HISTORY OF LAND TENURE IN IRELAND
The Land War and Reforms
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In 1845 the potato crop failed and famine spread throughout the land. The crop failed again in 1846 and again in 1847. A million people died and two million fled from the country in poorly equipped Emigrant Ships bound for America. James Fintan Lawler, in articles to the papers at this time, called on the landlords to join with the public in a common bid to restore the fortunes of the country. He warned that the consequences of not doing so would be a terrible war for ownership of the land of Ireland. This, he said, would undo the conquest of Ireland. The landlords, however, sorely hit by their inability to collect rents, and most of them deeply mortgaged from building grand mansions, began to evict tenants in an effort to increase the size of holdings and move from potato production to grazing. Lawler was arrested and jailed and soon died.
Ultimately, what Lawler predicted came to pass. The Land League was established and a campaign started to win back "the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland." Eventually the British government gave in and passed the Land Purchase Acts. Under these Acts, money was provided by the government for the purchase of the land from the landlords. The land was taken over by the Irish Land Commission and then vested in the tenants, who repaid the purchase price by way of annuities spread over 40 or 50 years.
The Land Purchase Acts referred to agricultural land only, and had no relevance to urban land.
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The Irish Land Commission was set up in 1881. Its main business became that of overseeing the transfer of the freehold of land from the landlords to the tenants. It examined the landlord's title, paid them the purchase money, vested the freehold in the tenants, and collected the purchase money from the tenants in annuities spread over 40 or 50 years.
Faced with the winding up of its business as the vesting in tenants
neared completion around 1960, the Land Commission re-invented itself
with another social role: the prevention of land falling into the hands
of non-nationals, and the promotion of viable holdings through enlarging
and consolidating existing holdings. A new act was passed, (The Land
Act, 1965), granting the Land Commission extensive new powers. As
a result, the land market became tied up in an incredible amount of red
tape.
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