WHILE HITLER voted in the Austrian plebiscite to sanction the Anschluss (by more than 99 per cent of the votes) and other Nazi leaders made no secret of their aggressive intentions, the Dáil was passing government spending estimates with the following comments on the Land Commission reported in today’s paper in 1938:
Mr [William] Davin (Lab Leix-Offaly) asked if the Minister realised that the cost of living had gone up.
The Ministers have increased their own salaries from £1,000 to £1,700 a year. He criticised the keeping on of single men while married men were disemployed. He alleged that a worker in another instance had been discharged for political reasons, the overseer stating that he had fought the Labour Party before and had beaten them.
He said that he was not alleging that the Minister would consciously associate himself with political victimisation.
“I would,” he said, “resign my seat and fight the Minister on that issue if the Minister is prepared to say he would support political victimisation, and I am sure the honest voters of Leix would not stand for that victimisation.”
In connection with the division of land, he said he was convinced that there was political victimisation on the part of certain of the more recently appointed officials in the Land Commission in connection with the division of estates.
Mr James Fitzgerald-Kenny (UI, Mayo) said that the Land Commission was greatly handicapped in its work by the political presence of Fianna Fáil clubs.
If the Land Commission was going to carry out its work it must carry it out undeterred by any pressures brought upon it.
Mr [Patrick] Giles (UI, Meath) said it was a mistake to divide the lands of Meath into small holdings, as it was the only land in the world fit to finish off store cattle without resort to artificial feeding. The Minister should be more careful with the type of people he selected for land in Meath.
He appealed to the Minister “in God’s Name not to wipe out the land of Meath by dividing it up into small patches”.
The cattle industry was the most valuable in the country, but if the Commission continued to break up the land he would ruin the industry and make the county the most impoverished in Ireland.
“We don’t want any more migrant colonies in Meath,” he said, “until the people of Meath are satisfied.”
The old IRA men in the county were entitled to first consideration, and that they were not getting at the present time.
Mr [Patrick] Hogan (Labour, Clare) said that the grievance they had in Clare was that the Minister was not going fast enough in the division of land. There was plenty of land awaiting division and yet from the area young men and young women were migrating to England who could usefully be employed on the land if it were divided.
Mr [Martin] Corry (FF, Cork) complained that £2,500 was due on two estates in Cork to the county council, and the ratepayers had to bear the burden of it.
Allegations of political interference had been made, but Fine Gael clubs had done it before Fianna Fáil got into power. He had recommended men who had fought for Ireland, and he had no apology to make for it.
To read the full reports of these stories and others in The Irish Times of April 8th, 1938, go to www.irishtimes.com and click "On This Day"; or click here: www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1938/0408/