Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill, 1935 (Certified Money Bill)—Second Stage.

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

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

This Bill has been the subject of prolonged debate, which has received a great deal of publicity, and I am sure that, meeting as we do at this particular period, the House would not be grateful if I were to detain it by reciting at undue length the circumstances which have made it necessary to introduce a measure of this kind. I shall, however, remind the House that while the Land Purchase (Annuities Fund) Act, 1933, did not state expressly that default in the payment of land annuities should impose an automatic charge on the Guarantee Fund, it was not the intention of the Government nor of the Oireachtas, as we contend, at the time, to relieve the Guarantee Fund of the obligation which had hitherto been imposed upon it by statute to make good any deficiencies in the Purchase Annuities Fund, or any deficiency which there might be in the collection of the land annuities. I stated that it was not the intention of the Oireachtas to relieve the Guarantee Fund of this liability and, in support of that statement, I cannot do better than refer the House to declarations which were made during the discussions, both in the Dáil and in the Seanad, on the Land Act, 1933. When that Bill was introduced in the Dáil by the Minister for Defence, then acting-Minister for Lands, on 28th June, 1933, the Minister, speaking on behalf of the Government, made it clear that one of the provisions of the Bill was designed to ensure that the Guarantee Fund would remain liable in respect of the non-payment of the reduced annuities. Referring the House to Volume 48. column 2387, of the Dáil Reports, I shall quote the Minister's exact words in that regard:—

"As regards the financial provisions consequent on the funding and revision of annuities, it is proposed that the deficiency in the Purchase Annuities Fund or in the Land Bond Fund, arising from the revision of annuities, shall not be a charge upon the Guarantee Fund, while not relieving the Guarantee Fund from liability to make good any other deficiency in either fund. That is to say, the Guarantee Fund will remain liable for the arrears of the reduced annuities payable in future."

The Dáil, accordingly, passed the Bill in the belief that its provisions would enable this, among other purposes of the measure, to be fulfilled.

In the Seanad, an amendment, on the Committee Stage of the Bill, was moved by Senator Wilson to insert a new sub-section as follows:—

(2) The charge on the Guarantee Fund in respect of the deficiencies in the Purchase Annuities Fund arising from the provision of this part of this Act in relation to the payment of the arrears of payment of annuities by means of the funding of annuities, shall cease on the passing of this Act.

In moving the amendment, the Senator was good enough to say: "My object is to do away with the Guarantee Fund altogether." The House will find the reference in Volume 17, column 127 of the Official Debates. The Seanad, notwithstanding the opposition of the acting Minister for Lands, speaking on behalf of the Government, adopted Senator Wilson's amendment, but, apparently, there was some doubt in the minds of Senators as to whether the amendment which had been adopted would, in fact, do away with the Guarantee Fund altogether. Accordingly, a further amendment was moved by Senator Sir John Keane with the intention of fulfilling this purpose more certainly, and the second amendment was also adopted by the Seanad.

In due course these two amendments, seeking to abolish the Guarantee Fund procedure, came before the Dáil. The acting Minister for Lands moved that the Dáil disagree with them and, in doing so, pointed out that those amendments would mean the abolition of the Guarantee Fund and the substitution of the Central Fund as the fund out of which deficiencies should be made up if the land annuities were not paid. The reference there is the Dáil Reports, Volume 59, column 1970. The Dáil agreed with the Minister and rejected the Seanad amendments, thus, we contend, for the second time clearly indicating, by the formal process of legislating, its purpose and intention that the Guarantee Fund should remain liable for any arrears of the reduced annuities. Not merely did the Dáil indicate that this was its purpose and intention, but when the Land Bill of 1933 came again before the Seanad, the Seanad this time modifying its attitude, did not insist on the amendments it previously had introduced into the Bill on the motions of Senators Wilson and Keane. The amendments were dropped, and the Bill became law in such a form as would carry out the clearly expressed intention of the Oireachtas as a whole, that the Guarantee Fund would remain liable for any deficiency in the collection of the reduced annuities. And so, in accordance with what was thought to be the clear provisions of the statute, since then the Guarantee Fund has been deemed to be and has been operated as if it were liable for any deficiency in the collection of land annuities.

We, the Government, and the administration generally, have operated the statute in such a way as to carry out what was beyond doubt the clear intention of the Dáil in this regard. Since then doubts have been expressed as to whether we had succeeded in putting clearly and unmistakably in words what our intention was. Doubts have been raised as to whether the Land Act of 1933 and the Land (Purchase Annuities Fund) Act of the same year did, in fact, impose this liability on the Guarantee Fund, and the present Bill is to remove such doubts. I think that merely as a matter of common sense, if for no other reason, the purpose of the legislature being beyond doubt, being put beyond doubt by the declarations which were made by the Minister responsible for the passage of the Bill through the Oireachtas and by the formal decisions in regard to amendments which were designed to abolish the Guarantee Fund procedure which the Oireachtas has taken—merely as a matter of common sense, if for no other reason, if such doubts exist, it is the duty of the legislature to clear them up and make manifest now beyond any question what its original intention was, and that is the purpose of this Bill.

Mr. Wilson

It will be noted from the Minister's speech that he has not attempted to give any justification whatever for the principle involved in the measure. He simply quotes the intention of the Parliament at the time the 1933 Act was passed to bring in this principle, but he has not justified the principle, the principle of taking moneys from the people for whom it was intended, and making good the default in the Land Purchase annuities. That is the principle underlying the Bill. I can explain to the Minister why it was the Seanad did not insist upon its amendments when they came back from the Dáil. If we insisted on them we would lose the Bill and, representing the farmers, we did not think it would be good policy for us to hold up a Bill which was granting to the farmers a remission of half their annuities. It was not because we accepted the principle, but because that particular thing was attached—that was why the opposition ceased. The Minister has not explained that the Land Act of 1933 has extended the application of the Guarantee Fund to Acts of Parliament passed a long time before that particular provision became law—to the British Land Acts from 1881 to 1896, for instance.

The Minister, in the Dáil, gave as justification for the principle that as the community pledged itself to pay moneys for the purchase of this land, therefore the community must be liable for any default and therefore each county council, as a community, is liable for default inside its own area of jurisdiction. In connection with the early Acts of the British parliament, there was no such thing as a question of community purchase. Individuals who were occupiers of land, tenants of land who had a tenant right and had the right to remain in their lands whether the landlord objected or not, tenants whose rents were fixed by a judicial commission—they were judicial fixtures—having an opportunity of purchasing out the landlord's title to their particular piece of land, used the Land Acts of 1881 and 1896 for that purpose. There was no question whatever of community purchase. The Government of the day used the Local Loans Fund to promote this passage of the landlord's title to the State first and from the State back to the individual tenant; but there was no question whatever of a community liability for defaulters. The Minister came up to the Act of 1903. I admit there is a clause establishing this principle, but I am surprised that an Executive, particularly a Sinn Fein Executive, should be so partial to a brutal clause of a British Act dealing with the farmers of this country.

We know perfectly well the British were always out in this country to get as much as they could while they were here. Their whole history shows that they were out to take as much out of this country as they could. It surprises me that a Minister representing a Sinn Fein Administration should adopt the predatory measures of what I would call the thieves who were in possession here at one time. The Minister apparently wants to prolong that and he says the community purchased. What happened under the 1903 and the 1909 Acts was this. A group of tenants under any landlord came together and fixed the price they would pay for the landlord's title. Having come to terms, the Government of the day advanced land stock to the landlord in discharge of his title and the State sold back to the tenants, not as a group but to each tenant individually, who was deemed to have entered into a subsequent purchase agreement for the purchase of his title from the State. That is the particular operation under which the Government of the day claimed the right to collect land annuities from the tenants of the land. They bought the landlord's right and sold it back to the tenant. The tenant was bound to pay that particular amount under the British Acts, for purposes of making good any deficiency in Sinking Fund and interest on the land annuities.

That was the original clause under which the Guarantee Fund was exercised. These purchasers never understood themselves to be liable for their neighbours. What happened was this: There was a certain amount of default —1 per cent., 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. of the land annuities was all that was in default. It never reached anything like the dimensions of to-day, where the default is well over £716,000 out of a possible collection of £2,000,000. I put it to the Seanad that local government is in a very serious position financially, if this collection is to continue in this way, and if it is to suffer for the liabilities of tenant owners every year. The Irish Land Acts, passed after the British Acts, were of a different character altogether, and brought about a social revolution with which we all agree. Under the provisions of the Irish Acts men are taken out of the West and are planted here in Leinster, and so on, under that particular social revolution, agreed upon, and which must be carried on. The only method by which that transaction can be financed is by collections made from the tenant farmers of their annuities every year. If the annuitants cease to pay, that social revolution will cease because the money will not be there to pay for this loss. That is the reason the Minister for Finance is so insistent upon community liability, in order to save himself the trouble every year of making arrangements in his Budget for financing these transactions.

It is a peculiar, and I think unconstitutional, procedure on the part of the Executive to come to the Dáil, with a flourish of trumpets, and pass estimates for the relief of rates. They pass that legislation and then because some people have defaulted they apply the money to altogether different purposes from that for which it was passed. They are applying it to the payment of defaulting land annuitants. I do not think that is a constitutional procedure. The money is voted by the Dáil for the relief of rates but the Minister applies it to the making good of deficiencies in the payment of land annuities in order to save himself the trouble of bringing in an Estimate for the probable amount of the default instead of allowing the Dáil to vote money especially for that purpose.

There is another point, and one which I think has not been attended to at all. As I said, the Government are bringing migrants from different parts of the country and setting them down in certain places as occupying owners. An estate is purchased, caretakers get allotments; uneconomic holders get allotments; and any allotments remaining over are given to people from the West of Ireland. People are introduced who may default or not. Other people in the community have to pay if they make default, but these people who have to pay have no right whatever in the selection of the defaulting people for whose debts they have become liable. The owners are liable generally for the default of the newcomers, for the default of men of whose character they know nothing or of whose ability to make good they have no knowledge. That occurs under the Irish Acts and it is under these Irish Acts that the land is being split up so rapidly.

I think the Government ought to face this matter in a different way from the way they have faced it in this Bill. I think they ought to face the question of collecting the annuities if the people who owe them are able to pay. I should put it that 80 per cent. of the defaulters are not able to pay. I hardly believe that the farming community, who always discharged their obligations so well in the past, could be wilfully defaulting for many years in a sum of something over £700,000. I do not think such people are dishonest, and I think the matter should be faced in quite a different way. There is, at the back of many farmers' minds, the belief that they have already paid, and that they have already discharged their obligations, at the ports. I think that is the reason, in many cases, but not in all, why this money is not forthcoming. I never agreed with the principle of the Guarantee Fund. Farmers' unions, in the twilight of the farmers' movements were opposed to it. When I was seeking parliamentary honours for the Dáil that was one of the topics upon which the farmers agreed with me. It was a matter that they thought should be fought. I do not think the principle is equitable. Possibly it will be changed eventually. The Government will have to vote the money directly, or else something will have to be done so that the defaulting moneys will be got in a different manner. It is impossible to carry on local government if one-third, or thereabouts, of the amount voted for it is to be kept back. The matter will have to be faced, and some other means devised, of providing for the default in the annuities. I hope the Minister will preserve an open mind in the matter and, in discussions with the Executive Council, might see his way to change the system which he certainly has not justified. It is a bad system and any law which is inequitable ought not to be persisted in.

Mr. Counihan

My particular objection to the Bill before the House is not because of its retrospective character, or because it has been declared a Money Bill, but because of the grave injustice it does to the farming community by imposing a burden upon them that they are very badly able to bear. Senator Wilson pointed out that up to the 1933 Land Act there were very few defaulters of land annuities. He did not state what was the reason for that. I do not want to have a discussion on the economic war, but it should be plain to everybody that the great bulk of the default is because the annuitants cannot afford to pay, and that is due to the economic war. When the Government started the economic war the President said that it would be a long war, that it would create a lot of hardship, that we should all tighten our belts and that every section of the community should bear the hardships equally. How has the promise implied in that statement been carried out? It has not been carried out at all. When the Government retained the £5,250,000 that was supposed to be paid to England, every section of the community benefited by the retention of that money, but when the British Government imposed their penal duties, they imposed them only on agricultural produce. The farmers have had to pay 95 per cent. of those penal duties.

I contend that the farmers are losing through the economic war at least £20,000,000 per year. Through the cattle trade alone they are losing directly more than £7,000,000 per year. In 1931 the returns from our exports of cattle were practically £13,000,000 and last year they were down to £5,000,000. That shows a direct loss of over £7,000,000 in the cattle trade alone. If you take into account the losses which the farmers have sustained through the loss of their markets, through the penal duties which they have had to pay on sheep, pigs and horses, and on every item of agricultural produce, I think any honest man looking into the question must admit that the loss since the economic war was started must have been at least £20,000,000 per year. I think furthermore that any honest man would say that it would be only justice to the farmers if they were not asked to pay their rates or annuities during the period of the economic war. I said at the outset that I did not want to enter on a discussion of the economic war and I am not going to continue to debate it at this season of the year.

A Senator

You have already said quite a lot about it.

Mr. Counihan

Before sitting down, I should like to enter a protest as a farmers' representative against the statements made in the Dáil by members of both Parties with regard to the alleged dishonesty of the defaulting annuitants and in regard to the injustice of making the honest man pay for the dishonest or less honest man. I contend that many of those farmers who have not paid their annuities are quite as honest as a good many of the people who have paid them. The defaulters could not do the impossible by paying money which they have not got and which it was not possible for them to find. That is the reason that the majority of the defaulting annuitants have not paid their annuities. It is because they have not the money they have not paid the annuities. The fact that they have not the money is due to the economic war which deprived them of the sale of their produce or brought about conditions under which they could only sell it at less than the cost of production. It is surprising how they have been so very honest considering the fact that the present Government since they came into office have put a premium on dishonesty. For example, let us take the clause in the 1933 Act which gave a remission to defaulting annuitants who owed anything over three years annuities. Three years annuities were completely wiped out and the balance was funded. We did not object to that but we said that the honest farmers, who had endeavoured to pay their annuities up to date, should get the same concession and that they should get the benefit of the annuities which they had already paid by having three years funded. The Government turned down that suggestion. In doing so they sowed the seeds of dishonesty amongst the farmers and the community in general. They showed that the only way anything could be got out of the Government was to refuse to pay the money due to them; to continue to owe it, and that then there would be a chance of its being completely wiped out after a few years.

I do not think there is very much use in continuing this discussion, but I think that the Minister should seriously consider putting to the Executive Council a proposal that farmers should not be asked to pay either annuities or rates on agricultural land during the period of the economic war because they cannot do it. It is impossible to do it. The Government will only be forcing people into the bankruptcy courts and preventing their being able ever again to do anything if they continue their present policy. It has been said that the people of the poorer districts are paying their annuities better than people in the wealthy districts in the South and East. The standard of living in the West of Ireland and in the poorer districts has always been lower than in these other districts and I cannot believe that it is the policy of the Government to reduce the farmers of the East and South to the same standard of living as has prevailed in the West and these other poorer districts. Before the economic war, many of these farmers were able to keep as good a home and maintain quite as high a standard of living as the people in the cities. Since then their income has been reduced or has practically disappeared altogether and their standard of living has diminished accordingly. I do not think that they are morally bound to pay rates or annuities until they first provide for their families and maintain them on that standard of living of which I am sure the Minister would approve.

Colonel Moore

In discussing this matter, I think that I probably take a different view from most other Senators. I think that before we can discuss the question as to whether these unpaid annuities should be charged on the rates, we must consider the question as to who has a right to the annuities. I think that is a matter which has not been discussed to any great extent. It is a matter which deserves a great deal of discussion and consideration. Some little time ago the President made a speech in Rathmines which was a very excellent exposition of the position of the Government as regards the annuities. It was made quite clear both from his statement and from that of others, that the ownership of the annuities is vested in the Free State. There is, however, a distinction to be marked there. I do not believe that the money belongs to the Irish Free State. In my opinion the annuities belong to the farmers, and for this reason. Let us consider for a moment how these annuities arose. What are they? The annuities are nothing else but old rents, rents that were reduced to a certain amount by the courts but still, in the main, old rents. Who imposed these old rents? How did they come to belong to the landlords? Was it by intuition, or how did they arise? They arose on account of the feudal system which came over from the Continent to England with the Normans.

The feudal system has its basis in the entire ownership of the land of Ireland or, indeed, of the land of any country, by the king. He owned the land of Ireland, and he had a right to distribute it, and he did distribute it amongst his favourites and friends. So that the time arose when flood after flood of English people came over to Ireland, and they were again and again given huge tracts of land which they were unable to cultivate themselves. They divided that land amongst a certain number of former owners and charged them a rent for it. They imposed rents on them. They took the land, established or imposed those rents on the people to whom the lands belonged. The lands were ruthlessly taken from them, and some of the former owners were driven into the mountains, into the wet places, and so on. I quite admit that according to recent English laws the lands belonged to the tenants—not to the Irish Free State, but to the Irish farmers who worked the land.

What claim have the Irish Free State got on these lands? The Irish State did not pay one penny for these lands. The State has not made itself liable for anything in connection with those annuities when they were originally applied. From beginning to end the State did not pay one single penny for the rents, and the State has not made itself liable for any of the annuities or the debts due by those who purchased their holdings. I am now speaking or dealing with Irish, and not with British law—with Irish law as handed down to us. During all the agitations we had in Ireland it was clear that all the agitation was about the land. The cry at one time had been raised that the land was owned by the Irish people. I have been told by various people that the speaker who uttered those words on a public platform always got a cheer. When anybody talked about land being owned by the Irish people he was cheered. Those listening to that speaker, the farmers of the country, attached an entirely different meaning to the words used by the speaker. He used the words in the sense that the whole of the land and everything in the country belonged to the State. Those listening to him took the words to mean that the land belonged to the farmers alone, and to nobody else. So that land argument will not bring us any distance.

The State has already remitted a considerable part of those rents. They handed over half of the annuities to the farmers themselves. They kept back another half of the annuities to be used for a very good object. That object was to make provision for those tenants who have not yet been established and put into a position of ownership. That was a very good use to which to put the money. But it was not quite good enough in my opinion. The State should in duty bound have handed over the annuities to the farmers. If the Irish State considers it was its duty to establish the farmers in a proper position, to bring them out of the bad land in the West where they were congested, that was a work for which the whole State should be liable and the charge for doing it should not be put on the farming population alone. The whole State is interested and the whole State should pay for it and not merely the present occupiers of the land. However, I do not suppose this argument will carry us very far because the Minister will tell us, and rightly tell us that we have to do such and such things in order to make provision for this work. We say we have but we ought not have to have done so. I have been dealing with the English claim in the matter of these lands, but one of these days it will go forth that the State does not own them. They took them and held them in trust for the tenants. Therefore, when they proceed to hand the collection over to the Guarantee Fund they are handing over that which does not properly belong to them. I think it well to discuss and consider that matter because one day it will arise.

Miss Browne

I just wish to say a few words on this measure and particularly about its practical application. But I will come to that later in so far as it touches local government. It appears to me that like myself the whole House has been disappointed at the Minister's introduction of this measure. In the eyes of the country the Minister is in the dock for having introduced what is, perhaps, the most unpopular Bill yet introduced. It is certainly a measure which has aroused an enormous amount of resentment amongst the people of the country, who so strongly disapproved of its sheer injustice. The Minister has made no defence of his Bill, and that is because no defence is possible. There is one thing which might be said by way of excuse for it, and that is that the farmers are dishonest defaulters who will not pay their annuities. That is a viewpoint with which I disagree.

I agree with Senator Wilson that the creation of the Guarantee Fund was from the first an objectionable system. First and last it was objectionable. It was introduced because there were doubts as to the honesty of the farmers. There was no other reason for its introduction. It was charged that the Irish farmer was a dishonest person who would not meet his commitment. That was why this system was first introduced. However, until within the last few years no great injustice was done, and the matter did not arouse very much interest, for the reason, as Senator Wilson has explained, that the number of defaulters was so small that the effect was negligible on the country. The number of defaulters did not amount to more than 3 or 4 per cent., and up to 1933 it had not gone beyond 6 per cent. At the present time there are over 33 per cent. of the farmers in arrear. No matter what may be said to the contrary, they are in arrear because they have not the money to pay the annuities. This is directly due to the policy of the Government, and not to anything else. No reasonable person will say that the farmers who discharged these payments so honestly, faithfully and regularly for so many years suddenly became dishonest and refused to pay.

There is no use in saying that the farmers were told not to pay. That argument used with regard to the past three years is dishonest. While the Minister's Party were in Opposition they rampaged the country from one end to the other and told the people that they were not bound to pay these annuities. The people who made those appeals to the farmers were actuated very largely by the historical aspect of the case which has been put before us to-day by Senator Moore. That aspect of the matter has been exploded long ago as a piece of sheer absurdity. That argument if applied in any other country in Europe would be turned upside down and inside out at once. There is no logical answer to such an argument except to go back to the historical occupiers of the land of this country 4000 B.C., when the original inhabitants of the country were invaded by people from another country. It is surely an ill omen that these people came out of Spain.

Now to come back to the practical issue—the burden which this Bill places on the people of the country— we can see at a glance that what had only a negligible effect previously will now become intolerable. It will place an additional annual burden of £2,000,000 a year on the ratepayers of this country. The legislation can only have one result and that will be the collapse of local administration. Let us be told honestly if that is the aim of the Government in view of the very clearly expressed aim of a dictatorship in the country. Is it the aim of the Government to wipe out local administration, because this Bill simply cannot have any other effect?

I do not wish to detain the House any longer except to quote from the speech of a member of a Wexford County Council, when this matter was discussed at a meeting, and which puts the matter as it affects that county council. I think that I can justly claim without any exaggeration that the people of my county are amongst the most industrious people in the country and paid their annuities as honestly as any others in the past. This member of the county council, in discussing this matter, said:—

"He understood that £41,000 had been withheld from grants and that, in anticipation of something turning up, the council did not strike any rate to meet that. If the Bill went through the result would be that they would be £41,000 short—he was assuming that that figure was correct—and there was every likelihood that there would be another reduction of £41,000, if not more, notified to the council next February, so it would look as if, in order to clear the liabilities, they should raise a sum of £80,000 in the next estimate—a rate of 4/- in the £. He thought it would be unfair to any county council to be asked to do that. If they failed to raise the rate, the poor law services and the road work would be affected. They were asked to contribute to the paying of a debt over the collection of which they had no control. The Government itself was apparently unable to collect, notwithstanding all the machinery it had at its disposal, and it looked as if people from whom land annuities were due were unable to pay, as otherwise, bailiffs, flying squads, etc., should be able to get it. He thought the measure should be withdrawn. It was only within the last three years that the defaulting annuities had become a very serious question. Up to 1932 the amount deducted from grants was so negligible that it did not seriously affect the county council's finances. The purpose for which the Guarantee Fund was established having disappeared, he held that the Government was not justified in proceeding with it."

He then goes into the matter fully. I quote that to show the practical application of it to one county council. Speaking from my own personal knowledge, I know that that county would not be able to pay another 4/- in the £, or £80,000 additional annual taxation.

Mr. Johnson

I have followed the discussions in the Dáil on this Bill through the reports and I find myself in a certain difficulty. There are two issues raised, both, it seems to me, of major importance. One affects the State finances, balancing Budgets and such like, for which the Minister here is responsible. The other affects constitutional and political matters touching the liberties and security of the citizen. I think the latter is the matter of greater importance. Dealing with the former first, the objections to this Bill that have been raised so far here have been on the ground that the Guarantee Fund system is inequitable and unwise and, particularly in view of the present size of the defaults, that it will have a serious effect upon local government finance. It is said by numerous people, including colleagues of my own, that the dislike of this Bill is on the ground that it is wrong to make the public pay for a private debt. I think that is a misguided argument, because it appears to me that the consequence of the failure to pass this Bill would be mainly to transfer the liability from the local ratepayer to the national taxpayer and the public would be called upon to pay a private debt in any case.

I may say that what I am putting forward to the Seanad is entirely my own view and may or may not be accepted by my colleagues. I think a strong case can be made for a change in the Guarantee Fund system. The Minister has referred to the amendment put forward by Senators Wilson and Sir John Keane in 1933. I said then that, whatever might be said against the Guarantee Fund system, any change ought to be done deliberately and as a matter of general financial policy and not be incidental to a Bill having a different purpose. I say the same now. I think that if that system is to be changed it ought not to be incidental or, as one might say, accidental owing to a fault of draftsmanship or negligence or lack of vigilance on the part of the Legislature. On that score I think the arguments against the Bill fail and are not justified.

I think there is, on the other hand, a very strong case, from the point of view of the State, for throwing the liability upon the local ratepayer for the defaults of land annuitants. I think that case is very greatly strengthened by the fact that there is a very widespread reluctance to assist the legal processes of rent collection by purchasing things put up for sale by the sheriffs. Recent experience of the objection to purchasing farmers' seized goods at sheriffs' sales makes one feel that if the liability is not brought home locally, if it is going to be diffused very widely, much more widely, by being put upon the national fund, the whole proceeding of rent collection by the process of law is destroyed. It astonishes me to find people who are very staunch upholders of the social system based upon private property here taking part and assisting in that very corrosive movement which would ultimately, I think, destroy one of the foundations, at any rate, of that particular system. Consequently I think, from the State point of view, there is a great deal to be said for this system of throwing the liability upon the locality, rather than upon the wider State taxpayer. It is arguable, however, and I think there is a great deal to be said on both sides of that case. As I have already said, I do not think it ought to be done by accident or be incidental to a larger issue. But I am concerned with the part which deals with the retrospective effects involved in this Bill. I said that I was in somewhat of a quandary. When I first began to take an active part in legislative processes one of the early lessons impressed upon my mind was that it was not what was the intention of a Minister, or of members of the Dáil, or members of the Seanad, that would tell in the courts, but what was in the Act. Every year's experience, since that time, has confirmed those early lessons. Now, however, we find the Minister and—more serious still, in my opinion—the Attorney-General proclaiming a doctrine which destroys, to me, that lesson; and I am wondering how far I misread the desirable lessons to be learned, or how far the Minister or the Attorney-General are departing from what I assume to be a fairly well-established rule. I never thought, and I do not think now, that the retrospective action of any legislation is always prohibited and in no circumstances to be departed from. I realise that circumstances have arisen, and will arise, when legislation must be retrospective in its effect; but those circumstances, or those cases, ought to be very few —as few as possible—and only to be adopted with the greatest possible reluctance. With even greater reluctance, however, ought the Legislature to proceed to make new laws affecting a case which is at the moment before the courts. It is that part of this Bill which strikes me as being very serious and probably ruinous to the reputation and to the credit of the State.

There was a case—it has not been very much referred to in the course of the discussions—the case of Lynam and Butler. That case was the subject of a special Act. The plaintiff therein sought to appeal to the Privy Council from a judgment of the Supreme Court here, and a Bill was introduced by the late Mr. Kevin O'Higgins, then Minister for Justice, and, with the greatest reluctance, was eventually passed into law. Mr. O'Higgins, in this House particularly, but to some extent in the Dáil also, brought forward many precedents to justify the retrospective effect of that Act. Let us bear in mind that the reason that it was eventually passed and that the Opposition were overruled—by general consent, I must say—was because it was an appeal to the Privy Council, a court outside this country, in a private matter which was quite foreign to the purposes of the Constitution. As I say, it was with the greatest possible reluctance that the House accepted that measure and, notwithstanding all the precedents that were quoted, I think that not one was a precedent which dealt with legislation which was then before our courts. They all dealt with changing the law after it had been declared to be what the courts said it was.

This, however, is what puts me in a quandary. We have the Attorney-General, who is the chief legal adviser of the Ministry—I am quoting from Column 2003, Dáil Debates, 5th December, 1935, saying:—

"...if, as has frequently happened, the House has not made clear by its legislation what precisely are its intentions, then this House has the undoubted right during any stage of litigation, either before an action is commenced, during the hearing of the proceedings, or after an action has been concluded, to say what, in its view, the law was intended to be."

The Attorney-General there said "the right," but I presume that he meant to say "the power." He also used the phrase "the House," and I presume that, when he talks of "the House," we may really give him credit for meaning the Oireachtas. Now, that is the doctrine that the courts here are expected to follow. If that is to be taken as the accepted principle upon which our judges are to act, it seems to me that the next step would be to have quoted in the courts the speeches of Ministers and the speeches of the Opposition, in order to find out what was the intention of the Legislature when putting its will into statutory form; and I can see that that is going to bring the courts into political controversy, or that the courts are to say what the law is as intended by the Ministers. Now, that was not merely a single expression of the Attorney-General, which might be thought to have been unpremeditated. He went further. He said:—

"Why should it be left to the courts to say what was the intention of this House on a question of construction? Are we to submit to the position that this House is leaving it to the courts to say what its intentions were?"

Frankly, I thought that it was the business of the courts to construe the laws as set out. Apparently, however, that is not the view of the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General further said:—

"What the courts say is: ‘What were the intentions of this House as expressed in its Acts?' If the Acts do not express its intention, I submit that every Deputy will agree that this House clearly has the right to say what its intentions were."

During the course of a legal action where there are two disputants, and where the Minister has a view as to one side of the controversy, or as to the rights of one party to the litigation, he can come forward and say what the intentions of the Act were, even though the Act is before the courts to be construed as the courts themselves determine. It is very like—shall we say—the case of a football team, where a dispute has occurred as to a point, and, before the referee has had time to decide, the rule-making authority is called upon to say what its intentions were in making the rule, that rule-making authority being governed by one of the parties to the controversy. It is a doctrine that seems to be foreign to everything that has been said hitherto in my hearing, of anything that I have read on this matter or was coached into believing as the right constitutional doctrine as between the citizen and the courts.

I want to draw attention to this fact also: that once a case has got into the courts, a case in which the State is on one side and a group or an individual on the other side, before the courts the State is merely an individual litigant. It is not the State as the sovereign authority, but the State as a litigant, as equal with the plaintiff or the defendant, as the case may be, that is before the courts, and for one of the parties to this litigation to come before the Oireachtas and ask it to say what the law is, when that party itself is in litigation, seems to me to be indefensible.

The Minister for Finance, speaking on this Bill in the Dáil—I quote from the Dáil Debates, December 5, 1935, column 2075—said:—

"...If we were to permit the courts to find that there had been a flaw in regard to this Guarantee Fund procedure, I am certain that the reactions upon the public funds would be disastrous. We cannot, no matter what the hardships, at the present stage, just when we are emerging from our difficulties, when the country is getting solid ground under its feet again, and no matter what the cost, contemplate that as an outcome."

The Minister, speaking in the Dáil on the 10th December, 1935—I am quoting from the Dáil Debates for that date, column 2216—further said:—

"Are we going to wait until people have wasted their money, until judges have wasted their time, until we have a decision which may or may not be in accordance with our interpretation of the law: which may or may not be inconsistent with the intention of the Legislature; and if it is inconsistent, are we to follow this regrettable precedent—"

which was the case under discussion quoted by a previous speaker—

"and bring in a Bill to reverse the decision of our own Supreme Court? No. Before people waste their time; before people waste their money, and before the public services are disorganised, we come in here and say that if, as some people allege, the Statute, as it was enacted by the Oireachtas, is ambiguous, we will clear up the ambiguity before the matter goes to the judges."

Now, that is the Minister's defence: that there may be considerable consequences and that there is ambiguity, and, because he had the intention, or his colleagues had the intention when they came to the Oireachtas to enact a certain piece of legislation, and that it was not precisely stated in the Act that emerged, he can come along, having become a litigant, and ask that the law-making authority is to declare what its intentions were, the other litigant believing, presumably, that the intentions were different.

But the Minister has no fears of what the courts will decide. He does not think the Statute is ambiguous, and, I take it, the Attorney-General agrees with him that there is no ambiguity in fact, because they have both said that the actions in the courts were frivolous and vexatious: that there could be little or no risk in allowing the proceedings to continue because the chances of success against the Minister were of the slenderest. Now, I have the view that even if the chances of success were much greater than they are, the danger to the State credit is much greater by enacting this kind of legislation than any repercussions on the public finances. Of course, one always has to look at a thing from the Minister's point of view.

He is the Minister for Finance and he is thinking in terms of public financial credit, but there is something bigger than that and more important, and that is the public credit for safeguarding the liberties of the individual citizen: of giving a sense of security to the individual as a citizen. It seems to me that that is more likely to enhance public credit in the true sense than any temporary safeguarding of the public finances.

I frankly cannot understand why the Minister should take this line. He knows that it is within his power, within the next few months, to correct, by a readjustment of the Estimates, and the Appropriation Act, in distributing his additional agricultural grants, and so on. In that way he could make all the corrections that are necessary if the law does go against him and if the courts do decide that the Minister had not the power that we thought he had. Once that decision is come to, unless it is the general ministerial policy to alter the law in regard to the Guarantee Fund, then is the time to come to the Legislature and ask for retrospective legislation. He can correct his financial maladjustments through the Estimates and through the distribution of the additional agricultural grants, but from the point of view of the integrity of the relation between the State and the citizen, and for the true political credit of the country, I think the Ministry have made a sad mistake in proceeding with this Bill, and I think that even worse were the arguments which were used, and which I have quoted, from the Attorney-General in defence of the measure.

Mr. Blythe

Even if the matter had not the vitally important aspect to which Senator Johnson has referred, I do not think that we could regard this Bill in the light of a mere correction of bad draftsmanship: the mere correction of a slip, as the Minister has suggested. I think we have to look at the substance of this Bill, if it has any substance—and that is problematical seeing that the courts have not yet given a decision—as a thing put before us for consideration on the merits.

If the Bill does anything it imposes a liability on the Guarantee Fund. We do not know whether it does anything or not, because the courts may decide that. If the charge is not there, this Bill has the effect of imposing a charge which, whatever the reason, did not exist up to the present in connection with the Guarantee Fund. It is unwise for the Oireachtas, and unwise for the Government to urge the Oireachtas, to impose a charge of this nature on the Guarantee Fund at the present time. Reference has been made to the enormous amount of arrears of land annuities that accumulated in the course of 12 months. Previously, at one or two particular periods, a considerable volume of arrears accumulated, but afterwards, where it was of rather gradual growth, they were reduced. We never had any parallel of well over £700,000 piling up in arrears arising out of two gales. I think that is the position. At any rate, within a very short period, perhaps two years, after the resumption of the collection we have this enormous amount of nearly £3,000,000. That seems to me to be something that forces the Oireachtas to consider the whole operation of the Guarantee Fund. My own view is that the Government will not be able to collect the land annuities if matters remain as they are at present, merely by saying that if a man does not pay his neighbours will have to pay. If, as in the past, the amount was small, no doubt that method would continue to be effective. Whatever Ministers may say, it is an undoubted fact that in the main the failure to pay land annuities is due to inability to pay. Possibly a certain number who could pay refrain from doing so in the circumstances of the time, and because of apprehension in regard to the future. But, in the main the position of the farmers is that they are not now able to pay, and the piling of the burden on to the rates will result in making some people who have been able to pay up to the present more quickly unable to pay.

In my opinion, if the Government wants to continue the collection of the annuities at all, provided there is not an early settlement of the economic war, the best course for them to take would be to suspend the collection altogether during the present period. If they did that the collection could be resumed when the situation was normal, and when the farmers were making an income that would undoubtedly permit them to discharge their liabilities. If the Government goes on with the present system, and if they tighten the screw, I think they are only going to make matters worse more rapidly. They are going to put a greater number of farmers into the position that they cannot meet their liabilities; they are going to cause other people, who might possibly pay, to look at the increasing difficulty of the situation, to hold the money in their pockets as long as they possibly can. If the Government looked on this question rightly, they would not proceed merely to copper-fasten anything that they might have lost in connection with the collection of the land annuities. If the Government is not prepared to take the steps I have suggested, they ought at least to give the temporary relief that would be given to agriculturists, by removing the words and phrases in this Bill which give it retrospective effect. If they do not do that, they are going to impose an enormous burden on local rates for the coming year, because in the present financial year most of the local authorities did not make provision for the loss of the moneys governed by the retrospective sections of the Bill. If the Bill passes, presumably these local authorities will have to make provision for these losses, and have to make provision also for the new deficits in the collection of the land annuities in the period that has since elapsed. There is going to be such an addition to local rates that there will be grave danger of causing more embarrassment to local authorities.

If the Minister would be content to amend the law for the future, and to allow the £716,000, or whatever sum is involved, to go out to the local authorities, he would, at any rate, postpone any crisis in the finances of local authorities for a further period, and by doing that, would also avoid the risk of bankrupting a greater number of farmers, and causing greater default in the payment of land annuities in the year immediately ahead. There is a great deal of force in what has been said against the whole system that is operated through the Guarantee Fund. It was not a matter of great importance in the past, because the number of those who could not pay, or who failed to pay annuities, was relatively small. When various Acts like the Act of 1923 were passed, I think it is safe to say that the justifiability of the Guarantee Fund system was not examined at all. It was there operatively, but was not important, and was simply continued. But the big draws made recently on the Guarantee Fund certainly necessitate some reconsideration of the whole system, and necessitate a decision as to whether the system is one that ought or ought not to be continued. It is true, as Senator Johnson has suggested, that the question of the continuance of the Guarantee Fund system should be dealt with separately, and in a deliberate manner. On the other hand, I do not think that if, by accident, the Guarantee Fund system has become inoperative, that we should put it into operation again without considering it in a more fundamental way than has been done up to the present.

At the time that land purchase was initiated, if there was an Irish Government, I do not think there could ever have been any question of setting up this Guarantee Fund system. I do not think if a debit had been payable to an Irish Department of State by Irish farmers, and if the Land Acts had been administered by an Irish Government, that it would have been proposed, in case an individual defaulted, that his neighbours should have to pay. In any of the recent Acts that enabled money to be advanced to farmers there is no provision whereby if an individual farmer defaults his neighbours must pay the debt. In cases where money is advanced to farmers by the Agricultural Credit Corporation, if an individual fails to pay the instalments the Corporation takes the necessary steps to make him pay if he can, but his neighbours are free of liability. When loans were advanced by the Board of Works to enable farmers to erect hay barns the same conditions prevailed; the debt was an individual debt of each farmer who got a loan. Even if every farmer in a locality or in a parish were to become a debtor of the Board of Works, the liability was an individual liability, and those who paid their own debts had no portion of the debts of defaulting neighbours thrown upon them.

The Guarantee Fund system, when one comes to look at it, is clearly a system that would only be established in any country by a foreign Government which knew quite well that it did not rest on the will of the people and which had to set up coercive machinery which a national Government would not establish. I do not think, as a matter of fact, that a Guarantee Fund can ever be efficient for its purpose under a national Government, because if there is little default, the situation is one which could readily be met by the ordinary machinery of the law, and if there is great default, there is going to be some sort of growing agitation or soreness which will make it impossible for the Government to operate the Guarantee Fund. I think that now that the matter has been raised by the situation which has caused the present Bill to be introduced, the Government should examine it very carefully and should not be content merely to claim that a little mistake had been made, that the intention of the Legislature had been clear and that the doubt which had now been raised should be disposed of.

I agree with Senator Johnson that, particularly from the point of view of the Seanad, the matter to which he referred is the most important matter arising out of the Bill. After all, the Seanad was given very limited powers with regard to Money Bills and the whole intention clearly was that, in money matters, the Seanad should play a very minor rôle indeed, but although this has been certified as a Money Bill, the fact that it is retrospective and that it deprives parties who have already applied to the courts of their rights means that it has something in it to which the Seanad should direct particular attention, something which although the Bill is technically a Money Bill involves principles that are not financial principles. There have been very many Bills with retrospective clauses, and, as Senator Johnson has said, there will occasionally have to be Bills which operate retrospectively, but retrospective legislation should only be resorted to in case of necessity and it would require some very serious reason to necessitate such legislation in the circumstances which prevail at present to take a case which is actually at hearing out of the hands of the court.

It has not been announced that it is the intention of the Government to allow the two councils which have taken action, if by any chance the judgment should be given before the Bill becomes law, to have their win. I know that in previous cases in which the law was changed with a view to making it conform with what had been the intention of the Government parties who had won, even in the Circuit Court, were allowed to retain their win, and all that was done was that other people were prevented from litigating. Perhaps it would not be possible to take that particular step in the present case, because you are not dealing with unlimited numbers when the case of each person is precisely the same. If that consideration to the courts and that regard for the rights of litigants is impossible, it is an argument for the Government being prepared to alter the Bill, so as to remove its retrospective effect.

Senator Johnson has referred to the damaging effects of retrospective legislation. The position will be very much more serious in the future when there is no revising Chamber. In former times there was a definite check on any tendency on the part of the Government to alter the law so that it would win every case it had before the courts. If there is to be no revising Chamber the Government ought to have come to a self-denying resolution, and not indulge in retrospective legislation for its own benefit. The situation in that respect tends to become very much more serious, and if the Minister is not prepared in respect of this particular case to agree to remove the retrospective clauses of the Bill, the Seanad, I think, ought at any rate to go as far as it can to induce him to give further consideration to the matter, so that possibly he may arrive at a different decision.

Mr. Toal

So much has been said on different sides of the House and in the other Chamber that I think it is useless for me to attempt to change the mind of the Minister. However, I should like to disabuse the mind of the Minister in one respect. I know that he would wish very much that the fact was as it is represented to him, that we in County Monaghan were in very prosperous circumstances and did not feel the pinch very badly. I should like to say to the Minister and to this House that from my long experience of public life and from my experience of agriculture in County Monaghan, I never remember the agricultural interests there, or, I may say, the commercial interests, in the position in which they stand to-day. I could go back to the dark days of 1880 and upward along the line from that period and I am satisfied that the outlook for the tenant farmer in County Monaghan never was as blue as it is to-day. No doubt there are on the surface features which would appear to indicate prosperity to people who do not know the circumstances. As we know, there is a certain number of well-paid officials. There is a great number of officials along the Border; there is a great number of pensioners and others who are drawing public money. Of course, they do not feel the pinch and there is an apparent wave of prosperity there. I can assure the House and the Minister, however, that there is no prosperity amongst the tenant farmers of County Monaghan.

I have long been connected with local government and I do feel that this is a fatal step from the point of view of local government. I do not know what is in the mind of the Executive Council. I do not know whether it is their intention to change the system of government or not, but, if this is carried out to the letter, it will be a fatal step. It will prevent local bodies from functioning. We might perhaps be in as good a position as any other county but I contemplate with anxiety the next striking of the rate if the default is anything like what it is represented to be. It is about the lowest in the Twenty-Six Counties. I think the sum is £7,690 and last year we were faced with a deficit of only £1,500. When the Budget comes round, if we have to strike a rate to meet the deficit and, perhaps, a greater deficit for the coming year and then provide for all the increases in the cost of upkeep of public institutions—the asylum for two counties would account for an addition of about £5,000—I say it will be impossible to collect the rates in County Monaghan.

I should like to impress on the Minister the serious effect which this Bill will have. We are in a privileged position in County Monaghan. We are a county of small farmers and we have gone in for intensive agriculture. The ordinary half-yearly moiety of the annuity on a County Monaghan holding would be only something over £2. That is quite different from the position in other counties. Then, we have other privileges to which I do not want to refer in detail at the present time. It has, however, been pointed out in the other House that we live convenient to the Border. I do not approve of smuggling. I have never smuggled and neither do I encourage it, but smuggling is going on along the Border. People from across the Border are coming in, smuggling our cattle and making fortunes out of them. These people come into the fairs and pay a price which the ordinary cattle dealer could not afford to pay. That is to the advantage of the farmers in County Monaghan. Nobody will say that it is a disgrace to the farmers of Monaghan to take the highest price they can get for the cattle or the commodities they have to sell.

There is another advantage and a very big advantage along the Border. The Government would be well advised to inquire into the whole circumstances. We have smuggling both in and out of the Free State. No Senator, I am sure, would blame a poor, struggling farmer, with a wife and eight or ten children to support, who went across the Border and bought a cwt. of flour at 4/6 less than he would have to pay in the Free State. That is only one example. The temptation is present in respect of every article that goes into the house of the farmer and the labourer of the Free State. That is one reason why our default is not larger. One thing has given our people enormous encouragement to pay. That is, the system by which they get credit notes every year from the Agricultural Grant. These make their rates very small and the people make a great effort to pay. If the Agricultural Grant is depleted or reduced, the effect will be very bad because the people will not make the effort to pay their rates and the amount of the rates will, consequently, be increased. The Minister had a sympathetic heart and he knows the people of County Monaghan very well. He knows that they are a hard-working, industrious people who take advantage of everything for their good. They are making a great effort to pay their way and I do not think it will be said by any member of the Government or of this House that we, in County Monaghan, have encouraged the people not to pay their annuities.

It has been suggested here that this should be a general charge on the rates. I hold that it would be far more equitable to make it a general charge than to place the burden on the backs of the farmers. Nobody will say that the farmers are responsible for the economic war. It is the politicians, if you like, and other interested parties who are responsible for the economic war, but it is the farmers who are to be charged with all this cost. They must pay. I think that that system is wrong. An agitation is started, rightly or wrongly. The farmers are not responsible for that agitation but, nevertheless, they are to be compelled to pay. That will have a very bad effect. A greater effort should be made by the State to collect the annuities. All the machinery of Government is available and why does not the registrar or the sheriff make a greater effort to collect these annuities instead of, by a stroke of the pen, charging them against the Agricultural Grant and depriving the counties of the money.

I regard this matter as very serious from a local government point of view, and I believe it will be fatal. The default in respect of labourers' cottages in our county is £1,600 a year. The ratepayers have to pay that sum and, day after day and week after week, increased charges are being placed upon them which they are not able to pay. I feel that this is an unfortunate Bill, both for the country and for the Government which introduced it. I do not think that it is the proper way to raise this money. It should be a State charge, and I do not think it was ever intended that the farmers of Ireland should have to meet default in respect of this Guarantee Fund.

Mr. Milroy

This House must have heard with gratifying interest the Minister's references to the action of certain members of this House in regard to the Guarantee Fund arrangement. His citation of Senator Wilson and Sir John Keane was, no doubt, intended to strengthen his argument about the intention of the people, but the real effect of the recalling of these statements by the Minister is simply to bring into strong relief the wisdom and foresight of these gentlemen at that time. I am not at all certain that the Minister, in the inner recesses of his heart, where the still small voice of conscience operates, did not feel that truth urged upon him. To-day he repeats those references to Senator Wilson, believing in his heart that in view of the imminent demise of this House it would be a pity that a gentleman of the long and wise vision of Senator Wilson should be lost to the Parliamentary life of this State. He takes this subtle method of drawing the attention of the electorate to the bold effort on behalf of the ratepayers that Senator Wilson made in 1933 in order that they may take steps to secure that the termination of this House will not mean the permanent loss to the nation of the statesmanlike qualities of Senator Wilson.

Mr. Johnson

Or Senator Keane?

Mr. Milroy

With that attitude of the Minister we are all in thorough agreement. One cannot gather from the Minister's statement to-day anything like a comprehensive conception of this Bill or its object. One has to take into consideration his numerous and lengthy utterances in the other House. I have examined them with a certain amount of care and close scrutiny. I think his defence of this Bill rests on two major considerations, namely, what he terms the intentions of Parliament and what he claims to be the securing of the continuance of that function of the Guarantee Fund for which it was originally created. A third, but minor, aspect is introduced by the retrospective provisions of this Bill. The Minister has cited several instances of retrospective legislation by his predecessors, and he attempted to parade them as justifying precedents for the proposals in this Bill. I think the Minister will agree that that is the gist of his case—the intention of the Oireachtas, the continuance of the function of the Guarantee Fund and the justification of the retrospective clauses. I contend, after examining his case, that his position is vulnerable in every one of those three cases. I take first his position about the intentions of Parliament. The Minister suggests— and I would like to get from him just now assent as to whether I am interpreting his suggestions rightly—that the intention of Parliament should be paramount in the construction of any statute. Is that the Minister's contention?

Mr. MacEntee

I will deal with that when I reply.

Mr. Milroy

I think I can take it that that is so. The Minister, at any rate, was stronger on that issue than on any other aspect of this Bill in the law. I would remind him that there is an expression of the intention of Parliament on record, with such clarity and with such lack of ambiguity or doubt that no supplementary Bill is necessary in order to make manifest that intention. It was the intention of a Parliament in a sense greater than the present Oireachtas, the Parliament that brought this Oireachtas and the Constitution into being, and that intention which I have referred to, expressed in the most definite and unambiguous fashion, was that there should be two Houses in the Oireachtas. I am not going to argue on that, but I do hope that the Minister, in his assertion about the overruling right of the intention of Parliament and that that should be respected, will be as staunch in upholding that principle in matters of constitutional right as he has been in trying to defend the rather dubious proposals that he is submitting to us in this Bill.

I think the Minister is very confused in his conception of the intention of Parliament. The intention of Parliament can only be assumed to be that which appears in the document known as the statute and not what the Minister subsequently states it was the intention of the Government to put into that statute. The intentions of the Government may be one thing; the intentions of Parliament may be another; they are not necessarily identical. If it be contended that the statute around which controversy has raged does not give full effect to the intention of the Minister, I suggest that it is not only right, but it is the duty of members of the Legislature who question the rectitude of the Minister's proposals to attempt to dissuade him from securing Parliamentary sanction for those proposals. The Minister has not proved his case in regard to the intentions of Parliament.

In regard to the question of the function of the Guarantee Fund, I want to say very definitely that the Minister's arguments may be to a certain extent plausible in relation to the intention of Parliament, but all the casuistry that he can bring to his aid will not enable him to demonstrate that the function which he wants the Guarantee Fund to discharge is the function for which the Guarantee Fund was originally created. I challenge the Minister to prove that the function which the Guarantee Fund is asked to discharge to-day is the function which it was called upon to discharge when it was originally created. That original function of the Guarantee Fund terminated when the present Government transformed the annuities from payments to complete land purchase into contributions to State revenue. When the Guarantee Fund ceased to be a security for the payment of interest and Sinking Fund for land purchase transactions and became a security to the Government for revenue, then I say the original purpose for which that fund was instituted ceased, and I defy the Minister to state that what I have said now is contrary to fact. That is the intention, and the Minister's contention is that he is entitled to continue the purposes for which the Guarantee Fund was founded.

I come now to the question of retrospective legislation. The Minister, I think, can only be justified in introducing retrospective legislation when its aim is fundamentally sound and inherently equitable. The Minister cited several precedents. I agree with the Minister in this: In a letter from his Department to the Irish Times, on this matter, he stated there was no close analogy between the cases of retrospective legislation, under the Cosgrave Administration, and the retrospective legislation that he proposes. He is quite right in that. I believe it will be found, on examination, that, in every case of retrospective legislation introduced by the Minister's predecessors, the object aimed at was both fundamentally and inherently equitable. But I want to find some basis of argument by which it can be shown that a procedure which makes a fund, that was originally security for certain purposes, now, security for taxation that the Minister imposes, is fundamentally sound and inherently equitable.

Senator Wilson made the point that this proposed legislation compelled certain districts to be responsible for the debts of private individuals introduced into those districts. I know no parallel for the introduction of that kind of system. I can only call to mind one instance that might be considered somewhat analogous, and that is the imposition, on certain districts, of moneys to be contributed to the army of conquest. If the Minister can show that that principle is fundamentally sound and inherently equitable, it seems to me that he has a big task before him. The Minister for Finance, in so far as he has at his disposal revenue-collecting machinery, is trying to make it an automatic apparatus for squeezing out the last penny from the people, regardless of the wants of local administration or public services. The Minister's conception of his Department is that, so far as it is revenue collecting, and if he can get Parliamentary sanction, he is entitled to press forward these proposals. But from my point of view I think the principle of this Bill is very unsound. I have looked back with gratification to the time recalled by Senator Wilson, in connection with the 1933 Act, and I find a certain amount of pride on seeing my name amongst those who voted for the termination of the operation of the Guarantee Fund on that occasion. I hope it will be remembered by the people who are going to feel the financial weight and burden, and the resultant privation and misery that is to ensue, that this House, which is now threatened with extinction, when this menace was proposed, did its utmost to avert it.

There is one important consideration that I want to call attention to before I finish. We have an important journal published in this city called the Irish Press, which supports the Government. On the 7th of this month that journal had a leading article upon the Guarantee Fund. I take this excerpt from it:—

"All the talk about ousting the courts, and depriving people of their legal rights, had no real weight or bearing on the point under discussion. It was merely a plausible, but shallow debating point, which was threshed to death."

And here comes the gem:—

"Every person with even a rudimentary knowledge of constitutional law knows that there is no check or limitation on the powers of the Oireachtas in such matters. It can pass what laws it wishes, and the function of the courts is to interpret the laws so passed, and to construe existing statutes in the light of amending legislation."

One would presume that the person who penned that had even a rudimentary knowledge of constitutional law, but, apparently, he has ignored Article 65 of the Constitution which says:—

"The judicial power of the High Court shall extend to the question of the validity of any law having regard to the provisions of the Constitution..."

This is a foretaste of what is in store for us when there is a further extension of Government policy. This foreshadows what the function of the Oireachtas, when it ceases to be a two-Chamber form of Government, and consists of only one Chamber, will be. Then, apparently, we are to have the courts deprived of their functions of examining the validity, from the point of view of the Constitution, of the law. In other words, we are going to have, not an orderly or deliberative Assembly, but an Assembly which, within 24 hours, can adopt a motion saying: "It is hereby resolved to dissolve this House and to vest the powers of the Oireachtas in the Executive Council." That is what is in store for us. Then the Minister will not require to come forward and make a defence for his proposals, whatever they be. He can sit in his Government office, and issue decrees for the collection of these moneys which he now compels the local authorities to collect for him. I say the whole prospect which proposals of this kind conjures up, with its potential ramifications, creates a situation which is gloomy and threatening. I join with Senator Johnson in deploring the action of the Minister in bringing forward this kind of legislation while cases raising the issue are at hearing. If that can be done when there are two Houses in existence to scrutinise Government proposals, and done with impunity, in the circumstances what may we expect when what is regarded as the more critical House of the Oireachtas vanishes, and the Minister has behind him a House in which he commands a majority, and in which no argument is needed, but in which he can rely upon his silent squadrons to rally behind him, in the Division Lobby, to give statutory effect to his decrees.

I say that the conception of democratic institutions in this country is diminishing if not vanishing, that the conception of democratic life is being sapped and undermined and that, so far as I can see, this country is faced almost with the certainty of a period under which it will be under a rule of despotism—whether it be a benevolent despotism or a ruthless despotism— at least a condition of affairs when democracy will be silenced and will have no means of becoming articulate, when the Ministry will be paramount and will be under no necessity to secure from the people an endorsement of their views. I regard that prospect with apprehension and I think that the tendency in that direction is one which every man and woman in this State who thinks of the future of the country will regret. I know these are big inferences to draw from the present Bill, but the Bill shows which way things are tending, and if the people of this State do not wake up, assert themselves and call a halt to the kind of thing which the present Government is doing and the havoc it is wreaking on the institutions of the State, then some day they will realise when it is too late, that the price they will have to pay for giving a free hand to the eccentricities of the present Government will be a price greater than they can afford to pay.

Mr. Lynch

I find it somewhat difficult to follow the course of what, for the sake of courtesy, I shall call the arguments which have been urged against the Bill before the House. They have been on various topics and diverse subjects, having no apparent connection with the proposal before the House. However, listening as I have been to all this discussion, I have been endeavouring to find out, and perhaps I have discovered, the object of these numerous addresses. They have one note in common and that is, that there is great poverty in the country and great distress amongst the farmers. According to one of the Senators who spoke, in some parts of the country farmers were not in such a bad condition since 1880 as they are now. We are told that they are in an appallingly bad condition. That is the first object with which apparently all these addresses have been delivered, to produce that impression some way or another. Having started apparently with that concerted idea, the climax was reached with two of the addresses of Senators who have spoken against the proposal before the House. One of them has said several times—I did not count how many times—that what he called the economic war was the cause of all this distress. He insisted upon that. I think my friend the Senator who did so frequently refer to that polemical aspect of the economic crisis has a weakness for introducing the subject into any discussion. However, he emphasised very strongly, and he was indeed very ably supported by some of his colleagues, that the terrible distress that exists amongst the farming community all over Ireland was due to the causes which he suggested.

Having apparently started with the object of producing that effect upon somebody somewhere—that the economic war, as it is called, has had terrible results economically upon the people of the country and is producing great distress—we come to Senator Blythe who in a speech, marked by a great absence of any doubt of what he intended to convey, suggested that the remedy for the present deplorable state that exists in the country was that there should be a cessation, while the economic war continues, of the collection of the 50 per cent. of the annuities that, under statute, the purchasing tenants are now bound to pay. He suggested that as long as the economic war goes on there should be no further call on the tenants who are bound under statute to pay their annuities, to pay anything at all in respect of them. I wonder what does the Seanad think of that as a business proposal? What does the Minister for Finance think of the proposal of the former Minister for Finance and of the suggestion made by him, that the people in occupation of every inch of land purchased in this country, who are bound to pay annuities, are to be freed from liability to pay, by some legislation which it is suggested is to be passed in the immediate future at the initiative of the Executive Council on the recommendation of the Minister for Finance when he goes back from this House? That is the champion high-water mark proposal of the opporents of this motion to pass this certified Bill——

Mr. Counihan

What is wrong with it?

Mr. Lynch

——that pending the determination of the dispute with reference to the annuities no further annuities are to be paid by the persons in occupation of the land. I would ask my friend, as I did not interrupt him when he was speaking, kindly to extend to me the same courtesy. That is a very extraordinary and very strong proposition from the learned Senator who proposed it. I listened to some of the other addresses which were delivered, some of them couched in language to which I do not propose to refer, lest I might inaccurately quote them, about the causes of the trouble in regard to the payment of annuities. They spoke of it as a matter that was brought about by some wicked, mischievous perversity of mind on the part of the present Government. I remember on a former occasion here, on a matter discussed somewhat irrelevantly, when the very same question was put before the House, hearing a very respectable Senator say that in his opinion, and his opinion ought to convey respect to the mind of everybody who heard it, that as long as that dispute lasts, the advocates for a certain class did not care how long it lasts provided that during the period there are no annuities to be paid.

Mr. C. Kennedy

If it is any information to the Senator, I want to say that the annuities are paid three times over to Great Britain.

Mr. Lynch

My friend the Senator will excuse me if I am not called upon to follow him in his flight of romance in dealing with the finance of the payment of the annuities three times over as he said. It would not, I think, be fair to the House to go into the finance of the matter at this late hour in the evening. But if I did go into the finance of it I would venture to say that I could demonstrate to my friend the Senator that he is under a misapprehension in the statement he has made, by way, I presume, of information to the House, but which you will excuse me in saying I consider to be by way of interruption of the few brief observations that I propose to address to the House on this subject. I was about to deal a little further with this aspect of the question which has been dwelt upon so much—the effect of the economic war on the finances of the country. What has been the suggestion of the former Minister for Finance? It is that during the continuance of the economic war nobody is to pay a farthing for any land of which he is in possession and that he is to enjoy that land for nothing no matter how large the holding is.

Perhaps it is not helpful here to mention this, but it is as relevant as anything else said here—which everybody in this House knows, whether they are on these benches or on the Opposition Benches—that there is no trouble whatever in settling or ending the economic war at any time if you establish one basis upon which to discuss the matter at issue between the parties. If you come to an agreement on one fundamental question you can very easily settle the economic war at any time. On a former occasion I ventured to suggest—and everybody in this House knows it is a fact—that if you start with the admission of the liability to continue to pay the annuities—the liability discussed in the address— which has been so highly eulogised by Senator Moore—by the President at Rathmines this year on the question of the liability on the part of this country to continue to pay the annuities, you can at once have a settlement of this question. If you agree that you will forego your claim to retain these annuities and admit your liability to pay them until the matter of the ultimate farthing due in respect of the annuities is paid to the bond holders— if you start with an admission of that liability on the part of this country, then you can settle the economic war easily. Nobody knows better than every single one of the Senators on the other side that there is a denial on the part of the advisers of the present Government that there is any liability to pay these annuities to England.

Senators know right well that there is only that difficulty in disposing of the differences that exist between this country and Great Britain as to whether the annuities are to be paid to Britain or whether the present attitude is to be persisted in on the part of this Government. No one knows that better than the former Minister for Finance; no one knows better than my friends the Senators who are opposing it now—that if the present Government, having adopted their present policy upon the advice that they got, now turned a volte face and said: “We did say that this country had no liability to pay these annuities; we have said that, that is our attitude and that has been our attitude; but having said that, we now execute a volte face and admit the liability for these annuities”—what the political consequences would be to the members of the Government.

Having dealt with these matters with all due respect and with the consideration of the House, it occurs to me that the question as to whether this money is to be dealt with in the way proposed by the Bill is a matter on which we can do nothing except by way of suggestion. I was just going to say that a discussion of this sort by this House on a question which is peculiarly within the province of the House which represents the taxpaying portion of the community, strikes me as being rather inappropriate in this House. I do not agree with the criticism which has been made. When you find people saying that there is some doubt as to the meaning of a section of the Act of Parliament, the best way to save people from the consequences of foolish legislation is to say there never was any doubt about the section of the Act of Parliament and that there is no use in your bringing several actions against the State or a Minister of the State for the purpose of having it determined in court what particular construction is to be put upon a section of an Act of Parliament. There is no necessity for that doubt; we can end the matter now easily. We can bring the matter before Parliament and ask Parliament: "Did not you or your predecessors pass this Act, and were not your intentions so and so; and if you did pass it with that intention then give effect to it by passing legislation of the kind that is proposed in this measure?"

This Bill was brought forward for the purpose of clarifying a thing which possibly did not need very much clarifying except that, perhaps, some draftsman might have expressed it differently, and to save people from the intense annoyance of a multiplicity of actions about the interpretation of a particular section. Judging by what happened when the Bill was introduced, there can be no doubt about the intention of Parliament. It seems to me that the apprehensions some Senators have as to the consequences of such legislation need not be present on this occasion. Some Senators seem to think that we are such an excellent body and can always show ourselves so very well fitted to be a revising Chamber and nothing else, always so absolutely judicial, semi-judicial, and quasi-judicial in the way we discuss matters, that really the disaster to the country if we were abolished would be a thing that no language can sufficiently portray so as to bring to the notice of the public the terrible terror and danger they are in by the abolition of this House. Some Senators are very strong upon that.

Mr. Milroy

You are just as much afraid of it yourself.

Mr. Lynch

Senators seem to think that the work which they performed and do perform to the present hour has been so excellent that really if even for a little while the public were deprived of their services, the injury to the public would be so incalculable that it would be a disaster the immensity of which it is almost impossible to contemplate. One of the Senators said that the effect of disregarding the presence of this House and the good it could do might result in our having a benevolent dictator, possibly a ruthless dictator. "Whatever you do," he said, "woodman spare that tree. If we are abolished, the future of this country is really one that we must shudder to contemplate." That is the burden of Senators who have spoken so vigorously, not only when they were on their feet, but when I was endeavouring to say a few words for the purpose of clearing up what appears to me a very elementary proposition, namely, whether the Bill, over which we have no control, should be ended by dealing with it in a businesslike way, being a matter that does not concern us one whit, so far as our functions and powers are concerned.

Mr. Dillon

I should like to say a few words, especially after listening to the last speaker. He expressed great astonishment that it should come from these benches that the annuities should be remitted during the period of the economic war. In view of that, it is no harm to remember what is really the cause of this Bill. The cause of this Bill, so far as I know, is the destruction of the markets for about one-half of the agricultural produce of this country and the absolute and deliberate discouragement of exports. The last speaker said that there was nothing spoken of from this side of the House but the economic war. I suggest that the Government have deliberately by their policy discouraged exports and told the people that they must not look to an export trade for their economic welfare in future. That statement is on record from several Ministers.

In view of that, and of the ruin brought upon the export trade, I should like to mention some of the results of which I am myself aware. One of the results is that the income of farmers has been cut by about half. Besides that, their market has actually been limited by the policy of the Government, a policy that has nothing to do with the economic war, that is, their policy of tariffs and self-sufficiency and telling the people that they must not look for their economic welfare through the medium of exports. The ability to pay annuities must be measured by the markets that are accessible to the agricultural producers. The Government should have not alone preserved the markets, but developed them in accordance with modern competition and progress. Instead of that, they set themselves out to ruin the markets. I do not say they did that for the purpose of destroying the economic life of the nation. At all events, the result of the Government policy is that the farmers have their income cut in half, their credit destroyed, and the value of their land and stock brought down, it is computed, by something like £120,000,000.

There is no better way of finding out the credit of the farmer than when he goes to a banking institution to look for money. He will then find out what his credit is. That is the position to which the Government have brought him. I might also mention, especially in view of the statement of the last Senator, that in money alone there has been something like £14,000,000 lost to the farmers and, of course, lost to the community as a whole. The Government, in the pursuit of their policy, have reduced the income of the agriculturists, destroyed their markets and destroyed the credit of the country. I say that they have deliberately destroyed the export trade, and in doing that they have destroyed the national economy of the country.

The statement is frequently made that the Government are responsible to the community as a whole to see that the farmers pay their annuities and other public commitments. They say that they have a duty as representing the community as a whole to see that these are paid. They see to it that even the farmers' breeding stock must contribute to that. I suggest that the community as a whole and the Government as representing them have a responsibility to the farmers. They have the responsibility of seeing that farmers who have not access to markets for their produce shall have food and clothing and boots, instead of being in rags, and using—and I say this deliberately and knowingly—in many cases the offals and dregs of the farms, because they cannot afford to eat the eggs and butter that they produce themselves. They have to sell the latter. When the Senator talks against the remission of the annuities during the period of the economic war, has he stood for that state of affairs? He has, and every member over there, and the members of the Labour Party have stood for it, and are prepared to stand and look at the capital and the industry of the country being destroyed. I suggest that they have stood for all that, but I say to them that if they go to the remote districts of the country they will see, in the pale faces of the men, women and children, the disastrous results of that policy.

It is not because of dishonesty that these people do not pay their annuities or their rates, but because they cannot pay them: because their earning power has been destroyed by the present policy. They are not talking, as some of our friends across the way may talk, about the laws of declining returns and so on. They know nothing about such laws, but they will be able to tell you the reason why they cannot pay their annuities. They will tell you that they cannot pay for their bread or their butter, or for any of the necessaries of life. I suggest that these are matters for consideration, and I say also that the economic war, in its effects, may be temporary, but temporary or not, the policy of the Government—the policy of discouraging exports and all that sort of thing— will have a tremendously evil effect; and I say, further, that there is nobody alive to-day who will see the end of it.

This Bill seeks to gather these rates from the poorest of the poor in the country. The effect of the Bill is that, if the rates are not paid in the way they have been paid hitherto, they will be paid by the cottagers throughout the country. I suggest that these matters, despite the indignation of the last speaker, are matters for consideration, and I think it ought to be admitted that there is a lot to be said for those people. We were promised what is commonly called derating. What did we get? We got, instead, a reduction of £750,000 in the Agricultural Grant. We were promised £2,000,000 of a reduction in taxation. What did we get? We got £10,000,000 of an increase in taxation. I think we should look at all these matters as practical and responsible men, instead of holding up our hands in indignation when we are asked for a remission of annuities during this temporary period.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

This Bill has been attacked on two grounds: firstly, that we are endeavouring to amend the law with retrospective effect, and, secondly, that we will impose an undue burden on the community. I should like, first of all, to address myself to the criticism that we are amending the existing law after proceedings have been initiated in the courts. In that connection, I should like to remind the House of Senator Johnson's remark, that one of the things that had been impressed upon him, in the course of his legislative experience, was that the courts do not take into consideration, in construing or interpreting the law, statements which may have been made in the Legislature during the passage of the Bill in question. It is quite true that the courts, in construing a statute, have regard only to the phraseology written in the statute concerned, and it is because of the knowledge of that, that we have been constrained to come to the Oireachtas and ask it to express clearly and without any ambiguity what its intention was, and what its intention is, in regard to the Guarantee Fund Bill. I agree that there might be difficulty in citing in the courts the action which the Oireachtas took in regard to amendments designed to abolish the Guarantee Fund procedure. I agree that the courts might feel bound to disregard the very precise statements which those, who were responsible for asking the Oireachtas to enact the Land Bill of 1933, made here with regard to the Guarantee Fund; but by the very fact that those speeches cannot be quoted in the courts, and that the action of the Oireachtas in regard to certain amendments might be held not to be binding on the courts, I contend that I am entitled, and that the Government is entitled, to ask the Oireachtas to have regard to the statements which were made both in the Dáil and in the Seanad, and to have regard to its own action on this matter of the Guarantee Fund Bill.

I say, furthermore, that not only am I entitled—not only is the Government entitled—to remind the Oireachtas of its former decisions in regard to the Guarantee Fund Bill, but it is also bound, in its duty to the courts, and in its duty to the citizens at large, when a doubt has been expressed as to whether a statute does in fact carry out the precise intention of the Oireachtas, to come to the Oireachtas and to ask the Oireachtas to place that intention beyond doubt; because, if the courts are entitled to disregard statements which are made here by legislators in fulfilling their function as legislators, there is a duty upon the Legislature of making clear to the courts what its intention was, so that the judges, in giving effect to the statutes, will, in fact, carry out the purposes for which these statutes were passed.

I cannot conceive any other view being taken of our rights in this matter than that, because, quite obviously, an impossible situation would arise if it were to be held that the Oireachtas could not mend its hand when, through an error of drafting, through some misconstruction on the part of people who, after all, are not skilled interpreters of the law, some mistranscription of the words of a Bill the Oireachtas was to fail to give effect to and to express clearly what its intention was in regard to laws which were bound to affect the citizens for whose benefit these measures were being enacted. Therefore, I say that, to my mind, there is no substance in the criticisms which have been launched against this measure. We are asking the House now, even though proceedings have been initiated, to state clearly for the guidance of the courts what its intentions in regard to the Guarantee Fund are now and always have been. I think that a much greater injury would be done if we were to allow the courts to interpret a statute which, it is contended, has another effect than that which the Dáil, not merely the Dáil but the Oireachtas, which passed the statute, has permitted the Minister and the Government to give to it. We must remember that the Dáil and those who represent these communities which are held to be prejudiced by the action we are taking in regard to the Guarantee Fund have had the opportunity, year after year, to get up and challenge the manner in which the Minister for Finance and the Executive Council, of which he is a member, has administered that Fund.

The Guarantee Fund procedure was not applied for the first time merely in 1934. It operated in 1933. It was operated in 1934, within less than 12 months after the Land Act of 1933 was passed, and within less than three months after the Land (Purchase Annuities Fund) Act of 1933 was passed. The Guarantee Fund is cleared on the 15th February of ever year and the county councils are made liable to the extent of the unpaid annuities for the deficiencies in the land purchase annuities' collection which accrued in their areas. No person came forward during the year 1934 when the Vote for the Minister for Finance was before the Dáil, when the Vote for the Minister for Lands was before the Dáil, when the Vote for the Land Commission was before the Dáil, or when the Appropriation Acts of those years were before the Dáil, to state that the Minister for Finance, in operating the Guarantee Fund in this way, was acting contrary to the intention of the Oireachtas or was doing anything else than what the Oireachtas desired him to do when it passed the Land Act of 1933: not merely that, but the grants which constitute the Guarantee Fund were grants which were passed by the Dáil in consequence of an Act entitled "Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Act, 1935, and, previously, of 1934." These grants were voted by the Oireachtas in consequence of this Act. When the Act was going through the Oireachtas questions were raised about this Guarantee Fund procedure, and while there was a great deal of bemoaning and a great deal of bewailing about the economic war and about the difficulties of collecting these annuities, there was no person among all the legislators who wrote the Land Act of 1933, and the Acts granting relief of rates on agricultural land, to get up in the Oireachtas to challenge the action of the Minister or hold that he was interpreting wrongly or misconstruing the act of the Oireachtas in regard to the Guarantee Fund. Therefore, since here in the Oireachtas there is not any doubt as to what the intention of the Oireachtas was when it enacted this legislation, if doubts have arisen outside surely it is our duty to resolve those doubts at the earliest possible moment and to safeguard and secure the luckless ratepayers of the counties who would have to bear the expense of what would, in any event, be fruitless litigation: to safeguard and secure them against such factious and vexatious proceedings as have been initiated in the courts.

Let us consider what Senator Johnson said. He said that the Minister for Finance, or for that matter any Government appearing in the courts, appeared there merely as a private individual. Precisely, but it is not as a litigant that we come here to the Legislature itself. It is as lawmakers entitled to make the law, entitled to write the law, and entitled, above everything else, to secure that a public obligation will be honoured because that is what this Bill relates to.

Mr. Johnson

The litigant goes to the lawmaker?

Mr. MacEntee

The Minister for Finance, in his capacity as a litigant, will appear in the courts, and he is entitled to justice the same as everybody else, and he is entitled, if he has a dual capacity, in his capacity as lawmaker, just the same as any other citizen he is entitled to make certain that there will be no ambiguity in the law as it is written, and that he will not be the victim of an ambiguity if it exists.

Mr. Brown

Yes, if he does that beforehand.

Mr. MacEntee

In advance, and he is doing it in advance now. I say that he is particularly entitled, in this case, to take steps to safeguard and to secure his position, and to safeguard and secure the Exchequer. I do that for this reason: What is involved in this litigation are two public funds, one of them provided by the Oireachtas. The Guarantee Fund is constituted out of public moneys voted by the Oireachtas. Forming part of that Guarantee Fund, and subject to all the liabilities which the Oireachtas, when it voted these moneys, thought it had charged upon that fund was the £227,000 voted for the relief of rates in County Cork, and something like £39,000 of public money voted for the relief of rates in County Louth. When the Dáil voted that money, first in 1934, and again in 1935, for the relief of the rates, and to assist the County Councils of Cork and Louth to discharge their liabilities to their ratepayers, it did so under the impression that these moneys were going to form part of the Guarantee Fund, and that they would be a guarantee to the Exchequer that the land purchase annuities within the jurisdiction of these public authorities would be paid. Is there anybody who would ask any member of this House, or any member of the Dáil, to believe that if it was thought then that—after this money was voted by the Dáil under the belief that the Vote was governed by the Guarantee Fund legislation— the County Councils of Louth and Cork would have brought the Minister for Finance to court—even if they have not brought the Minister for Finance but the Attorney-General to court it amounts to the same thing— or by a side wind would endeavour to get a declaration from the court that there was a flaw in the legislation which set up the Guarantee Fund, they would have got one penny? Does anybody think that any Minister for Finance or any Government would have undertaken the responsibility of going to the Dáil and asking it to tax the citizens of the country as a whole, in order to provide £220,000 for County Cork and £39,000 for County Louth, public bodies that by a side wind wanted to get out of their obligations to the State? That is why I say, no matter what else the position may be, we would be justified, since the Guarantee Fund procedure forms an essential part of this bond, to ensure that that bond would be honoured by those who are taking advantage of the generosity of the Oireachtas. That is the position. I say that it is not fair, and is not right, and that no person is justified in endeavouring to put us into the position of some person who is taking advantage of the law to get out of the obligations of a contract which he freely entered into. If we were coming along, say, to dispossess the County Council of Cork or the County Council of Louth of something to which they were rightfully entitled; of something to which they were entitled by long custom and usage; or if we wanted to amend an old-established statute and endeavour by a new Act to put a new interpretation upon that statute, there might be some ground for criticism, but, when we are endeavouring to preserve the interpretation which has always been placed upon the Acts which set up the Guarantee Fund in the first instance, when we are endeavouring to preserve the position in relation to that Guarantee Fund, by virtue of which the Dáil has made itself responsible year after year for imposing heavy taxation upon the generality of the citizens, then I say the criticism which has been levelled against us, particularly by Senator Johnson, is not well founded and should not commend itself to the acceptance of the House.

Senator Wilson charged me that I had not justified the principle of this measure. In view of the fact that the Guarantee Fund procedure was accepted by the Oireachtas, not merely in 1933 but much more formally in 1923 I did not think that I was called upon to deal with the principle of the merits of the Guarantee Fund procedure at all. Our position here is this, that that procedure has applied for a considerable number of years, and because we thought the Acts which governed it were watertight, we have year after year asked the people to vote moneys to give effect to an arrangement of which the Guarantee Fund procedure was a vital part. In view of that, I did not think it was necessary for me to deal with the merits of the procedure at all. I should say this, that I am grateful to Senator Wilson, because I think his speech answered in advance most of the objections that have been raised against this measure. I recited to the House what those who were responsible for asking the Oireachtas to enact the Land Act of 1933 said in regard to the Guarantee Fund. I have pointed out the action which both Houses of the Oireachtas took in regard to amendments moved by Senator Wilson and Senator Keane, and I ask the House to perceive the force there is in what Senator Wilson said to-day in that regard. "If we accepted the Bill." said the Senator, "as it came back from the Dáil, we accepted it because if we did not we lost the Bill." Therefore, it is clear from Senator Wilson's own words that this Bill— which apparently the Seanad accepted because it thought it conferred substantial benefits on the farmers of the country and upon the ratepayers of these counties which are challenging our action in regard to the annuities— had, as a vital and essential part of it, this Guarantee Fund procedure. I am not a lawyer, but I understand that when a contract is an issue you cannot approbate and reprobate at one and the same time. The House cannot take up this attitude: that having, in 1933, accepted the Guarantee Fund as an essential part of the procedure, it can now turn back and say: "We are going to drop the Guarantee Fund procedure, but we are going to take all the other benefits that the Act of 1933 conferred upon us." We ask the House to say what was its intention and to write that in the only place, and in the only way in which courts can clearly see what in fact was the true intention of the Oireachtas in regard to this matter, to write it on the statute book. We are asking the House to stand honourably by a contract to which this House was a party, in 1933, when it accepted the Land Bill rather than reject it because of the Guarantee Fund.

It has been pleaded by those who are opposed to this Bill that it will inflict an injustice on the farming community and upon the local ratepayers, but how will our failure to enact this measure obviate that injustice? Surely some person will have to find the £700,000 odd which is at stake here? Whenever an individual defaults in his just obligations, he inflicts an injustice upon the other party, whether it be the individual, or the community, or the State to whom he fails to pay his debt. It is not we who are inflicting any injustice on the farming community. It is those who have failed, and in some cases wilfully failed, to pay their land annuities who are inflicting the injustice. Where would the greater injustice lie? After all, as I did say in the other House, what has made it possible to carry through land purchase upon terms that would be equitable to the tenant farmer has been the fact that the community as a whole has stood behind him and has pledged its credit in his support. The defect in the law, or the assumed defect in the law, which this Bill is designed to remedy relates only to the pre-1923 purchase agreements. Nobody has challenged the legality of applying the Guarantee Fund procedure to the post-1923 agreements, but if those who purchased out under the pre-1923 Land Acts are going to get away with it, as they would get away with it if the Guarantee Fund did not apply to those transactions, how long does anyone think that those who purchased out under the post-1923 agreement would be content with their disadvantageous position?

If the people who bought out under the 1903 and 1909 Acts were once placed in the position that they could refuse with impunity to pay, what chance would there be of collecting the annuities payable under the 1923 and subsequent Acts and what chance would there be of the State or the Exchequer continuing to complete the land purchase programme in this country? Would not the whole system of land purchase collapse? Either that or the community as a whole, the landless men in the community, would have to bear the whole cost. And remember, the landholders are a minority in the community; it is sometimes overlooked, but the fact remains that they are a minority in the community—the people in the towns and the cities who do not own a rood or square yard of earth would have to make good the default of those who are blessed in owning land in this country, of those who fail to meet their obligations in respect of that land. They may be passing through a less prosperous time than they were, but times will change as they have changed before, and if there is land going in this country to-day it does not go abegging for want of a prospective owner, and people do not go looking for it as greedily and as hungrily as they do because they think it is a bane and not a blessing.

Where is the greater injustice then? Are the people who own nothing, who have no hope of owning anything, going to be penalised simply because a certain section of the farmers of this country who have bought their land by virtue of the communal guarantee which was given in the first instance, are going to try to avoid fulfilling that guarantee? Are the people, say, of County Cork, where, on 31st July last, arrears of annuities amounted to £227,000, going to escape free at the expense of the 55,000 souls in Leitrim who, at the same date, were in arrears only to the extent of £8,681, or of the 65,000 souls in Monaghan who, at the same date, owed only £7,906? Where does the greater injustice lie? In making the ratepayers of County Cork who accepted responsibility for those who are in default to the tune of £227,000 pay, in making them bring the pressure of public opinion to bear upon the defaulting annuitants and compelling them, through that pressure, to pay, or in saddling the unfortunate people in Leitrim, in Sligo, in Monaghan, in Donegal, or in Cavan who have paid and who are trying to discharge their liabilities to the community as a whole to the utmost of their ability? If it is a case of inflicting hardship, surely it is more just to compel the people of Cork who have been witnesses of the campaign which has sprung up there, and which is responsible, and solely responsible, for the position which obtains there at the present time, to waken up to the fact that the hardship and injury is being inflicted, not merely on this State and on this community, but upon themselves and upon their neighbours. When they realise that that is the effect of the campaign that has been carried on there I am perfectly certain we will see the end of it.

Senator Counihan, I think, said that the annuitants could not pay the money which they could not find. I should like to believe that was the position. I should prefer that those people were in the position in which they are due to inability to pay rather than due to a dishonest unwillingness to pay. The facts, as we have experienced them during the past ten months, do not bear out Senator Counihan's view, because from the 1st February of the year of which this is the last day to the 30th October—eight months—over £1,065,000 of land annuity arrears was collected. Most of that—I go so far as to say £1,000,000 worth—was tendered in cash at the door when the agents of the special machinery we set up to collect the annuities arrived there. It was not a case of having to seize stock and dispose of it here and there. As soon as these people saw that we were determined to collect the annuities, the money was forthcoming. That does not indicate any inability to pay on the part of these people. The money was available. In most cases, there was no delay in getting it. It was there ready and waiting, except, I suppose, such part as had already been contributed to the Purchase Annuities Defence Fund for the purpose of financing this campaign against the Government, the State and the honest people in the community. The reason why the local authorities in Cork, Tipperary and some of these other counties find themselves in the position in which they are to-day is that, instead of paying what was honestly due to the Exchequer when it became due, a large part of this money was hypothecated to other purposes. It was only when it was clear that this campaign against the payment of annuities was not going to prevail that this money was released in order to enable these people to meet their obligations to the Exchequer. Because we know that these people have realised the error of their ways and have realised how seriously they have jeopardised their title to what they regard as their own property, but upon which the State has a prior charge, we feel that, during the coming year, the local authorities are not going to be financially in anything like the parlous position that has been represented to the House.

Senator Toal spoke of the position in County Monaghan. I should like to make clear to the Senator that I did not represent that conditions in County Monaghan were everything we should like them to be nor did I say that County Monaghan was enjoying a big measure of prosperity. On the contrary, when in the Dáil I cited the figures relating to County Monaghan, I remarked that it was one of the counties which possibly were suffering in greatest measure by reason of the economic war. I pointed out that, notwithstanding that it was so suffering, it was one of the counties in which both rates and annuities had been most readily forthcoming. If we pass this Bill, I do not think that County Monaghan is going to be in any serious position next year because, so far as I can see, the increase in the accumulated arrears for the past 12 months over what they were when last the Guarantee Fund was cleared will not be more than £1,100. As against that deficiency, County Monaghan will receive a grant of £50,000 in relief of rates on agricultural land. That is, if we pass this Bill and make clear what the intention of the Oireachtas was in regard to the Guarantee Fund.

If, on the other hand, Senator Toal and Senator O'Rourke vote for the rejection of this Bill, what is the position of their county going to be? Assuming we have to find £750,000 we shall have to find it out of taxation and that taxation will be levied at the rate of 4/6 per head on every man, woman and child in County Monaghan. Instead of a deficiency of £1,100, to be made up out of the Guarantee Fund, there will be a possible deficiency of about £15,000. Will we inflict a greater injustice by asking the people of County Monaghan to find £15,000 in order to make good the default of the wealthy farmers of County Cork than by passing the Guarantee Fund Bill and expecting them to make good only the £1,100 which they owe in respect of the accrued arrears of the past 12 months? What I have said in regard to County Monaghan applies to other counties as well. Surely, it would be contrary to natural justice to ask the counties which have met their obligations to make good the deficiencies of those who have wilfully, deliberately and without any justification refused to meet their obligations in respect of the land which they are occupying and out of which they are making a living—and a comfortable living compared with the standard of living of a lot of people in this country at the present time.

Senator Counihan has said that the reason why the people of Monaghan, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim have paid their annuities and their rates is that the standard of living in these counties is very low. Senator Counihan, while talking about the injustice we are inflicting on the farming community, is asking us to depress still lower the standard of living in those districts in which it is already very low but in which the people have met their obligations to the State and to the local authorities in order that those more fortunate people, who are richer in the world's goods, may get off scot free. If there were no other argument in favour of this Bill, the argument that the people who have already paid annuities in the poorer districts should not be further mulcted should be sufficient to secure the passage of this Bill. On that basis, if on no other basis, the Seanad should pass the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Cathaoirleach

Senator Robinson is not here to move the motion on the Order Paper standing in his name. This Bill has got to be law by to-morrow night. I have power given to me under Standing Order 110, on a question of urgency, to allow the House to take a vote on this matter now—that the Standing Orders be suspended to permit the taking of the remaining Stages.

Mr. Foran

Has anyone asked for that?

Cathaoirleach

I will allow any member of the Seanad to move that the Standing Orders be suspended. In order to have that motion carried, it must be carried unanimously; one dissentient can defeat it. If it is defeated, there is no course open to me but to summon the Seanad for 3 o'clock to-morrow in order to take the remaining Stages of this Bill, which I shall do. I will now give any Senator an opportunity of moving that the Standing Orders be suspended for the purpose of allowing the remaining Stages to be taken to-night. As I have indicated, that must be carried unanimously; one dissentient will defeat it. If it should be defeated, there is another course open to me, one which I shall adopt; that is, to call the House together at 3 o'clock to-morrow to take the remaining Stages, in regard to which an Order will be put on the Paper by some Senator.

Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 31 Dec 1935