§ MR. J. TULLYI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that, at the last meeting of the grand jury for the Spring Assizes for the county of Longford, it was resolved, instead of continuing the old system of paying road contractors where the county surveyor had to give certificates for payment for work three months before the work was done, that in future all road contracts should run either from 1st May or 1st November, so that contractors who had a half-year's work done in November would be paid at the Spring Assizes, and contractors who had a half-year's work done in May would be paid at the Summer Assizes; and whether, seeing that this system had been successfully 768 carried out in the County Kerry for the last 22 years, he is prepared to recommend the general adoption of this system by grand juries in Ireland, so as to obviate not only the necessity for any contentious legislation, but the inconvenience caused by the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of M'Intosh v. The Derry Grand Jury?
MR. J. MORLEYIt appears that the magistrates and cesspayers in the County Lonford adopted resolutions to the effect that road maintenance contracts should run from the 1st of May and the 1st of November, and that the contracts should provide for a half-year's work and a half-year's pay. The general adoption of this form of contract seems most useful, and calculated to obviate, so far as future contracts are concerned, the difficulties that have been raised. The Executive have no power to constrain grand juries to adopt this form of contract; but I have no doubt of their desire to meet the difficulty in question, and relieve the road contractors from the hardship of deferred payment. I have been unable to ascertain that the Longford grand jury passed any resolution on this subject.