§ MR. PATRICK M'HUGH (Leitrim, N.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland will he state in detail how much out of the quartet of a million and more which the Congested Districts Board has spent in the last five years has been expended on bulls, rams, boars, poultry, seeds, manures, material or machines for preventing potato disease respectively, in the 18 scheduled divisions of the unions of Manor Hamilton, Sligo, and Bally-shannon, in the counties of Leitrim, Sligo, and Donegal; and will he state the number and give the names of the occupiers under £5 valuation in the 18 divisions referred to who profited by the Board's expenditure on horses in the year with which their last Report deals?
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,) Leeds, CentralIt is not possible to give the expenditure of the Congested Districts Board according to local areas, such as electoral divisions; and in regard to such expenditure as has been incurred on general schemes or projects, it would be equally impossible to apportion payments according to electoral divisions or counties. The Board do not keep any record, in connection with their horse-breeding operations, of the valuation of the holdings of individual occupiers who profit by those operations; but, as I have already explained in answer to a Question of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Antrim, about seven-eighths of the entire number of such occupiers throughout congested districts generally, in the year ended the 31st March 1895, were of the particular class referred to by the hon. Member.