Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 24 Mar 1983

Vol. 100 No. 4

Land Bond Bill, 1983 [ Certified Money Bill: ] Second Stage (Resumed) and Subsequent Stages.

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

Mr. Lanigan

The vexed question of land division in Ireland is one that we will have to take a radical look at in the very near future. Constitutionally private ownership of land is sacrosanct. The private ownership of land is a new concept for Irish people in a sense, because 90 per cent of the people in Ireland were tenants of either absentee landlords or of very big landlords up to the time the State was founded. Then people were able to buy land on a long lease system, take over the absentee landlords' interest and pay back the Government through long leases.

Anybody who travels through Ireland at present will see that there is an under use of land. We hear at times about the prospects of finding oil off our coasts but we have within the country resources which would far exceed the potential of an offshore oil field. We do not use our resources to the best advantage for the individual or for the country. Travelling through the country, unfortunately we see many big estates which are not being used because the people who own them are too old to use them or they have run out of the means to use them. Then we pass on to a very small holding where a young active farmer is using the land to the maximum of his ability.

We have to restructure radically the use of land, and the only way we can do that is to transfer it on a long lease basis to younger, more active farmers. At the same time, we must give to the people who own the land a better living standard than they have at present. In many cases elderly people who are trying to hold on to large tracts of land are living in poverty. If that land could be used to the benefit of the country and to the benefit of the owner, the owner would have a better standard of living and the country would benefit from the proper use of that land.

To do this we will have to have a radical change in the structure of financing for farming. The system of financing for farming at present is totally inadequate. If you prove to the banks that you have enough money, they will give you enough money to stay in business. The EEC lower interest loans or interest subsidies which are available are given to development farmers within a certain bracket which does not allow the person who is trying to develop to get into the developmental stage. He is caught for capital. He cannot get working capital. He cannot get the type of capital he needs to develop his enterprise.

The Social Welfare Bill suggests that farmers' dole, as it is called, should be given to people if they can prove their income is below a certain level. Farmers' dole is a misnomer, because a person with a small number of acres who has a job on the side may be using the money he gets from the job on the side to develop his small holding. He uses what is called farmers' dole to try to develop his farm at the same time. Anybody who suggests we should do away with the small amount of money a small farmer gets from the social welfare system is living in cloud cuckoo land. Basically we are telling that person: "You have a small farm. Get out of it. We will not subsidise you any longer. We will not help you any longer. Get out of that small farm. Sell it and go and take a job in industry." In many cases the same people buy up the small farms. We do not have to go to the west of Ireland to see that. We have seen it in the east of Ireland. The bigger farmer gets bigger and the small farmer is eliminated. The subsidy a small farmer has been getting because of his inability to live off his farm should be maintained at all costs.

In a country which is supposed to be going through a financial crisis how can we maintain the number of Land Commission officers we have throughout the country who, in many cases, have not divided farms in the past two years, but who have gone to auctions at which these farms have been set on the 11-months system?

Mr. A. O'Brien

I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment. His experience and knowledge of the farming business and, in particular, of the sort of problems we are discussing today, convince me that he will do a good job.

I will be very brief because the points I intended to make have been made by a number of speakers on both sides of the House. Anything the Minister can do to expedite the division of land held by the Land Commission for a number of years will be very welcome. I know cases where land was held by the Land Commission for as many as ten years, and that is not a satisfactory system. This land is being let out on the 11-months system. It is abused in every way. In wet weather cattle are moved to that land to save the farmer's own land. It is not fertilised. No attempt is made to drain it, and the value of the land deteriorates rapidly. In some cases it is almost taken over by scrub. While that is going on, a number of farmers with holdings which are barely viable are looking anxiously for as much of that land as would make their holdings viable or nearly so. I ask the Minister to do everything he possibly can to expedite the distribution of land held by the Land Commission.

Any incentives which can be given to elderly people to give the land over to younger farmers, a member of their own family or whoever, should be made available. Much of our land is underutilised due to the unwillingness of owners who have gone beyond the years of active work to give up their farms. They hold onto the farms, although they are not able. Much of our land is under-utilised not taking the maximum productivity from them. That should be attended to. The EEC scheme for the purchase of land is known to have failed. The lessons learned from that should be applied and a new scheme should be drawn up to give an incentive to people who have gone beyond the age of active farming to leave the land and allow it to pass to younger people. That is an essential part of a drive towards greater productivity. In the last analysis our only genuine hope of improving our standard of living is greater productivity. In the last industry. In so far as people have not been encouraged to give over the land when they are no longer able to work it, we are failing in the productivity sphere. If the Minister does something to change that substantially he will have made a big contribution towards the increased productivity which a higher standard of living will demand.

Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture (Mr. Connaughton)

I should like to thank Senators for a very constructive debate. This is a very popular topic. In the Dáil in the last few weeks, when we were debating this Bill, it got a very detailed airing.

This is an enabling Bill. We are getting permission from both Houses of the Oireachtas to allow an extra £25 million worth of bonds to be created. I must advise the House that how they will be used is entirely at the discretion of the Minister for Finance. Most of this money will have to be used immediately to pay for land which has been acquired by the Irish Land Commission and land in the pipeline for acquisition. There are about 7,000 hectares of land in that position.

I agree with Senators who said that one of the stumbling blocks to increased production on Irish farms is our huge land structure problem. Our land mobility is extraordinarily slow compared with most countries in Europe. To compound that even further, we have other problems in that much of our land badly needs rearrangement. We have many fragmented holdings and we have the age-old problem of elderly farmers holding on to what could be very productive units. Most of those people are not making a good income.

It is my intention and the intention of the Government to do everything possible to streamline an imaginative land structure programme. After all the talk that has been generated for years back on this very important subject, all the emotion created by it, all the surveys, plans and so on, we must do everything possible to create an environment and a structure which will allow farmers to get on with the job of gearing for greater production.

I have been having very detailed discussions with the officials in my Department and I hope that in the not too distant future we will be able to come before both Houses with proposals. There are certain aspects of land structure which do not need new legislation. I instance the problem of commonages. We have to look very seriously at this. It came up here and in the Dáil on many occasions. Where there are six or seven participants in a commonage and one is an objector, that one objector should not be given the chance to scuttle the programme for the division of that commonage for the greater good of the community. It makes good law to provide that that individual cannot upset us. At the moment I am getting legal opinion on how best to implement this. Some speakers suggested that any new land policy should be implemented by a process of encouragement and should not interfere with the right of free sale. I want to assure the House that there will be no tampering in any way with the right of free sale. That is enshrined in our Constitution. We hold it dearly and I can assure this House that any future legislation will not in any way tamper with it.

That does not necessarily mean that some farms will continue to get bigger while others remain static. Hard decisions will have to be taken. It may be necessary to place some obstacle in the way of persons deemed to have enough land or too much land at the moment. The concept of group purchase for small farmers is very important. One of the problems is that many farmers were not satisfied with the system of land distribution because of the fact that it took too long but, most important, because it was for the relief of congestion. By and large the land was given to people with the small holdings and in some cases it was put to great use, and in other cases it was not used productively. I suggest that in future we should look closely at the concept of the Land Commission helping in every way possible to get a number of small farmers to come together to purchase small properties jointly. The Land Commission could use their subdivision department to help and this group could act on their own initiative. The banks and the ACC might be asked to help those people with payments in the future. This would have a number of advantages. It would mean people who were most interested in getting land would be more likely to use it productively because of the fact that they had to pay for it. Above all else it would mean that, on the morning after the auction, they could go and farm that land instead of having a huge land bank.

The acquisition of land by the Land Commission will have to be curtailed. There is a huge loss to the Exchequer on the resale of land. It was mentioned today that, with land now at a much lower price than it was two, three or four years ago, we are coming back to an economic price. Unfortunately for the returns in agriculture, this is still not true. Land purchased at £1,000 or £1,500 per acre will show a resale loss to the Exchequer in most cases of almost 50 per cent. As Senators are well aware, if a farmer has to pay an annunity of £100 per acre that leaves him with very little profit. If there was no Exchequer supplement or subsidy on this he would have to pay £200 per acre. The Exchequer cannot stand this. There are far more imaginative ways in which we can get parcels of land transferred to local smallholders.

Very important decisions have been taken in recent times on the question of long-term land leasing. This has not exactly caught the imagination of the farming community over the past ten years since our entry into the EEC. However, there are indications that we will be more successful on this occasion. A number of farming organisations have gone to the trouble — and I certainly congratulate them on their initiative — to come up with what we call a master lease which may well mean that we will have a far more informal type of land leasing in the future, possibly ranging from three to 12 years depending on what would suit. I believe there is a great future for this and I can assure the House that my Department will do everything to help in this regard.

On the question of the land bank as created by the Irish Land Commission of land on hand, acquired but not allocated, I want to assure the House that since I went to the Department I have asked the chief inspectors to give me a list of outstanding estates with a view to having them allocated as quickly as possible, with the vast majority allocated in 1983 and 1984. I consider this to be important. We will always have acquisition of land, to a much lesser degree admittedly. It is an important facility.

The time is now ripe for a new, imaginative approach to the entire land structural programme. The will is there. I am heartened by what I heard in the Dáil and Seanad on this particular subject. I guarantee to the House that I will not be found wanting in ensuring that we get the necessary measures activated very quickly to achieve this goal. I hope the Senators who have spoken, and the people who have an interest in this, will continue to have this interest, because it is very important to the farming population. I hope that in the not too distant future signs of this new approach will be very evident on the ground. A number of people spoke about the priorities of the Land Commission over the years. This is not the time to go into that, but it is time to have a reappraisal of the priority listing of people who should be entitled to buy land and those who should not. I propose to give this every attention.

I am extremely thankful for the contributions made here today. I found them very enlightening. I have taken note of everything said and I will take due note of it in any new legislation to be enacted.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.

Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration, and ordered to be returned to the Dáil.