§ MR. BYRNE (Wicklow, W.)asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Why the Land Commissioners have not sat in the County of Wicklow in March or April this year, as they have done in previous years, for the purpose of fixing fair rents; whether it is a fact that tenant farmers, who have served originating notices on their landlords long since, have to wait unusually long periods to have a fair rent fixed; and, whether the Sub-Commissioners, who are announced to be at the Court House of Shillelagh on the 9th May instant, to fix rents of plots of land for labourers' cottages in that Union, could then fix fair rents for tenants in the district?
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY (Colonel KING-HARMAN) (Kent, Isle of Thanet)(who replied) said: The Land Commissioners report that there is no fixed time in the course of a year for the sitting of a Sub-Commission in any particular county. The last sitting in County Wicklow was in August, 1886, and all the cases then listed for hearing were disposed of, with the exception of seven, which had to be adjourned for legal reasons. There has been no unusual, or unavoidable, delay in hearing Wicklow cases. It would not be practicable to carry out the suggestion in the last paragraph of the Question. The Sub-Commission referred to consists of two members only, the legal member being with difficulty spared for one day from his work of fixing fair rents in the County Louth, and it will have a special delegation to dispose of labourers' cottage cases under the provisions of the Labourers' Acts. The circumstances would not, therefore, admit of its being employed in fixing fair rents.