scale state-funded rural social housing, in which over 40,000 labourer-owned cottages were erected on of land by local County Councils. The Acts housed, at low annual annuities, over a quarter of a million rural labourers and their families, previously living in hovels, which thereby transformed the Irish countryside. To provide small parcels of land for people to grow their own vegetables and fruits, Parliament passed the Local Government (Allotments and Land Cultivation) (Ireland) Act, 1917. Irish Land (Provision for Sailors and Soldiers) Act 1919 Following the Great War, a further 5000 houses were built in both parts of Ireland for returning soldiers, under the Irish Land (Provision for Sailors and Soldiers) Act 1919 which was defined as "An Act to facilitate the provision of land in Ireland for men who have served in the Naval, Military, or Air Forces of the Crown in the present War, and for other purposes incidental thereto. (23rd December 1919)", and, "so far as it relates to the provision of holdings under the Land Purchase Acts, shall be construed as one with those Acts, and, so far as it relates to the provision of cottages, plots, or gardens under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts, 1883 to 1919, shall be construed as one with the last-mentioned Acts." It was effected by the "Irish soldiers' and sailors' Land Trust", which co-operated with the new Irish Free State, mostly building small new housing estates for veterans at the edge of towns. The object of the Act was to facilitate the reinstatement in civil-life of ex-servicemen and their dependents with the provision of £800,000 sterling for housing accommodation by the Local Government Board. Free State Land Acts On the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Commission was reconstituted by the Land Law (Commission) Act, 1923, which also dissolved the Congested Districts Board. The Land Act 1923 adopted many proposals for a final land settlement from decisions reached during the Irish Convention in 1918 under the chairmanship of Horace Plunkett. The Convention's proposals formed the basis of the Act. The Land Commission had bought up of farmland between 1885 and 1920 where the freehold was assigned under mortgage to tenant farmers and farm workers. The focus had been on the compulsory purchase of untenanted estates so that they could be divided into smaller units for local families, some of which proved to be "uneconomic"; this policy was applied