The present Land Commission system is completely wrong. By the term "the present system", I mean the system operated by the Minister and his predecessor.
The system of land division in North Tipperary has been very unfair to cottage holders and landless men for a good many years past. They are people who should receive a certain amount of the land that is being divided. The present Minister and the former Minister will tell us there is nothing in the land Acts to debar landless men or cottage holders from getting land. If you follow up the matter closely, you find that landless men and cottage holders are the very last on the list of persons qualified to get land. If any land is left over after every section of the people has been catered for, the landless men and the cottage holders will then qualify for a portion of an estate. Surely that is unfair.
Under the system operating in this country for a long number of years, the Land Commission do not acquire a farm unless it is not being properly worked. Take, for example, a farm of 200 or 300 acres. In the good times, the owner was able to employ five or six men. As times became harder and harder, he had to lay them off until he had perhaps only one man or two. Someone notified the Land Commission who then stepped in and told the owner he was not working his land to the best advantage and acquired his farm.
Under the law, the one workman or the two workmen in occupation and working with that owner may possibly qualify for a certain amount of the land, but the other men who had worked on it for one, two or three years do not qualify. That is very unfair. In all those estates, you have people and small farmers' sons who marry and, having no holding to get at home, apply for cottages and get them built on the estates. Yet, when the estates are being divided, they do not qualify for a portion of the land. They may qualify if land is available over and above what everybody else wants. It is obvious that the present system of land division is completely wrong.
If we are to keep people in rural Ireland and help them to rear a family in healthy conditions there, every cottage-holder living on every estate being divided should qualify, as they did some years ago, to get five, six or seven acres of the land in question, that is, if they qualify to the extent of being in a position to work and to stock those seven or eight acres. When I say "stock," I mean to have a cow or two, which will help them to rear a young family. Under present milk regulations in the country, 90 per cent. of the farmers are not allowed to sell milk and in rural Ireland we have the position that agricultural labourers are finding it very difficult to get supplies of milk, because if a farmer supplies them he can, under certain regulations, be brought to court. The Minister should try to change this position and give those landless men five or six acres on which they can keep a cow and which will help to make them a little more industrious. If they have a cow, it means that they can have a calf and also that they will have milk for the family. That would help to stem the rush from the land.
In North Tipperary, we have a vast number of small farmers with perhaps a valuation of £12 or £13 and who have four, five or six sons but none of those will qualify to get conacre, because it is the owner of the farm who has to qualify, and if he has a valuation anywhere around £12 or £13, he gets no land at all. The result is that agricultural labourers and farmers' sons have to emigrate. There is nothing to keep them at home and they have no interest in the land. Since I became a member of this House, I have put down questions regarding the Land Commission and when I was a Senator, I also made inquiries about their activities. The Minister tells us that he has no control over the Land Commission. It is very wrong if a Deputy cannot get a reply from the Minister regarding the activities of that body.
I do not know how this House can accept responsibility for providing a vast amount of money, year after year, for the Land Commission, over which we have no direct control. I am not advocating that the Minister should have complete control, nor am I suggesting that he should have control in the sense that he could direct their activities, but I am suggesting that any member of this House should be in a position to ask the Minister about the activities of the Land Commission, in any part of the State. That is very important because we see things going on, and I do not mean in North Tipperary alone, about which we should be able to ask questions. When we hear things about the Land Commission, we do not know whether they are actually true or not.
In North Tipperary, we find that the Land Commission are very backward. They are not so backward in the matter of acquiring farms but in the matter of dividing them. We find that they also take over a farm from a farmer because he is not working that land to their satisfaction. I have a case in mind where a man was not farming his farm to the Land Commission's satisfaction. He was setting it in conacre and had been so setting it for about three years. The commission came along and, after acquiring the farm, they set it for another three years. There was no question of title because the man from whom they had acquired it had bought it only three years previously and the title was completely in order. This case was in Lower Ormond, North Tipperary, 90 per cent. of which comprises tillage land.
Anyone who takes conacre has no interest in it except what he can get out of it. He is not going to put fertilisers on the land over and above the amount he may get from the crop which he grows on it. The commission came along and set this land as low as £1 an acre. The land became so poor that the people would not take it at even £1 or £2 an acre. After setting it back for the last couple of years, they proceeded, a fortnight ago, to hand it over and the people who have got it are now burdened with 12, 13 and even 20 acres of stubble ground, which will not grow a crop for at least the next ten to 12 years.
I would like to ask the Minister what is the position. You buy a farm of 100 acres for £1,000, or maybe £1,600 or even £2,000 and you start to set that every year. Is it possible to get back the purchase price paid to the previous owner, before he hands it over to the small tenants, who are getting land which gives them no return for a long number of years?
This position may not actually occur in other counties, but it does occur in areas where tillage is predominant, such as in Lower Ormond. Provided that the title and such matters are in order, I hope the Minister will do his best to get these farms which the Land Commission take over divided out amongst the people who want to get some benefit out of them. The people will have to pay rent and rates on the portion of land which they get, and it will be ten to 12 years before they get a return of one penny. I am not blaming this Minister for that position. No matter what Government is in power, I think it is very unfair that a farm is acquired and the Land Commission then set it and keep setting it, in an effort to get back all the money, or threequarters of the money which they have paid for it
With regard to pumps erected by the Land Commission, I find that I can get no reply from any official of the Land Commission when I ask them who is responsible for the repair of those pumps which are put up on farms. The same applies to the roads which they have built in my area. No one seems to have any responsibility for them. The Land Commission are not responsible; the tenants say they are not responsible; and the county council in my area refuses to take over a Land Commission road. I raised the matter at North Tipperary County Council and the manager rightly pointed out that those roads are not made up to the standard required for a county council road and that it would be a terrible burden on them to acquire them. I would ask the Minister to try to put those roads in the required good order and then make it compulsory on the county council to take them over.
I want to raise the question of drainage by the Land Commission. Within the last couple of weeks, I had occasion to get in touch with the Land Commission in regard to drainage carried out by them in North Tipperary. In the subdividing of an estate in my area, the Land Commission cleaned a vast amount of bog, with the result that it flooded three or four farmers on good arable land at the lower end. This has been going on for a long time. The three farmers did everything humanly possible to get the Land Commission to finish out their drains in order to get an outlet for the surface water brought down but nothing has been done.
The Land Commission went so far as to offer one of the tenants a farm in another part of North Tipperary. His land was so badly flooded that he agreed to remove to this farm. After giving his consent to the removal, he found that the Land Commission changed their mind and said: "No, we cannot give you this farm in North Tipperary, but we will give you one in Laois-Offaly." He refused to go to Laois-Offaly and, because of that, he is left there now. A fortnight ago, he told me that nothing could be done because he had refused a farm in Laois-Offaly.
If the Minister does not mind my saying so, I think there should be a little more common sense in the activities of the Land Commission. This House votes a vast amount of money to the Land Commission. When we try to get answers to certain things, we are told the Minister has no responsibility for the work of the Land Commission. It is a wrong system that the House which votes the money has no power to see whether it is spent wisely or not. I should like the Minister to make some statement about the rights of all Deputies in this matter. I am not blaming this Minister alone; the other people were just as bad.
I know there is nothing in the Land Acts which debars a landless man or a cottage holder from getting land. It is like telling a working man he will not be debarred from going into the Gresham Hotel. The only thing that will debar him is the amount of money in his pocket. A landless man can get land only when everyone else in the locality has been completely satisfied. In other words, you can bring a man from £5 up to £12 and then bring him from £12 up to £20, and still leave the landless man out. I think we are all interested in keeping our people on the land. If the Minister is interested— and he may be more interested than many people—he should make it clear that when any estate is being divided cottage holders or landless men living on or adjoining the estate will get at least six or seven acres.