§ MR. N. K. SHEE (Waterford, W.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether the Irish Land Commission, in pursuance of a circular issued to that effect in December 1892, has completed or is in course of completing the registration of the title of all purchasers, under the Land Purchase Acts, who applied to the Commission direct for the purpose; and (2) whether, in the cases where purchasers employed legal assistance to 1179 lodge similar applications at the same time, the Land Commission will complete the registration of the titles if so requested by such purchasers, without expense to them, in the same way as has been done for those purchasers who threw the entire onus of the registration of their titles on the Land Commission?
§ MR. GERALD BALFOUROwing to the difficulty of obtaining information from the parties, the Land Commissioners, up to the present, have only been able to perfect the registration in some 3,500 of the cases referred to in the first paragraph. In about 1,500 cases the forms of application prepared and sent to the parties have not been returned to the Commissioners, although they have repeatedly applied for them. In the remaining cases the Commissioners are proceeding with all possible expedition. The inquiry in the second paragraph is properly one for the consideration of the Treasury, and should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of that Department, but I may observe that the Commissioners are not authorised to take up registration proceedings in the cases referred to.