Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1941 > Committee of Public Accounts > Interim and Final Report - Appropriation Accounts 1939 - 1940

APPENDIX VIII.

EXECUTION OF COURT ORDERS ON LAND COMMISSION WARRANTS.

The sum of £19,005 13s. 6d. represents the fees recovered by County Registrars for executing Court Orders and Land Commission Warrants during the year of account (1939-40). This work devolves upon the County Registrar in each County according as the separate office of Under Sheriff becomes vacant by reason of the retirement or death of the Under Sheriff who held office in 1926 (Section 54 of the Court Officers Act, 1926). This transfer of duties has already taken place in 13 of the 26 Counties.

Over all the 26 Counties the amount recovered under Land Commission Warrants in respect of arrears of Land Annuities, and paid over to the Land Commission during the six years ending 31st March, 1940, was about £2,600,000. For the purpose of this note, half that sum may be regarded as having been recovered by Under Sheriffs and the other half by County Registrars. So far as the half which was recovered by the Under Sheriffs is concerned, the fees were paid to and retained by the Under Sheriffs and do not appear in the Department’s accounts. So far as the other half (the half recovered by County Registrars) is concerned, the fees were paid into the Exchequer as portion of the Appropriations in Aid on the Circuit Court Vote. The fees in respect of sums recovered under ordinary Court Orders were disposed of in the same way.

The total amount of fees recovered by County Registrars and paid into the Exchequer in this way during the six years mentioned above was about £126,000, an average of about £21,000 a year. How much of this is attributable to fees on ordinary Court Orders, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to fees on Land Commission Warrants cannot be stated: separate accounts are not kept: but it is certain that much the greater proportion is attributable to fees on Land Commission Warrants; possibly an annual figure of £16,000 in respect of fees from Land Commission Warrants and £5,000 in respect of fees from ordinary Court Orders would be a reasonably approximate division.

The general position, so far as the Circuit Court Vote is concerned, may, therefore, be roughly stated to be that in each year the County Registrars recover, by way of fees in respect of Land Commission Warrants, a sum of £16,000, which is surrendered to the Exchequer as an Appropriation in Aid in connection with the Vote, and they also recover fees to the extent of about £5,000 in respect of ordinary Court Orders, which amount is surrendered in the same way.

It should perhaps be added that occasionally in a county in which there is still a separate Under Sheriff who would normally be entirely responsible for the work and would take all the fees, special assistance is given at State expense in the enforcement of Land Commission Warrants on the terms that the resultant fees, or a proportion of them, should be surrendered to the Exchequer. In the year 1939-40, this special arrangement existed only in one county, viz., Wicklow: a sum of about £1,000 was received for that year in respect of fees on Land Commission Warrants for that county and is included in the figure £19,005 13s. 6d.

Accounting Officer,

27th May, 1941.

Department of Justice.