Paul Rouse: How the Land Commission grow the GAA in many areas
After the establishment of the Irish Free State, visions of independent Ireland involved a country backboned by prosperous farmers. It was this group that was also understood to be the driving force in GAA clubs
A whole section of the history of modern Ireland cannot be properly told because the documents which tell of it sit in folders buried in the National Archives. This is the history of the Land Commission — and it is fundamental to understanding the modern position of the GAA all across rural Ireland.
For more than 100 years the Land Commission was the body responsible for redistributing farmland in Ireland. It was set up in the 1880s in the aftermath of the Land War. It initially engaged in fixing rents — fair rents —on farms, but quickly moved into the sale of farmland from landlords to their tenants. Essentially, at this point what it did was use government finance to buy out the freehold of landlords and selling it on to tenants who paid back the capital over a set period of time: The famous land annuities.
