Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 3 Dec 1963

Vol. 206 No. 4

Private Members' Business. - Land Bill, 1963—Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".

General MacEoin

This Bill has been covered fairly extensively and I propose to comment on only a few aspects of it. I am particularly worried about section 4 but, before I deal with that, I want to remind the House that not so very long ago the Minister declared portion of north Longford a congested area. I notice it is now excluded from the Schedule. Does that mean that we shall have again to petition the Minister, becoming mendicants to the Minister, to have that area included? I submit it does. We succeeded in getting the area declared a congested area after many efforts.

Under this section, and this is the serious point, the Minister can declare, if the Bill becomes law, any area outside the congested districts a congested area. That gives him so much power that he will be in a position to bestow very substantial favours personally. While that may be good politically for a Minister, I do not know that it is wise to put that power into the hands of any Minister. The Minister will not be here for all time and I would ask the House to remember that, when passing legislation such as this, we are passing it not for today, or for tomorrow, but for the future. If we give this particular power we shall do something that is dangerous. It will open the door to abuse. I do not say the present Minister would be guilty of abuse, but it would be a stepmother who would blame him if he were guilty, because it is too much to expect that, when you get power, you will not use it.

Under section 7, the Minister can, by order, create a congested area and he can give certain people whom he will send in to lands acquired the benefit of a halved land annuity and put the obligation on other allottees in similar circumstances of paying the full land annuity. I suggest the Minister should have included North Longford in the Schedule. That was promised by every Fianna Fáil Deputy, without exception, in Longford-Westmeath since 1932. It did not eventuate until last year or the beginning of this year. The advantages of it have not been fully secured yet but, with one stroke of the pen now, this is removed.

I come now to the difficulty of the small holdings of 22 acres established in what are known as the Gaeltacht areas or the Irish speaking areas in Meath. Remember, when Fianna Fáil were boasting about an economic unit, they decided 22 to 25 acres were an economic unit. They brought these people up from the west and planted them in Meath. Now they find this is not an economic unit. These poor people with 22 to 25 acres will now become eligible for an addition to their holdings. When they get that addition they will have to pay the full economic rent. Land in Meath is making approximately £100 per acre. When you give 22 more acres to these people to bring them up to the 40 or 45 acre limit, which is now supposed to be the economic unit, they will have to pay a new rent of £127 per year. Is there either sense or reason in that? I know it will be argued that they are taking conacre and paying high rents for it. I submit it is not the intention, and never was the intention, of this legislature, no matter what anyone may say to the contrary, be he Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, to create a new rackrent. Yet that is what this Bill will do. Remember, this will be at the nod or wink of a Minister. It is a serious matter and I ask the House to think twice about it.

Despite adverse criticism by some I believe the Land Commission has done a very good day's work. I submit, however, that no person, inspector or would-be inspector, has the right to force his way in on any man's holding without that man's consent, except by a judicial order. When the Minister takes to himself power to direct an inspector to go down and inspect Martin Corry's farm and see what he is doing, I submit that is an intrusion on Martin Corry's rights as a citizen and, unless Martin Corry has slipped very much, he will meet that inspector with a few well chosen words as to his right to enter on his farm, and more power to Martin's elbow for resisting.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Martin Corry.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

This is an imaginary Martin Corry.

General MacEoin

This is Martin Corry before he became a Deputy and when he was very strong in maintaining the rights of the Irish farmer. I know that Martin Corry would defend them today just as well as he defended them in the past; but there is, of course, a Deputy Martin Corry now who has unfortunately to bow to the Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party, and I do not know if the two individuals are the same at all.

Mr. McQuillan

Jekyll and Hyde.

General MacEoin

I would not go quite so far. I would say there is a very big difference between them, but it is hard to disentagle them.

The Dáil or the Government should not give power to any person to forcibly enter on a man's holding or house without his consent except under judicial order. It could certainly lead to very great abuse, and I am afraid of it. The inspection of land cannot be carried out at present unless the Land Commission give notice to the landholder that they propose to inspect and he has so many days to object. When they inspect, he knows they are coming with an order, not from any political personage but from a judicial body that has the confidence of this House, no matter what Government is in power. That is something that should not be thrown away lightly.

I know it can be argued that this new provision will speed up the acquisition of land. That may be. Speedy acquisition has great merits, but we know that where land has been acquired for a considerable period, it has not yet been divided. Will this new section speed up the division of land already held by the Commission? I doubt it. I do not know what the cause of the delay is. I do not think the Minister should take this power to himself. The former Minister for Lands, Deputy Blowick, used what I thought was an expressive phrase. He said this new section was the crowbar put into the foundations of land tenure in Ireland. He meant, of course, that if you put a crowbar into the foundations, you wreck the whole structure or at least badly shake it.

The purchase of land by aliens is a question that should be kept closely under review. I know it is hard to tell a farmer anxious to put a substantial holding on the market that he is not to accept the highest price he can get. It is not easy to tell him that he must sell to a restricted number of would-be purchasers. I do not like to see aliens acquiring these holdings, because it could beget something that none of us would like. Even where the foreigner has acquired land, the Land Commission can still serve notice of intention to inspect and acquire. When foreigners buy land, they do not secure any rights which Irish citizens have not already. They are no more protected than the ordinary Irish citizen. But it could easily happen that the Government of the day would be charged with taking hostile action against the citizens of another country. The Government should emphasise that the acquisition of land by foreigners, no matter how much they pay for it, does not give them any more protection than that enjoyed by Irish citizens already and that their lands are liable for acquisition.

I do not know how far the Minister has kept the register of land purchased by aliens to which he referred. I hope it is an accurate record. There is a conflict of opinion about it. I take it, however, that the Minister and the Land Commission have a fair idea and, when they say the amount of land purchased was not very much, I will not go further. The fact that land has been bought here shows one thing: that the purchasing power of our monetary system, as such, has been reduced so far that the hard currency countries find land cheap. That is an indication to all our people, no matter what their politics, of the dangers that can lie ahead.

Amendments will be put down on the Committee Stage. However, we know from experience that amendments put down by the Opposition are nearly always resisted by the Government of the day. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that the Minister himself, knowing the equity and justice of all I have said, will put down the amendments removing the statutory power he is now acquiring and restoring it to the judicial authority that has exercised it for so long.

Mr. Corry

I am glad the Minister has introduced this measure. It is only in keeping with the experience we have of him since he has come into office. He has been most energetic. Where he finds legal difficulties left by his predecessors, he is removing them. I cannot see what Deputy MacEoin's complaint is. There is a definition of congested areas, but there is no Deputy representing a rural constituency who has not a congested area in it. Take my constituency. In Gortroe, Ballymacoda and Ballycotton, there are very small uneconomic holdings. It is about time those people were considered just as well as the gentlemen from Mayo and Galway. I consider the Minister should have power to act in those areas the same as in any of the congested areas.

I found an appalling state of affairs in the Rockchapel and Newmarket area, which came into my constituency on the last occasion. Here you have whole districts with holdings of a poor law valuation of from £10 to £15. I had to intervene on one occasion when a farm of 90 acres went on the market and the Minister, acting with his usual promptitude, instructed his officials to take over that farm. Seven unfortunate, so-called farmers—the largest with 21 acres of land—had that divided up amongst them. They were happy and satisfied that they would have a fair livelihood in the future.

Wherever a holding is put up or can be acquired in areas where there is very grave congestion, the Land Comsion should step in immediately. That is the only chance the people in that area will have in their lifetime of getting a fair holding. I had two instances recently and, unfortunately, the holdings went in both cases. These were cases of two people jumping the gun, jumping this Bill. One was in the Youghal area in a place where there is a large number of uneconomic holders. I handed in a list of some 25 smallholders to the Land Commission but the land was let go.

On a more recent occasion in Cloyne, there was a holding that had been let on the 11 months system for the past nine years. As soon as this Bill was mooted, the lady who owned that land decided that she would sell and she succeeded in getting out from under, without any benefit to the unfortunate smallholders of the district. I suggest to the Minister that until this Bill becomes law, he should exercise a very careful eye on those holdings that are being put up and he should step in immediately they are put up.

There is too much land being held in this country on what is purported to be the conacre system. The effect of this on the ordinary tillage farmer has been practically fatal. These gentlemen have driven the tillage farmer completely out of the grain market. You have people living in other countries sending instructions to auctioneers over here and I saw a cheque for £25,000 paid for wheat to one of these gentlemen. Does anyone want to pretend to me that he was an ordinary farmer, a gentleman who had £25,000 worth of wheat to sell and I do not believe he owned 50 acres of land in this country himself?

What hope has the ordinary tillage farmer of going up against such a gentleman? If he had a profit of half a barrel out of each acre, that was all he wanted. What hope would a man with ten acres of land have who is trying to get something out of it on which to support his family? That kind of thing is becoming far too common here, particularly in the midlands, and it is time it was ended. I am glad the Minister has taken power to step in in these cases.

I heard Deputy MacEoin mention what Deputy Blowick did in his time in office but I have a very vivid picture of what he did. There was a holding of 700 acres in Cloyne and when it came up for sale, the Land Commission took 17 acres of it. That is the kind of thing that has brought contempt on the Land Commission but, thank Providence, that is going to be changed. I am glad the Bill has been brought in but I would advise the Minister that there will be a rush on the part of the worst offenders under the conacre system to get out from under and I suggest to him that whenever one of these holdings is put up he should be prepared to step in immediately. That is the only hope that these big holdings will ever be divided and that our people will be able to remain at home and earn a livelihood in their own country.

As things stand at present, that cannot be done. The Minister now has an opportunity to do it and I am sure he will avail of that opportunity. I compliment the Minister on the Bill, although there are certain phases of it with which I may not agree. We will have an opportunity of dealing with these on the Committee Stage.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

Deputy Corry has made a strong appeal to the Minister to exercise a very careful eye on those engaged in conacre letting. I am not quite sure what Deputy Corry means by that appeal to the Minister. I do not know to what extent the Minister is supposed to exercise his eyes or in what way the Minister might exercise a careless eye but Deputy Corry appeals to him to exercise a careful eye in regard to conacre lettings. I am glad Deputy Corry mentioned that subject because I find myself somewhat confused as to what is meant by the provisions of the section which Deputy Corry had in mind, the provisions of section 12 of the Bill.

That section provides that an agricultural holding shall not be let, sub-let or sub-divided without the consent of the Land Commission. There does not appear to be any definition of what letting or sub-letting may mean. It seems to be the law at the moment that a conacre letting is not a letting or sub-letting of a holding. If that still is to be regarded as the legal position, section 12 of the Bill, to my mind, appears to be meaningless because it does not prevent or prohibit conacre lettings of land and, if that is so, I cannot understand what the object or purpose of the section may be.

I understood the position to be that under our existing law if any person made a lease or letting of agricultural land then, automatically, under the Hogan Act of 1923, the land so let was vested in the Land Commission and, for that reason, since 1923, there has not, in fact, been any leasing of agricultural land in this country because the person who effected a lease achieved a position which obviously he did not desire—the freehold of the land passed from him to the Land Commission. Perhaps the Minister in closing the Second Reading will explain what, in fact, is intended by the provisions in section 12?

I should like to go back to an earlier section—section 10—of the Bill. section 10, if the marginal note is to be accepted, is a section which is designed to exonerate the Minister for Lands and the Land Commission from certain obligations and liabilities and these obligations and liabilities are stated to be any obligation to cleanse, maintain, repair or restore any works on land which has been divided or under the care of the Land Commission. These works are referred to as drains, embankments, and so on. I should like to know from the Minister why it is proposed that the Land Commission should be relieved from any obligation in regard to drains or rivers or embankments of that kind. In fact, where an estate is divided or where a number of allottees get land, if it is necessary to build ditches or embankments or if it is necessary to provide a proper channel for drainage, and so on, it would appear to me that for so long as the Land Commission continue to exercise responsibility for land divided and continue to control that land in relation to subdivision, sale, and so on, they should certainly continue to exercise responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the works they had carried out. That, in my view, is particularly essential when we consider that through other Departments of State a vast capital investment has been made in land reclamation and in improving the quality of land. If we permit a section of this kind to pass unchallenged it may mean that what is the responsibility of no particular person becomes a problem affecting everyone and the drain which is not maintained very rapidly will cause a flooding problem over a divided estate and nothing, in fact, will be done because there will be no authority to point to.

Also in section 10 there is an indemnity given to the Minister for Lands and the Land Commission in respect of any act or omission of an officer, servant or agent of the Minister or the Land Commission which amounts to a tort or a wrong in relation to the construction of any drain or the making of any of these embankments. Why should that kind of section be passed in a Bill of this kind? If, in fact, the Minister for Lands or the Land Commission or any of their officers so carried out any works in relation to the division of an estate that they left behind for the unfortunate tenant a heritage of flooding or some other difficulty by reason of negligence, why should the Land Commission under a section of this kind be exonerated from responsibility?

We are far too prone in our legislation here to legislate preferentially for the big bodies in the country, to exclude them from a liability, giving them an exclusion which would not be available to any other individual in the State. I would suggest that to exclude the Land Commission from being amenable in the ordinary courts of this land for any negligence or carelessness on the part of their officers and servants in works of that kind would be legislating in a very wrong way.

I should like also to refer, if I may, to section 13 of this Bill. Section 13, as I understand it, is intended to ensure that after a notice has been served providing for the inspection of a holding, then that holding may not be sold, transferred, let, sub-let, or sub-divided without the consent of the Land Commission. I should like to say in relation to that section here in this House: quo warranto? By what authority do we legislate in that way? We have a Constitution in this country and the Constitution, so far as I understand it, protects the rights of private property. On what basis do we propose in relation to land not owned by the Land Commission, owned by some citizen of the State, to say that he may not sell his own land ? I do not want to be prophetic but I would hazard a guess that if that section is contained in this Bill when it becomes an Act, very quickly it will be declared to be unconstitutional by the courts. I cannot understand on what basis it can be suggested that the Land Commission should have power to prevent the sale of lands which they have not acquired, in which they have no particular rights except that they have given a notice that they propose to inspect. I think the section, if it is contained in the Act, will be clearly held to be unconstitutional.

It is well to bear in mind that that section—section 13—must be considered in this Bill with the provisions of section 27, under which power is now given to a senior inspector of the Land Commission, by a letter posted by registered post, to give notice of an intention to inspect anyone's land. There are, I understand, according to the White Paper, four senior inspectors who are officers of the Land Commission. Each of these four senior inspectors, presumably, is an ordinary, frail human being. Any one of these now, if this Bill becomes law, may serve— not with the seal of the Land Commission and not in any formal way but by ordinary registered post—a notice to an owner that his land will be inspected. Once he does that, for the next 12 months, that person's land, under the proposal contained in this Bill, cannot be dealt with by him as owner of that land. If he was considering selling his land and was balancing the probabilities between two or three possible purchasers and if one of these purchasers for some reason known to himself could achieve the service of a notice of that kind and if it had any validity in law, then that person's land and his possible bargain just disappears as far as he is concerned. This is a most reprehensible provision.

Section 27 is a proposal which takes from the Lay Commissioners a right which, under our existing law, was exclusively a right of the Commissioners themselves. We have had in this country, in the years before the State was established, experience of land division. We are aware of the problem in this country of the necessity for the division of land which has to be balanced against the rights of property, however those rights may have been acquired. In that regard, we should now be able to legislate with experience.

It is worth recording that, after the first Fianna Fáil Government came into office in 1932, an amendment of the Land Acts was proposed and passed by this House. Those who proposed and passed those amendments very shortly afterwards realised they were in error and they proceeded to undo what they had done. Eventually, a stage was reached, which is now represented by our present Land Acts, that the Lay Commissioners had certain exclusive rights. They decided and are entitled to decide under our present Land Acts what lands should be considered for acquisition and division. That was an excepted matter, taken out of the political field and taken out of the control of the Minister, peculiarly a right of the Lay Commissioners themselves and, in addition, the Lay Commissioners have the exclusive right of deciding who should get land.

These excepted matters—there are others, of course—were excepted to the Lay Commissioners in the light of actual experience earned in this country in the early 1930s. It was found undesirable that political considerations should enter into decisions affecting what land should be selected for division as it was equally found undesirable that political considerations should enter into a decision as to who should be allotted land. I should like to put on record my appreciation of the fact that a Fianna Fáil Government in the early 1930s saw the necessity for these provisions, having, in fact, proceeded in another direction before that.

Under, I think, the Land Act, 1936, the charter of the Lay Commissioners was laid down. Since that, the Lay Commissioners have operated as a very worthwhile stabiliser so far as any Minister for Lands might be concerned. While the Minister was entitled to lay down policy so far as land division was concerned, the Lay Commissioners—and only they—on the other hand, removed from political pressure or political considerations, were entitled to take the first step with regard to the division of any particular land or any particular estate. In this section, this is proposed to be changed? Why?

Are we now to go back to the mistakes of almost 30 years ago? Are we now to go back to a situation in which pressure groups can grow up in the country and the Minister for Lands, as the political chief, can direct a senior inspector of his Department to serve a notice of intention to inspect on a decent farmer in this country? We have no more big landholders. We now have no absentee landlords.

The people who will be affected by this Bill are all citizens of this country. They are all men who have land which they themselves or their fathers probably acquired initially as a result of land division—the Ashbourne Acts, or whatever it may be. Are these people now to be put under the thumb-screw of political pressure? There is a danger in section 27 that that can happen and the threat of its happening could cause considerable concern and dislocation throughout the country.

If a notice is now served under section 27 there will be no quiet appraisal of the merits by independent people, by a judicial or semi-judicial body. There will merely be the decision of a senior inspector who may be a Johnnie-jump-up for all we know—a fellow who possibly may have conceived a dislike of some farmer. Just by dropping a letter into the post office, he now can serve a document on that farmer which will, if the Bill is enacted, destroy that farmer's right to let, transfer or deal with his land for the following twelve months. This is an atrocious provision. I cannot understand the necessity for a provision of this kind. I urge the Minister to have second thoughts in that regard.

I am concerned that a proposed amendment of this kind should be associated with a decision by the Government to appoint as one of the Lay Commissioners the Secretary of the Department of Lands. The Secretary who is concerned in this appointment is a man for whom personally I have the highest possible regard. He has been an excellent officer and a first-rate civil servant. I think it is embarrassing for him and for everyone who knows him that associated with a proposed change in the law of that kind, we are to have as one of the Lay Commissioners, the permanent head of the Department of Lands. Where are we going? Is there to be an end of any independent examination of ministerial decisions with regard to the Land Commission? Will we have a situation that, on a Minister's orders, a senior inspector may go into a farmer's land, serve a notice and destroy his right of dealing with his own land for the next 12 months, and if the action has to be called in question, one goes before the court of the Irish Land Commission to arraign that inspector before the person who is the accountable officer, the permanent head of the Department of Lands? It is quite reprehensible that a provision of this kind should be contained in this Bill.

I mention these matters perhaps strongly but this is a good Bill which is destroyed by provisions of this kind. The Minister could achieve and would have achieved everything he seeks in this legislation without including sections of the kind I have mentioned, section 13 and section 27. I do not think the Bill would lose any of its merit if on the next stage the Minister agreed that section 13 and section 27 should be deleted. If that were done, I would feel the appointment of the Secretary of the Department of Lands as a Lay Commissioner would lose much of the very undesirable implications it carries with it. It was done before and it was objected to by many people but certainly to associate that appointment with these proposed changes in the land code is very hard to understand or to appreciate.

I wish to say a word or two with regard to what has been said in this debate in relation to the purchase of land by foreigners. This is a matter about which one can become illogical and, perhaps, unreasonable. I have endeavoured to keep a balanced view on this problem. Nevertheless, I feel myself in entire agreement with what Deputy Blowick said earlier in this debate. I cannot understand why we in this country permit foreigners to purchase our land. I believe quite sincerely that, irrespective of the amount of land purchased by aliens at the moment, whether it is a problem or mounting towards a problem or whatever way one qualifies or describes what is going on, it is absolutely essential that we, by our legislation, should prohibit the purchase of any Irish land, particularly agricultural land, by non-nationals.

I am certain that if we do not provide for a prohibition of that kind in our land laws, in a few years' time, we shall regret very bitterly the lack of such a prohibition. At the moment arable or agricultural land on the continent of Europe fetches, in terms of our money, something approaching £750 or £800 an acre. At present the best barley land in the midlands would fetch £120 or perhaps £130 an acre. If in the foreseeable future we join the Common Market, that is an investment very well worth making by continental purchasers, when they can buy up the best agricultural land in this country for £130 an acre. Certainly in the midlands there is very big money chasing good land.

I know this has not become a prolem yet. Of course it has not because most people prefer to hold on to the land. Most Irish farmers fought hard enough to own the land they stand upon and they will not lightly or easily sell it. However, slowly, bit by bit, their understandable pride in their own land and their natural reluctance to sell is being eaten away. It may not be a problem but it will become one. In certain other parts of the country our coastline is being bought away. In parts of the country with which perhaps you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, should be familiar, the north-west of Ireland, there is an influx of money in buying large tracts of the seaboard and we are permitting this country to be sold bit by bit.

I would regard this Bill as being excellent if the sections I have mentioned were not in it and if instead, a provision were contained in it prohibiting absolutely, without, say, the consent of the Land Commission, the purchase of land here by any person who is not a national or a citizen of the country.

I do not know—I am sure the Minister knows—but I would be surprised to learn that in any country on the continent, there is such a freedom of purchase of land as is emphasised here. I would imagine that in most other countries some form of control is exercised and that they are very careful to ensure that no one may blow in with a bag of money and just buy whatever his eye happens to fall upon.

Generally speaking, the Bill is a good one and I congratulate the Minister on its introduction. However, it is a Bill which is affected adversely by the sections I have mentioned and by the deficiency that it does not contain any provision with regard to alien purchase.

Mr. J.J. Collins

I welcome this Land Bill gladly. The amazing reception it has received and the general interest it has created throughout the country have been reflected in the number of Deputies who have contributed to the debate. Apart from any criticisms that may be made of the Bill, I think it is generally agreed the measure is at last a serious attempt to grapple with land tenure and congestion problems in this country.

This is the 14th Land Bill introduced in Dáil Éireann since we got our freedom and many of the previous measures were ultra-conservative. In this Bill we have got something revolutionary by comparison with the past. The Minister is to be congratulated in his approach to the framing of it. Reading through its sections, it has struck me there is something in each that Michael Davitt, in his day, would have worked for, and I am glad it is left to a Mayoman to pilot it through an Irish Parliament.

In piloting this measure through Parliament, the Minister for Lands is striving, by the process of trial and error, to introduce for the future, legislation that will deal once and for all with land tenure and congestion. As a rural Deputy and as one who, so to speak, represents an area outside the Pale of congestion. I have one criticism to make of section 5 of the Bill, which deals solely with loans for congests who wish to migrate, but it leaves outside its scope people living outside the old Congested Districts Board areas. They are not to be entitled to the same facilities for the provision of capital as are available to congests in the already defined areas.

I can give the Minister an example of the unfairness of that schedule. I suggest to him an area from the Shannon at Foynes, cutting right through the western part of Limerick to the Cork border at Tullylease and moving to the Kerry border at the river Feale and northwards to Tarbert. I am now stressing the point already made by Deputies that within that area we have uneconomic holdings as numerous and congestion as dense as in either Roscommon or parts of Mayo.

We have been looking at this Bill as a promise for the future and I should not like it to go abroad or to be accepted generally that the Bill is parochial or provincial in its scope. I think the old criterion of the standard of the Congested Districts Board as outlined in British days should be removed from the Minister's mind and congested areas reframed, whether in North Longford or in the part of West Limerick I have just mentioned.

The Opposition have attacked various sections of this Bill but they have also welcomed the Bill generally. I listened carefully to the contribution of Deputy T.F. O'Higgins who took severe exception to section 27, saying he feared it would take away from the quasi-judicial body, the Land Commission, the powers already vested in them. Under 13 previous enactments of land legislation, the power of acquisition in section 27 has been advocated over the years and that power of acquisition of land does not interfere with its subsequent division by the Land Commission. Therefore, Deputy T. F. O'Higgins has failed hopelessly to sustain the serious objection he has made to this section.

Another aspect of his speech I did not like was his reference to the Secretary of the Department of Lands when he said it was a very undesirable move that he, as Secretary of the Department, should be appointed as one of the Lay Commissioners. His exact words were: "Such an appointment creates undesirable implications". Deputy O'Higgins forgot to tell us there was a precedent for that appointment, that during the Cumann na nGaedheal administration, the late Mr. Deegan was not only Secretary of the Department of Lands but also a member of the Land Commission. I do not think it would be fair to that deceased gentleman that any member of this House should say his appointment had very undesirable implications. We must also be fair to the person recently appointed.

I am satisfied section 27 will serve to expedite the acquisition of land. Deputy O'Higgins also made the point that we should be careful of non-nationals coming in and buying up our land. To my mind, the foreigner is not the greatest danger in this respect. We have in our midst the old vested interests, the gentlemen who came here in British days and who have been doing immense harm to the acquisition programme by purchasing up large tracts of land throughout the country. In this Bill there is adequate provision in a number of sections to ensure that where such people are not working their farms in the required manner, the land will be acquired by the Land Commission for division. They are the foreigners who are doing all the harm in this country.

Deputy Blowick, a former Minister for Lands, also attacked section 27 and by implication, said that the operation of that section would be tantamount to bringing back the crowbar again into the land question. Since he mentioned the crowbar, if he is free on Thursday evening next, I suggest that he watches the Telefís Éireann programme dealing with this subject. In that programme on Thursday night next they will see exactly what we know and experienced of the days and effects of landlordism and the crowbar brigade in my native parish. That is something very important and educational and enlightening for Deputy Blowick if he can watch Telefís Éireann that night.

I hope, in dealing with section 5, I have made clear my point that the Minister must adopt a more elastic and flexible method of defining congested areas. That can easily be done by his chief officers in the different counties if they include pockets of congestion where they occur. Where there is a desire to migrate voluntarily, the same facilities should be made available. The Minister is taking on a very large burden in this Bill. Even though we may be unanimous here about it, the problem of congestion, I fear, is beyond solution.

The most attractive feature, for the really congested areas of the west, is section 5, which provides necessary capital and helps holders of small parcels of land to go out and buy land for themselves. In order to create viable units in the west of Ireland, I think that side by side with our efforts to grapple with land congestion, there must also be industrial development in the towns and cities. No matter how big we make the farms in the west of Ireland, in that part of Limerick that was mentioned or in the part of Longford mentioned by Deputy MacEoin, the best that can be done especially with our entry into the European Economic Community imminent, is to provide a living for one member of the family on a holding. If we must co-relate the flight from the land with relief of congestion, I believe, after the surveys in West Cork and Limerick and elsewhere as outlined in the thesis published by Dr. Noonan of Maynooth, that the answer to the stabilising of viable units in the areas I have mentioned will depend solely on the industrialisation of the main towns of the counties. That is one of the best solutions we can find.

Before going on, I should like to break down the serious objection or the point made by Deputy O'Higgins against section 27, and the appointment by the Minister of senior officers to go into any province and point out, or by letter designate certain land, saying: "We have this earmarked for division." When I said that some of our previous Land Acts were ultra-conservative, I meant that was so because we had not taken that power. We allowed too much time to elapse and too many avenues of escape which defeated the desires of the Land Commission.

It is very encouraging also that we are now trying to gain the co-operation of our own people in helping the Land Commission and the nation as a whole. There was complete reluctance on the part of many owners of large tracts of land in the past to have any dealings with the Land Commission. If they wanted to sell, they were anxious to dispose of their land for cash and did not want to accept Land Bonds from the Land Commission. I am glad that is being completely changed and that land can be purchased openly in the public market and the vendor given the choice of accepting cash or bonds which, at the moment, bear the very high value of 102 on the Stock Exchange. That will be attractive to owners of large tracts who are coming near the end of their tether.

Section 6 is also welcome because it will provide life annuities for old farmers with no sons to succeed them. This is all very far from any insinuation of compulsion because the section clearly states that life annuities for old farmers are on an entirely voluntary basis. Also—and we know this is traditional for Irish people—if they want to remain where they were born, under this section they may have a free house for life and if they need rehabilitation or a life interest, they may be provided with a garden.

Deputy O'Higgins said that section 13, taken with section 27, seemed to cancel out. I do not understand that because when you read section 13 carefully, you find an effort is being made to prevent what we all mentioned here, the quick moves made to frustrate the efforts of the Land Commission in the past to acquire land where a fair case for acquisition was established. I do not think any Deputy on any side should object to that section because no matter what we did with the 13 previous Acts, the flaws were there. We have had Deputies saying that the Land Commission should be there to deal with the operation of land acquisition and division and that section 27 and section 13 were bringing the crowbar back into play again. I do not think that is a fair interpretation or a fair analysis of the Bill.

Section 18 is simple in itself but it is a right that should always have belonged to the tenant farmer but never did. It gives the ordinary farmer control over the sporting rights of his lands where formerly they were reserved functions of the landlord. It is a very welcome section.

In regard to Deputy O'Higgins's speech. I must say that I read the speech made by Deputy Dillon and I could see his points being redelivered by Deputy O'Higgins in a kind of caustic criticism of the Bill. Over the years, western Deputies from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been making capital of the great harm caused by absentee landlords. If any Deputy has studied the Bill carefully, he will see that section 34 is a vital section in so far as it leaves the absentee landlord very vulnerable to acquisition. That is something for which we have all been striving, that the Land Commission should have the power to deal with these gentlemen. Not alone will this apply to the absentee farmer or the absentee landlord but it will apply to the foreigners who are now absentees and who have bought some of the pool of land in recent years.

Another matter with which it will deal is the effort which was made in the past to come in under the guise of companies—in order to get away from the heading of foreigner or absentee landlord—and buying land through the company. The motive behind this will no longer be effective because section 34 will definitely circumvent such efforts.

Section 34, which is a repeal schedule, makes it possible for the Land Commission to purchase land for cash in many cases where at present they could not do so. Previously they could pay cash in certain cases, and in other cases they could pay with Land Bonds. Under section 43, cash can be paid in all cases and it is clear that this will make for greater speed and greater convenience in the purchase of land, especially from old persons and under section 5, from migrants.

The most important item in the Bill is in section 26 which provides for an additional £5 million for land reform. I heard no mention of that from the Opposition benches.

I think I have covered all the points I wished to raise. I started by saying that I am very glad to be associated with all the Deputies who welcomed this Bill. The criticisms which have been expressed may have been to an extent confused. It is easy to have confused thoughts and arguments if you do not go to the trouble of dealing with the sections that affect your own area. We are a small country and the pattern of land husbandry varies greatly. I come from a dairying area; other Deputies come from grain-growing areas; and western Deputies come from congested areas.

By and large, this Bill represents a very courageous approach. Over the week-end, I went to the trouble of reading the speeches made by the various Deputies on both sides and the extraordinary thing is that it is the first land measure ever introduced here that has received so much support. That is a good thing. I was glad to see that Labour Deputies took an interest in it because it deals with a very serious problem in our economy, something we would all like to see removed. The Minister is to be congratulated. This Bill took a bit of courage. It is revolutionary, if you like, but, if it is revolutionary, it is also evolutionary. It is a step in the right direction. Thank God, it has been received as well as it has. I should not like to see anything taken away from this Bill in the Committee Stage. Perhaps something more might be added to it. As one speaker said, it is not legislation for today, or tomorrow, but for the future. Within the framework of this legislation, I hope the aims and ambitions of Michael Davitt will at last be realised.

Mr. Gilhawley

And John Dillon.

Mr. Coogan

The last speaker referred to the crowbar. I thought we were about to have a little history. He could have added the battering ram and the baitín boys who smashed the rafters over the heads of the widows in my county. I could go a bit further than that, if I wanted to.

I come from the most congested area in the country. Some speakers have talked about the very favourable provisions in this Bill from the point of view of the west, including the promise of 40 acres of land to everyone who applies. This has brought a smile to many a face in the west, brought a smile to the faces of those who have been crying out for years for land, to the faces of those who saw the Land Commission taking over land across the wall and letting it on the 11-months system. That land was held by the Land Commission while those with holdings of four and five acres were crying out for additions. These people were ignored for years. Many of them threw up their hands in despair, packed their bags, put the hasp on the door, and never opened the bags again until they arrived in Birmingham.

It has been said by many that the Land Commission are the biggest landlords in the country. The way they have held on to land is a disgrace. This promise of 40-acre holdings prompts me to ask if there will be enough land to go round or is it that there will be less people who will get land? The Land Commission has been quite extraordinarily slow in dividing lands taken over. I should like to see the straitjacket taken off the Land Commissioners. The delay is not altogether their fault. It is the fault of the set-up. Something should be done to expedite division. People are sceptical of these 40-acre holdings. They sound like a Fianna Fáil pre-election promise. People have lost faith. They have seen the foreigner coming in and buying up land from under their feet, while the Department looked on. There is nothing to prevent that practice continuing in the future.

This Bill has some good points. It has some weak points. The main problem is to make the land more fertile and more productive. That can only be done by using more lime and fertiliser and doing more drainage. In other words, the Dillon scheme. It is all very well to divide land. It is useless unless we ensure we get full value from it. If we are serious about the Common Market land division will have to be given a new look. More speed will be necessary in putting the land of Ireland into the hands of the people of Ireland. This Bill is not the be-all and end-all as far as the problem of land division is concerned. I wish it every success. Perhaps the Minister will have another look at it and strengthen the weaker points in it. I suggest he accept some of the proposals made by this side of the House. Let him get on with the good work and his Bill will have the backing of everyone here.

Mr. Cunningham

I should like to take a fairly wide view of this Bill. We should, I think, first of all consider targets. If our target is increased production at a cost which will enable production from the land to be disposed of competitively in the home and foreign market then we should consider the type of person to whom land should be made available and the type who should be assisted to either acquire land or increase his holding of land.

The relief of congestion in the West seems to be the main ambition of many Deputies. It sounds good but, if it results in retarding increased production from the land, then the relief of congestion alone should not be the be-all and end-all of land legislation. We cannot take the land and divide it up like a chessboard into 40- to 45-acre holdings. All types of holdings have their place in an agricultural country like ours. We cannot confine ourselves to a standard pattern of 45-acre holdings.

The small farm has its place in modern industrialised agriculture. Across the water and in western European countries we have highly-geared industrial agriculture, where, for example, up to one million turkeys can be produced in one place. That pattern of largescale production in small areas can and should be operated here. We cannot succeed in many branches of agriculture until we do that.

The relief of congestion should not be our sole aim. We should also aim at having more people employed on the land. And we can have more people employed on the land, even on our small farms, by promoting the type of modern, industrial agriculture to which I refer. The type of person who is a landowner or who will become a landowner under this Bill is important, and the use to which he is capable of putting his land is important. Not all congests are good farmers, although many of them are very good farmers. Congests who are good farmers can also be and are good fishermen. Our aim should be to put the best-qualified farmers on the land whether they be small farmers, landless men or conacre farmers, those who have shown themselves to be able to make good productive use of the land and to farm it scientifically. Those are the people who should be given land and assisted in the purchase of land.

The system up to now has been to take a congest's farm and give it to his next-door neighbour or nearest small farmer, whether they be good farmers or not. The congest is given a farm somewhere in the eastern part of the country or in a less congested part of his own county. Under that system we provide a large amount of money for an individual. There are many people at present who, although they are good farmers, cannot afford to purchase farms costing from £5,000 to £8,000. They may have no land or a small bit of land or they may be conacre farmers. In this Bill there should be a section whereby the Land Commission would purchase those larger holdings and make them available at the cost price to suitable persons of the classes I mention. They should be allowed purchase them for a lump sum, if they can afford it, or, if not, they should be allowed to place a deposit and pay the remainder over a period of years. In other words, when a 200-acre farm is up for sale the Land Commission should take it over and subdivide it into four or five holdings, depending on the type of person to whom they will give it. Each portion of land should be sold at the cost price, either for the full price or a deposit and payment by way of an annuity over a period of ten, fifteen or twenty years. Under that system you could determine the most suitable type of landowner, and the State would not be involved in very great expense as at present by having to provide holdings. That is what is happening under the present Act and possibly will happen under this Bill. My suggestion does not rule out the relief of congestion or migrants getting land. They deserve to get it where they have shown they are capable of using that land to the best advantage.

Exceptional circumstances exist in some counties, including Donegal. Any Bill catering for the whole country which does not take exceptional circumstances into account may not benefit the areas where these exceptional circumstances exist. In one half of Donegal we have the larger type of farm, while in the other half we have migrants. Strangely enough, there is no great desire on the part of migrants to move into the holdings offered to them by the Land Commission. I know of one case where 24 different people were asked to look at a holding of 40 acres on which a new house and outoffices had been built. They came one by one but returned to their homes saying they would prefer to stay where they were.

In that same area there is a demand for land by local conacre farmers. There is a tradition of conacre farming on the larger farms. The system of conacre farming has been handed down over three generations. While they are prepared to pay very high prices—last year up to £40 per acre— for conacre land, they cannot afford to purchase an entire farm with farm prices reaching £6,000 or £7,000. Those conacre farmers have built up cattle stocks and a pool of modern farm machinery, and they should be specially catered for. An exception should be made in the order of priority which probably will be operated under this Bill. I understand the order of priority is that the first to be considered are the workers on the estate to be divided. Naturally when conacre lettings have been made or the farms have been let over a long number of years, you do not have workers on them. It is not the workers' fault that they have not been workers on these particular estates or farms. They could not be because their fathers before them have been taking those lands in conacre and they are doing the same now. Therefore, they will not qualify under the first heading.

The second type of person to qualify is the smallholder but in areas where there are no smallholders, that class falls by the board. The third class are migrants or congests and the fourth are landless men. Therefore we have a situation which is unsatisfactory, a situation which tends to a frame of mind which is illustrated by an example in East Donegal. There a person bought a number of farms totalling 3,500 acres. I do not think there is any district in Ireland where a person could acquire so much land and not cause local agitation but there has not been any agitation against the purchase of those lands. They are being worked. It was hoped that there might be an industry on them but instead 40 to 50 people are employed on them at the moment.

The Minister can well imagine the situation which would arise if the Land Commission decided to take over those lands and allocate them to migrants or congests. What would happen to the 40 people now employed there? Would they have to emigrate or join the ranks of the unemployed? There has been no agitation there for the simple reason that the practice operated by the Land Commission up to now of bringing in migrants means that these people know that, no matter how industrious they are or how well they have farmed conacre in the past, they cannot hope to acquire land because they are landless men.

This is something the Minister should consider and I would ask that he do so. It may be a policy matter and it may not be necessary to have it included in the Bill, but if it is necessary, I would ask that a section be put into the Bill to cover that point. We know that these people who operate the conacre system are first-class farmers. They must be because they start off under a very severe handicap by having to pay high prices for conacre land.

In that area of East Donegal, there is a certain pool of land available for conacre lettings every year. The practice of taking conacre is a bad system but it is a system which was forced on those people. They have been at it for years; they have built up certain stocks and pools of machinery of the most modern kind and each year they have available to them a certain pool of conacre land. Every farm that is taken out of that pool by the Land Commission, divided and given to migrants, reduces the pool available and increases the number of conacre applicants the following year because the migrants who come in and are allotted 30, 35 and 40 acres of land find it is not enough to carry on the necessary rotation. In the following year they themselves are candidates for the pool of conacre available.

I have mentioned these points before and they are important. I would urge the Minister to give special consideration to them. I would urge that in carrying out the provisions of this Bill and the policy enshrined in it, he take cognisance of what I have said and that any acquisition of land, sub-division of land and movement of farmers, be they large or small, should be done in such a way as to benefit the community at large and benefit the economy of the country. Specialisation should be undertaken in such a way that the production from every acre of our land will be increased, that more people will be able to live on less land.

A uniform pattern of 40 acres of land is not the best pattern. It has been said in this House that the small farmer in the west cannot keep a family on a farm of that size and that they must have subventions from the State by way of unemployment benefits to exist. But by specialisation in certain aspects of agriculture, a livelihood can be obtained on some of those farms. If we go into intensive production, whether it be poultry, pigs or vegetables, we can get better yields and better incomes even from the small farms, and if the Department of Industry and Commerce follow up by assisting to place industries in the smaller towns where these congests live.

Mr. Donegan

I intend to be pretty general in my comments on this Bill because it is a Bill that can be more properly debated in detail on Committee Stage. It is a Bill containing a large number of sections ranging over a wide variety of aspects. Therefore, the Second Reading would be best employed in the way Deputy Cunningham employed it and as I hope to do, in giving a general view of the matter.

One of the jobs that I would hate if I were in the Civil Service would be to be in the land division section of the Department of Lands, because I believe it has failed in the objects for which it was instituted, land division. On the institution of the State, it was necessary that something be done. There has been a period when "To Hell or to Connacht" was the phrase. This produced a large number of uneconomic holdings in the west of Ireland.

I would join other Deputies in saying that this situation is not entirely confined to the west of Ireland. I come from Louth which would be regarded as one of the best agricultural counties in the country, a place of prosperous farmers. Yet, there are many uneconomic holdings in Louth, holdings on which the farmer, unless he has fantastic industry or ingenuity or can do something like market gardening, finds himself unable to support his wife and children by the ordinary agricultural activities pursued by his neighbour. Indeed, it would be a mistake to accept that the congest is a problem largely related to areas of the west of Ireland. It is obvious that most of the work that has to be done must be done in places such as exist in the west of Ireland where there are so many more congests.

This Bill was foreshadowed in a speech by the Taoiseach some months ago in which he gave the details. I remember being very critical at the time of that speech because I felt that to suggest 40 acres of land and not to vote any more money for it, would merely reduce the number of people who could be served. That is a truism. It appears to apply to the present situation. Therefore, while I agree that anything less than 40-45 acres at the moment, taking into account the general overheads and high costs that have invaded farming, would be quite uneconomic, at the same time, even though we have taken a step in the right direction, we do not seem to have made any great or real progress in this problem of clearing up the congestion that remains in large areas of the country.

Land division is something that I personally abhor. I know it is a necessary evil in many cases but, notwithstanding the fact that it is well known that a landless man cannot get land, if one walks into a country public house in the middle of one's constituency and if there are ten men there, I will lay an even shilling that seven of them would be with some Deputy of some Party seeking land and very often specifying a farm belonging to their neighbours which is not being worked, a farm belonging to their neighbours that was apart from the main holding, where only ordinary grazing was carried out, as the land that they would like. While it is a necessary evil, is is something that, with the exception of the movement of the migrant from the west of Ireland to Meath or some similar place, produces greed and envy that does not bring progress to any community.

A step could have been taken in this Bill away from the restriction of this whole effort to land division. That is not the answer. One has only to look back at the farms that were divided because their owners were grazing them, because their owners were going to the west of Ireland, to the very places where these congests could live only by breeding milch cows and bringing young cattle to market. Owners in the east of Ireland, who were in reality the finishing shops for those people, who represented the only income these western people could get, had their lands divided because they were not ploughing them and growing wheat.

Over the years it is a question of what is fashionable. We have seen changes in Government policy. That must be the case. I do not suggest that there is anything wrong with the Government changing its policy from "grow more wheat" to "grow less wheat". I do not say there is anything wrong with the Government now lauding the stock farmer, now seeking as a main plank in their agricultural policy an increase of 50 per cent in the output of cattle from the land. But, remember, there were many people whose lands were taken from them because they participated in what is now the main plank of Government agricultural policy. What may be fashionable and right today may be a reason for acquiring land tomorrow. We who have to interpret policy, whether we are politicians, civil servants or lay commissioners, have to make our decisions on the basis of what pertains at the moment. In fact, we may be wiping out a holding that in five or ten years' time might be doing the very thing that would be the policy of the Government of that day. The question of land division and compulsory acquisition of land for division is a matter that one cannot be very dogmatic about.

The only time that I was ever in the Lay Commissioners' court was when I went with my parish priest to try to stop the division of land, and succeeded. It was the case of an old woman, who is dead now. She was physically disabled. Four miles away from her farm she had 18 acres and, naturally, she set it because she was not able to work it. It remained set for 10 or 12 years. She was served with notice that it would be compulsorily acquired. It was her only source of income. Her nephew was waiting to step in. He is farming that land today. At that time he was not old enough or competent enough to do it. The stage of land division should never be reached in that sort of case but I am sorry to say that over the years land has been divided in such circumstances.

Another step could have been taken in this Bill to help congests. At present Lieutenant-General Costello is setting up four factories for the processing of vegetables. The production of vegetables for such purpose requires a very small acreage, a high degree of rainfall and gives a high level of employment on the land. A figure given is seven hours' work on each item of production for one hour's work in the factory. The Land Commission could co-operate with the technical schools in training boys to participate in Lieutenant-General Costello's scheme on their own small holdings and make holdings bigger as far as they were concerned. That is something that could be done in the west of Ireland.

I sincerely believe that if the Land Commission could acquire voluntarily a few holdings from those people who have turned the key in the door and gone away and if they could then get down to the education of young fellows who are there in many cases, it would be possible to get a good income from them so long as the market was there or, alternatively, by the setting up by the Department of Lands of a co-operative selling organisation that would give these fellows who were trained in horticulture a chance of living where they grew up rather than taking them and putting them into different types of soil, without any advice but to sink or swim as they liked.

I know plenty of migrants who have succeeded exceedingly well in County Meath. I know some who have been an abject failure. A root cause of the failure was that they had a certain type of husbandry where they came from. It worked very well in Mayo or in Galway but when they came to a different type of soil, they just were not able to make the change-over. They just were not able to look across all the ditches around where they were and to watch their neighbours who had been there all their lives tilling their lands and to note the changes they had to make in their own practices.

The first thing the Land Commission would have to do is to integrate, just as in agriculture now, advisory services with the advancement of credit. You must integrate the issue of land, the placing of men on land, with the building-up of a confidence within them to produce the money from it. If you do not do that you will have your percentage of failure constantly far higher than it should be. I am sorry to say that the percentage of failures in those men who get land is too high. It is great to see the ones who succeed but it is not so good to see the failures.

I welcome this figure of 45 acres but, at the same time, if the same money is voted, it means fewer units divided. The house grants are also an excellent step forward. They are the things that should be done and must be done. Some of them are being done in this Bill. The retirement pensions are good but, as I read it, the provision is restricted to incapacitated owners. I know decent old men who come down to the publichouse for a "half one" and who go home again and who are not incapacitated. I do not know whether or not they will be in on this: they should. If they are not it will be a highly restrictive measure and will not live up to the grandiose advertisement it got as it was introduced here.

There are so many things that must be done which are not included in this Bill which follows the stereotyped pattern of all that has been done for congests in the past that it is difficult to list them. Any Deputy can, from his experience and work, make up a list of all that should be done but it is something which a Government Department could more readily do.

Surely there are opportunities for co-operation and joint action between the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Lands in order to keep more people on the land? I believe this is the most important thing of all. There is no use in throwing somebody 40 acres and saying: "Goodbye; do your best." He may—and it may be good enough or not. But, as well as agricultural education, as well as a farm apprenticeship scheme especially designed for those who are to go on the land in the congested districts, there is also necessity for the production of some sort of marketing organisation for the crops they grow when we have helped and taught them how to grow them. It is no good if the Minister for Lands tries to do it himself because the vast resources of knowledge, and skill, and efficiency in the Department of Agriculture should also be there. I believe that if we could get the two Ministers and the two Departments working together on this particular problem, almost as one unit, we should find the task far easier than it seems at the moment.

Deputy Collins said land should be taken from those who are not working it in the required husbandry manner: I do not know what that phrase means. It sounds like something out of the Kremlin—that if you do not plough a field from north to south, you are out or if you do it from east to west, you will immediately be liquidated. Must we be so absolutely dogmatic and conservative about ths situation ? Must we always believe that the fellow who for ten years has not been working his holding must be got off the land ? I know of families who, for four or five generations, worked their land hard and then for ten or 15 years, it was in the hands of a fellow who was taking too many drinks or was going to too many race meetings. Is it right, with the family record there for generations, to take that fellow's land from him compulsorily ? I do not think it is. I believe that most of these purchases must be voluntary ones.

The industrialisation of the towns in the congested areas, mentioned by Deputy Collins, is a bit of a pipedream. I should love to see the west highly industrialised but when you meet an industrialist and you are from an east coast county, your trouble is to get him a mile away from Nelson Pillar, much less west of the Shannon. Even when you have an excellent number of ports and an area that lends iself to industry, those people still want to be beside Nelson Pillar.

Not long ago, I heard an industrialist mention, as one of his requirements, a first-class hospital of very large size within ten miles at least of his factory. Those people have choice. I do not think there is anything in the suggestion by Deputy Collins. We have to do what we can for the people on the land. We should do the maximum where they are and, after that, we should do our best by moving them over but let us not move a man over until we have taught him the difference in the soils and in the problems he will have to contend with.

Mention was made of Land Bonds. It was mentioned that the recent issue of Land Bonds is standing at 102. I do not know whether that figure is correct: I have not seen it. There was grave dissatisfaction about Land Bonds issued over the past 20 years. Many times they were issued at such a low interest rate that the very moment they were given into the hands of the fellow whose land was being acquired, they were worth about 20 per cent less. An old man said to me the other day: "You have robbed the savers and now you are asking them to save." That is the problem. Interest rates have gone up. I do not think the Government of the day—whatever Government it was —in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s which issued Land Bonds really meant to do this. However, there should be some insurance for the man who gets the Land Bonds and keeps them. The man who gets the Land Bonds and sells them has the money and if they stand at 102 at the moment, he gets a little odds on the price. If he keeps them and if the interest rate goes up, it is only fair that he should be covered for the difference in the prevailing rate as against rates in the future because that is where he is getting his income just as surely as he was getting it in the letting of his lands.

The first necessity, as I have said, is a farm apprenticeship scheme; the second necessity is an integration of effort between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Lands; and the third necessity is to acquire most of the land voluntarily. Anything that comes from greed and envy does not succeed. I hate to meet a constituent who, although I know he needs land and that he has an uneconomic holding, says to me: "Will you put my application in for Mr. Moran's land down the road. He is not farming." I know that Mr. Moran had a heart attack, say, three years ago and that he will not farm it. He has no son who could farm it and he will dispose of it to a relative or in some other way.

In that connection, let me say this Bill does go very far forward in some aspects. It would be inappropriate to discuss those on the Second Stage but on the Committee Stage we shall have a full and detailed debate on all the sections of it from which we hope will come changes recommended to the Minister not only from his own side and from his Department but from this side. This is a measure where a degree of non-political action could help and where the pooling of knowledge and advice from all sides, as happened with other Bills in the last few years, could result in a better Act at the end of its passage through this House and through the Seanad. I feel sure the Minister will look at the matter in that light and I can assure him that not only will he get every co-operation but that there will be a good deal of hard work in an endeavour to improve a measure which goes forward to a certain extent but which should also, in my view, take steps in the direction I have indicated and which it does not seem to do.

Mr. McLaughlin

We on this side of the House are most anxious to see the great majority of small farmers getting a transfer or an extension to their present holding. In part of my constituency, Leitrim, there are 8,710 uneconomic holdings. I cannot give the figures for Sligo but I know there are very many uneconomic holdings there, too. Due to that fact and that fact alone there are whole families leaving the homes they occupied for generations and going off to England or America. This is not a craze as has been suggested. It is a case of people being forced off uneconomic holdings because the whole pattern of life has changed and the cost of living has reached such a height that it is not possible for these people to struggle as they did heretofore.

We are told of our people coming back to engage in industry. Only last week I sent a letter to the Minister from a farmer who told me that nine years ago he applied for a transfer from his small uneconomic holding and since then he has been seeking a change. He said in that letter that his two sons were in England and that if he got a farm they would be only too glad to come back and work it with him. These cases come before us very often and bring home to us the fact that if the broad acres that are often lying idle were put to use there would be many more people working on the land instead of in England and the various other places to which they emigrate.

Since I was elected, the two big problems that have come before me most often are land and unemployment. If the land problem were properly tackled, it would solve the unemployment problem because in the constituency which I represent, the people who are always making an approach for employment, particularly in the winter months, are the people who find themselves living on those uneconomic holdings. If they got this employment, they would be able to hold on a little longer in the hope that something would turn up. At least 50 acres of the type of land in Sligo-Leitrim would be necessary to make a livelihood for a family there.

We have been told by the Minister that the Land Commission hold 4,818 acres for division in Westmeath, that they have been in possession of 7,843 acres in Meath since 1957 and that they have 2,578 acres in Kildare. We agree that would not provide enough land for all those hungry for it, but it would ease the position appreciably if it were divided. When so many approach me personally, I realise the enormity of the problem when I multiply that number by the number of Deputies who have been similarly approached. Yet there are some thousands of acres of land lying idle in the various counties. In my county a holding of more than 300 acres has been let at top rent during the past ten or 15 years, while there are so many neighbouring farmers clamouring to have those broad acres divided.

I would respectfully urge on the Minister the need for speeding this division up. It is true to say this cannot be done overnight, but I feel a lot more could be done to expedite land division, and if this Bill serves to do that alone, it will be doubly welcome. If more people had more economic holdings, we would have in agriculture a thriving industry with resultant benefits to all.

Instead, we have young men, tired of waiting, leaving the country. They are young men who, under the present system, have not got a hope of being allocated land. We have now come to know them as the landless men. I attended a meeting the other night and even in that small gathering there were four or five of those young people, for all of whom I could vouch as potentially good farmers. If they were given land, they would certainly make the best of it. Many of them in fact are setting land but because it is far away from the labourers' cottages in which they and their families are living, they can raise only dry stock on it and therefore have to buy the milk and the other farm produce which they could well be producing on their own farms.

The upshot of all this is that in my constituency the countryside is becoming more depopulated every day, more houses are being locked up, more of our young people who could very well be making comfortable livelihoods at home are getting the boat for England. To give an example of how beneficial it would be to have large tracts of land acquired and divided, only last night I was speaking to a man from Carrick-on-Shannon who told me that the division of the Rockingham estate meant that 12 families were given holdings of up to 60 acres each and that it also enabled surrounding uneconomic holdings to be extended. That meant that not only were 12 families who would otherwise have emigrated been settled at home, but that many other farmers who had been struggling for years on uneconomic holdings can now make comfortable livings.

There was a suggestion that many migrants have been unsuccessful when placed on holdings away from home. There are failures in every sphere, and I submit that the proportion of failures among migrants is no higher than in other fields. Of course, as Deputy Donegan pointed out, the extension of advisory services in the education of farmers and their families would eliminate many of the failures in future, and the Minister should see to it that there is the fullest co-operation possible between the public bodies concerned to ensure that better advisory services are available generally.

A question I often ask myself is if it is possible in 1963 for somebody to walk in and say to a farmer: "You are too old; you are not working the farm satisfactorily. We will give it to somebody else and give you an allowance for it." Coming from a rural area, I know the small farmer is as proud of his little bit of land as are the bigger men on their broad acres. The power to take their land from such men constitutes a disruption of their pattern of life. It would be a sad day when the Land Commission would get such powers. Personally, I do not think they would use such powers. I think, also, that the Minister would find himself in a very awkward position if he sought to exercise these powers.

It would be all very well to invoke such powers in the cases of persons who have spent all their lives in America or England and who have nobody to take over from them when they die, but I should like to point out to the Minister that this might be applied to people forced, through a stroke of bad luck with their stock or some other difficulty, to go abroad. Those people will certainly come back. The cases I mentioned earlier of farmers sons—they will come back. I occasionally have letters from other people in England who are only too anxious to get back when the opportunity arises. It would be a very serious matter to interfere with the rights of those people.

When this Bill was first mentioned about 12 months ago, we Deputies had many people coming to us to inquire what would be the outcome. These were people who had relatives abroad. Those people should be protected and also those who for years have been asking for a transfer. I hope the thousands of acres that are being set at top prices by the Land Commission will be given to people who are hungry for land. I say: the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland.

Mr. Gilhawley

We all agree that we want the maximum number of Irish families living on the land of Ireland. It is difficult for anybody to speak on the land question, as I see it in my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim, without also having regard to agriculture because without land you cannot have agriculture. That brings in another Department as it embraces the question of drainage into which I do not propose to go. I merely mention this because in my contribution on agriculture, I made a suggestion about our special problems and the manner in which I thought they should be handled.

There are 17,000 holdings in my constituency and of those, 13,000 are under £20 valuation and therefore uneconomic. Various speakers here went back to the days of the Land League and Michael Davitt. In those days also we had a Dillon very interested in the land problem in the west. He did a tremendous amount of work and his name has been remembered and will always be remembered as "Honest John" Dillon for his work on behalf of the smallholders of the west.

I welcome this Bill or any Bill which tends to improve the situation of the smallholders in the west. Perhaps it is a happy circumstance that the Minister introducing this Bill is himself a west of Ireland man. There may be shortcomings in the Bill but it is a step in the right direction and I heartily congratulate the Minister on it. So far as its implementation is concerned, it will have my full support. Before it is finalised, I am sure the Minister will accept amendments, if necessary. This is an important contribution towards the relief of congestion in the west which is a very serious problem and one that will not be solved overnight.

My first reaction to the Bill was that the Minister had my sympathy because the problem is so great that it will be very difficult to solve even given time. I doubt if it will be solved in the next 20 years. I believe the Minister will make the Bill work; I know he will do his best and I hope that we shall give him every facility to do so.

Probably the first snag that arises is that the land is not there to divide. If we want to have 40-45 acre farms in the west, we know you must get people out one way or another because the land is not there. The only solution I see is migration. The number of acres in the midlands in the hands of the Land Commission—15,000, I think—has been mentioned. That would solve a problem for 200 or 300 families, but I hope I do not drop a bombshell on my countymen in Sligo when I say that I have discovered, by question and answer here, that in spite of the fact that Sligo is in the congested areas for all purposes and all Departments, it is not, and never was considered to be in the congested areas from the point of view of migration through the Land Commission. We had one migration in the past six or seven years and that man was actually across the border in Mayo. He had some land in Sligo and consequently he was regarded as a Sligoman. I ask the Minister to look into this point and to ensure that Sligo will be regarded by the Land Commission as a congested county in respect of migration.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, December 4th, 1963.