Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/52

40 purposes of the Land Purchase Acts. In 1894 another Act was passed, which enabled the Board to give a guarantee to the Land Commission on selling to a tenant purchaser within such limits as the Treasury might fix, for the repayment of the annuity. Such guarantee enabled the Land Commission to dispense with the retention of any sum out of the purchase money as a guarantee deposit, a practice which, if followed, would have seriously crippled the operations of the Board. The Land Law Act of 1896 gave power to the Board to obtain an advance from the Land Commission for the purchase of estates "in like manner as if the Board were a tenant purchasing his holding." This Act contained some provisions that greatly hampered the Board. Thus, an advance could not be obtained by a tenant valued at under £10 for the re-purchase of his holding. Also section 40 (2) enabled court tenants and temporary tenants to obtain advances under the Purchase Acts in the case of sales of estates in the Land Judge's Court. This meant that the lands that were most required by the Board for the relief of congestion were commonly disposed of to graziers and others in such a way as to prevent their being acquired by the Board. The Congested Districts Act of 1889 cleared away these two obstacles to the work of the Board, and also enabled the Land Commission to make advances for the redemption of head rents, etc., and increased the Parliamentary Grant from £6,500 to £25,000. The Congested Districts Board Act of 1901 gave a limited power of dealing with obstructive tenants in the re-arrangement of the estates purchased. It also gave the Board all the powers of entry on a holding subject to a statutory tenancy for the purposes of mining, quarrying, cutting timber or turf, opening or making roads, fences, drains and watercourses, hunting, fishing, shooting, etc., given to the landlord by section 6 (sub-section 5) of the Act of 1881, and further extended these powers to holdings not subject to statutory tenancies. The Act also enabled the Board to purchase land outside a Congested Districts County with the approval of the Lord Lieutenant. The Land Act of 1903 gave increased facilities to the Board for the purchase of estates, similar to those given to the Estates Commissioners under the Act. It also gave the Board the discretionary power of deciding whether an advance should be made to a purchaser; of what amount the advance should be; and how far the security was sufficient. The collection of the purchase annuities so made, however, was still left to the Land Commission. The Act also added £20,000 to the annual income of the Board, to be drawn from the Irish Development Grant (section 38).

The Act of 1903 enabled the Estates Commissioners to deal with congestion under two procedures. They might buy an estate, after making due inquiry, under section 6 and if that estate included untenanted land, they could divide it among the holders of uneconomic farms. They could expend money out of the Reserve Fund placed at their disposal (section 43) either