Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/45

33 empowered to recover the money so spent by increasing the resale price of the land affected. The latter power was extended by the Evicted Tenants Act of 1907 (Sec. 17) to lands sold to a re-instated evicted tenant by the owner of the estate; and was further extended by the Irish Land Act, 1909, to lands sold by landlords to tenants through the Estates Commissioners. So much of this expenditure on improvements as, in the opinion of the Commissioners, can be recovered—having regard to the security for the payment of the Land Purchase Annuities—is included in the price of the holding so improved; and the balance is treated as a grant not repayable.

The expenditure of the Estates Commissioners on the improvement of estates is made once and for all on the occasion of the sale; when the holdings have been vested by the Land Commission in the tenant purchasers, any further financial assistance which may be required for improvement purposes may be obtained from the Board of Public Works under the Land Improvement (Ireland) Acts, or the Department of Agriculture. In this manner the evils resulting from tenants beginning their career as proprietors with insufficient capital have been largely modified, with, on the whole, eminently satisfactory results. Tenants who have received advances of this nature have not infrequently been enabled thereby to save and invest in the improvement of their holdings still further amounts of their own.

The other principal evil already mentioned—the lack of sufficient land—has been remedied in general by the purchase by the Estates Commissioners of untenanted land with which to enlarge existing holdings. So much attention, however, has been devoted to the treatment of uneconomic holdings, that a separate section will be needed for its proper consideration. But before we pass on to deal with the problem of congestion, the following statistical summary will enable the reader to take a concise view of the progress made under the Land Purchase Acts from their inception.

The following table gives a summary of the number of tenant purchasers and the amount of advances made under the various Acts from 1870 to 31st March, 1916: