§ MR. DELANY (Queen's County, Ossory)To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the cottage 1197 proposed to be built by the Abbeyleix District Council under the tenth scheme for a labourer named Thomas Byrne on the lands of Mr. George Alley, Donaghmore, Queen's County, has been disallowed by County Court Judge Fitzgerald, upon I appeal at the late Maryborough Quarter Sessions; whether he is aware that the house occupied by Byrne, his wife, and family of four children, has no sanitary accommodation and no outhouse attached, and that the fowls occupy part of the dwelling-house; that Mr. Alley, for whom Byrne has been working for the past nine years, has 400 acres of land at Donaghmore, with only one union cottage thereon; and can he say what steps the Local Government Board propose taking; to provide this labourer and his family; with a sanitary house and plot of land to which he is entitled under the Labourers Acts.
(Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Local Government Board have no information as to the proceedings in the County Court. The decision of the County Court Judge is final, and if the application has, as stated, been disallowed, the labourer can only apply once more to the district council with a view to their providing him with a cottage plot under a new scheme.