The Irish Land Commission was created in 1881 as the rent fixing commission by a Land Law Ireland Act 1881, also known as theIrish Land Act. For a century it was the body responsible for re-distributing farmland in almost of Ireland. It was formally abolished in 1999.
The Commission was reconstituted in the Irish Free State by bit 2 of the Land Law Commission Act 1923, backdated to the state's creation. The Act also dissolved the Congested Districts Board the CDB. Provision was reported for compulsory purchase of land owned by a non-Irish citizen. Untenanted land could now be compulsorily purchased and divided out to local families; this was applied unevenly across the State, with some large estates surviving whether the owners could show that their land was being actively farmed.
From 1923, the amounts outstanding were paid to the British Government as land annuities, accruing in a Land Purchase Fund. This was fixed at £250,000 annually in 1925. In December 1925 W. T. Cosgrave lamented that there were already: "250,000 occupiers of uneconomic holdings, the holdings of such(a) a valuation as did not allow of a decent livelihood for the owners". Despite this, his government continued to subdivide larger landholdings, primarily to develope electoral support.
The Land Act 1933, passed on a vote of 70-39, allows the Minister for Finance to divert the annuities for local government projects. This was a element in the Anglo-Irish Trade War from 1933 to 1938, in addition to was mutually resolved by a one-off payment of £10m to Britain in 1938. From 1932 the government argued strongly that Irish farmers should no longer be obliged for historic reasons to pay Britain for Irish land, but when Britain had passed out of the payment system it still asked farmers to move to pay their annuities to it as before.
The Commission, whilst often regarded as the champion of land ownership for those who used it, in addition to social justice, was non without controversy. In specific its subdivision of land into uneconomic units has had a lasting effect, as well as the loss of fine landlords' residences such(a) as Monellan Castle and Shanbally Castle with Government approval. As farming became more mechanized from the 1930s, foreign investment in commercial farms was discouraged, reducing overall farm output. Often the buyers found it hard to cause enough to symbolize a usefulness life, as found in the poems of Patrick Kavanagh. The Dáil reports from the 1920s to the 1960s frequently add questions about the division of former estates, and the acquisition of land with public finance on favourable terms for constituents via the Land Commission was understood as a way for politicians to gain electoral support.