§ MR. GINNELLTo ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners hold that conditions of vacating a holding submitted to by a widow under threat of eviction, without the consent of her children, are sufficiently valid to deprive the children of the right of reinstatement in their father's farm on the estate being sold, and that farm not tenanted bona fide; whether the equitable powers vested in the Commissioners enable them to do substantial justice in such a case; and whether they will reconsider equitably the claims of Mrs. Killen and Mrs. Hobson for reinstatement in the farm formerly held by their father, Bernard Killen, on the Joly estate, at Corbetstown, King's County.
§ MR. GINNELLTo ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when an estate comprising evicted land is being sold and the claims of the evicted people are, from lapse of time or other cause, technically weak, whether on a sale of the estate the Estate Commissioners will allow those claims to be ousted by the creation of new tenancies in persons not prepared to reside on the 384 land, but purchasing as a speculation with a view to subsequent sale; and whether, in view of the effect of such proceedings in a district containing bona fide evicted tenants and congestion to be relieved, the Commissioners will take steps to prevent such a course of action being followed on the Joly estate, in King's County, now in process of sale.
(Answered by Mr. Birrell.) In dealing with applications received from persons seeking reinstatement as evicted tenants or as the representatives of evicted tenants, and in making advances, the Estates Commissioners have due regard to the circumstances of each case and to the provisions of the Land Purchase Acts. The Commissioners are not prepared to reconsider their decision not to take any action in the case of Mrs. Killen or Mrs. Hobson, whose mother surrendered her lease of the farm at Corbetstown in 1883 in consideration of a pension of £50 a year for life.