§ MR. MAURICE HEALYI beg to ask the Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in the case of a holding purchased under the Land Purchase Acts (the lands of Egmont) situate in the County Cork, the Land Commission have recently permitted the tenant purchaser (Mr. G. S. Bolster) to permanently sublet the whole holding at a substantial rent as an ordinary agricultural holding, thereby recreating the relation of landlord and tenancy in the holding; whether the Land Commission intend as a general practice to waive the prohibition of subletting in the case of holdings purchased under the Land Purchase Acts, and to permit the purchasers at their pleasure to become landlord; what the reasons for allowing subletting in this particular case were; and whether the person to whom this holding was sublet will himself be entitled to purchase the holding under the Land Purchase Acts.
§ MR. ATKINSONIn the case to which this question refers, the tenant-purchaser in September, 1899, applied to the Commissioners, under the 30th Section of the Land Act of 1881, for their consent to receive proposals for the subletting of the holding, to commence from the following November. The 1075 Commissioner refused the consent applied for. The tenant-purchaser thereupon in October last paid off the advance and then became entitled to sublet the holding without the consent of the Land Commission. The answer to the second paragraph is in the negative. The tenant-purchaser in this case is an Assistant Land Commissioner. He based his application for liberty to sublet on the necessity of giving his whole time to the performance of his official duties. The reply to the last paragraph is, having regard to the provisions of Section 9, Sub-section (4) of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, in the affirmative.