5Provisions as to existing proceedings and awards.N.I.
(1)Any agreement made before the sixteenth day of April, nineteen hundred and thirty, in any legal proceedings in connection with a proposal to grant a warrant authorising the abandonment of an unnecessary canal under the principal enactment, and any regulations made, inquiry held or other proceedings taken by, or under the direction of, the Ministry of Commerce before the said day in connection with any such proposal, shall be deemed to have been duly made, held or taken under the authority of the principal enactment as amended by this Act.
Any award made by an arbitrator appointed before the said day under regulations of the Ministry of Commerce to determine compensation under paragraph (d) of sub-section (2) of the principal enactment, as originally enacted, shall have the like effect as if made under this Act.
(2)Where, in pursuance of an award to which sub-section (1) of this section applies, compensation is payable to any persons by the proprietors of an unnecessary canal by reason of the abandonment thereof, the order of release made in respect of the canal may provide, if the Ministry of Finance consents, that the whole or part of any sum payable by the said proprietors to that Ministry under a local or personal Act passed before the passing of this Act shall, instead of being paid to the Ministry of Finance, be applied in payment of compensation as aforesaid.