Land Purchase Policy in Ireland, 1917-23: From the Irish convention to the 1923 land act

When the Irish convention met in 1917. it set up a land purchase subcommittee under the chairmanship of Lord Anthony McDonnell. Having examined the financial arrangements of previous legislation, as outlined in Chapter One, it came to the conclusion that these acts had failed, to complete lands purchase because the interest rates of the land stock used were set too Low. The committee then drew up a plan for the completion of land purchase, which involved three basic principles, described in Chapter Two. All tenanted holdings were to be automatica1ly vested, in the tenants, if thev did not require modification. All untenanted land in congested districts was to vest in the CDB, for the relief of congestion, and an automatic method of fixing the price of land, was included to expedite the process. These proposals were included in the 1920 land bill which never became law. Meanwhile, agrarian unrest had become widespread, in the west after 1918. Chapter Three explains how the Dai1 was forced to intervene, and. hew the Land Bank and the Land Settlement Commission did some useful short term work, but thev had limited resources and had little long, term effectiveness. Chapter Four details how the Free State government signed an agreement in February 1923, which settled the questions of liabilities for annuities, excess stock and bonus. It also included a promise bv the British to guarantee new Free State land stock on condition that thev approved the legislation. Patrick Hogan. Minister for Agriculture, realised the political danger and told, a land lord-tenant conference that this credit was been given without anv conditions, so the agreement had to be kept a secret. Chapter Five relates the process bv which the 1923 land, bill was formulated by Hogan, It adopted the basic principles of the Irish convention's proposals, although the details were altered, considerably. The 1923 bill was not as generous to the landlords, but it was more generous than some would have wished. The 1923 land act, as it became was the act that completed land purchase, and finally removed, the landlord from Ireland