I move that the Bill do now pass.
Public Business. - Labourers Bill, 1935—Fifth Stage.
Is it not the intention of the Minister to deal with matters that arose in connection with this Bill in Committee Stage? The Minister may remember that amongst other points raised by the Opposition was the question of title. We pointed out to the Minister on that occasion that it was something quite unknown to the existing law of property to attempt to convey in a terminable manner a title in fee. Under this Bill a labourer may enter into an agreement for purchase with the local authority, and when the agreement is drafted and completed on a certain date to be agreed upon, the vesting order is made. Up to this point the procedure of conveying the cottage to the labourer is closely analogous to that pursued by the Land Commission when it conveys a holding to a tenant purchaser under the Land Acts. But under the Land Acts, when the holding is conveyed to the tenant purchaser, the Land Commission retains a mortgage charged upon the land for the amount of annuities outstanding. I think they have certain statutory powers whereby they can institute what are known as resumption proceedings: but no matter what device they employ to recover possession of the holding, damages are awarded to the tenant for the disturbance that results to him.
Under this Bill it appears that if a cottage has been vested in the labourer, and the labourer after paying that annuity for 30 years fails to pay one instalment, he becomes liable to have his cottage taken from him, and given back to the local authority without any credit for the instalments he has paid in his 30 years of occupancy of the cottage from the date of the vesting order. I think the Minister agreed with me that such an arrangement did not appear to be desirable. I understood he intended to look into the matter before the Report Stage, and introduce any amendments that might be necessary to regularise the position and to ensure that the tenant purchaser would, at least, get adequate compensation for anything he paid, in the event of disturbance.
The House will readily understand that the difficulties, in the way of the Opposition preparing adequate amendments to meet a case of that kind, are almost insuperable because, admittedly, extremely difficult questions of title and conveyancing law may arise, and it might be necessary to redraft a considerable portion of the Bill to do that adequately. I, therefore, took no further action after directing the attention of the Minister to the dilemma; but I now discover that nothing was done on Report Stage. I would be glad to hear from the Minister, now, if he is satisfied with the machinery incorporated in the Bill for effecting conveyances. So far, I think I have touched upon nothing controversial. I must now, however, mention one aspect of the Bill, before it leaves this House and becomes law, and I am afraid the Minister will regard it as a somewhat controversial contribution.
The country was plastered, at the last election, with the announcement that Fianna Fáil were going to transfer labourers' cottages in fee simple to the tenants. I, myself, in County Donegal, was very strongly pressed by my supporters to go flatfooted for that policy. At first, I must confess, I was very much attracted by it, because I believe, generally, in the principle of increasing the number of small pro prietors from the social point of view. But when I came to investigate the matter closely it became clear to me that, in a very large number of cases, conveying the cottages to the tenants would be putting upon the tenants a very substantial burden. I was not quite sure, in my own mind, that, if the tenants of cottages understood the full implication of what the transfer of these cottages meant, they would be so enthusiastic for the scheme. I doubt if many of them realise that each of these cottages at present constitutes a burden of about £2 10/- per annum upon the rates of the county in which they are situated. I doubt if many of the labourers understood that the rents of their cottages were uneconomic, and were unavoidably subsidised out of the rates, and that if you wanted to evolve a system of purchase it must inevitably mean that, not only the rent charged, but the character of the commitments would be substantially heavier for the tenants of the cottages.
I allege against Fianna Fáil and the Government that they have not made these facts clear. What they have done is this: Instead of preparing a scheme of cottage purchase they have introduced an enabling Bill, and left it to the local authorities to carry out the whole working of the scheme. I do not think that is facing up to the question fairly and honestly. I think the Minister has deliberately avoided what seems to me is his clear duty of formulating a purchase scheme. And I believe the reason is that he felt any such scheme that he could conscientiously recommend to this House would come as a disillusionment to the tenants of the labourers' cottages. What will happen if the Bill becomes law is that certain local authorities will make certain schemes. In certain districts they will make wholly uneconomic schemes that would involve the rates in intolerable burdens. Such schemes the Minister will refuse, and send back for revision, and that will go on indefinitely. I doubt when the whole job is done whether many labourers will buy their cottages at all because they will find that the terms of the scheme that the Minister's Department would approve are so onerous that it would be better for them to stay as they are. I would like to hear the Minister on that. I think we are entitled to ask the Minister why he did not undertake to formulate a regular scheme of purchase. Why is it left to the local authorities? I think he is bound to state authoritatively now, having had ample time to consider the question in all its bearings, whether, in his view, it will be possible for the tenants of labourers' cottages to buy out their cottages on the instalment plan without paying a larger weekly sum than is represented by their present rent. The labourers are entitled to that information. When we have got that information, we shall be better able to judge as to whether this Bill should pass or not.
In support of Deputy Dillon, I should like to say that this is the last act of what I regard as one of the most dishonest campaigns ever carried out in this country—a campaign deliberately started for the purpose of getting cottage holders to believe that legislation would be passed by the Fianna Fáil Government which would make them the owners of their homes and benefit them to a very large extent. I am satisfied that many members of the Party opposite lent themselves to that campaign before they realised that it was not possible to carry out the promises that were made. So far as I am personally concerned, I can claim that I was as anxious as anybody in the House or outside it to see the workers become the owners of their houses, but I opposed this campaign and this scheme for the purchase of labourers' cottages from the very outset. I opposed it in my own county where, I may say, the campaign was started and carried on most enthusiastically. I am satisfied that, as a result of that opposition of which I made no secret, I lost hundreds of votes. I told the cottage tenants at that time that, notwithstanding the flowery speeches and promises, there was going to be no legislation that would confer any benefit upon them.
We have now reached the final stage of this measure and, when the Bill becomes law, it will mean that an additional burden of £17,000 a year will be placed on the cottage tenants. That is the end of the campaign which was carried on over a number of years and that is the fulfilment of the promises which were made. Those who led the tenants into that campaign and helped to organise them are not so eager to-day to reveal the way in which the tenants have been fooled but, even already, I think most of the tenants realise that this Bill will confer no real benefit upon them. We do not know yet what the exact nature of the schemes will be, but we do know that there is to be a reduction, taking the average, under the Bill of 3½d. per week per cottage. As against that, there is to be responsibility for repairs carried out, not as the tenant himself considers necessary, but according to instructions by the engineer to the local authority. Anybody who goes to the trouble of examining the proportions of the liabilities borne by the three parties—the State, the local authority, and the tenant—will see that, allowing for the 25 per cent. reduction, and taking into consideration repairs to the extent of £50,000, which was the sum for 1930, but which does not, in the opinion of some of us, represent the amount which should have been spent on repairs, the tenants are going to be saddled with an additional sum of over £17,000 a year. The House is to be asked to pass this Bill, while the majority of the members know that it is not going to confer any benefit on the tenants. If the members of the Government Party were free on this matter and if Party discipline had not been enforced, the Bill would, I think, have been a much better one than it is.
The point raised by Deputy Dillon is one of the most important that will arise in connection with these schemes. But the Minister, even if he had the will, has not the power to set this matter right at this stage. The Minister is not now in a position to move an amendment in the Seanad and to bring it back to us, even if he desired to do so. If the Minister desires to settle this question of title, he will have to go to the trouble of introducing an amending Bill. I believe it is necessary to do that and I hope he will do so. The Minister expresses dissent. I hope he will be able to satisfy us that there is no necessity for an amending Bill. I do not think that any member of the House would agree that the tenant should pay his annuity for 20 years and, at the end of that time, if the contract were broken, that he should get no compensation whatever for his 20 years' payment. That appears to be the position under the Bill and I think it is unfair. If the Bill be strictly enforced, the tenant can very easily be deprived of his cottage—much more easily, so far as I know, than any other person could be deprived of his house or holding or have his contract terminated.
The point I want to emphasise is this: here are poor cottage tenants who, like many other sections of the community, put their faith and trust in the Party opposite. That Party said, "Support us and we will see that you are all right, that your house will become your own without any fine. Financially you will be better off, and you will have more security," but the net result is that they are going to be saddled with a bigger burden than ever before. I do not believe that there is a cottage tenant who, if he properly understood the terms of the Bill, would not say to the Government, "We prefer to carry on as we are; we are, perhaps, better off than if the Bill were passed." I myself believe that they are much better off than they will be under this Bill.
I know, in fact, that before any Bill was produced here, there was an opinion in the minds of a number of people, not confined to any one Party in this House, that it would not be wise for the cottage tenants to change their present status for any purchase scheme. I have had that view put to me very forcibly by members of the Labour Party, by members of the present Opposition, and also by one or two members of our own Party, who said that no matter what scheme would be brought into this House, and without doing injustice to the three parties concerned—the present cottage tenants, the ratepayers and the taxpayers—there would not be or could not be an improvement in the present position of the cottage tenants. That view is very strongly held by a number of people of this House, and probably by a number of people outside the House. But in the last few years I met deputation after deputation of cottage tenants, and I put frankly, fully and clearly before these deputations what, without doing an injustice to the ratepayers or taxpayers, it was likely we could do by way of a purchase scheme for the cottage tenants. I was pressed by those representatives of the organisation of cottage tenant-holders to bring in a purchase scheme. I have in the last few weeks received resolutions from a number of branches of that organisation in various parts of the country, stating that the purchase scheme as set out in the Bill was not satisfactory to them. I did not expect to hear anything else, but they wanted me to push the purchase scheme ahead and get it carried, and the sooner the better. I have had a number of such resolutions.
I certainly know that it would be difficult to get unanimity in any organisation such as the Cottage Tenants' Organisation, or in similar circumstances in an organisation of small or large farmers if they had something of this kind going through the House, say a Land Bill or a Bill for better housing or anything of that kind; you would find that you would never have unanimity. You would never get any organisation to say to any Government that the Bill brought in was a magnificent Bill, that it did all they wanted, and that the sooner it was passed the better. You would never arrive, no matter what stage of civilisation we got or what state of political development we got in this country or perhaps in any other country, at the position where you would get substantial agreement or unanimity on any matter of that kind. But from what evidence I have had before me, I believe that there is fairly substantial agreement amongst those most interested that, first of all, a cottage tenant purchase scheme is desirable, and that, though this scheme will not satisfy all the demands of a great number, still that it will be useful financially to the cottage tenants. There will be, I am sure, many people, perhaps cottage tenants, too, who will say, when the scheme has been drafted by the Board of Health, submitted to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, sanctioned by the Minister, sent back and promulgated in the county and submitted to the tenants, that it is not satisfactory. There will be many tenants who will examine the scheme and seeing what the consequences to them are compared with their present position, say: "We are as well off as we are and we will not change." I do not think the majority will be of that way of thinking.
In reference to what Deputy Morrissey and Deputy Dillon said, I have a few words to say. Deputy Morrissey in particular talked about the dishonesty of the campaign in regard to the cottage tenant purchase scheme. I must say this, that before I ever came into this House, I heard a demand that a cottage purchase scheme should be brought in. That demand was not started by the Fianna Fáil Party.
I do not suggest for a moment that the campaign started since this Government came into office. I know that the campaign was started long before that.
That is probably true, and Deputy Morrissey is probably in a better position than I to know that. He was more closely interested in matters concerning such people in rural areas. It was only after Fianna Fáil was established that the matter was brought to my notice. Looking into it I find that as far back as 1925-26, a cottage tenant purchase scheme had actually been drafted by at least two counties. These schemes were never put into operation. Before Fianna Fáil came into existence and long before I came into this House a campaign for a purchase scheme was going on through the country. I think Fianna Fáil has got a greater percentage of cottage tenant backing through the country, for very good reasons, than any other Party, including the Labour Party.
You will not have them after this.
I am satisfied we will hold them and gain more of them. There is not the slightest doubt about it, because despite the criticism passed on this Bill we are conferring very considerable benefits on the cottage tenants. I do not admit that they will have to pay more. That is not the question. Let us say they will have to pay more in paying their instalments and doing their own repairs than they are paying at present. Let us say that it will be slightly more, but even so, is it not a good bargain for them to pay even a small sum more? In many cases it will be less than their present rents. But even if it is slightly more these men will become at a date not far distant the owners in fee of their own cottages and plots.
In a quarter of a century.
No; some of them will be owners in ten years' time.
How?
They will become owners according to the date of the building of the cottage. That will be 15, 20 or 25 years from now. Some of them have been paying rent for the last 45 years, and they do not own a brick in their cottages or a square foot of their own plots. Now they can and will become the owners of their own cottages. The present owners or their immediate family will become the owners of the cottages and plots. That is something to be thankful for. As I have said before more than once, it is good policy to make cottage tenant holders and as many others as possible the owners of their own houses. That is one way of defeating subversive social propaganda, propaganda subversive of the State and of religion, and on fundamental matters it is giving people of the kind who are vulgarly called the "have nots," something substantial of their own. Holding out to them to become property holders in their own land is something substantial.
There will be a saving on the outlay by the local authorities of £24,556, and the tenants' rent will be reduced by £32,356. Added to the tenants' rents will be the cost of repairs. To be quite frank, in some cases these annual repairs in the case of the older houses may add slightly to the present rents, but in the vast majority of cases that will not be so. If we bear in mind the fact that, before the scheme of purchase comes into operation and before the tenants are to pay their first purchase instalments, these cottages will have to be put in such state of repair as will satisfy the Minister and his Department, it will be seen that the matter of repairs will not make much of a difficulty. That aspect of the matter has to be taken into account. The people in some counties may be slow to avail of the purchase scheme, but it is better in the interests of the tenant that the scheme should be slowly put into operation rather than that the tenants should be saddled with cottages that are not in a proper condition to be taken over by them.
Boards of health would be well advised to spend the money as soon as possible, put the houses in good habitable condition, put the scheme into operation, and hand the cottages over under the instalment scheme to the tenants. It will save the ratepayers and the taxpayers, though not very much in the latter case. The taxpayers will practically have to go on as they are until the purchase scheme is concluded. It will save the ratepayers considerably more than the taxpayers. It will certainly save the cottage tenant in some cases and to some extent. At any rate, he will have the feeling that, with every week's instalment he pays towards the complete ownership, he will be coming nearer to the day when he can say that the house and piece of land, whatever its size, is his, and that neither he nor his family can be removed from it. There is a considerable psychological as well as a social value in that.
I went into the question of the difficulties of formulating a scheme for every county on the Second Stage and on the Committee Stage of the Bill. There are differences in the ages of the cottages, the rents of the cottages, the terms under which loans were granted at different times to the local authorities and the rates of interest— there are peculiar differences in every county. It was not found possible, or even advisable, to put into the body of the Bill or by way of a schedule anything in the nature of a cut-and-dried scheme. We have the general outlines of a scheme already hammered out and these will be supplied to the secretary of every board of health, or anybody else who wishes to have them. The boards of health will be asked to formulate their scheme with the information at their disposal and the help they will get from the Department of Local Government. They will be in a position to take into account local circumstances and to try to make the schemes fair between the different classes of tenants who pay different rents. When what is regarded by both parties as a fair scheme, for the cottage tenants and for the ratepayers, has been drafted, with the help that we will willingly give to the board of health, such scheme will be passed and sanctioned by the Minister and can then be put into operation.
I am glad the scheme has been criticised, that people like Deputy Dillon, Deputy Morrissey, Deputy Brennan, and Deputies on the Labour Benches have taken such an interest in the matter and criticised it. It is all to the good, so far as the tenants are concerned. I certainly, as the Minister in charge of the Bill on behalf of the Government, do not want any cottage tenant, as it were, to buy a pig in a poke. I should like the tenants to know what they are doing. I believe they will be making a good bargain in buying the cottages and be doing a good thing for themselves and a good thing for the State. But I should like the disadvantages as well as the advantages to be known to everybody, so that the tenant, when making up his mind what he will do, will have the facts for and against before him. When the facts for and against are weighed by those primarily interested, namely, the cottage tenants, I believe that the vast majority of them will plump for the purchase of their cottage and plot.
A point was raised by Deputy Dillon in the beginning of his speech as to the title. I made a promise that I would examine carefully the matter of the difficulty of title raised by Deputy Dillon. I had it examined by the experts, legal and otherwise, of the Department, and, having had it examined very fully by the legal experts of my Department, in consultation with the legal experts of the Land Commission, we could find no other way than that set out in the Bill for meeting the difficulties which are there. There are unquestionably difficulties there. But, with the peculiar title under which the tenant holds and will hold his property, it is not possible to make the holding in fee absolute, as is done in the case of the farmer when he gets a parcel of land from the Land Commission. The cottage tenant will not be the owner, and cannot be the owner until the final instalment has been paid. He is in a similar position to those who nowadays buy furniture on the hire-purchase system. He will not be the owner, and the house and plot can be taken from him if he fails to pay.
Might I put it to the Minister that you do not manure an armchair?
I will not go into the comparison. At any rate, the case of the tenant farmer and the case of the cottage tenant are not on all-fours and cannot be treated alike. In the case of the tenant farmer he pays his full due to the State for his holding. The cottage tenant does not pay an economic rent, and he will not be paying a full economic price for his holding under this scheme. You have the State and the ratepayers bearing a very considerable portion of the burden, and the ratepayers must be safeguarded. There must be such a grip held on the holding as will encourage the cottage tenant to make certain that he does not lapse in his payments.
I have had to find fault frequently with boards of health for not exercising their proper authority in collecting the present rents of cottages all over the country. In some areas, possibly due largely to the officials and the members of the boards of health, rents are very considerably in arrear, unnecessarily so, I believe. The boards of health have not pressed the tenants, as they should have done, to pay their rents. Frequently the boards of health have been circularised, written to, and called upon by officials of the Department to press these tenants who are in arrear. Frequently they have pretended to do so, but have not done so, so that the arrears have been mounting up. Very few tenants have been evicted. What is true of the payment of the ordinary rents will certainly be true of the payment of the purchase instalments under this scheme.
I do not believe that there will be any injustice committed by the boards of health on the purchase tenants any more than there was an injustice committed by boards of health on tenants who failed to pay their ordinary rents. I would like to see all over the country a better spirit on behalf of boards of health in pressing tenants to pay their rents, and I would like to see tenants in some counties, where they are considerably in arrears with their rents, show a better public spirit in the way of meeting their liabilities. I do not believe that any grave injustice at any rate will be done to any tenants by the public authorities who will have the administration of this scheme.
I would ask the Minister if he recollects another point that was raised, as to whether it would be desirable to insert in the purchase agreements some restraint on alienation, because we envisage cases where genuine labourers might be tenant purchasers and then alienate their cottages to people belonging to a class for whom such cottages obviously were never intended. The Minister said that he would look into that.
We have covered the question of alienation—to other than agricultural labourers—as far as it can be done. I may say that my own anxiety in regard to that is much on the same lines as Deputy Dillon's.
The Minister is satisfied then that the position has been safeguarded?
I think so.
Question put and agreed to.