The Irish Land Acts/Irish Land Act, 1903

by William Frederick Bailey

SECTION XII.

Irish Land Act, 1903 (the "Wyndham Act").

I have traced the history of the Irish Land Acts down to 1896. Some short Acts were added to the code during the following years to clear away certain difficulties, and in 1903 Mr. Wyndham brought in and passed his Irish Land Act, which may be said to have opened a new era in Irish agrarian legislation. Under it a new body, known as Estates Commissioners, was formed, and included in the Land Commission to administer land purchase in Ireland.

Sales under previous Purchase Acts were carried out by holdings. A landlord could agree with one or more of his tenants to sell them their farms, and if the Land Commission, after examination, found that the particular holding was security for the advance asked for by the tenant to buy out the landlord, such advance was made irrespective of any other sales on the estate. The Act of 1903 introduced the system of sales by "estates." A landlord, to obtain the benefit of the Act, is obliged to sell his entire estate, or such portion of it as the Land Commission considers fit to be regarded as a separate estate for the purposes of the Act. The Commissioners, before defining any lands to be an estate, have to consider all the circumstances of the district and of the property. Once the estate is "declared," the holdings comprised in it are dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Those subject

Houses erected by the Estates Commissioners on new holdings created by them on
untenanted land acquired on the Adamson and Erne Estates, County Fermanagh.

to judicial rents and within certain "zones" laid down in the Act are freed from the liability to inspection as to security or equity of price. The Act presumes that a holding subject to a judicial rent which is sold at a price the annuity on which is from ten to thirty per cent, less than the judicial rent, where that rent was fixed since the passing of the Act of 1896, or from twenty to forty per cent, where the rent was fixed before that date, is good security for the payment of the annuity, and that the agreed price is equitable. Holdings not subject to the "zone" provisions are liable to inspection as to security and as to equity of price.

The Act also introduced the system of sales of estates to the Commissioners under section 6 (the direct sales to tenants by landlord being under section 1). When a landlord so sold, the Commissioners, after due enquiry as to the price that should be paid by each tenant for his holding, may offer to purchase the estate for the purpose of re-selling to the occupiers, provided that at least three-fourths of the tenants agree to purchase their holdings from the Commissioners at the estimated price.

To encourage sales of estates, and to enable owners to get such a sum as would give them their net income out of the purchase money, when re-invested in suitable securities, a bonus of twelve per cent, on the purchase money was paid to the owner on the completion of this sale. At the same time, the tenant was enabled to borrow the money he is to pay for his holding on easier terms. As we have seen under the former Purchase Acts, the annuity rate was fixed at four per cent., of which two and three-quarter per cent. was for interest and one and a quarter per cent. for a sinking fund, the accumulation of which, with compound interest, would repay the sum advanced in about forty-three years. Under the Act of 1903 the annuity rate which the tenant had to repay was reduced to three and a quarter per cent., of which two and three-quarters per cent. is for interest and a half per cent. for sinking fund. This reduction in the sinking fund lengthens the period over which the repayment will extend to sixty-eight and a half years, and, of course, rendered it practically impossible to continue the system of giving decadal reductions in the annuities. Those decadal reductions, which were abolished by the Act of 1903, worked out at about 15 per cent. reduction in the annuity every ten years.

The Act of 1903 also enabled owners to sell their demesnes and untenanted lands to the Commissioners, and to repurchase them, or so much of them as the Commissioners approved, with the aid of advances made in the same manner and under the same conditions as to tenant purchasers.

The Act of 1903 gave considerable powers to the Estates Commissioners to improve small and uneconomic holdings by the purchase of untenanted land, to be re-sold to the tenants or sons of tenants on the estate, or to the occupiers of holdings not exceeding £5 in rateable value in the neighbourhood, or to tenants evicted from their holdings since 1878, or in case such tenant is dead, to a person nominated by the Land Commission as his representative.

It also gave power to the Commissioners to purchase untenanted land for the purpose of enlarging holdings and of creating new holdings; and to enable this work to be carried out satisfactorily, the Land Commission is given all the powers conferred on the Congested Districts Board by their Act of 1901 for facilitating re-sales to tenants.