Land Bill, 1963—Committee Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That section 27 stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Dillon

This section raises two very fundamental matters. I have said at an earlier stage of our discussion that the great danger of this Bill is that it contains some very useful provisions but that concealed behind those useful provisions, there are some extremely dangerous ones. One of the most malignant of the proposals in this Land Bill is contained in this section and it falls into two parts: one, the new and unprecedented power which the Minister for Lands seeks to acquire, to direct himself the inspection of land for the purpose of acquisition; and two, flowing from that power, the consequence of the Secretary of the Department of Lands for the time being being himself a Land Commissioner.

I want to make this quite clear—it is a matter of some delicacy to handle with propriety—that the present Secretary of the Department of Lands is an outstanding public servant whom we on this side of the House consider would be a most suitable person among many others to be appointed a Land Commissioner. It is important that that should be made manifest in the very opening stages of discussion of the principle here involved. But for section 27 we would be prepared to argue the appropriateness of the Secretary of the Department of Lands for the time being being also himself a Land Commissioner, but if the powers of section 27 were to be vested in the Minister as head of the Department, we would put it to the House, and I do not think it could be argued against us, that it is fantastic to suggest that justice could not only be done but be seen to be done.

If you had a situation in which the Minister for Lands calls in the Secretary of the Department and says to him: "Tell the senior inspector in a certain area to inspect certain land with a view to acquisition," the Secretary acting as he is constitutionally bound to act under the direction of the Minister, instructs the senior inspector of the Department to go and inspect lands with a view to acquisition. The person whose lands are inspected on the instruction of the Secretary of the Department of Lands appeals against the propriety of the acquisition of his lands to the Land Commission, and seated in the Land Commission when he goes before them to make his case is the very man who has sent the inspector to inspect his lands for acquisition. How can anyone suggest that justice will not only be done but be seen to be done if a man labouring under a deep sense of grievance at the prospect of his land being compulsorily acquired by the Department finds that one of the judges in his case is the man who set the process of acquisition in motion?

Yesterday Deputy Corry intervened in the debate and I think Deputy Corry has stated the case most eloquently against section 27. No one could have done it more dramatically. He described how, in his own constituency, feeling that a certain farm should be acquired, he went out by night and he manoeuvred his car so that he threw the lights of it on the farm, lest the proprietor should be in any doubt that there was a vigilant eye upon him, and he scanned the farm under the light of his headlamps. The neighbours all round could see the car turning and Deputy Corry scanning the land. He said he turned his car then and he drove to Dublin, went in to the Minister, and said: "Take that man's land" and, within three days, he says the farm was taken.

Now, I allow for the picturesque in Deputy Corry's description of his own prowess as an ardent servant of those who vote for him and the scourge of those who vote against him, but does the House want to perpetuate the picture? Whereas heretofore there stood between Deputy Corry and his constituents at least the Land Commission, consisting of quasi-judicial persons holding their office by quasi-judicial tenure, now the situation is to arrive that, when Deputy Corry goes out and casts the light of his headlamps on his neighbour's farm, he can drive to Dublin, not to say to the Minister: "This case ought to be referred to the Land Commission for consideration as to whether the farm should be inspected for acquisition" but, rather, to say: "Michael, will you put a blister on this fellow? Send in the inspectors, in any case, to put the heart across him." Do we want that? Does Deputy Corry, or any member of the Fianna Fáil Party, think it would be a desirable thing, if Fine Gael were the Government of this country, that a member of the Fine Gael Party should have the right to go to the political head of the Department of Lands and ask him to send inspectors in on his neighbour's land?

Now, what I apprehend is that a great many people do not understand, or do not realise, the radical nature of this departure because relatively few people are familiar with the whole atmosphere that surrounds land settlement in Ireland. There is, however, powerful evidence in existence in support of preserving the present situation. The first Land Acquisition Act was passed in 1885 under a British Administration. Since 1885 to date there has been a succession of Land Acts. They are legion. There is the Ashbourne Act; there is the Wyndham Act; there is the Hogan Act of 1923 which transferred all the tenanted land to the Land Commission. There is the Birrell Act. There is a whole succession of Acts passed by Fianna Fáil, two or three passed by the inter-Party Government, and one or two since passed again by Fianna Fáil. In all the Acts that have been passed, time and again, individual Deputies have made the case that we could expedite the procedure of acquisition if the Minister had certain powers. Time and again Deputies on both sides have said that it was not proper, to their way of thinking, that you could not raise in Dáil Éireann the question of the acquisition of an individual farm and require the Minister to explain the reasons for its acquisition or inspection. British Ministers, Cumann na nGaedheal Ministers, Fianna Fáil Ministers, Clann na Talmhan Ministers, Fine Gael Ministers and, again, Fianna Fáil Ministers have all said, for 40 years, that with the intimate knowledge of the whole land code, and the problem it involves in the social pattern of the life of the small farmer, it was undesirable that the political head of the Department should have such a power.

It has never been argued before in this country, and anybody who has any understanding of the whole history of this business must realise how utterly damnable is the suggestion, that we should put into the hands of the political head of the Department the power to inspect or the power to acquire. I know perfectly well that the Minister for Lands will intervene most energetically to say: "I have never asked for the power to acquire. I do not want the power to acquire. That will be left in the hands of the Land Commission. All I am trying to do it to streamline the whole proceedings." I can see at once that the Minister for Lands is as familiar with the whole background and history of this business as I am and he knows, just as well as I do, what the inspection of a holding by a Land Commission inspector means to a farmer in rural Ireland. It means the threat of the prospect of compulsory acquisition. Remember, there is a profound difference in the whole machinery of compulsory acquisition being set in motion since Deputy Blowick's Land Act. There were two Acts, one which provided the Land Commission must pay the market price and another authorising the Land Commission to purchase land at public auction, or were they both in the same Bill?

Mr. Moran

Yes, 1950.

Mr. Dillon

Both powers were in the same Bill. The Land Commission have power now to go to an auction and buy a holding for cash and the Land Commission are also required to pay the full market price. If a man puts his holding in the hands of an auctioneer and if the Land Commission inspector goes to that auctioneer and tells his client the Land Commission are interested and, if they offer him a good price and he should take it, in 95 per cent of cases he sells that land to the Land Commission at the market price. There used to be a feeling that, if you took your money in land bonds, you lost some money on the realisation of those bonds. It has long been the practice now to ensure that these bonds carry the current rate of interest and I imagine land bonds today are selling at par or at a premium.

If a man is willing to part with his land the machinery is there to bring him into contact with the Land Commission and make it easier for him to sell his land to the Land Commission. From the point of view of the majority selling holdings in congested areas, if they sell to the Land Commission, they will be selling with the goodwill of all their neighbours. But, if a farmer puts his holding up to auction and sells it to one individual, he will do so to the indignation of all his other neighbours and he will earn 20, 30, or 40 enemies for the one man he obliges by selling the holding to him. All the machinery is there for a man who wants to get rid of his holding to the Land Commission.

When we talk about inspection with a view to acquisition of the individual case we are talking about the man who does not want to sell. Now, we all recognise that the whole land code is based on the assumption that a situation can arise in which the public good conflicts with the private individual's strong personal predilection and the whole of the land code says that strong personal predilection must be protected up to a point. But if the user of the land is grossly unsuitable, if the man is obviously not using the land as a farmer would use it, but perennially setting it, and if there are a whole number of small congests living around him in urgent need of enlargement of their holdings, then it is legitimate for the Land Commission to go in and if need be compulsorily acquire the land for distribution among his neighbours. We recognise, however, that there are all important fundamental rights involved here and, therefore, it is most essential in cases of this kind that not only will justice be done but that it will be seen to be done and we have provided that if after the Land Commission have weighed up the matter in a court, which will go down to the district where the land is situated and sit in the very area and perhaps itself go out and look at the situation, and if they are taking the decision that the land should be acquired and fix the price then the tenant still has the right to go to a judge of the High Court to argue as to the justice of the price. We all know that not infrequently when the appeal is made the judge fixes a higher price than the Land Commission thought appropriate and sometimes a price that the Land Commission is not prepared to pay and as a result the Land Commission withdraw from the acquisition proceedings and the man is left in undisturbed possession of his land.

I do not deny that in certain very rare and isolated cases that may mean that possibly what would appear to the bulk of us an unreasonable solicitude for the individual rights of the smallholder has been manifested by the Land Commission court. I do not deny on very rare occasions one gets a case where most men would have said that it would have been wiser to go on with the acquisition of the land than leave the land in the hands of the person who objected, but I rejoice in that just as I believe in the jury system in criminal trials because I believe it is better that many guilty men should go free rather than that one innocent man should be convicted. So I believe the whole principle of security of tenure is far better maintained even if it means the rare and exceptional case in which the Land Commission have bent backwards to respect the security of tenure of the individual and have gone perhaps rather further than the average reasonable man would go to see he remains undisturbed in his fixity of tenure, so that all might be reassured in the country that fixity of tenure was a fundamental principle to which all of us, no matter to what political Party we belong, still subscribe.

The great danger if you start cutting corners in this matter, if you start seeking expedition, efficiency and rapidity, is that you purchase it at too high a price. I put it to you, a Cheann Comhairle, that it has been truly said that Parliamentary democracy is the most inefficient system of Government in the world, except all the other systems. Let us come to the fundamental question. What is the purpose of Government? The purpose of Government is to maintain individual liberty in an ordered society. There are a dozen other systems of Government which will get things done quicker and more expeditiously than Parliamentary democracy but at the price of destroying individual liberty. So, it has been truly said that this system is the worst system, except all the others, because our system preserves what is vital.

I want to put it to the House that we in Ireland have evolved a system under the land code which has worked because it has served the public good while preserving the fundamental principle of fixity of tenure. I know it is slow. I know it can often appear devious and tedious. I know from my experience as a Deputy for Donegal and Monaghan how impatient my constituents can become at what appears to them the endless machinations of the Land Commission before they acquire and even more so before they will divide. Time and time again I have taken up with the Land Commission this question of the slowness of acquisition, the slowness to divide and time and time again I have had to go back to my constituents and say: "I think the Land Commission are right. It seems as clear as crystal to you that such and such a farm should be acquired but the Land Commission have looked into this case which is that of a widow woman with a boy of 17 who is attending the Agriculture College. She says that if they will wait until he comes out in two years then she can run the farm but at present she has to set the land for the boy's education and all the other children are too young and she is entitled to a couple of years to demonstrate whether she is going to do that or not." I have said that I thought the Land Commission was right in refusing to proceed.

I have had cases, too, where the Land Commission appeared to be setting land they had bought for year after year and I have said: "Are you never going to divide this land? The people are in a state of uproar when they see people taking Land Commission land on conacre." And they have replied: "Here is the situation. This is all part of the plan for division and for settling a whole area. Until we get another 20 or 30 acres we cannot do the job and if we proceed with a scheme now without that additional land having been acquired the whole scheme will be unsatisfactory and this whole place will be in turmoil for the next three or four generations." I have told my constituents: "I know how exasperating this is, but they are right." Why are they right? Because you will find in the Land Commission men who have devoted their whole lives to this question. I am not pretending that everybody in the Land Commission is an omniscient angel but taking them by and large they consist of a body of knowledge, a body of experience and a body of skill unrivalled in any part of the world.

Let us not forget that our procedure for the settlement of the land question is the admiration of every country in the world Ask them in Germany, or ask in the various continental countries what they think of the work of the Irish Land Commission. They will tell you that all they now know about the resettlement of land they have learned from the long experience of the Irish Land Commission. That is something we ought to be proud of, but we are crossing Rubicons if we make this fundamental change. Do not be under any illusions: this is a fundamental change.

Let us revert for a moment to the picture drawn by Deputy Corry himself. He goes out at night and throws his headlamps on his neighbours land. He makes up his mind that it ought to be acquired. At present he may swagger about his constituency and say: "I will soon fix that", but anyone else in that constituency, to whom that boast is repeated, can reply: "Do not bother about Martin. He talks that way, but he is harmless. He will make a hullabaloo, but when he gets to Dublin—smack, he runs right into the Land Commission, and they do not give a damn for Martin in the Land Commission. His representations are listened to but any other Deputy's representations are listened to just the same. The case will be judged on its merits. If it is right, proceedings will be initiated, and, if it is wrong, they will tell him to take a running jump at himself. Then he will be roaring and bawling in Dáil Éireann, dancing the can-can and saying the civil servants should not be superior to the elected representatives of the people, but nobody will pay the least heed to him."

But suppose we pass this section, you cannot say that any more. I cannot reassure people concerning their fixity of tenure. I am obliged to say: "I do not know. Deputy Paddy Smith has just resigned from the Government. They are very shaky. It is notorious there is a lot of confusion and quarrelling going on within the Government. They would be glad to see the last of Martin"—I mean no disrespect to Deputy Corry when I speak of him as "Martin" because he is spoken of that way in his own constituency—"but if he got tough and said that, unless this land is taken, he would resign, this is a time when they are very shaky and they would not like that." It might be that he could blackmail the Minister at least into making the gesture of directing a senior inspector to inspect the land.

The senior inspector goes to inspect the land and the matter comes before the Land Commission. Two Commissioners go down and hold a court in the immediate vicinity of that holding. The farmer goes in with his solicitor and counsel to make the case that the land should not be acquired. Who is sitting on the Land Commission Court? The Secretary of the Department of Lands. Who sent the inspector to inspect the lands? One of the men sitting on the Bench. What am I to say to the small farmer who comes to me and says: "Have we not got fixity of tenure under our own Government?" I ask any fair-minded Deputy, could I honestly reply: "Yes, we still have"? I could not.

I suggest to the House that, if you pass this section in its present form and in the context of the other section dealing with the appointment of the Secretary of the Department to the Land Commission, you are asking the people in rural Ireland to accept an appeal from the prosecution to the prosecution. I put it to you that the moment you place in the hands of the political head of the Department of Lands the power to send a senior inspector in to inspect lands for the purpose of acquisition—I want to give you the most solemn possible warning of this—you are going to invent the most pestilential instrument of political blackmail ever forged in the history of this country. You are going to put into the hands of every Deputy the temptation to go out and claim he has the power to get his neighbour's lands inspected.

I put it to Dáil Éireann that very often, inadvertently, a Legislature does something without full realisation of the impact of what they do. Pass this section, and into the hands of the unscrupulous Deputy there is going to be put an instrument of vicious political blackmail. Do not stop there. Take Deputies trying to do their best, who are, in my opinion, and I speak from some experience, the vast majority of Deputies. The Deputy trying to do his work honestly in his constituency is going to be exposed to intolerable pressure. He is going to be arraigned by an incensed group of land-hungry people in his constituency and challenged: "What is the measure of your influence with your own Government? We are putting it to you that that man's land ought to be inspected. You cannot any longer say the best you can do is to forward our recommendation to the Land Commission for their judicial determination as to whether it should be inspected or not. You are now in a position to go to the Minister for Lands of your own Party and demand that it be done, and we are going to judge of your value as a TD representing us by whether your influence with the Minister is sufficient to get it done or not. If he throws you out, it means he does not give a damn about you. The moment you admit we have carried conviction to your mind that that is our feeling, then it should follow, as day follows night, that it will be done. Or else, the case is clear. You are a political has-been and the sooner we get rid of you the better, because the Minister does not give a damn for you."

Do Deputies on any side of the House want to create that position? I ask Deputies on all sides of the House, whose neighbours are involved in this matter: do any of us want to create such a situation as I describe? I certainly do not. I do not believe any level-headed, calm or prudent Deputy on any side of the House disagrees with me. I know that some of the most experienced and rational members of the Fianna Fáil Party agree with me.

I am utterly unable to understand what has persuaded the Minister to suggest this change. The best case he has made for it so far is that it will expedite the process of land acquisition. I do not believe a word of it. Theoretically recommendations have to come up from the court, be considered by the Land Commission and be returned with their approbation to rural Ireland. You may save a week or sometimes less by empowering the local senior inspector to direct the inspection, but you are doing that at the price of making fixity of tenure the servant of political expediency in rural Ireland. Unless you are all mad, unless the Members of this House have lost their senses, they will not do this thing.

Look back on the whole long saga started as far back as 1870. Think of the new departure, of the land war and the Land League. Think of the great panoply of successive Land Acts that have contributed collectively to the solution of the land problem in Ireland. Down through that period of stress and strain, violence and even bloodshed, we here in Ireland have always maintained, against the immense forces arrayed against us by the landlords with power, wealth and an alien Government to sustain them, that fixity of tenure was the sheet-anchor of rural Ireland.

Is it credible that, having sustained that thesis for close on a century, certainly for 90 years, for no better reason than that we should expedite acquisition proceedings, we are going to put it in jeopardy? Heretofore those of us who have been long in politics, and those of us who are not so experienced, could afford to smile when we heard of Deputy Corry going out with his car by night, throwing his headlights on a neighbour's farm to survey it with a view to acquisition, and could afford to say that that kind of constituency acrobatics was typical of some old warriors, that it did not matter because fixity of tenure was firmly rooted in the judicial status of the Land Commission. I cannot say that any more, and no one else can either.

I fully appreciate and I fully understand that section 27 does not give the Minister power to determine whether land is to be acquired. I fully appreciate and fully understand that the only new power it confers on him is to direct inspection of land for the purpose of determining whether acquisition is desirable, and that the latter question remains a reserved function of the Land Commission, but I was reared in rural Ireland, in the heart of the second most congested area, and I saw the last evicted tenant restored to his holding in east Mayo in December, 1918, after 40 years of struggle. Many other Deputies share my experience.

I know what it means to have your holding illuminated by Deputy Corry's headlights on a Monday night and to have a Land Commission inspector walk your land the following Monday morning. I do not believe there is an honest or experienced Deputy on any side of this House who wants to incorporate in the land laws of this country the principle that Deputy Corry can go out by night and call the attention of the whole surrounding neighbourhood to the fact that he has come to scan his neighbour's holding under the searchlights of his car, and that the Minister for Lands for the time being of his own Party is to be put in the position of having to declare either that Deputy Corry was a fraud or that he was only playacting or alternatively of saying to the Secretary of the Department: "Tell the chief inspector of that area to go and inspect that land."

Love of the land is very deep in this country. I solemnly warn you that if that transaction were repeated in many parts of Ireland, you would raise ghosts the nature of which you ought not to have forgotten. I know what it cost to eliminate violence on the land question in this country. I know the story of the new departure. I know the days when "grabber" was a hated name in Ireland. I know men today who still have tarnished reputations because their grandfathers were grabbers. I know a field today, and every time I pass it, I cannot prevent myself from thinking of the people who own it and recalling that they grabbed it from a tenant farmer. Do not stir those murky depths. Do not forget how hard it was to put an end to moonlighting in this country. Do not forget what the new departure was. It was the struggle of Davitt, Parnell, O'Brien and others to harness violence, to control it and concentrate it in a concerted effort to abolish by law the evils which afflicted the people and drove them to violence and hatred. I ask Deputies to pause.

In the old days the grabber would be seen creeping up to the back door of the rent office and when the agent knew he had a tenant, then came an eviction, and the high hopes amongst the neighbours that he would not be able to set the land were ended when the grabber came creeping in. We all know that when the evicted tenant could not get a holding on an adjoining estate, lest his continued propinquity would keep the agitation alive, he was supposed to go away, whether it was to the workhouse or some distant place, in order that his name might be forgotten so that the hatred of the grabber might die away. It never did die away. It survived and passed to the grabber's children and grandchildren. But the Land Movement substituted the path of legislation and reform for the violence of desperation that had characterised land agitation in this country heretofore. All of us understand that picture.

I beg of this House to reflect for a moment. If Deputy Corry can go out by night and illuminate his neighbour's land for all the world to see, and claim the power to get that land inspected, and that that is the law that we, the elected representatives of the Irish people, have made in our own Parliament, are we not reversing the whole course of history? Are we not inviting that there should be substituted for the due process of law a desperate resort to violence rather than to submit to the grabber's claim?

I know how hard it was to launch the new departure and to substitute the rule of law for the moonlighter and the cattle hocker and the gun fired in through the kitchen window. Do not raise those ghosts again. They were once successfully laid by great men. Walk warily lest you find that, in this generation, there will not be men of equal stature to lay those ghosts again if we should call them from their graves.

Mr. Moran

After all these histrionics, I want the House to get back to the realities of Section 27 and what it proposes to do. I think that Deputy Dillon, by repeating these misrepresentations of this section, expects to terrify the people outside this House: he certainly will not terrify those inside the House.

I am quite sure that Deputy Dillon must know from his experience that the picture he has built up here in connection with the section is completely incorrect and completely untrue. Deputy Dillon must know that prior to this law, since the foundation of this State, it was the Commissioners who authorised the inspectors to go out to inspect the land in respect of which they themselves sat to decide whether to take or not to take. He paints the picture now that because the Secretary of the Department, Commissioner O'Brien, will be sitting on that court there is something completely immoral, something completely wrong, in the Commissioner authorising somebody to go in to make an inspection and then sitting in judgment on that particular case.

Deputy Dillon must know that this section provides for the simple process of the senior inspector's signing a form authorising an ordinary inspector of the Land Commission to make the usual report, upon which the Commissioners must decide whether or not the land should be taken. It is not the Minister who will decide: let me re-emphasise that, no matter what smokescreen may be raised here. The Commissioners must decide and they must decide on the report of the inspector in the same way as they have decided on the reports of their inspectors since the foundation of the State.

Until the year 1947 and the decision in the Dunleavy case in the Supreme Court, with which I was associated, the Commissioners operated what I described then as a Star Chamber procedure. In those days, the Commissioners signed this form—called the Section 40 Notice—and the inspector went in and reported to the Commissioners behind closed doors and they read the whole file. The owner was not notified of what was in the file. The owner did not know in those days what case he would have to meet if he came before the court, if he wanted to resist the Commissioners.

After the decision in the Dunleavy case in 1947, which was followed by the Roscrea case the next year, that procedure was reversed. For the first time, it was laid down that the owner was entitled to hear what the Land Commission inspector had to say. It was after these cases to which I have referred that, for the first time since the foundation of the State, the Land Commission inspector had to go into the witness box to give evidence of what he found on the owner's land and to stand up to cross-examination on those issues. Therefore, instead of this being something new in the form of Commissioners dealing with the case by their own inspectors, and they themselves signing the form, they have been authorising the inspection of those lands since the foundation of the State and have been sitting judicially or quasi-judicially on those cases in the Land Court ever since. Deputy Dillon suggests that there is something extraordinary in the suggestion that Commissioner O'Brien, because he is Secretary of the Land Commission, should be able to sit in a Land Court, having authorised or directed the signing of a form of inspection, completely overlooking the fact that on these forms of inspection by their own inspectors the Commissioners have always decided whether or not to take any particular farm.

Let us just recapitulate what actually happens or how the matter comes to the Land Commission in the first instance. The Commissioners do not live in outer space. They cannot decide any issue as to whether land should or should not be taken without having independent evidence before them as to the necessity for taking the land, as to whether there is congestion, and as to the user of the land, that is, in cases where they are taking lands because of bad user.

Invariably, these files start perhaps by local people going into the local Land Commission office and making the case that Mr. X is in America and that his lands have been let for many years, and so on. That goes from that very junior official to the senior inspector there and from him to the Divisional Inspector. It goes up right along the line and under existing law, it has to go to the Commissioners in Dublin for signature of this preliminary notice—the Section 40 Notice— to enable that junior official to go out to find out whether these allegations are true or otherwise. By the time that happens, in nine cases out of ten the land is gone because Mr. X's relations know that his neighbours have been making representations about the lands. It may well be that the neighbours may or may not be accompanied by the local Deputies. They know that the people around the place have become interested and, of course, the friends immediately get busy and these lands are sold or transferred before the Land Commission get an opportunity of sending their inspector to ascertain whether or not they are suitable for Land Commission purposes.

All that is being asked here is that, instead of this travelling up and down, the Divisional Inspector—and there are only four of them in the country, each of them dealing with several counties—will be authorised to sign this notice enabling the preliminary inspection to be made upon which the Commissioners will make up their minds whether or not to go ahead with the usual proceedings for acquisition. That is simply what is being sought here.

Let me emphasise that the Commissioners, whether a Commissioner happens to be Secretary of the Department or not, have no way of getting an independent report on the suitability of these lands for acquisition except on the report of one of the Land Commission officers, their own inspector. Irrespective of what allegations may be made by neighbours or what representations are made by Deputies, what the Land Commission must do is have their own inspection upon which the Commissioners will make their minds up whether proceedings should be instituted or not for the acquisition of these lands. After the passing of this Bill, it is the Commissioners who still have that power and who will still decide whether any lands should be taken for Land Commission purposes.

Having made that clear and having re-emphasised that, can we not get away from the smokescreen that has been raised about an alleged judge confusing two issues, about a member of the Land Commission court deciding a case that he himself had prejudiced in some way by authorising an inspection notice before the hearing of the case? Every notice for inspection since 1923 was authorised and signed by the very Commissioners who decided the case. They had to sign these notices according to the law passed by this House. How were they to know whether the allegations were right or wrong unless they got the inspector's report? All I am asking the House to do in this section in order to streamline this procedure and eliminate this wasteful delay in having reports in this form sent up to the Commissioners, is to provide that the divisional inspector for the area can authorise that preliminary report.

Let me explain that—I am sure Deputy Dillon knows this very well-the divisional inspector for the area would have seen whatever files there were anyway because they would have to come from the local office, whether in Cork, Mayo or Roscommon, through the senior inspector, the divisional inspector and up to Dublin to the Commissioners for the simple purpose of signing this section 40 notice to enable the preliminary inspection to be made. Invariably the Commissioners have the papers before them; the divisional inspector would have made recommendations to them to have this inspection if he thought it desirable because it is the only way they can get the true picture. This is for the sole purpose of expediting this procedure, to enable that senior officer, the divisional inspector—there are only four of them, the most senior men outside the chief inspector in the whole Land Commission organisation —to be authorised to sign this preliminary notice of inspection.

There has been some talk here about the awful thing it is to interfere in any way with the reserved powers of the Lay Commissioners. I pointed out last night, and it is well to emphasise it and particularly to direct the attention of the Leader of the Opposition to the drafting of this section. It starts off: "For the removal of doubt ..." because there is very considerable doubt at law as to whether this has been in fact a reserved function of the Lay Commissioners, although they are in the practice of signing these notices. I quoted for the House last night the whole of section 12 of the Land Act of 1950 which spells out in detail the reserved functions of the Lay Commissioners and in section 12 (1) from paragraph (a) to the very end, there is not a line to indicate that the signing of these notices is a reserved function of the Lay Commissioners, nor have I been able to trace back through the Land Acts any specific power authorising the Lay Commissioners to serve this particular notice.

I concede that was the practice but I cannot find any legal basis for it and it is for that reason that this section is drafted in this way: "For the removal of doubt...." There are some sections, including a section in the much-vaunted Act of 1950, which would indicate to the contrary. I refer to subsection (2) of section 12 which says:

Any power or duty for the time being vested by law (including this Act) in the Land Commission or the Lay Commissioners may, save in relation to excepted matters, be exercised or performed by—

(a) the Minister, or

(b) any officer of the Minister or the Land Commission for the time being authorised whether specifically or by reference to a class of such officers, in that behalf by the Minister.

Again in subsection (8) of the same section, it is stated:

The following provisions shall have effect in relation to schemes for the rearrangement of lands held in rundale or intermixed plots whether with or without the distribution of other lands to facilitate the said rearrangement:—

(a) no such scheme shall be approved by virtue of subsection

(2) of this section save by an officer;

(b) the Minister shall not authorise pursuant to that subsection an officer to approve any such scheme unless the officer is an officer of the Land Commission and not below the rank of Senior Inspector.

This is to deal with the question of rearrangement schemes by inspectors.

Where—

(a) a power or duty is exercised or performed by virtue of subsection (2) of this section by the Minister or an officer, and

(b) in exercising or performing the power or duty it becomes requisite that any document should be sealed with the common seal of the Land Commission,

the Minister or such officer (as the case may be) may cause the document to be sealed as aforesaid.

Among all the specific powers set out under section 12 (1) giving chapter and verse for the reserved powers of the Lay Commissioners there is no reference to this form of notice being reserved to their exclusive jurisdiction. Indeed, from other subsections I have quoted it might well be read into the law that the Minister has already this power but in this case—and it is for that purpose, let me emphasise, that the section is introduced—it is for the removal of legal doubts.

The reserved functions or powers of the Lay Commissioners that are so very sacrosanct today were not so regarded by Deputy Dillon and his colleagues in 1950 because, under the Act of that year, for the first time since 1923, they took away reserved powers of the Lay Commissioners that had existed since the foundation of the State, including the very important power of dealing with the question of rearrangement schemes for rundale estates. There was no doubt that these powers were the exclusive domain of the Lay Commissioners but the then Government did not think there was anything wrong in removing these powers regarding rearrangement at that time.

Irrespective of whatever smokescreens are being raised here to terrorise the people outside, this is merely a section for the removal of doubt to enable the divisional inspectors of the Land Commission to sign these notices. The section does not enable and will not enable, the political head of the Department of Lands, whoever he may be, to decide whether land may be taken. That is still the reserved function of the Lay Commissioners. No matter how many smokescreens are raised, that is the position and that is still the law.

Mr. Dillon

In intervening here, I emphasised and repeated again and again that I fully understood and wanted all to understand that the question of the acquisition of land is a reserved function. The Minister cannot possibly charge me with seeking to create any fog or smokescreen on the ground of that——

Mr. Carter

It is a mist, not a fog.

Mr. Dillon

I tried to explain—I think, successfully—the great danger inherent in the proposal contained in section 27.

I am grateful to Deputy Carter and Deputy Corry, for they illustrated most eloquently the very point I have sought to make. I agree with Deputy Carter 100 per cent that up to the day when we enact Section 27 the lantern lighted meetings of the Fianna Fáil cumann to divide land or get land inspected in Ireland were pure bunk. I cannot say that when Section 27 comes into law. Will the Minister not agree with me that that is true. Heretofore, he and I were in a position to say, if we were informed a meeting of a political organisation had been held to require the inspection of land or its division, bunk. All they can do is report the facts to the Land Commission where they will be efficiently examined and appropriate steps taken. If Section 27 passes can we ever say that again? It is my submission we cannot. That is the very heart of the matter.

I want to be able to say to Deputy Corry's carrying on exactly what Deputy Carter has said—it was bunk. I want to be able to say the next time I am called down to Monaghan to answer a suggestion that a Fianna Fáil Deputy has been dividing land at a Fianna Fáil cumann meeting that it was bunk. I can never say that again in regard to the inspection of land for acquisition when section 27 passes. Now a Fianna Fáil Deputy will not go to the Land Commissioners but to the Minister and he can say to him: "Well, even if you do not believe the land ought to be acquired, why can you not do me the good turn of sending out an inspector to inspect it? Then if the Land Commission turn it down we can put the blame on the Land Commission but, in the meantime, we will have knocked the roar out of the fellow. That fellow was standing outside the booth running a car and this will give us a chance to put the Minister"——

Mr. Corry

God help you. No one else will.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Dillon

No, but God help the people because so surely as we are in this House that kind of conduct will not be borne in silence. That kind of conduct will not be borne without resorting——

Mr. Corry

You are worse than I thought.

Mr. Carter

Or better.

Mr. Dillon

——to the means which are perhaps the only ones that some people in this country understand. I do not want to see that happening in our time. I am not now pleading that the existing restriction be preserved solely for the control of the Fianna Fáil Party. I am asking that the existing restriction be preserved to control the political head of the Land Commission no matter to what Party he belongs, whether it be the Labour Party, the Fianna Fáil Party, the Clann na Talmhan Party or any other political Party in this House.

The last matter which appears to me the Minister for Lands has wholly failed to understand refers to the case I have sought to make relating to the position of the Secretary of the Department of Lands who is appointed a Land Commissioner. The Minister has pointed out here perfectly rightly that heretofore an Inspection Order No. 40 has been signed on the authority of the Land Commission, before which, subsequently, came the whole question of acquisition procedure. That is true. The new position under this Bill, and it is a very special position and I beg Deputies to understand it, will be that the Secretary of the Department of Lands will have two separate and distinct functions. One of his functions would be that of Land Commissioner. Here he is utterly independent of the Minister and in a quasi-judicial position. But his second position is that of Secretary to the Department of Lands and under the high professional ethics of the public service he is the Minister's faithful servant. Whether he agrees with the Minister or not, his position is he has not only the right but the duty, when the Minister consults him, to differ emphatically from the Minister if he thinks the Minister is wrong. But at the end of the discussion the Minister says a decision has to be made and he makes his decision. Whether the Secretary agrees with the decision or whether he most emphatically dissents from it, his duty is to say: "Very well, Minister; effect will be given to your decision to the best of my ability to ensure its success."

Envisage the situation. The Minister calls in his Secretary one morning and says: "Instruct the divisional inspector or the senior inspector in such and such an area to inspect Pat McAuley's farm." The Secretary says: "That is a most monstrous proposal; that is a well worked farm; the Land Commission have surveyed that whole area many times before; to send an inspector into that man's home will create pandemonium." The Minister asks: "Why?" and the Secretary explains the reason and puts the case very strongly against it, and says: "Whoever put that recommendation to the Minister is a notorious mischief maker and is walking the Minister into seas of sorrow if he goes in there." The Minister says: "I have listened to all that; go and inspect it."

Remember what the Secretary's obligation is. He has argued with the Minister. He has been perfectly open and frank. He has stuck his neck out and has criticised, perhaps, a colleague of the Minister and said that the man is a notorious mischief maker. The Minister says: "Those are my directions: carry them out." Now, Inspection Order No. 40 issued on the Minister's instructions, against the Secretary's advice, and the reports of the inspection come up to the Land Commission but the Land Commissioner sitting to consider the report is the Secretary now in his capacity as Land Commissioner.

We have been challenged here that we would threaten the Minister with our resignations unless certain things were done and we are told that by a man who either left or was kicked out of the Fine Gael Party, became an independent, then crawled back and at present, having wrecked that Party, is looking for another jumping-off ground. Who knows where he will jump next? I do not think the Labour Party would take him. However, that is the kind of gentleman who stands up here and takes three hours of the time of the House talking tripe.

Mr. Tully

I shall be very brief. One of the important things about this section is that it does give the right to members of this House when they ask for a farm to be inspected to ask the Minister at a subsequent date whether it was taken over or not. At the present time the right to do that is not there. That is a very important part of the section. Secondly, as far as Deputy Dillon's reference to land grabbers is concerned, he does not realise that the modern land grabber is the man with more land than he is able to use and more money than he knows what to do with it, who has a craze for possessing more land and buys every bit of land that comes up within 40 miles of where he lives. While I am not in agreement with many provisions in the Bill, if this section prevents this gentleman from continuing his activities it will be very useful.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister pretends there is nothing exceptional about section 27 of this Bill, that it is only meant to be used as a means of getting a pool of land quicker that would in any case be taken by the Commissioners if they had the opportunity and the time to get around to it. It has been shown beyond all doubt that there is a much greater significance in it than this.

All of us on this side of the House are anxious to see the largest possible pool of land being made available for the relief of congestion and for distribution among deserving people but the difference between us on this side of the House and the people on the other side of the House seems to be that we are not prepared to get this pool of land at any price. We believe the people who own land here at the present time have not robbed it and that that ownership entitles them to reasonable treatment. The owners of land in this country have gone through very hard and difficult times. The agricultural policy of this Government has driven many people away from the land and away from the country but I believe that if this section goes through many more people will be driven away. In the hard times many people clung to their farms and their homes simply because they felt they were the owners of those homes and when the worst came to the worst nobody could put them out of those homes.

Here we have a section enabling the Minister to direct inspection. That inspection is a serious thing in the country. It is a serious thing once the Land Commission display an interest at all. All dealings in a farm which is inspected are frozen for a period of 12 months according to this Bill. The very fact that an inspector comes in there does an irreparable amount of harm to that landowner whether the land is subsequently taken away from him or not. He himself feels acquisition is now inevitable, that he is not free to sell to anybody except the Land Commission. He loses interest in his holding and his credit position is ruined. The Minister in dealing with the various sections of this Bill has quoted the National Farmers Association in support of it. He did not quote the National Farmers Association in connection with this section where they say:

We consider that these powers should be reserved to the lay commissioners as heretofore and that the number of commissioners should be restored to six, if necessary.

They have given a great deal of consideration to this Bill and they largely represent the people of rural Ireland, not only the people who at present own land but those also who are anxious to get farms or to increase the size of their holdings. I would say their membership would contain many more people who feel at present they have uneconomic holdings and that they are entitled to additional land, people who really have no land, who are farmers' sons and who are well qualified to make the best use of it, than it does those who are in possession of land at the present and who do not want to lose it. I believe that many of the recommendations of the National Farmers Association represent compromise, because they know it has been the practice with Ministers of the present Government up to now to oppose with all their might the recommendations of rural organisations. The Minister and his supporters are looking for more teeth. There are many people who believe that Fianna Fáil Ministers have already far too many teeth, and they do not hesitate to show them. There are many people I know who speak in whispers because they are afraid of political victimisation. I believe this puts a powerful instrument in the hands of a Fianna Fáil Minister to enable him to victimise anybody who does not appear to be a supporter of him and his Party.

This is a dangerous provision and it is one which should be resisted. It will be resisted by all of us here. It is our duty to inform people outside of the dangers inherent in this section. No one will henceforth feel secure on his land. I believe this is only a beginning. We shall have more of this. We shall have legislation, perhaps next week, or the week after, enabling Ministers to go in and inspect someone's shop or someone's factory and, if they are not satisfed with the way in which these properties are being used, they will promptly introduce legislation enabling them to take the premises over and give them to someone else whom they think will make better use of them. It is time the people woke up to what is happening. As I say, I am sorry the opposition of the rural organisations is not stronger. What they recommend is a compromise because they feel that the most they can expect from the present Government is a compromise. Otherwise, I believe the representations and recommendations would be very much stronger.

Mr. Carter

Deputy Clinton and his colleagues are, of course, put out. They do not like the idea of Fianna Fáil subscribing to the family farm. They do not like the idea of the NFA agreeing tentatively with certain proposals. Deputy Dillon acted the bully here this morning. He often casts himself in the role of the bully when anyone has the temerity to cross him. He turns upon whatever Member objects to his views. First of all, he tries to demolish him by ridicule. When he cannot achieve that, he proceeds to preach a panegyric on the merits of prevarication, on the merits of ambiguity, on the merits of the Fine Gael policy of sidestepping every real issue that faces the country.

I want to show up now some of the sidestepping tactics of Deputy Oliver Flanagan and the Deputies lined up behind him. As I said last night, we are facing a by-election in Galway and the whole Fine Gael effort is directed at the farmers of South Galway, designed to pretend that the Fianna Fáil Party are undermining the foundations of the land of this country. We all know the need for this section. We all subscribe to it. We commend the Minister for having the courage to introduce this provision. If the Minister did not answer for this provision here where else would he do it? This is a democratic assembly and Deputies opposite know very well that the Minister is open to criticism here. They also know that any client who feels aggrieved has the Land Court at his disposal and, not only that, but he has two others as well to protect his property.

The Leader of the main Opposition is obviously pretending and he carries his pretence to the extent of pretending to be frightened by the implications he says are contained in this section. That cuts no ice with those who know the Leader of the main Opposition, who know his tactics, who know his fondness for prevarication. He is pragmatic about the importance of this Bill merely because he knows that the Bill is designed to provide for the family farm. It is because it does that that we so strongly support the section.

We are prepared to take on the Fine Gael Party on this issue here or on the platforms in Galway. We charge the Fine Gael Party with delaying tactics, with a desire to build up a great volume of paper in Merrion Street and with an anxiety to delay every step we propose in order to emancipate the small farmers and provide for them a decent standard of living in their own land. That is what this section is designed to do and that is what the Fine Gael Party does not want it to do. We fought against Deputy Dillon and the Blue Shirts to establish and maintain a democracy here. All down the years we have had to fight on this side of the House to ensure that that democracy will survive. We do that in good faith and in the hope of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion providing a decent standard of living for all our people, including our farmers.

Deputy Dillon cannot stomach naked fact. What is the naked fact in section 27? The Minister for Lands has the moral and physical courage to bring before this House legislation without having a scapegoat. For the first time, a Minister for Lands has no need of a scapegoat in the person of the Chief Executive Officer of his Department.

I do not want to arouse political acrimony in this debate nor do I want to prepare a platform for Galway, but whether Fine Gael like it or not the Fine Gael Party have done just that for us. They have paved the way to make a case for section 27 and, indeed, for the whole Land Bill. As the Minister rightly said, he has the power to delegate to his senior inspectors, of whom there are about four, the power to look up land. What is wrong with that? If we side-step—as Deputy Dillon would not—the paper build-up, the passing of files here and there from country to Dublin and back again, what do we find? We find that those inspectors, from a long knowledge and wide experience, will be able to do the task that the Minister assigns to them. Deputy Dillon bewails the fact that in 40 years this was the first time such a provision was sought in land legislation. Of course, but I should like Deputy Dillon and his colleagues to know that this is the first time the real problem of land division and rearrangement was grappled with. Merely because the Minister has taken the initiative and is prepared, as I said, to defend and maintain his attitude the Fine Gael Party do not like it. They would much prefer a vague attempt being made with a weak Executive and, of course, look out for scapegoats as usual.

One cannot visualise a clean-cut programme for land division under those circumstances. One cannot visualise the Fine Gael Party subscribing to or tackling a clean-cut system of land re-settlement. That, in short, is precisely what is wrong with Fine Gael and why we hear all this shouting across the House and why we see the attempt to make out that Fianna Fáil would like to be cast in the role of another Khrushchev. Deputy Dillon would very much like to be a Khrushchev; he might have the intellectual ability to be, but not the moral or physical courage, but he will accuse us on this side of the House of emulating such characters when we are merely trying to regulate something that Michael Davitt and the men who fought the Land War dreamed of and thought up longing to see the day when there would be viable units in the country and the smallest farmer would at least be able to say: "Well, I have a reasonably economic farm of land."

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Deputies who spoke this morning seem to be directing most of their energies against the Fine Gael Party and criticising the speech made by the Leader of the main Opposition. Deputy Carter made no reference to the section with which we are dealing. He said that he is anxious to see the small farmers getting a decent standard of living and that that is the policy of his Government. In order to give the smallholders a decent standard of living on the land one must first give them security. To have a high standard of living on the land and be overshadowed by the evils of insecurity and instability will not encourage people to remain and work on the land, to respect and love the land. We hear Government speakers endeavouring to present a case in support of section 27, to give the impression they are devoting their energies towards improving the standard of living of people on their holdings whilst at the same time they are depriving them of the security and fixity of tenure they have enjoyed for almost 100 years.

This section has been debated at great length and much sound opposition has been advanced, but the Minister for Lands has given no reason for the section beyond the fact that, when this becomes law, he claims it will speed up and expedite the acquisition and division of land. The Leader of the main Opposition made a very reasonable plea to the Minister this morning. I want to refer to that plea briefly. I am prompted to do so by the allegation of Deputy Carter that we are deliberately obstructing this Bill.

Mr. Carter

Exactly. Hear, hear.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Deputy Carter repeats that allegation, along with applause from himself. This Party have never held up legislation for the benefit of the community. On the contrary, we have always expedited the passage of such legislation. We have stated that there are provisions in this Bill with which we wholeheartedly agree, but the main reason for our opposition to the Bill is the very section we are now discussing.

If Deputy Carter is anxious for a speedy passage of this Bill, could he and his colleagues not ask their own Minister to view this matter with commonsense and intelligence and have the inspection of lands come, not from the Minister, but from the Land Commissioners? What we fear, and what every landowner is shivering in his boots about, is that some future Minister can, at his own whim, reduce the value of land overnight, be it ten or 500 acres.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but I seem to have heard all that on several occasions before. I am sure the Deputy does not wish to repeat himself, but I think it would be almost impossible for him to say anything new on this section. I have heard these arguments repeated over and over again.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Despite our best efforts, we have not succeeded in extracting from the Minister an explanation as to why he is pressing this section. More serious still, there has been no explanation from him as to why the Secretary of his Department should have the right to sit as a Commissioner and decide on the merits or demerits of inspections carried out at his direction.

Mr. Moran

I spoke for half an hour on that.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

The Minister referred to the fact that on the records of the Land Commission was a letter written by Mr. Deegan to the Minister for Lands in October, 1951, prior to Mr. Deegan's retirement. I do not know why the Minister for Lands should today quote a letter written in 1951, which has no bearing whatever on the situation today. Everybody knows Mr. Deegan was Secretary of the Department and a Commissioner many years ago. If section 27 had been enacted in legislation when Mr. Deegan was Secretary of the Department and a Commissioner, what would his views have been? The Minister has endeavoured to paint a picture that Mr. Deegan asserted the proper procedure would be that the Secretary of the Department should be a Commissioner in order to be familiar with the entire workings of the Department of Lands and the Land Commission and that it was necessary in the interests of efficiency and economy and of having the best possible expert advice. But what the Minister did not convey to us was that at that time the Minister for Lands had no right to instruct any officer in his Department to carry out an inspection of any farm in the country.

I prophesy that the Minister is creating a position in which the Civil Service head of his Department will find it intolerable to remain on as a Commissioner. Nobody is more anxious to see this Bill pass than I am. I am very much concerned with the relief of congestion and I realise what a problem it is. If the Minister wants a speedy passage for this Bill, let him admit there is no comparison between the terms of this Bill in 1964 and the period when Mr. Deegan was Secretary of the Department and a Commissioner.

In the past hour the Minister and other speakers have tried to convey that Deputy Dillon in his speech this morning said the present Secretary would be acting on political instructions. Everybody knows that that charge was not made from this side of the House. Anybody familiar with the brilliant manner in which the present Secretary discharges his duties would be far from making an accusation of that kind. Deputy Dillon prefaced his remarks by stating that in this country today there was nobody more highly qualified to occupy the position of Secretary of the Department than the present Secretary.

I want to know from the Minister what will be the position when, for political purposes or otherwise, pressure is brought to bear on him by his Party and he feels that, to comply with the wishes of his Party, an inspection of lands should be carried out, no matter how undesirable this may be and no matter whether the holding is large or small. That will be the situation facing him if this section is passed. Will the Minister carry out the instructions——

Mr. Moran

The Deputy has carried out his instructions. He has succeeded in holding up this Bill for another week. Those were his instructions coming in this morning.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 5 Nov 1964

Land Bill, 1963—Committee Stage (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 5 Nov 1964