I am sure the Minister and his officials must have felt pleased with themselves when they left here last Thursday having heard Deputy L'Estrange, as Fine Gael spokesman for Lands, compliment them on the work of the past year. Deputy Tully also complimented the Minister and the officials. I should like to be associated with that and also compliment the Minister on being courageous in dealing with this problem of land which is such an emotional one for Irish people. Down the years the debate on the Department of Lands, particularly as far as rural Deputies are concerned, has always been an occasion for attacking the Land Commission, the Minister and the Government. No matter what the Land Commission, the Minister or the Government could do by legislation or otherwise they could not satisfy the land hunger of rural Ireland. This is principally due to the fact that there is not sufficient land available for those requiring it, the smallholders and the people who, if they had land, would make excellent farmers.
In the past few years there has been a big change in land acquisition largely because the big estates, or most of them, have been acquired and the Land Commission now have to go into the open market for smaller holdings of 60, 100 or 200 acres and compete with farmers who are possibly trying to build up big estates. While land bonds as a means of payment for large estates may have been acceptable in years gone by I am sure the Minister, as a legal man, is aware of the complaints passed on to us by auctioneers and solicitors from people who are selling farms about the land bond problems they have. I cannot understand why we cannot have a change in this. I know that the Minister is now buying more land for cash but I cannot understand why we cannot use capital moneys—similar to those used for housing and schools—in buying land, rather than land bonds. Every speaker in this debate and everybody who has spoken in past years has been critical of land bonds which are not an acceptable means of paying for land. This is one reason why even auctioneers—although under the latest Land Act they will get commission on sales from the Land Commission—are not disposed to sell land to the Land Commission who so badly need it.
In the past few days there was comment on the section of the Land Act under which the Land Commission buy land from old people paying them a certain amount in cash and giving them a pension. As the Minister said, 33 applicants have availed of this scheme resulting in 1,672 acres being acquired by the Land Commission. When the scheme was first introduced in the 1965 Land Act it was acclaimed by farmers, farmers' organisations and by the public as one way not only of getting more land but also of making sure that land which was available and which was non-productive would be used for the relief of congestion. Some 33 people have sold their farms and accepted these pensions but there are many reasons, apart from those mentioned previously, why people did not avail of this scheme. One is illustrated by the case of the old bachelor living on a farm who has a nephew or niece waiting for him to die to take over the farm. Now, with the introduction of this provision, such a nephew or niece is more interested in the bachelor or spinster farmer. Even though only 33 people have availed of the scheme, a great deal more land has become more productive because the relatives of the old people are interested in it.
The Minister referred to the self migration scheme for congested areas. He said:
I shall arrange that the scheme be examined with a view to improving its attractiveness.
I am glad he said that. Coming as I do from an area that is designated as non-congested but an area in which many people may be surprised to know we have congestion so far as smallholders are concerned, I welcome this. When reviewing this scheme I ask the Minister to consider allowing this section to apply to the whole of the State. I am thinking of the small farmer with 25 or 35 acres who sees a viable farm of 70 or 80 acres adjacent to him being sold. He has no capital and cannot obtain capital from the ACC, the Land Commission or from a bank to buy the farm. I should like the Minister to allow such farmers to avail of the scheme outlined in the 1965 Act under which they could go to the Land Commission saying they wanted to buy such a farm and offer their own farm for the relief of congestion in the area. You could have three or four small farmers in the 25-30-acre class who might be interested in buying the 80-acre farm.
Someone may suggest that, if the Land Commission make money available to a small farmer to buy an 80-acre farm close to him, the price of land will be increased. I can see no reason, if there are three applicants, why the officials of the Land Commission could not go down, as they do now in the case of migration, and say: "Right. We select candidate B. He is the man we recommend to the Land Commission to buy this farm." They would then estimate the market value of the farm and give this small farmer the opportunity of having a viable holding. In turn, of course, this would also create further viable holdings because the 35 acres he had handed over to the Land Commission could be used to bring up the size of the holdings of the other small farmers.
The Minister said he will have a look at this section of the Act. Will he consider extending it to other parts of the country? We are on the threshold of entry to the EEC. We hear Mansholt and many other people talking about the small farmer under EEC conditions. I do not know what the Mansholt Plan is. I am not saying anything against Mr. Mansholt who is a very able parliamentarian, who was a very able Minister for Agriculture and who is, I think, a very able Commissioner. So far he has produced about seven or eight plans but to my knowledge none of them has yet been adopted by the EEC Commissioners or by the Council of Ministers. We still have to wait for a definite decision to be made in Europe as to what a viable holding is.
A viable holding in modern terms must be larger than the one now defined in the Land Commission regulations, that is, 40 to 45 acres of good land or more if the land is of varied quality. I think it was Deputy L'Estrange who referred to regional areas. We have divisional areas in the Land Commission. We have one in the south-east with its headquarters in Carlow. I presume there is one in Galway and others elsewhere. I can never understand why regard was not had in the Land Act to the fact that in different parts of the country there are different types of farming. In the Midlands there is mixed farming. People are in beef, in milk and in tillage. This type of farmer cannot rotate his crops on a small holding. Take beet for example. You cannot grow beet in the same field for a period of five years due to eelworm or some other disease which attacks beet from time to time. Therefore a farmer who, according to the Land Commission, has a viable holding of 45 acres and who is growing eight acres of beet cannot have proper rotation without taking conacre, or hiring land as it is sometimes called.
From my experience as a rural Deputy, I think that the Land Commission plan for a viable farm of 45 acres of good land, or more if the land is of varied quality, is outdated and outmoded. While a certain standard of living was accepted by farmers 40 to 45 years ago, today a farmer would require 100 acres of land of varied qualities, or 80 to 90 acres of good land, to have the standard of living which the Land Commission, the Minister and every Member of this House would like him to have. The most recent figures I have suggest that a viable holding in Sweden is considered to be somewhere in the region of 130 acres. We should be thinking of that figure in any future creation of holdings by the Land Commission.
Coming to the question of land division, more and more we hear people saying: "So-and-So got land but So-and-So should have got it." We all know, as I said earlier, that one of the problems is that we have too many eligible applicants for the amount of land we have. No two cases of land division are the same because no two farms are the same size, and no two areas have the same set-up so far as the size of farms and the number of suitable applicants are concerned. The Land Commission's scheme is the best scheme. If some people who criticise the scheme adversely were asked to do so they could not prepare a better one. The first category of people who must be compensated in some way are workers who become redundant on the farm. People who are suitable, who have stock and capital, who are married and have a family and who would make suitable farmers, are provided with a viable holding.
The second category is the uneconomic holder living within one mile of the estate. There are many other categories of people who would probably make excellent farmers, such as people who hire land all the year round and people with four or five acres of land who make a living from the land. If they are to get land, the uneconomic holder and the man who has been declared redundant cannot get it. This will cause more problems in the future because the estates which will be available for division in the future will not be anything like the estates which were available ten, 15 or 20 years ago. When Deputy L'Estrange was speaking last Thursday he mentioned something about a double annunity. I do not know what he was referring to.