asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state in respect of each year from 1970 up to and including 1983 (i) the amount of land sanctioned for sale to the Department of Fisheries and Forestry by the Land Commission; (ii) the amount refused by the Land Commission for sale to the Department and the location of each lot refused and the reasons for this; (iii) the amount of land re-offered to the Land Commission by the Department of Fisheries and Forestry; (a) the location of such land; (b) the amount accepted by the Land Commission; (c) the cost and (d) the number of farmers who received extra land.

Land Commission records are not kept in such a form as to make the information requested readily available and the significant expenditure of time and labour required to ascertain it could not be justified. If, however, the Deputy wishes to have information in an identifiable case, and tables a question or writes to my Department, this will be provided.

I am very disappointed that this information is not available. The Land Commission are the body charged with responsibility for division and acquisition of land, while the Department of Fisheries and Forestry are charged with responsibility for land for afforestation. Surely all lands purchased by the Department of Fisheries and Forestry come under Land Commission sanction. This information should be reasonable and readily available.

In order to ascertain this type of information we would have to examine all the schemes over 14 years, with an average of about 300 a year. It would be a mammoth task. On the third part of this question, we would have to identify and examine approximately 100 schemes dealing with re-sale of land purchase. If the Deputy has a particular scheme in mind, we will follow that up.

No, it is a general question.