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Irish Land Commission
The Irish Land Commission was created by the British crown in 1843 to "inquire into the occupation of the land in Ireland. The office of the commission was in Dublin Castle, and the records were, on its conclusion, deposited in the records tower there, from whence they were transferred in 1898 to the Public Record Office". It took on the role of a rent fixing commission in 1881 under the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 (also known as the second Irish Land Act). For a century it was the body responsible for re-distributing farmland in most of Ireland. It was formally abolished in 1999.
Under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885 (the Ashbourne Act), the commission developed into a tenant-purchasing commission and assisted in the agreed transfer of freehold farmland from landlord to tenant. This was a response to the turbulent Land War that had started in 1879. It was rapidly enacted by the government of Prime Minister The Marquess of Salisbury, was funded initially with £5,000,000, and was designed to avert support for the Irish Parliamentary Party, given the larger number of voters allowed by the Representation of the People Act 1884, before the IPP entered an alliance with William Ewart Gladstone in 1886.
The commission eventually transferred 13.5 million acres (55,000 km2) by 1920. Following the Land Conference of December 1902 arranged by the Chief Secretary for Ireland George Wyndham, the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 was steered through Parliament by William O'Brien, which provided government finance to buy out freeholds, with the former tenant farmers paying back the capital over 68 years. This was managed by the Land Commission, along with ancillary work such as compiling statistics. Valuations were reckoned on a years purchase (Y.P.) basis, the price being a multiple of (perhaps 16 times) the annual rent, instead of the discounted cash flow method used today. The commission had to supervise the haggling process and find the fairest multiple for every transfer. The loans issued by the government were resold in the capital markets as Land Bonds.
By 1908 the emerging problem was whether the new owners would be economically viable on their small farms. Michael McDonnell commented, "The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances the landlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with much success under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is to be avoided if the country is to be saved from the economically disastrous position of having established in it a number of occupying owners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them a living wage."
It was realised by now that existing rural poverty arose from small farm sizes, yet the procedures and limits of the acts also tended to keep farm sizes down. The aim had been to create "peasant proprietors" owning what were usually small farms. By definition, the activists in the 1880s Land War period had been poorer and more desperate, and few came from larger prosperous farms. This remained a matter of policy debate for the rest of the commission's existence; generally, it continued to create new small units by breaking up larger units that had more commercial potential. Larger commercial farmers were characterised as "landlords" or "grazers" simply because they had more land than the average.
The Irish Land Act 1909, fostered by the Liberal Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, allowed for tenanted land purchase where the owner was unwilling to sell, to be bought by the commission by compulsory purchase.
In 1915, Chief Secretary Birrell confirmed in Parliament that all Irish land transfers from 1885 to the end of 1914 had cost the British Government £91,768,450, and the tenants had invested a further £1,584,516.
During the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s, some farms were seized, and in June 1920 the Dáil debated a motion proposed by Arthur Griffith as Minister for Home Affairs, and approved a decree stating that all claims to land should not be adjudicated on until after the end of the war.
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Irish Land Commission
The Irish Land Commission was created by the British crown in 1843 to "inquire into the occupation of the land in Ireland. The office of the commission was in Dublin Castle, and the records were, on its conclusion, deposited in the records tower there, from whence they were transferred in 1898 to the Public Record Office". It took on the role of a rent fixing commission in 1881 under the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 (also known as the second Irish Land Act). For a century it was the body responsible for re-distributing farmland in most of Ireland. It was formally abolished in 1999.
Under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885 (the Ashbourne Act), the commission developed into a tenant-purchasing commission and assisted in the agreed transfer of freehold farmland from landlord to tenant. This was a response to the turbulent Land War that had started in 1879. It was rapidly enacted by the government of Prime Minister The Marquess of Salisbury, was funded initially with £5,000,000, and was designed to avert support for the Irish Parliamentary Party, given the larger number of voters allowed by the Representation of the People Act 1884, before the IPP entered an alliance with William Ewart Gladstone in 1886.
The commission eventually transferred 13.5 million acres (55,000 km2) by 1920. Following the Land Conference of December 1902 arranged by the Chief Secretary for Ireland George Wyndham, the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 was steered through Parliament by William O'Brien, which provided government finance to buy out freeholds, with the former tenant farmers paying back the capital over 68 years. This was managed by the Land Commission, along with ancillary work such as compiling statistics. Valuations were reckoned on a years purchase (Y.P.) basis, the price being a multiple of (perhaps 16 times) the annual rent, instead of the discounted cash flow method used today. The commission had to supervise the haggling process and find the fairest multiple for every transfer. The loans issued by the government were resold in the capital markets as Land Bonds.
By 1908 the emerging problem was whether the new owners would be economically viable on their small farms. Michael McDonnell commented, "The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances the landlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with much success under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is to be avoided if the country is to be saved from the economically disastrous position of having established in it a number of occupying owners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them a living wage."
It was realised by now that existing rural poverty arose from small farm sizes, yet the procedures and limits of the acts also tended to keep farm sizes down. The aim had been to create "peasant proprietors" owning what were usually small farms. By definition, the activists in the 1880s Land War period had been poorer and more desperate, and few came from larger prosperous farms. This remained a matter of policy debate for the rest of the commission's existence; generally, it continued to create new small units by breaking up larger units that had more commercial potential. Larger commercial farmers were characterised as "landlords" or "grazers" simply because they had more land than the average.
The Irish Land Act 1909, fostered by the Liberal Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, allowed for tenanted land purchase where the owner was unwilling to sell, to be bought by the commission by compulsory purchase.
In 1915, Chief Secretary Birrell confirmed in Parliament that all Irish land transfers from 1885 to the end of 1914 had cost the British Government £91,768,450, and the tenants had invested a further £1,584,516.
During the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s, some farms were seized, and in June 1920 the Dáil debated a motion proposed by Arthur Griffith as Minister for Home Affairs, and approved a decree stating that all claims to land should not be adjudicated on until after the end of the war.