HC Deb 18 December 1916 vol 88 c1130W
Mr. GINNELL

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he has made himself acquainted with the disabilities under which future tenants in Ireland suffer, frequently acknowledged by his predecessor and by County Court judges and Land Commissioners; whether his attention has been called to the remedy applied in a small number of those cases by the Congested Districts Board, as shown on pages 8 and 9 of their Report for 1915–16; whether he will ask the Board to apply that remedy to the cases of all future tenants who seek relief; and whether he will ask the Estates Commissioners, now that their large operations are in suspense, to apply the same remedy to future-tenants applying to them for relief?

Mr. DUKE

As was stated by my predecessor on the 13th May, 1915, in answer to a similar question by the hon. Member for Cork (South), the provisions of Section 65 of the Irish Land Act, 1909, were expressly designed to meet the case of tenants who had been evicted from their holdings and subsequently reinstated as "future" tenants, and there is no analogy between their case and that of new tenants who have entered into their contracts with their eyes open. In the particular cases to which the hon. Member alludes the creation of judicial tenancies was effected not by the Congested Districts Board, but by the owner before the Board acquired the estate.