§ MR. MACALEESE (Monaghan, N.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state the cause of delay in completing the sale of the Weir estate in the county of Fermanagh; is he aware that Mrs. Alice Brown signed an agreement for purchase of her farm on this estate in April, 1896, and that, although she has several times made application to the Land Commission, and also to the solicitors for the vendors, she can get no satisfactory reply as to when the sale will be completed; and seeing that Mrs. Brown was in a position, before signing the agreement, to enter the Land Court and have a fair rent fixed, and is now paying £12 a year as interest on the purchase money without any part of the principal being paid off till the sale is completed, will he cause inquiry to be made in this case.
§ MR. G. W. BALFOURThe estate referred to appears to consist of three holdings. The contract for the sale to Mrs. Brown of her holding was lodged in February, 1897. The advance was conditionally sanctioned in May, 1897, but the abstract of the vendor's title was not lodged until March, 1898, and in July of the same year the title was ruled defective. The defect in the title was not remedied until January last. It will be ruled and the sale completed in the usual course.