LAND ANNUITIES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 289, 1 August 1932, Page 4

LAND ANNUITIES

The subject of the Irish land annuities is one' whieh is prominently in the public eye at the present time, but it is one which, overseas at least, will repay a little explanation. Successive British Governments from 1881 on--wards advanced and guaranteed immense sums to enable the Irish tenant-farmers to buy out the old landlords. Under the Balfour Act of 1891 alone £30,000,000 was provided for this purpose, and under the Land Act of 1896, as the sober "Encyclopaedia Britannica" records, "the interests of the tenant were so carefully guarded that the prices obtainable were ruinous to the vendor unless he had other resources." The Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903 "gave the tenants a material reduction,"

and to meet the case of landlords who protested that if they had to sell at the Irish Land Commission's price it would ruin them, "a bonus of 12 per cent on the purchase-money was granted to vendors from funds provided by Parliament." By virtue of another piece of legislation "this percentage became the private property of tenantsf or-life on settled estates" ; and the conversion of tenants into freeholders went on more rapidly than ever. In effeet, a large proportion of the purchasers, unlike our soldier-settlers, became possessed of cheap land at a low rate of interest. During the war years, when England paid high prices for farm produce, the finest peasantry in Europe was unquestionably the most prosperous, and the land-purchase debt was substantially reduced. Nevertheless, £76,000,000 is still owing, and there is an annual charge of £3,000,000 — otherwise the annuities ; it is roughly about half of what the tenants were obliged to pay the rentlords in a typical pre-purchase year. Before the Free State arrived, the £3,000,000 was collected by the Land Commission and paid into a British fund created for the service of the special stock raised to finance saies. An early Act

of the Free State Parliament made the Minister of Finance, and not the Land Commission responsible for the payments

into this fund. A dispute arose as to whether the Free State Government had the right to deduct income tax, but the obligations were duly met. It was reserved for Mr. de Valera to repudiate them, and to demancl the return of £30,000,000 handed over by the Cosgrave Government; and to "withhold" other amounts owing — Royal Irish Constabulary and Judges' pensions, interest on telegraph and railway loans and the like — for good measure. • |