Clause 12.—(Interpretation.) (Hansard, 23 November 1909)

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
Before this Amendment is put may I call the attention of the Chief Secretary to the fact that it brings us down to line 13 of Clause 12, and before that line there is the question of a date which the Chief Secretary, I understood, both in the Committee and on Report, agreed would be altered.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
There is nothing before the House.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
I wish to refer to an Amendment consequential on the Lords Amendment, and which cannot be made afterwards. The right hon. Gentle- 21 man, the Chief Secretary, I understood, promised to alter the date from the 15th September to that of "the passing of this Act"?

§ Mr. SPEAKER
That question is not before the House.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
May I suggest, as it is a consequential Amendment to the Lords Amendment, I am entitled to put a question?

§ Mr. SPEAKER
A consequential Amendment to which Lords Amendment?

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
It results from the whole of them.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
That will not do. I think we will follow the regular course that when an Amendment is made which leads to a consequential Amendment we will consider it.

§ Mr. BIRRELL
I move: "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment." It, and the two following, are purely drafting Amendments.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
I have no objection whatever to an Amendment of this kind being adopted, but I suggest that in its present form it is technically wrong. It conveys that the purchase agreements are entered with the Land Judge or by the Land Judge. That is not so. The Land Judge never himself enters into an agreement to sell; neither does he enter into an agreement with the tenant to buy. I suggest that the proper form that the Amendment should take would be to insert after the words "Congested Districts Board" in paragraph (a), the words "or approved by the Land Judge on or before that date." The Land Judge himself never enters into an agreement to buy an estate; he sanctions the agreement to sell the estate to the Estate Commissioners or he sanctions a series of agreements which the tenants are to enter into with the landlord. According to the words on the Paper, there must be an actual agreement entered into by the Land Judge or with the Land Judge. That is really never done. I therefore propose to add after the words "Congested Districts Board" in paragraph (a) of Clause 12 ["or with the Land Commission or the Congested Districts Board"] the words "or approved by the Land Judge on or before that date."

§ Mr. SPEAKER
The first thing the hon. Member will have to do is to negative the 22 proposal to agree with the Lords Amendment. He can then move his Amendment.

§ The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Cherry)
It is quite true, as the hon. Member has said, that it is not the practice of the Land Judge to enter into agreements with tenants to sell, but I understand under the Acts it is within his power to do so. I think under one of the earlier Acts it is in the power of the Land Judge to do so if he wishes.

§ Mr. MAURICE HEALY
He has not done so.

§ Mr. CHERRY
I agree, but that is no reason why we should not provide for it. We are of opinion that these words in the Lords Amendment are unnecessary, and that the clause as originally drafted is sufficient to cover all possible cases, but if there is any possible case that might be excluded that is covered by the words in the Lords Amendment we have no objection to them. The alternative Amendment which the hon. Member (Mr. Maurice Healy) suggests is one to which the Government would object; "approved" is such a vague term. We have a definite period in this Clause for allowing agreements with the Land Commission or being entered into by the Land Commission, and the result of the hon. Member's Amendment would be to substitute the words "approved by the Land Judge" for the effective and definite phrase in the Bill. I ask the House to agree with the Lords Amendment; it cannot possibly do any injury, and it may possibly do some good.

§ Mr. MOORE
I never heard a more ridiculous proposition, if I may say so, than that contained in the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney-General. His argument is that the Land Judge has powers under previous statutes to enter into these agreements, and in the same breath he says he never exercised them. This is not a question of the future with which we are dealing; it is a question of something that has been done, because unless the agreements are approved before 15th September, the Clause is no use whatsoever, and the Attorney-General tells us he has not approved of any agreement before 15th September.

§ Mr. CHERRY
So far as I know.

§ Mr. MOORE
I quite accept that, everyone knows he has not; he has not approved of any of these agreements prior to 15th September last. Yet we are going to put his name into a Clause for 23 agreements in which may approve of. If this was legislation for a future date the Attorney-General would be perfectly right, but you are dealing here with lots of people dependant upon a past state of facts, and the Attorney-General has admitted the Land Judge has never entered into an agreement. Will the Attorney-General tell us what class of agreements this is to apply to?

§ Mr. JOHN DILLON
It is certainly most cheerful to hear the speech of the hon. and learned Member for North Armagh (Mr. Moore). The hon. Member for North Armagh practically announces that this is an idiotic Amendment. Seeing the source of that Amendment, I do not wonder. It is a House of Lords Amendment, and it is a most edifying spectacle to hear the hon. and learned Member denouncing it as idiotic.