§ MR. JAMES O'KELLY (Roscommon, N.)To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state how many of the 172 agreements lodged by Mrs. Grace C. P. Mahon, Stokestown, county Roscommon, with the Estates Commissioners on 25th April, 1906, are applications for an advance in respect of holdings not in the occupation of the applicants; is he aware that there are upwards of eighty tenants on this estate who have not been allowed to sign purchase agreements, and that middlemen are receiving benefits in their payments as interest on the agreed purchase money of holdings not in their occupation, which the law does not entitle them to purchase; whether he is aware that middlemen on this estate are not allowing their sub-tenants any reduction in their rents, but are persecuting them by having processes served for half-year's rents, and that agreements have been lodged for advances at twenty-five years purchase of non-judicial rents; and whether, having regard to the hardships imposed on a number of the tenants on this estate, he will ask the Estates Commissioners to have an immediate inspection made or suggest some remedy for the redress of such grievances.
(Answered by Mr. Cherry.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that 470 purchase agreements in all have been lodged with them in respect of the estate in question. The agreements have not yet been analysed nor has the estate been inspected, and the Commissioners are therefore unable to say in how many cases applications have been made for advances in respect of holdings not in the occupation of the tenants, or how many sub-tenants there are on the estate, or whether any of the agreements lodged are for advances at twenty-five years purchase of judicial rents. The Commissioners, moreover, 1337 have no knowledge of any dealings between the middlemen and their subtenants. In order to obtain complete information upon these various points at once it would be necessary to direct an inspection of the estate out of its order of priority, and the Commissioners, after full consideration, do not see any sufficient reason for adopting that course. The case of this estate will be dealt with in its proper turn.