When we broke off discussion on this matter, I was listing a number of reasons why we in Fine Gael put down this amendment and why we considered that the Government proposals, as originally introduced, were utterly unsuited to Irish conditions. I mentioned a number of them. I think I was mentioning, when we broke off, that one of our reasons was that we believed that the proposals as drafted were bound to give rise to considerable litigation, family dissension and unpleasantness of that kind.
So far as the question of unnecessary litigation is concerned, I think it is fair to say that I believe the amendments which the present Minister for Justice proposes to introduce will obviate it to a large extent. In any event, it is fair to say that the same objections on that particular ground to the original proposals do not lie at least as strongly against the modified proposals which the Minister proposes to ask the House to adopt.
One of the main grounds why we felt the original proposals would be quite unsuited to conditions in this country was the provision which was implicit in the original proposals that a testator could not leave his entire estate to his wife, if he chose to do so. I think it was clear to anyone who had any kind of knowledge of the ordinary run of wills, certainly in the city of Dublin and I think the same would be true of other large urban centres, that what would be regarded as the normal will of, for want of a better expression, the middle income bracket was the will leaving everything to the wife. That also is being remedied in the Minister's proposals. To that extent, the objection which we had to the original proposals does not exist to the proposals which the Minister now puts before us.
On the other side of the coin, so far as rural areas are concerned, the Minister will probably agree with me that a perfectly normal average type of will in rural areas in this country is the will of a small farmer who decides to leave the bulk of his estate, which is the farm, to a particular son—it might be the eldest son or it might be one of the younger sons who has shown a particular aptitude for farming or because possibly the eldest son has gone on for one of the professions, the priesthood or into a training college to become a teacher. In any event, I think the Minister will agree that it is quite a usual, normal and average type of will to find in rural areas in this country that the farmer will leave his farm as a unit to a particular son and probably make provision for his wife, if she should survive him, either that she will have some share in it or certainly that she will have, as a minimum, a right of residence and support on the farm. That, as I say, in our circumstances is a normal will and, I believe, a perfectly proper will.
The Minister has not remedied that situation in his proposed amendments. All he has done is this: he says that you cannot leave it by will but that you may do it by deed, provided you get the consent of the spouse. I think that provision certainly does not meet the objections which have been put up to the original proposals—not, let me say, primarily by lawyers who seem to be a bugbear of the former Minister for Justice but by other responsible organisations and individuals, such as, for example, the National Farmers Association.