

Mr. S. Flanagan

I should like at first to deal with the last statement made by Deputy Blowick in a speech from which the only elements missing were the sound of cattle hooves, the tinkle of pint glasses and possibly Deputy Donnellan's raucous voice in the background. Deputy Blowick's speech is dishonest and disgraceful and is no credit to a person who occupied the post of Minister in two Governments in this country.

I want to deal with the matter of this meeting held in Castlebar and a report of the proceedings carried by the Irish Independent on the following day. I did not notice the report in any other morning newspaper. The report said that no Fianna Fáil member was present. I do not know whether that is true or not. I assume it is. As far as I am concerned, I certainly was not there and I think it right that I should make a public statement as to what happened after I received a letter from the Secretary of the organisations convening the meeting and telling me its purpose.

In regard to the meeting, I wrote to the Secretary at some length and told her I had read the reports of the previous meeting which had been addressed by Deputies Blowick, Donnellan and Lindsay. I pointed out this was a matter of public interest in which I, as a Deputy, had a duty to take an interest. I said I would be very interested to hear the views of the representatives of the various organisations she had mentioned in the course of her letter and that I took a disinterested view. In case some people might not appreciate what I mean by "disinterested" I understand it to mean impartial or dispassionate. In my letter I said I was not prepared to attend a meeting in Castlebar or elsewhere if its purpose was to provide a platform for Party political purposes for the Donnellans and the Blowicks and the Lindsays and that I had no intention whatsoever of attending unless I got the requisite assurances beforehand.

I must place on record that I got no reply to that communication and I accordingly did not attend. What the other Fianna Fáil representatives who may have been invited to that meeting did I do not know but I take it that they also would have required certain assurances before they would have attended that or any other meeting on a very important matter. Deputy Blowick, to the accompaniment of the tinkle of pint glasses, chooses to deal with this as a Party political issue. It is a shame for him particularly because it was not necessary and because the question is of sufficient importance to be discussed dispassionately by those who have the responsibility either as Deputies or as Members of the Government.

I fail to see what is wrong with the acquisition of waste or derelict land along the seaboard by foreigners. Have we got to a stage in this country where we can be accused of xenophobia? Are we so precious about ourselves that we do not want to have a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman or anyone else in here, and if so, why? We are very glad to have them when they do their fishing here, when they spend money here on petrol or in our hotels but we do not want to have them purchase land which nobody has wanted for the past three hundred or four hundred years. God help us and God help the people who can be fooled by the nonsense Deputy Blowick came out with when he dealt with the flight from the land, with the fact that so many young people are leaving and that villages and townlands in the West of Ireland are becoming derelict.

They are leaving, it is true, but if Deputy Blowick is right it is all the fault of Fianna Fáil and it all dates from 1957. I think he will find that neither the people of Mayo nor of the country as a whole are prepared to accept that. I have pointed out on one or two occasions that I thought there were certain social aspects to the problem that had not been given full consideration or attention and the principal social aspect of the flight from the land to-day, in my humble opinion, is that young girls are not prepared to live there.

On an issue like this I should hate to exaggerate or to use any statement I could not stand over absolutely. So, when I say that dozens of young men of my acquaintance have left Mayo because there was nobody whom they could marry, that is absolutely true. It would also be true, I think, if I said "hundreds" but I do not wish to put it that high nor do I wish to particularise about areas. Even with rural electrification, with all the grants provided by the Minister for Agriculture for outbuildings, by the Minister for Local Government for houses and by the Minister for Lands for this and that, the fact is that the young women of rural Ireland no longer appear to be interested in marrying farmers. If that is not true, I should like to hear somebody say so.

Mr. Corish

May I ask a question purely about the West? Would industries there not keep them there? The Deputy mentioned many things but would not the fact that industries existed there keep them at home?

Mr. S. Flanagan

Even the industries that are there provide work only until such time as the girls are thinking of getting married and if the proposals they get come from farmers they are not interested. They marry somebody in the factories or in the towns rather than go back to the country. As soon as a girl gets a taste of industrial life she is even more weaned away from the idea of farming life. I think these girls are greatly and gravely mistaken and I know that many of them in America, England and elsewhere would dearly like to come back but through some kind of inverted pride they would rather stay than come back and admit that they were wrong to go.

I think that Deputy Blowick's speech is doing tremendous damage, that what he is saying is apt to drive people out, not to help them to stay here. Of course it is true that the Land Commission should try to provide holdings that are as economic as possible but Deputy Blowick knows the Land Commission's problems and difficulties as well as anybody and it is not, and should not be, necessary for me to point out that the Land Commission can only achieve results by using the resources they have. They cannot manufacture land or economic holdings. When I say sufficient attention has not been given to these social problems I do not mean given by the Government. I believe that the Government, all governments —to give them due credit—have done from time to time in various ways everything possible to make the lot of the rural dweller better. They were perfectly right but more attention should be given to this problem not by political Parties or bodies but by voluntary organisations and by the Church which surely must have a considerable stake in this aspect of the flight from the land.

In my own locality I know two or three areas that have become derelict not because the men—many of them close acquaintances of mine—do not wish to reside there. They do, but because they have reached an age when they want to marry and settle down and they find nobody prepared to take that course with them, they move to Birmingham or New York. No matter what Government is here if that trend continues it will pose a very grave problem for Church and State. It is not true that Fianna Fáil have been driving the people out of Ireland for the past two or three years. It was unnecessary and dishonest of Deputy Blowick to say that but as I said already he is thinking of Balla, Kiltimagh or Claremorris and the dropping of votes into the polling boxes. He is old enough now not to buy votes that way and he should be a man of sufficient integrity to be more honest with the people that he has the honour to represent.

It appears to me that the tourist is being squeezed out progressively in this country and finds greater and greater difficulty in getting a day's fishing. Attention should be given to the applications of those who state in their proposals that they are prepared to allow casual fishing by tourists on application. That would be a possible solution to a problem posed by the fact that many stretches of water are tied up for five years by one person or estate not prepared to share anything, with the tourist.

In conclusion, I should like to compliment my colleague and friend, the Minister for Lands, on a job well done. In spite of the attack made upon him by his predecessor I think he deserves great credit for speeding up the acquisition and resumption of land and its division. That is the essential purpose of the Commission. He has been able to do that by persuading the Government to give him more money than his predecessor or anybody else ever got for the purpose. He deserves the congratulations of the House. This much should be added: that during his administration I have never heard a single complaint from my constituency of North Mayo or Galway that there was any semblance of personal bias or interference by the Minister. He deserves credit also for that. Of course he is right in not interfering except where he has authority to do so. I am afraid the same could not have been said of his predecessor.

Mr. Killilea

At this time we are all inclined to criticise the Minister and his Department in various ways but the type of criticism voiced this evening is, as a Deputy pointed out, in no way helpful. There has been a lot of talk about emigration and Deputy Blowick dwelt on it at length. Deputy Blowick is no more a child than I am. His memory goes back a long time. My memory goes back, too. I was a toddler when I saw my father and the only uncle I had on my father's side having to emigrate to England. My memory goes back to the time when my mother's five brothers all went to England. My memory goes back to a time when emigration from the West was on a much greater scale than it is today. The kind of emigration to which Deputy Blowick referred is nothing new in the West of Ireland.

I heard Deputy O. Flanagan this evening talk about the eldest son being left the holding and a couple of brothers able to make provision for themselves on that holding also and going out and taking conacre. Surely the day arrives when each of those had to go and find somewhere else to live. All of us know that that home could not support more than one family. That applies in every home in rural Ireland, whether it be on the smallest holding in the West or on the largest farm in the Midlands.

In days gone by large tracts were taken over from the landlords and divided amongst the congests of the West. The small holding of from £3 to £4 valuation has to a large extent disappeared. Nevertheless, there are still holdings in the West which cannot be brought up to the Land Commission standard of £12 or £12. 10s. poor law valuation. The reason is not hard to find. There are no longer estates to be acquired. The only pool of land available are the little holdings of 12 or 14 acres. One can appreciate how far 10 or 12 acres will go in making other holdings economic. It is an impossibility.

I think we ought to stop the sort of tactics we had in this House this evening and forget the good propaganda they may be on the platforms in the near future. As someone said a few moments ago, if we must discuss this, then let us discuss it at the crossroads. Obviously there is a campaign being initiated here. This is the leading plank in the platform of the Clann na Talmhan Party. I suppose a good many of the Fine Gael people will take it up too.

There has been one small change in my constituency. A migrant left there about a month ago. He will have to try to acquire some new territory in South Galway. He left because the ground had been slipping very fast from under him. That poor man is not here today to cry over the congests in North Galway. I refer to my colleague, Deputy Donnellan.

The Minister has a welcome increase in the amount of money available for acquisition of land this year. The only hope for the relief of congests in my constituency is migration. However unpalatable that may be to some of the people in the Midlands, and elsewhere, a greater effort will have to be made to remedy the situation. I am not saying a good effort is not being made at the moment. The problem is not easy to solve. The Land Commission try to move the largest tenant because, the more land they can acquire, the easier it will be to improve the other holdings. Naturally the large tenant does not like moving out and he strikes a hard bargain.

Great play has been made about the purchase of land by non-nationals. There may be non-nationals infiltrating into other counties. I know of only one case in the west where a non-national got in. The Pim Estate outside Newport in County Mayo was offered to the Land Commission when the Coalition Government were in office. The Coalition Minister did not take the land. Neither did he make any cry about land being bought by a non-national. It was bought by a non-national. Deputy O. Flanagan asked Deputy Blowick when he finished speaking: "How did I get on, Joe?" and "Joe" said "Smashing". Everybody heard that just as well as I did. Now that estate was bought by a non-national in Deputy Blowick's time. If Deputy Blowick were Minister again in the morning would he pay any attention to Deputy Flanagan's argument that you must have the right of private ownership and the right of free sale? If Deputy Flanagan were holding an auction in the morning and a non-national bid higher than a national would Deputy Flanagan refuse to take his bid? I do not think he would. Deputy Blowick will have to recognise, whether he likes it or not, that every farmer in this country is entitled to the highest bid he can get. While that is there I am not one of the people who would encourage any Government to interfere with that right. That might be construed as indicating I am prepared to welcome any non-nationals. I am not so prepared, but as a farmer I am prepared to have done for everybody else what I would like to have done for myself. In other words if I have my holding up for sale to-morrow morning I am not too interested in who the purchaser will be any more than Deputy O. Flanagan would be as the auctioneer. I am interested in who is going to pay the biggest price and I will say "Thank you" to the buyer whether he is from Spain, Germany, France or anywhere else.

This is now being made a racket but the people will see through the racket. They realise that the Land Commission is making a good effort to solve these problems. I have had the experience of making an effort to be helpful to a number of my constituents in regard to the rearrangement of holdings. People will say that the Land Commission for the past ten years have a holding of ten, 12 or 14 acres in a townland, that they acquired another holding five or six years afterwards and perhaps another holding a year or two later. If I approach the Land Commission to inquire why they are not dividing these lands the reply is: "We are making an effort to create satisfactory holdings. If we divide the area of land we have in that locality at the moment there will be grievances because it will increase people's holdings by only £2 or £3 valuation and leave others out."

Deputy Flanagan dwelt on the 1956 Land Act and I interjected that I was one of the people who had no confidence in that measure when it was going through this House. Nor have I today, my reason being that I am convinced it was one of the greatest handicaps ever imposed on the Land Commission in the acquisition of land. One would be led to believe from Deputy O. Flanagan that were it not for the 1956 Land Act there would not be an acre of land purchased anywhere. However, the following extract from the Land Commission Report to the 31st March, 1960, which I think all of us received this morning shows we do not have to refer to recent Land Acts at all. It says:

Since the passing of the 1923 Act, 112,000 tenancies comprising over 3,000,000 acres have been purchased from landlords for about £21 million.

That is an indication that we have been able to purchase land without any assistance from Deputy Blowick's Land Acts. It was very hard to form any sort of picture of what Deputy O. Flanagan had in the back of his mind this evening. Deputy O. Flanagan is a shrewd businessman and this is what is likely to happen when land goes up for sale. A number of Land Commission inspectors may be sent out to Deputy Flanagan, or whoever is conducting the auction, to bid against somebody for this holding of land. The farmers are not as much asleep as many of us seem to think. They would be very quick to realise there is a little game they can play. Deputy Flanagan would say to me: "Now, Killilea, you could be useful to me. I am selling a holding of land tomorrow morning and a few Land Commission inspectors are coming to bid for it. I want to get the highest possible price for it."

I should like to know from Deputy Flanagan or from Deputy Blowick how many acres of land were purchased by the Land Commission at what is called the market price. Market price in this context is the greatest joke of all time and it is only a joker like Deputy Blowick who would have thought of it. There is no such thing as a market price for land. In other spheres if I want to buy a commodity I will look in the shop windows and see the different prices at which it is marked. At a fair it is the same. When we talk about land one would think that every acre of land was being sold at a particular figure, say £50, £60 or £100 an acre, no matter where it was being sold.

That is very far removed from the facts. The market value of land is based on one thing only, the suitability of the land to a person in the locality who has the money to pay for it. Therefore, in one district a farm of land will be sold for £25 an acre and maybe only half a mile away a farm of land will be sold for £140 an acre. What we call market value is a figure calculated by the Land Commission. They have to make up their minds or should I say their minds are made up for them as to what that figure will be. If a holding is given to Paddy McGinty or somebody else at a certain price he may come along in 12 months or in five years' time and say: "Here am I paying £5 an acre for land that is not one bit better than my neighbour's land who has it at 10/- an acre." There will be a rebellion overnight. Everyone knows that.

These are a few of the reasons why I say here and will say from the platform and will say at all times that the greatest disaster ever brought upon the small farmer was the curse of the Land Act, 1956, introduced by Deputy Blowick. Let him use that anywhere and in any way he likes but let him also use the arguments I have used against it.

Mr. Blowick

What did the Deputy do to repeal it? Did he ask his Minister to repeal it, if it was such a disaster?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Killilea is in possession.

Mr. Killilea

The Deputy knows as well as I do that when he brought in that Land Act there were a number of other Acts and a number of sections of Land Acts that might be repealed. He did not repeal them. I have been in this House a very long time and I have yet to see any Land Act repealed. I do not think the Deputy could indicate a Land Act that was repealed.

Mr. Blowick

I repealed several in the 1950 Act—whole junks of the Land Code. The Deputy was in the House at the time and should know all about it.

Mr. Killilea

There is in the Front Bench and in charge of the Land Commission at the moment a man who has much wider experience of Land Commission work, both in the Courts and in the country, than any Minister who came before him.

Mr. Blowick

He has it in the Courts, surely.

Mr. Killilea

That might be very annoying to Deputy Blowick but it is well known throughout the country.

Mr. Blowick

Not a bit.

Mr. Killilea

I am practically certain that when the next election is over we will have the same Minister there.

Mr. Blowick

God forbid.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Killilea.

Mr. Killilea

As regards rearrangement of holdings, the Report of the Irish Land Commissioners for the period ended 31st March, 1960 says:

In some instances in Western districts, the land required for relief of congestion, for rearrangement of intermixed holdings and abolition of rundale and for the improvement of conditions generally, can be obtained only through the migration of a number of tenants to newly-created holdings on estates acquired by the Land Commission elsewhere.

I have to agree entirely with every word of that.

The report also states:

Rearrangement schemes, i.e. the regrouping into compact workable units of the series of disconnected and intermixed plots which frequently constitute the poorer holdings in Western congested districts, are now a significant and, indeed, a very arduous feature of land settlement. The success of these schemes and also of the migration programme which is inseparable from them, is wholly dependent on the voluntary co-operation of the participants.

That is one of the difficulties that the Land Commission have to overcome.

I am prepared to agree that people have left holdings and have gone away. I say they ought to be ashamed to have done so, for the reason that these holdings were considerably improved by the addition of land by the Land Commission. The sooner the Land Commission takes steps to acquire these holdings compulsorily and to distribute them amongst people who are prepared to live on them and to work them, the better for the country. It is a disgrace that any person who has got an addition of ten or 15 acres from the Land Commission, at the expense of the taxpayer who can ill afford to make presents to anybody, should leave that holding. The Land Commission and the Minister should not tolerate that and should step in immediately and take over these holdings and inform the people who have left the holdings that the land will be divided amongst people who are prepared to work it. There are many people who, if they get five or six additional acres of land, will not lock the door and go off.

There is no use in Deputy Blowick or any member of his Party telling us that every second door in the country is closed. That is not true and they know that it is very far from the truth but it appears that as far as they are concerned the truth is something they do not respect and, it would appear, do not not know too much about.

Mr. Blowick

The Deputy must have been in hiding for a good while if he does not see that all the houses are closed. He should come out of his shell and knock about a bit.

Mr. Killilea

This racket will blow over. The reason why Deputy Donnellan has left North Galway and gone to South Galway is that they called his bluff. The same thing will happen to Deputy Blowick in Mayo if he is not careful. The people in North Galway would not listen to Deputy Donnellan any longer. Deputy Blowick has not done too badly for himself.

The Minister indicated his attitude to game preservation this evening and towards regional game councils, gun clubs and so on. We must all appreciate the work that such associations have done by voluntary effort. More co-operation is needed from the top. The formation of a national game council has been suggested. I agree with that suggestion. I would also suggest that where the Land Commission let land of which they have the game rights, first preference should be given to the local game council.

I think it was a perfect disgrace— and I brought it to the Minister's attention at the time—that a couple of years ago a dozen Frenchmen came to the country around Loughrea and Ballygar for a week's snipe shooting— this is one of the best snipe shooting parts of the country—but one or two people from Dublin happened to have purchased the game rights for the time being from the Land Commission.

In little towns throughout my constituency like Ballygar, a dozen people coming and spending a week or a fortnight would mean a lot to the shopkeepers and to the people round about who would sell more vegetables, more potatoes and other things like that and it is a disgrace that those people could put their foot down and tell those people they could not shoot snipe. Those fellows themselves would no more shoot a snipe than they would shoot a scarecrow because they would not waste the cartridge.

They let the people around Ballygar and other parts around the country destroy the vermin and do everything to preserve the game, but when it comes to shooting the game they reserve it for themselves and there is no hope of tourists being interested in going to those places. The fisheries have been well developed and a fairly good job has been done, but I think there is an even greater future for game and that it would be a greater attraction for tourists who are interested in the shotgun. The Minister should take steps as soon as possible to stop those lands being let go for a mere bid of 1/- or 2/-to people who serve no useful purpose by bringing an additional shilling into the locality in which those rights are preserved and if the Land Commission loses a few shillings the Minister should make that little sacrifice. The amount they get would never make them up anyway.

I want to say in conclusion that while we criticise the Land Commission and criticise it very severely at times, we have offices in Galway, Roscommon and the West of Ireland as a whole staffed with the finest officials one could ask for. They are men who know their job, men who are capable, men who understand the position of the migrants and of the uneconomic landholders and who as a result are able to make progress where others would have failed. It is only right that I should congratulate those people on the job of work they are doing.

Mr. Palmer

It would seem from what we have heard from previous speakers that the only people interested in the Minister's Estimate come from counties such as Mayo or Galway, but I would like to remind the Minister that there is such a place also as Kerry and that we are specially interested in land division and in migration, particularly from South Kerry to the midlands. There are various degrees of dissatisfaction at the delays in transferring applicants from uneconomic holdings in South Kerry to the midlands. We have the greatest right because away in the past, if you look back into history, the people of the midlands were driven south west into Kerry and, therefore, we have the trouble about the uneconomic holdings. The descendants of those people who were driven back under pressure have the right to be brought forward when any division of land takes place in the midlands or in the eastern part of the country.

There are very many applicants from my area who desire to get their portion of any estates that may be now available there. I assure you I am not interested in any differences that may arise between the ex-Minister for Lands and his successor because I hold that neither one nor the other did what we wanted in connection with that sub-division of lands and give the uneconomic holders of South West Kerry a chance to keep their families in this country under proper conditions. Somebody should look into history, examine it and make a survey of these areas in the south-west of Ireland. I am not going further north than the Shannon because I have heard so much discussion this evening on land division west of the Shannon, especially in Connacht and they can definitely look out for themselves. They were very fortunate for a long time in having as Minister for Lands and as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance two Deputies from that area and I am sure they availed very much of all the facilities possible while those people were in office. We never had anyone for many years to facilitate the small farmers of south-west Kerry so that they could be brought forward and get transferred to areas in the Eastern counties or the Midlands or even in East Cork or elsewhere to rear their families under proper conditions.

Mr. Geoghegan

Surely the Deputy will agree that small holders were transferred from Kerry to the Midlands.

Mr. Palmer

I do not understand the Deputy from Connemara about that because I do not regard people from Connemara as small holders. I would like to make it clear that I do not blame the present Minister nor the past Minister. There have been Ministers since this State was set up. These conditions existed in the constituency I represent, the constituency that someone also will represent in the near future, now that the Dingle Peninsula has been brought into the south Kerry area. Nothing has ever been done by the Land Commission to help those people to get an economic holding. Holdings have been deserted and the owners have emigrated. Whole families have died out in those areas and no one wants to take their place. There are many derelict holdings there. Why do the Land Commission not take the proper steps, which I think they have the authority to take, to make their holdings economic so that they can live there instead of having to emigrate?

I understand that on this Estimate we can deal only with the Land Commission. My view is—and it is the view of the people in those areas— that when a large holding is taken over by the Land Commission it should be divided in such a way as would enable the small farmers to get a certain portion which would eventually make their holdings economic. I am not blaming the Minister for this, but when any farm is acquired by the Land Commission in the areas to which I have referred, either in south or west Kerry, or even in west Cork, there is always a political scramble to get some portion of the lands that have been acquired by the Land Commission for sub-division. That should not be so.

I have been in this House for 14 years and I have made representations on behalf of the people who live on land adjoining land that has been taken over, but I have never asked that it should be considered from the political point of view. I assure the Minister that so far as I am concerned since he took office I do not blame him for the administration of the Land Commission but I advise him that when land is acquired by the Land Commission they should so far as possible arrange that sub-division should be carried out in such a way that the adjoining farmers would get the land and make use of it. That is all I ask. That is the wish of the people concerned and no matter what Government are in office that should be the order of the day.

I hold that my people in south and west Kerry are entitled at any time to make application for an exchange of holdings in the midlands, in east Cork or in the eastern counties. They deserve the first consideration because no matter what my friend the Deputy from Connemara says the Kerry farmers who have transferred their holdings to the midlands or the eastern counties have proved themselves highly efficient in regard to agricultural advancement, unlike those from Connemara who would not know a plough from a harrow.

So far as I am concerned the Minister and his officials did their best to carry out our wishes any time I approached them, as I am sure is the experience of any Deputy representing Kerry, south or north. Of course, we have been told that they have no function in the matter but any time I approached the Land Commission or the Department of Lands I received the greatest courtesy not only from the Minister but from his officials.

Mr. Johnston

This Estimate is of particular interest to my constituency because for many years Meath has been the main source of relief for land congestion in other counties. At the moment there is a very large migrant population in Meath which has fitted in very well to the economy of the county. The migrants have proved to be very good citizens and there is no hostility whatever to them but some farmers who were living near those lands felt that they should have been given portion of those holdings—and who can blame them—because in many cases their forefathers had worked there and many of them had taken conacre. Those who were raising livestock were told that by a certain date they must have their livestock off that land and that there was no alternative. They felt that was not fair and that there should have been some consideration for them.

I do not say they should have got all the land but the people in Meath had shown that they were competent and able to work the land. If 25 per cent. of the estates which were divided had been given to local people it would have been a much more satisfactory arrangement. I discussed these matters with some migrants and they felt that the local people were not treated fairly. In some recent programmes of land division which I have seen that opinion has been borne out. Fair treatment should be given to the local people. That is something for which I would be very thankful.

It is hard at times to understand the policy of the Land Commission. I know of a case where a young married man with a family, who was on an uneconomic holding, was in every way competent to work a farm and had machinery and capital, but when a farm at this man's back door was available he did not get any of the land. He was consulted again about another farm that was being divided but still got no land. That man was treated very unfairly. In regard to congestion, strange as it may seem there is congestion in County Meath and in one portion it is badly congested. The people in that area should get consideration. I was amazed to hear that there was congestion in the West, having regard to the numbers who have abandoned their homes there and left the country. There should be ample land there if those statements are true. I am glad to see that the Minister has increased the acreage of holdings. It was a great mistake at the start that 20 or 21 acres were given.

Mr. Blowick

It was I who increased it.

Mr. Johnston

I think it has only been increased in the last year.

Mr. Blowick

No.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order. Deputy Blowick should allow Deputy Johnston to continue.

Mr. Johnston

Even if the Deputy did that, he did a good job of work. I am glad to see that the five-acre plot scheme has been brought back. It was abused at first but people then were not in the happy position they are in today of being able to put stock on the land and working it as it should be. I should like to pay tribute to the Minister and his staff for the job they are doing. It is a difficult job and they are doing it as well as they can. It is not easy to please everybody but, please God, in time a solution will be found for our present position. In Meath we are a land hungry people and that is to be understood. In the old days the people were dispossessed there and it is only right that we should turn a complete cycle and the people now should get their fair share.

Mr. McLaughlin

It is not for political purposes or merely for the sake of criticism that I stand up to speak but to voice the grievances of the people in my constituency. Let there be no doubt about it, people are still very anxious to get land. I am sure every Deputy has had the same experience as I have had since I was elected, of people appealing to me to make representations to the Land Commission so that they will get portion of a certain farm or be granted a holding on an estate which is going to be taken over or which has been taken over. I was glad to hear Deputy Killilea saying that there were still many fine farms. He was perfectly right. There are plenty of people only too anxious to get an economic holding and make a good living out of it. While it is very easy for us to say that the Land Commission's job is a difficult one I would appeal to them to do all in their power to get this land and divide it as quickly as possible.

Another problem which we have in regard to the position of land is that the Forestry Department may purchase a good farm when a few active farmers are only too anxious to get that farm. Some arrangement should be come to between the Forestry Department and the Land Commission. If there are a few farmers anxious to get a particular piece of land in the neighbourhood the Forestry Department should yield its right even though the necessary signature has been obtained. We had an experience where people were anxious to get land and we were told if we made representations to the Minister or the Forestry Department something could be done. We did make representations but the Forestry Department would not yield. That is a matter that should be looked into because we have instances where such land would be a useful addition to the farmer instead of having it planted as a wood right up to his door. I appeal to the Minister to look into that matter.

The drainage of land and of the rivers in my constituency is of vital importance at present. We have sent deputations on several occasions and we were told that the arterial drainage scheme would commence shortly, but even today floods are causing a lot of destruction in Sligo-Leitrim. On Saturday last farmers in Sligo told me that they had lost their whole harvest. Immediate attention should be given to that matter and something done to save those people who have had the grit to hold on to those farms for generations. It has been the same sad tale down the years. Things were all right if the year was good but they were all wrong if it was a bad year. I suppose it would be wrong for me at this stage to refer to the installation of electric light on those farms.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The matter would not arise on this Estimate.

Mr. McLaughlin

A number of Deputies spoke about game rights. These should be given to the local farmers. Farmers in my constituency found that they had not got the game rights on their farms. It is sad to think that in 1961 we should find ourselves in the position we were in years ago when some of our people took to the hills so that we should have the right to our own land and shoot what was on it. The fishery rights are also reserved and in many cases that is what is causing flooding and the consequent destruction of farm produce, for the reason that in many rivers there are rocks and the fishery conservators have the right to prosecute anybody who goes in to blast out those rocks.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is a separate Estimate for fisheries and the matter might be raised then.

Mr. McLaughlin

It is no harm to point out that the farmers suffer greatly from this. Our population is of far greater value to the country than a few tourists coming in to fish for a few months every year. I can prove beyond doubt that a number of people have had to leave their small holdings due to the fact that on two successive years they were flooded to such an extent that they had nothing left and they were not going to remain in that state.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Moran)

I was rather surprised to hear Deputy McLaughlin complain that in his constituency there was some difficulty between the Forestry Division and the Land Commission. I want to assure him and the House that the ruling is that where the Forestry Division or the Land Commission take over land only that portion of it which is suitable for forestry goes to the Forestry Division. It is in fact the rule on both sides of my Department that land suited for agriculture or what is classified as agricultural land is not used for forestry and is not devoted to forestry. That is the official policy on this matter and indeed it is not alone the official policy here but is also the official policy with the British Forestry Commission on the other side.

I have come across only a couple of isolated instances—a very insignificant portion of land was concerned—where I received a complaint of this kind. I cannot remember receiving one from Deputy McLaughlin's constituency but I remember receiving one or two isolated complaints. There may be doubts, of course, as to the value of the different types of land on occasion but they rarely arise. I can assure the Deputy that, generally speaking, the policy to which I refer, that agricultural land should not be devoted to afforestation purposes, is invariably carried out by both Divisions of my Department concerned with this matter.

I know, and every Deputy from rural Ireland knows, that there is a vast demand for land in this country. The picture that has been painted of thousands and thousands of people closing their doors and leaving the land is completely unrealistic and completely untrue. There is not a Deputy in rural Ireland or any Land Commission official or certainly any Minister for Lands who is not fully aware, as Deputy McLaughlin has said, that there are thousands of people every day in the week looking for more land. The fact is that land is a very scarce commodity and that there is not enough of it to go around. It is completely unrealistic to start talking about giving 60-acre or 70-acre holdings or £25 valuations in respect of land that may be in outer space but is certainly not in this country.

I referred in my opening statement to the fundamental job of the Land Commission which is the relief of congestion in this country. We estimate that there are between 60,000 and 80,000 uneconomic landowners in this country and these are the first charge on the land of Ireland that may be available for the relief of congestion. Every other category that you shove in on that limited pool will prolong the job of clearing up our land slums. Every other acre you make available by way of additions or going into higher valuations than, say, £15, which is the general rule in the west now, will lessen that limited land pool that is there available to do the job which we want to do. With every new category like landless men, cottiers, farmers' sons, that you try to bring in, you simply not alone bring them in but you are diminishing a pool which is not sufficient for the purpose for which it is needed; you are postponing the day indefinitely when these land slums are cleared up.

If we got the Six Counties in the morning, uninhabited, there would not be enough land to deal with the cleaning-up of our congestion problem. It is therefore not alone unrealistic but unfair to dangle a mythical carrot in front of classes of people who cannot in our circumstances ever hope to get land from the Land Commission, people such as landless men and farmers' sons who have been referred to here. It may perhaps be good politics in the short term but in my view it is bad politics in the long term to hold out these seductive carrots in front of these men in the hope that they will get something from the State which we all know is not there.

I do not think that that is honest policy. It is completely unrealistic. I am quite satisfied that those who are advocating that line of country in this House are perfectly well aware that it is unrealistic and are perfectly well aware that it is dishonest. It is true that, with the new query we have put in the recent census, we shall be able to speak of this problem with practically mathematical accuracy. However, I have no doubt that when we get these new statistics in this new form, in the way it is now being put, it will disclose a state of affairs somewhat similar to what I am telling the House now, and that the problem of the congested areas, of the people in the land slums, will not prove to be any less than I have indicated to the House here tonight.

We have between 60,000 and 80,000 people living on uneconomic units and intermixed units, in many cases rundale. These are the people whom the Land Commission and its predecessor, the Congested Districts Board, were designed to relieve. Until they are dealt with let me emphasise again that all others must come to the end of the queue. In my view, they will be wasting their time at the end of the queue because, by the time the congestion problem as I know it and as I have studied it is dealt with in this country, there will not be and cannot be land to go around for all these other classes that have been spoken of here tonight by those people who seem to think that we have an unlimited amount of land in this country to deal with the problems with which we are faced.

I should also make this clear, too, that the problem that is left, dealing with this question of congestion, is the hard core problem; I refer to 10,500 odd cases that have not yet been vested. These cases in the main are the remnants of the worst congested estates in this land. The estates that were easy to deal with have naturally been dealt with during the years. What is left in the main is comprised of different intermixed rundale estates where you have possibly one man's farm comprised in eight or ten intermixed plots with those of his neighbours. In these cases, not alone is it essential to have migration before we can have any progress in dealing with that land slum but it is also essential to get the co-operation of the people in connection with the rearrangement of what is left.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.