262 THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD FOR IRELAND. 



procedure is often impossible, and then the Board has to carve out a new 

 farm from unoccupied land and build a new house for one of the tenants in 

 order to induce him to give up his original farm, which is then divided 

 amongst the adjoining lioldings. The difficulties of " re-striping " the 

 estate, i.e., squaring and re-arra.nging the holdings so as to make them 

 compact and large enough to be of use, are, of course, enormously increased 

 by the way in which farms that were originally compact have been sub-divided 

 from time to time. 



On many estates in the West, especially w^here the land is poor and a 

 dense population — dense, that is for the quantity of the land cultivated — has 

 been in undisturbed possession for many generations, the people have sub- 

 divided the holdings from time to time in their own way, and the result is 

 that often the holding of one tenant does not consist of one or two or even 

 three separate portions of land, but of many detached fields, or plots within 

 fields, lying amongst similar fragments of other scattered holdings. A field 

 of one acre may belong to a dozen persons, each of whom owns his own 

 particular plot, and very frequently matters are still further complicated by 

 " undivided shares " in various fractions of plots, such as three-fourths of 

 one and one-sixteenth of another. 



In order to ensure that the new holding which is to be offered to the 

 tenant is of at least the same value as the old, it is not only necessary to 

 estimate the quantity and quality of the land in each plot, but due con- 

 sideration has also to be given to rights that may be possessed of com- 

 monage grazing or of cutting turf and seaweed ; and, after all these more or 

 less technical difficulties have been surmounted, the Board may find their 

 plans upset and their progress stopped by some one unreasonable person 

 who refuses to accept the new holding or to give up the old one ; thus on 

 one estate considerable trouble arose from such action on the part of an old 

 woman who held a strip of land completely surrounding a small village, 

 each inhabitant of which had houses or land both inside and outside the 

 encircling holding. This action on the part of the tenants is, however, 

 quite exceptional, now that they understand that the measures adopted are 

 for their ovvoi good, and, despite other difficulties, the Board has persevered 

 in the work of purchasing, improving, and then re-selling holdings to the 

 tenants, as it wisely considers such a scheme likely to prove the most per- 

 manently beneficial measure it can take in order to better the' condition of 

 the small occupiers in the congested districts. This is specially applicable 

 to the inland districts, where agriculture must always be the chief industry, 

 and where a very large number of occupiers, beyond all doubt, have not 

 sufficient land, regard being had to both quantity and quality, to give full 

 employment to their labour or to afford them a bare subsistence. Accord- 

 ingly, from the beginning the Board has recognised that in many cases any 

 scheme which merely fixed these men as peasant proprietors in their hold- 

 ings without some collateral proposal to improve the farm or to increase 

 its size would but intensify the troubles of the situation. 



Clare Island, which was purchased for iJ"5,ooo, affords a good example of 



the Board's procedure. The extent of the island is 



p, J , , nearly 4,000 statute acres, with a Poor Law Valuation 



oiare isiana. ^^ _^^^^ ^g^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^g^ ^^ One-fifth 



of the area was held in commonage and the remainder 

 consisted of holdings occupied by ninety-five tenants. As Mr. Doran, the 



