The Gazette 1984

INCORPORATED LAW SOCIETY OF IRELAND GAZETTE Vol. 78 No. 7 September 1984 Abolition of Land Commission

T HE recent announcement by the Government of its intention to abolish the Land Commission will be received with mixed feelings by the Solicitors' profession. To many the Land Commission is almost an old friend, certainly a familiar institution. To others it will have been an anachronistic nuisance, notable chiefly for spoiling auctions of farming land by the last minute service of Inspection Notices. In its time, the Land Commission, as successor to the Congested Districts Board, served the Irish community well. The system of land acquisition from big estates and its re-allocation among the local farming community has, in the course of not so many generations, transformed the Irish rural population from almost total serfdom to being independent, land owning, conservative capitalists. With the ever-increasing spread of bureaucracy into our daily lives, the Land Commission became the body charged with responsibility for administering such diverse concepts as the approval of land purchases by non- nationals and the farmer's voluntary retirement scheme. To date, official explanation of what the dismantling of the Land Commission will involve has, to say the least, been scant. Little or no reference seems to have been made to the setting up of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Land Structure Reform, which delivered its Final Report in May 1978, nor to the Government White Paper "Land Policy" published in December 1980. Interestingly, the fnter-Departmental Committee found that the Land Commission, which was established to deal with the problems of an entirely different era, was not the appropriate body to implement future land policy, and recommended the establishment of a new land agency for the purpose. The White Paper, however, chose to ignore the r e commenda t i on and, instead, stated that Government policy was to strengthen the powers of the Land Commission by two additional mechanisms, separate but complementary, consisting of Fiscal measures and a direct control of the right to purchase land. The White Paper went even further and made a number of strong and fundamental recommendations in the context of the continued utilisation of the Land Commission. In particular, it envisaged a continuing need for compulsory acquisition as long as a substantial acreage of land remained under-utilised in the hands of owners who were not interested in its development — which was in no way an attack on the idle rich, or "hobby farmers". The White Paper stated that over 30 per cent of the land of the country is taken up by farms which have shown no significant growth in recent years. One has only

to drive through the Irish countryside to see the number of fields covered in gorse or brambles which could, at little cost, be restored to productivity. In the face of the 1980 White Paper, the abolition of the Land Commission seems something of a volte face. Socially, it may be argued that the loss of the Land Commission's compulsory powers of acquisition may have the effect of raising the price of land. Against this it can be said that market forces, including the state of the economy and the money supply from time to time, will themselves regulate the price of land. The areas of the country in which very large areas of land will be purchased for very large sums of money are small and are, in the main, areas in which compulsory purchase and re- allocation is not a major factor. In other areas, the absence of the Land Commission as a purchaser of large farms should simply result in those farms being offered for sale in smaller lots, thus, in effect, making land available to more farmers. It is also possible that farmers who have purchased additional land out of their own hard-earned cash would be more concerned to farm it to its best advantage than would the farmer who has the land allocated to him through the Land Commission and who pays for it over 30 years on the "never never". At least it can be recorded that one key recommenda- tion of both the Inter-Departmental Committee and the White Paper has found favour with the Government, namely, that steps be taken to make more land available to those who need it — existing farmers and intending farmers — through the medium of leasing. While this proposal has a great deal to recommend it, it faces the obstacle of a historically entrenched and entirely under- standable "anti landlord" attitude which must be surmounted. It also faces the obstacle of a residual body of old and largely dormant law, passed over the years for the protection of tenants and which both the Inter- Departmental Committee and the White Paper stated should be identified and repealed. The Land Bill, 1984, introduced earlier this year marks the Government's first positive action in this regard, by excluding leases of agricultural land from the application of a number of old enactments and by modifying Section 80 of the Building Societies Act, 1976, so as to provide that the expression "prior mortgage" shall not extend to or include certain charges on agricultural land. The entrenched fear of "Landlordism" may be harder to dispel. As far as the profession is concerned, it would welcome

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