§ MR. KEAY (Elgin and Nairn)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in reference to the 12 holdings which are stated to have been the subject of default after sale under the Ashbourne Acts, if he will state their original sale price under these Acts, and the amount advanced on them, also whether they were all put up for sale again after the default; how many were re-sold; how much did they realise as compared with the original sale price; and, if any loss has been incurred, to what account has it been debited?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe Land Commissioners do not resume possession of holdings under Section 3 of the Act of 1885. All holdings put up for sale for default in payment of instalments are so put up subject to the future instalments of the annuity payable in redemption of the original purchase-money. Of the 12 cases referred to in the question nine have been sold, and three, as I understand, remain unsold. In the nine cases the purchase money was £9,579. The fresh purchasers paid £501, subject to the redemption of the original purchase money, as above stated.
§ MR. KEAYI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will explain to the House why, instead of the Return moved for by the right hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Morley) of the names of the landowners in Ireland, "the purchase of whose property has been sanctioned by the Irish Land Commission," a Return, No. 115, has been presented giving the particulars of "completed sales" only; whether this circumstance explains the fact that the total amount shown to have 806 been advanced under the Ashbourne Acts, both in the Return in question and in No. 81, of which it is a continuation, is £5,123,479 only; and whether he will lay upon the Table the additional particulars necessary to show how and to whom the remaining funds available under the above-named Acts, amounting to nearly £5,000,000, have been or are now being allotted?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe Return was limited as described because the provisional sanction of the Commissioners is not always followed by a completion of the transaction, as it sometimes happens that one or other of the parties either cannot or will not fully comply with the necessary conditions. The Commissioners considered that the names of the applicants in cases not yet complete should not be included. All finally sanctioned cases are included, and they make up the total figure given in the Return. A monthly Return is laid on the Table of the House, and the latest of these Returns shows that up to the end of February the total amount applied for was £8,393,000, while the advances provisionally sanctioned amounted to £6,760,000.