§ MR. SHEEI beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1) whether the Local Government Board have received complaints from labourers in various parts of Ireland, whose names were given as the "specific instances" in representations under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts, as to the letting of the cottages built on these representations to other persons; (2) whether, where a labourer named as "specific instance" seeks the erection of a new house to replace his existing unsanitary house, the Board of Guardians are entitled, having regard to Section 17 of the Labourers Act 1885, to let the 272 new house erected to other than the labourer named as "specific instance" if the latter continues to reside in the house condemned as unfit for habitation; and (3) whether the Inspectors of the Local Government Board have specially reported the unsanitary houses of which evidence was given to them at local inquiries under the Labourers Acts; and, if so, whether steps will be taken to compel the Boards of Guardians, which disregard the law in this matter, to carry out the provisions of Section 17 already mentioned?
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURThe reply to the first paragraph is, Yes. As regards the second paragraph, the Local Government Board are of opinion, to which they have frequently given expression, that the Labourers Acts contemplate that the cottages authorised in pursuance of representations based on the ground of the unfitness of existing houses for human habitation should, when built, be lot to the occupants of the condemned houses. Reports of the nature mentioned in the third paragraph have been furnished by the Board's Inspectors, and have, in every instance, been communicated to the Board of Guardians concerned; but the Local Government Board have no power to compel the local authority to let the cottages to the labourers whose houses were mentioned in the original representations.
§ MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN (Kilkenny)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that James Donohue, the owner of a farm at Ballina, county Clare, refuses to give possession of a plot of land upon which a labourer's cottage was built by the Kildysart Board of Guardians for a labourer named Thomas Ayres, although Donohue contracted to have the cottage completed last November; that it is still unfinished; and that he has been paid for the plot; and whether the Local Government Board will take steps to compel him to complete the cottage and give possession of the land at once, so that Thomas Ayers may do his spring sowing?
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURA complaint of the nature referred to in the first paragraph has been received by the Local Government Board, who have called for the observations of the Board of Guardians thereon. Pending the receipt 273 of these observations, I am not in a position to reply to the question.