§ Mr. DILLON (Mayo, E.)I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland why the Estates Commissioners were prevented from establishing.a special department for the management and improvement of estates purchased by them, for the purchase of untenanted land and the reinstatement of evicted tenants; and whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the correspondence between the Estates Commissioners and the Treasury which resulted in the issue of instructions to the Commissioners to confine their inquiries to estates before them for sale, and to Plan of Campaign estates or to other estates similarly situated when evictions were not due to ordinary causes but to the land war.
§ MR. WALTER LONGThe Estates Commissioners have no power to establish a separate department, properly so-called, for the performance of this or any other work, nor did they ever seek to establish such a department. But they have power to assign certain portions of their work to specified members of their staff, and this they have done with the sanction of the Treasury, given on the 23rd June, 930 1904. There was no correspondence on the subject between the Estates Commissioners and the Treasury, but communications in writing took place between the Irish Executive and the Estates Commissioners in reference to the matter. These were Departmental confidential communications, which I must decline to produce.