Vol. 18 No. 5
There are nine amendments from the Seanad. One or two deal with Section 6 and the others with a new provision regarding the remission of rates. I am agreeing with amendments 1 and 2. No. 9 is the important one; amendments 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 being consequential. After that amendment No. 8 remains, about which I would like to make a statement. I move: "That the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 1."
Section 6, sub-section (6) deleted.
Could the Minister explain what is the effect of this amendment?
It has practically no effect. It is a drafting amendment. There was a certain amount of controversy in the Seanad as to whether it was essential or not and there were different opinions on it. I would just as soon have the section as it was, but as the Seanad has thought fit to amend it, I am accepting the amendment. It does not make any difference to the Bill.
It means really that you want to satisfy the Seanad.
I move: "That the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment No. 2." The object of this amendment is to delete a section which required that a portion of the rates book dealing with particular areas should be left in the local Civic Guards barracks. The view was expressed in the Seanad that that was unnecessary as it led to unnecessary expense.
Perhaps it would be well to give a fairly long explanation of this amendment, as it is very important. Section 69 of the Principal Act adopted for the first time in Saorstát Eireann the idea of encouraging the erection, enlargement and improvement of buildings by exempting their occupiers from the full amount of rates. The section was limited to buildings which will be completed by the 1st of April next. The exemption from two-thirds of the rates which was conferred by the section only applied where the building was completely erected during the period, or where the enlargements or improvements made were substantial. This last expression has been found in practice to give rise to uncertainty and to some apparent injustice. No one could be quite sure that any enlargement or improvement of a building would be considered to be substantial. The result was a plentiful crop of disputes to be determined by me. 339 such disputes have been determined in a period of eight months. Of course, this uncertainty tended to prevent the section from fulfilling its purpose of encouraging building improvements. Inevitably also there was produced a sense of injustice in the persons whose improvements came very near being sufficiently extensive to be treated as substantial, but who received no remission of rates under the section.
Sub-clause (6) of Section 11 of this Bill as introduced and passed by the Dáil extended to buildings and improvements completed before the 1st April, 1930, the remission of rates given by Section 69 of the Principal Act to buildings and improvements, completed by the 1st April next. The clause proposed no change in the nature of the improvements required before the rates could be remitted and only substantial improvements were affected. The clause included a rather complicated machinery for dealing with the disputed questions which would arise under that extension as they have arisen under the original Section 69.
During the debate on Section 11 in the Seanad the defects in the system adopted in 1925 were emphasised, and finally it was decided to delete sub-clause (6) (under which the period for completing the building was extended) and to substitute a different method of remission of rates on buildings erected or improved before the 1st of April, 1930.
The new proposal, stated shortly, is that for five years after the valuation of a holding is increased by reason of building, only one-third of the increase is to come into effect for rating purposes. This covers all improvements causing increase in valuation and is not limited to substantial ones. To take examples. First, suppose a shopkeeper makes some structural alteration in his premises and the valuation is increased from £40 to £100. The result of this clause would be that for five years he would pay rates on a valuation of £60, that is to say, only £20 of the £60 increase would come into effect. Again, if a new house is erected on a plot valued at £10, and after its erection the holding is valued at £40, the rates for five years would be paid on a valuation of £20, only £10 of the increase of £30 coming into effect. The advantage is that all improvements would be covered and encouraged and there would be no uncertainty.
It must be remembered that where all the premises in a rating area are undervalued each occupier pays a proper proportion of the rate, and that in such a case the increase of one occupier's valuation to an amount which is theoretically correct produces an actual injustice. This injustice would be mitigated by the proposals in Section 12. A general re-valuation of the rating area, however, at once cures the injustice I have just referred to. Moreover, where a general revaluation of the area is impending the fear of re-valuation is not a deterrent to persons wishing to build. For these reasons the clause excludes from its provisions all increases in valuations made as part of a general revision of valuation, and provides that after such a revision all increases previously made shall become effective at once.
One great advantage of the new clause is that it confines itself entirely to future building, and no building or improvement which has been begun before the Bill passes will be able to receive the benefits of the remission. There are certain complications in the clause which have been necessarily introduced to meet rare and peculiar cases which may arise, though in practice the new system will not be complicated but easy to understand and administer.
The latter part of sub-clause (4) deals with the case where there are during the prescribed period successive improvements of a holding and successive increases in its valuation. In that case each of the successive increases takes full effect until the five-year period has expired. Sub-clause (6) deals with cases whose holdings are divided up into parts. Sub-clauses (5) and (7) deal with determination of disputes. The Commissioner is to decide the origin of any increase in the valuation. Every other matter is left to the court.
It is certain that a provision relieving persons who expend moneys on improving their premises from the full burden of rates for a short period is a useful and equitable provision, at any rate in the immediate future. Section 69 of the Principal Act and Clause 11 of this Bill were framed with that object in mind. I consider this amendment introduces a system which is an improvement on that embodied in the Principal Act, and I would ask the Dáil to accept it. If this amendment is accepted, amendments Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 to Clause 11, which are consequential, should follow as a matter of course. I move: "That the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment 9."
I move:—That the Committee agree with the Seanad in amendment 8:
In Section 11 a new sub-section inserted at the end of the section as follows:—
"(9) Sub-section (3) of Section 69 of the Principal Act shall be amended by the deletion of the words ‘the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Acts, 1883-1919' and the sub-section as so amended shall apply as from the passing of this Act to any house erected under the aforesaid Acts."
This amendment raises certain issues of some importance, and it will be necessary for me to deal with it at length. To see this in its proper light it is necessary to realise that I introduced this Bill, so far as I could judge, as a non-controversial measure. I only put things in the Bill that I thought would meet with general agreement, and I was quite prepared to delete anything in the Bill that was likely to provoke keen opposition or lengthy discussion. My reason for taking up this line on this Bill was that the two principal sections in it—Section 6 and Section 7—when they come into operation, will effect a considerable saving in time, labour and money for local authorities. But, in order to have the benefit of these sections for local authorities this year, it is necessary that the Bill should be in force before the 21st of this month. As a matter of fact, as a result of this Bill not yet having passed the Oireachtas there is a great deal of doubt, confusion and anxiety in my Department, and in local authorities generally through the country, because we do not know for certain whether the new system of applotment, which will come into operation under these sections, can come into operation or not this year. As I say, if we have not got the Bill before that date, we will have to do without the benefit of it this year.
When Amendment 8 was carried in the Seanad I was placed in the position of having to choose between two evils— of accepting what I realised to be a thoroughly unsound amendment on the one hand and, on the other hand, of disagreeing with it, which would mean either that the Bill would be held up by the Seanad—held up, as a matter of fact, until after the dissolution, which would mean that the Bill would never become law—or, in any case, that the Bill would be so long delayed that it would be useless, as no saving would be effected under it this year.
I shall quote from my statement in the Seanad:—
As the Senator has explained, the motive of his amendment is to give to the occupiers of local authorities' houses a rates remission similar to that provided for private persons and public utility societies under the Housing (Building Facilities) Acts, 1924, and the Housing Acts, 1925-1926. This would give to the occupiers of the Marino houses who, as already explained, have had the advantage of what is the equivalent of £280 the added advantage of the remission of rates. The capitalised advantage of such further benefit would, when calculated on present Dublin rates, amount to £63 10s. From this it follows that the tenant purchaser of a Marino house would get £80 more than the total assistance provided for under the Housing Acts for private persons and public utility societies. At present the Marino tenant gets £17 10s. more, namely, £280, as against £200 plus £63 10s. Furthermore, the majority of houses being built in Dublin under the Housing Acts by parties other than the Corporation are being built by speculative builders, and in the sale of the house the State subsidy is divided between the builder and the purchasing occupier.
In that statement I tried to make clear to the Seanad that houses constructed by the Corporation and by other local authorities were being let on more favourable terms than other houses. My figures on that occasion were challenged and, as a result of that challenge, I have had the figures very carefully inquired into, and I accordingly give a further statement to elucidate the general figures I gave on that occasion.
Following the consideration of this question in An Seanad the figures relating to the houses provided in Dublin under the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Acts have been examined in detail, and the average in relation to a single house has been calculated in respect of all the houses concerned. It will be understood that figures varied in relation to each individual scheme, owing to different conditions as to site and the continued fall in building costs, etc., but the average figures will, of course, apply relatively to all schemes.
Five-roomed houses have been built and sold by the Dublin Corporation (and Borough Commissioners) at Fairbrother's Fields (357), Donnelly's Orchard (84), Marino (431), and Croydon Park (880). The average all-in cost of the houses, including expenditure, was £756 per house. The average all-in cost, excluding acquisition of land, was £733, and excluding acquisition of land and development £648.
Well, the Minister made it clear that that includes the Fairbrother's Fields houses.
Yes—the average for all the houses. The houses have been sold on lease at an average price of £428 per house, subject to an average annual ground rent of £2 16s. per house. From these figures it will be seen that the average price of land per house was £23, while development costs averaged £85 per house, making in all £108 per house between land and development. It was contended in An Seanad that as a ground rent was being charged no expenditure in respect of the acquisition of land should be included in the cost of the houses for sale purposes, and that, partly for the same reason and partly because the roads were public roads, development cost should also be excluded. So far as the ground rent is concerned this contention would be sound if the ground rent covered the cost of these services, but an examination of the facts will show that this is not so. The ground rent is merely a charge to secure reversion of the land to the Corporation when the leases have expired.
This is essential to ensure that the new housing areas will not become slummed when the houses have decayed. In regard to the roads being public roads, it should be mentioned that the roads included in the costs quoted are not roads which would be required had not the houses been built. The expenditure on roads, sewers and water-mains, etc., was, without doubt, consequent on the provision of the houses and must be charged to the cost of the houses. True, some recognition should be given to the nominal ground rent. As stated, this rent is £2 16s. per house or £4,900 (approximately) on the 1,752 houses referred herein. A generous estimation of the market value of this ground rent would be, say, 18 years' purchase, equalling £88,200. The expenditure on acquisition and development of land in respect of these 1,752 houses at £108 per house is £189,216, which is £101,016 in excess of the value of the ground rents. This excess represents £57 per house, and when added to the net cost of the house, which, excluding land and development, is £648, brings the latter figure up to £705.
The sole effect of Sections 12 and 69 and the sole effect aimed at in our housing legislation is to encourage building and reconstruction. The amendment as it was intended will not do this. In fact, it will have the very opposite effect. It will have the effect of placing individuals already in an extremely fortunate position in the still more fortunate position of having houses provided for them by the local authorities without any effort of their own under conditions more favourable than apply in the cases of houses acquired under other circumstances at the expense of the ratepayers. The intended amendment would put an additional burden of 3d. in the pound on the ratepayers of the city of Dublin. That burden would have to be borne, directly or indirectly, not merely by wealthy ratepayers but by those unfortunate slum dwellers, many of whom would give the two eyes out of their head to be able to get into those Corporation houses about which complaints are being made. As well as asking the ratepayers, including the inhabitants of the poorer areas, to shoulder this additional burden of rates for the purpose of giving additional subsidies to these houses you are lessening the chances of the slum dwellers and people living in the poorer areas of ever being able to get similar houses for themselves, as you are not only diminishing the possible Building Fund of the Corporation and the other local authorities by decreasing their rate returns, but also as a result of a kind of post factum legislation you are imposing unforeseen and unlimited liabilities on local authorities, so that they will be very slow to commit themselves to further building schemes which may completely upset their finances.
I believe if this amendment, as it was intended in the Seanad, were carried it would have a very serious effect on building by local authorities throughout the country. If this amendment did what it was obviously intended to do in the Seanad I would unhesitatingly recommend the Dáil not to accept it. However, I have gone into the amendment carefully and I find as a matter of fact that it will practically have no effect on the section, as, owing to a fault in drafting, it will not achieve the result which was intended. Therefore, I am going to ask the Dáil to agree with the Seanad and accept the amendment.
I do not know what the effect of the amendment would be so far as technicalities go, and, therefore, I am not going to try to argue the point with the Minister. He has made it clear, at any rate, that so far as he is concerned he is going to do all he can to prevent the benefit of the remission of rates which has already been given, at his instance or at the instance of the President, to the wealthy people of the city who have built new premises being given to the people enjoying the benefits of the Corporation housing schemes. There is a good deal of mystification about these figures. I am afraid the statement of the Minister was not easily understandable in the way he presented it. Perhaps if this matter were to be postponed for a day or two we might have the figures before us in such a way as that we could read them. I take it he is standing on the statement he made elsewhere. I really think there is some need for clarification of the figures which have been presented officially by the Corporation and the Minister.
The figures presented by the Commissioner for the Corporation do not bear out the figures the Minister has put forward. I think that it might be as well to draw attention to a certain rather important fact regarding this question of the remission of rates on these houses and the remission of rates generally. I hope the House will not forget that the initiation of this scheme came from the President or the Minister for Local Government.
It was not from me. It was done in the Seanad.
I know it was done in the Seanad.
I was not there when it was done.
The Minister for Local Government was there and he did not go to the Seanad with the same message as he brings here to-day. I challenge him to deny that he had no part in the initiation of the proposal for the remission of rates in the 1925 Bill.
He had, certainly.
And the President came to this House and forced it through in opposition to the Vice-President.
And in opposition to the Deputy. It shows how powerful I am!
The President says he had nothing to do with it.
No. That is quite a different thing to what you said a moment ago.
Let us remember that this proposal referring to the remission of rates was taken on the initiative of the Ministry, and when we are reminded by the Commissioner of the cost of these remissions, as we are in the morning paper, it is well to remember that the greater part of that cost is in relation to houses which were built and premises which were erected before the date of the passing of the Act in question. That is, it was retrospective. We are told, of course, that it is a very heavy charge. The Minister says that this proposal, if it had effected what it was intended to have effected, would have incurred an additional burden of 3d. in the £. I calculate it at something less than 3d., but the additional burden that is at present being borne, according to the Commissioner's statement, is 4d. in the £. That is to say, out of a total of £36,000 valuation, which is affected by these remissions, £31,033 is valuation in respect of ratings of £100 or over. The rich companies are enjoying a sum in the remission of rates which involves a charge on the City of 4d. in the £. Then they come and throw into our faces this sum of 3d. in the £ on the rates. I think the House should be informed of some of the facts in regard to this Dublin housing scheme and the way it affects the case that is put before us by the Minister and his Commissioner.
We are told by the Minister that since 1920, 1,750 houses have been sold under the purchase scheme, and the cost of these houses, excluding the cost of acquisition, was £1,287,000 odd, and that they have been disposed of for £750,000. He did not tell us that the Corporation had received, in respect of these houses, a sum of £804,750; so that taking into account the amount of money received from the Government and the amount of money to be received from the tenants, the Corporation is making a profit out of these schemes of £267,000. The suggestion, of course, is that the Corporation is going to lose too much if this amendment becomes effective. But I am going to take the case that the Minister himself has made. The Minister has told us that certain of the houses built by the Corporation are not sold. They are rented. The houses cost £700 each, approximately, and they are rented at rents averaging 8/6 per week. I do not know where these houses are, but taking his figures, he says that it leaves an annuity of £11 12s. 6d. towards funding the capital expenditure of £700. But the tenants of these Marino-Croydon Park houses, who are in the same position in life and who are not able to pay any more than the tenants of these rented houses, are obliged to pay 16/- and 17/- per week. Some of us, I, for one, remember my earliest lesson in Political Economy. I remember reading, when I was about ten years of age, in a school-book, that no man should pay more than one-tenth of his income as rent. I wish we could apply that in Marino, Fairbrothers Field, the Boyne Street area, or any other part of the City.
A purchase scheme.
A purchase scheme, the Deputy interrupts, and the Minister makes a great point about this being purchase money. I wonder have you seen any of these houses and have you made any calculation as to what the value of these houses will be in 40 years time? A purchase scheme! They would sell them very cheaply if you buy them now and take delivery after 40 years.
Will the Deputy build more cheaply?
I am not talking about cheapness. I am talking about the quality.
Will the Deputy build them better?
I am talking of the quality and the difference in the value of houses being purchased and houses being rented. From the point of view of the occupier, taking into account his weekly income, it matters not much to him whether his dwelling is rented or whether it is being purchased. It is so much out of his weekly income before he can begin to live. The Minister gave us a lot of figures which I am not able to follow in the reading.
I have also some figures provided by the Corporation, and I find they do not work out quite as the Minister's statement would have the House believe. In the course of his statement he has been referring to the Marino-Croydon Park houses, costing approximately £700 per house on an average. He said also that they were being sold at an average price of £420 a house. I have not been able to find any house sold at less than £420. I wonder will the Minister tell me how many houses in that area have been sold at less than £420 and how many have been sold at more than £420, or is it not a fact that £420 is the lowest price at which any of these houses have been sold? I have before me one purchase agreement which speaks of £460, and I have two at £420. I know it is round about those figures that the houses in the main have been sold. I might not have been able to reach a fair sample of the thousand houses in the locality, but perhaps the Minister could tell us whether the £420 which he spoke of was, in fact, an average?
I can read them out for the Deputy.
I just want to know from the Minister whether he will confirm the statement that this is the average price at which these houses were sold or whether it was a slip?
It is the average and it included the Fairbrothers Field and Donnelly's Orchard.
The Minister's statement, of course. was that the houses at Croydon Park and Marino are costing an average of £700.
Yes.
I take it that that was a blunder?
No it was not.
It covers the four areas —Fairbrothers Fields, Croydon Park, Marino and Donnelly's Orchard—taken together.
Now we are told that the Fairbrothers Fields area is included in the £700 average.
Yes.
We are not bound to the £700 average; it is over £700.
I would like to know whether the Minister's statement or the President's is the one that we are to rely on. I take it the £700 average includes the cost of the houses in the Fairbrothers Field area?
Yes.
And the £420 includes the selling price of the Fairbrothers Fields houses?
Yes.
Will the President or the Minister inform the House whether it is a fact that the cost of building at the time the Fairbrothers Fields houses were built was a good deal higher than the cost of building in recent years?
The average cost was £756.
The average cost of the houses in the Croydon Park-Marino area, including acquisition, development, cables and public lighting, none of which should be charged to the occupier, was £663. That is the average for 1,283 houses. The cost of the acquisition and development, etc., is round about £80 per house in respect of three contracts and £66 in respect of another of the contracts. That is a long way from the £700 that the Minister quoted in respect of Croydon Park-Marino, and it nullifies his argument completely when he says that the benefit derived by the occupying purchasers of these houses is so much greater than the benefit accruing to those who are receiving the benefit of the public utilities scheme.
A question has been raised on which I would like to have some explanation. The Minister said that the charge for ground rent is merely intended to secure a reversion to the Corporation at the end of the period. I would suggest to the Minister that he could do that at much less than £3 per year. If that is the whole object, he might be able to do it at 1/- per year. Three pounds a year for 99 years for land, the acquisition cost of which was fourteen guineas, leaves a fairly handsome profit. You expend fourteen guineas and by the end of 99 years you have had an income of £300. That is all merely for the sake of getting the reversion at the end of the lease! The Minister claims that the cost of development should, in fact, be taken into account in making up the value of these houses when you are comparing them with the value of the houses of the public utility societies and other private ventures. The comparison, if it is to be a fair one, will have to include in respect of the public utility houses on Malahide Road about £75 per house for development, and the alleged benefit that is being given to the Corporation houses has to be reduced by this sum for development, public lighting, public cables—£75, £80, or £85 per year per house.
The President has told us, and the Minister has confirmed it, that the sums of £700 on one hand and £280 on the other have reference to the Fairbrothers Fields site as well as the Croydon Park-Marino site, and that they include the cost of development and the cost of acquisition. The Fairbrothers Fields cost of acquisition and development amounts to £163 per house. This charge against the cost of these houses in the Fairbrothers Field area has to be taken into account before you can arrive at this £700 cost per house. There is £128 per house for development, £35 for acquisition. Certainly there is no justice in making the tenant purchasers of those houses pay a sum of £128 per house for development, and in taking that cost into account when making a comparison between the public utility houses which have no charge against them for development.
This Fairbrothers Field house includes that sum of £163 for the acquisition of site and development, and we have a total all in cost of £893. The Government paid a subsidy in respect of £488—at least the Government subsidy was charged in that fashion against those houses—leaving a sum of £404 or thereabouts to be charged to the tenant. Now, one is not complaining of the action of the Corporation in dividing the Government grant of that time in the way it did, but if there is going to be a remission of rates to Clarke's factory, Player's factory, to new banks, cinemas and printing-houses costing the city 4d. in the £, it is certainly a fair thing that such remission of rates should be given to the occupiers, the purchasing tenants of these houses, for the period of six years which is proposed in the motion. When a man who is earning, when he is working, £4 a week or £3 10s. or £3 a week is asked to pay 17s. a week for the rent of his house, it is an unreasonable burden and an impossible burden when he is out of work, as he unfortunately too often is, and it simply forces him to endeavour to take in subtenants. I regret to hear from the Minister that this amendment which he proposes should be accepted is not going to have any effect. If that is the position it is a regrettable one, and I hope the time will come when it will be possible to remit rates on houses of this kind, as it is possible and has been decided to remit rates on the houses of wealthier citizens and of the big companies.
You have not proved that it is not done.
The President says that I have not proved that it is not done. All I can prove is that the tenants are being required to pay in the case I have before me in respect of Fairbrothers Field houses: rates, £9 0s. 3d.; ground rent, £2 12s. 6d.; interest, £19 14s. 0d.; repay of capital, £3 9s. 4d.; fire insurance premium, 10s. 6d.; charge to cover the cost of collection and book-keeping, £2 8s. 0d. per house on 400 houses. That is a fairly good item for the cost of collection and book-keeping. However, this tenant had to pay as soon as he went into the house the same rates as any other tenant in the city. If that is not a proof that the remission of rates has not yet had effect——
What did he get the house for?
The Corporation received a grant in respect of the building of the house. The Corporation built the houses and made certain terms with the tenants. Those terms included the cost of payment of the house, plus rates. We are not dealing with the price of the houses.
That is it. You need not bother about the rest of it.
We are dealing with the rates, and when one section of the community, at the instigation of the Government, has had allowed to it a remission of rates, then I say it is only fair that another section of the community, in somewhat similar circumstances, should also be allowed the remission of rates. All that we are asking in this matter is that the people who have been relieving the pressure upon these tenants, should be allowed something like the same privilege in respect to rates remission as the wealthier people whom the President has fathered and backed in this matter.
Before any other Deputy speaks I would like to know whether we are quite clear as to what we are doing. An amendment has been passed in the Seanad to this Bill. The Minister thinks that the amendment is of no effect, but he has moved that the Dáil agree with it. I think that that procedure should get very careful consideration before we adopt it. I say that without any regard to the merits of the question. If this amendment is of no legal effect, then it has no meaning and the question is whether we ought to adopt it at all.
I am going to move that we disagree with the Seanad in this amendment. I think it will not require very much study on anyone's part to realise the close proximity of an election in this amendment. Now, what is intended? It is this: to let in those houses, to which Deputy Johnson has devoted a good deal of time in his speech, which have been built out of the million grant or by reason of the assistance given by the Government grant of one million under the Housing Facilities Acts of 1925 and 1926. But that is not on the face of this amendment. This is a fool amendment, and it certainly reflects no credit on the Seanad to send down an amendment of this sort. The amendment reads: "(9) Sub-section (3) of Section 69 of the Principal Act shall be amended by the deletion of the words ‘the Housing of the Working Classes (Ireland) Acts, 1883-1919.'" Now, there are no such Acts. There are the Housing of the Working Classes Acts from 1890-1919. The amendment goes on to say: "and the sub-section as so amended shall apply as from the passing of this Act to any house erected under the aforesaid Acts." The sub-section as so amended seeks to prevent all houses from getting this remission. That is what it amounts to, and that is what it means. As I have said, it is the close proximity of the elections—the fervid haste with which members of the Seanad sought to buy votes, because this is little short of that—that has resulted in the amendment being put down in that form. A certain well-known man rubbed his hands and said: "That is 2,000 votes as soon as this is passed." That is not the way to do public business, and I hope, at any rate, that we will agree on one thing, and that is that issues should be put straight and fair before the people of the city and country on all these matters.
Hear, hear.
Deputy Johnson, when addressing himself to this matter, brought in the parallel of a big firm such as Player's and said that this ought to apply to houses built under the Housing Facilities Acts. What is the difference between the two? Player's constructed huge industrial institutions without any subsidy from the Government. They built their big institutions at a time when building costs were high, and they got no assistance from the Government. They gave employment in the city at a time when employment was much needed, and when their institutions were built they were valued at a fairly high figure. In the case of houses erected under the million grant or under the Housing Facilities Acts these got substantial subsidies.
He has been at some pains to show that in the sales which were effected by the Corporation in respect of houses built under the Housing Facilities Act they pooled whatever advantages were to be derived from the incidence of the rate charge and gave them a cash value, which really amounts to about £170. A house cost approximately £750, less the £100 Government grant, less the £100 Corporation grant, less the pooling of this rating advantage amounting to about £70. Eleven houses were sold on the Fairbrothers Field site for £327 each; 10 for £361; 191 for 378; 4 for £429, and 134 for £394. The all-in cost of these houses was £950. It is all moonshine to be talking about excluding the cost of development and the cost of the acquisition of the site from the cost of the house. If I am going to build a terrace of 10, 15 or 20 houses in any part of the city, I will have to acquire a site and put down roads and pathways in order to attract people to increase the valuation of the city.
The Corporation gives the same advantage in this connection, which I believe they did in recent years. The fact is that somebody has to pay some contribution. Most of it has been coming from the municipality as well as the Government in order to assist in providing houses. There is no comparison between the big factories, banks and institutions for which no subsidy has been granted, and those houses built in respect of which a subsidy is given by the Government and the Corporation, and also from the pooling of rates—from whatever advantages there are in that gradual increase from one-twentieth in the first year to nineteen-twentieths in the nineteenth year. This is a fool amendment. It is no credit to the Seanad to send down that amendment. I for one object to our Statute Book having such a discreditable sub-section in an Act of Parliament, and I hope the Dáil will reject it.
Is the Minister withdrawing his motion to agree?
It would place me in an anomalous position if I did. This amendment effects nothing. The only reason for not agreeing to it is that if it goes back to the Seanad it may mean the holding up of the whole Bill. However, I will leave it to the Dáil.
I have nothing whatever to do with the merits of the amendment, but if the amendment does not mean anything then from the point of view of the House generally we should not agree to it.
I withdraw the motion.
Is this a technical question of dates?
The whole thing.
I have no knowledge of the legal effect of the amendment. I have not investigated that. If I did investigate it my view would not be valuable on that particular aspect. If, in fact, the House accepts the view that this amendment does not mean anything, then the House should give most careful consideration as to whether it should accept the amendment. If the Minister's dilemma is that he must get this Bill passed in some form by a certain date, I think it would neither be consonant with the dignity of this House to pass the amendment, nor a proper procedure in our relation with the other House to do so. Putting it from both angles, from our own point of view and the point of view of our relations with the other House, the procedure which is involved in agreeing to the amendment seems to me under the circumstances to be wrong. The only remedy that seems to be open to the Minister, since the practical effect of the argument he has made to the House is that the amendment ought not to be accepted, is to induce the Dáil to disagree with the amendment, and so place upon the other House, if that House insists on its amendment, the onus of holding up the Bill, notwithstanding his plea of urgency. In my opinion the Minister should not ask the Dáil to agree to an amendment which, according to himself, effects nothing.
There is an alternative procedure which would be quite in keeping with precedence and decency, and that is, to invite the other House to confer with this House in regard to the intentions of this amendment.
I quite agree; but the position, as I understand it, is that the Minister really understands their intentions and is strongly opposed to them. I am taking that as fixed. We could have a conference with the other House, but if the Dáil does not want to agree, that would not be of any great value.
Time is the essence of this question. The really important section of the Bill, which, I expect, would save £30,000, cannot be effective this year if I cannot get it through before February 21st.
All this was known.
Was it known when the President was moving the adjournment for weeks?
The Minister for Local Government stated that the adoption of this proposal of the Seanad would delay the provision of houses for the workers and the slum dwellers. I ask the Minister whether anybody within his Department is dealing at present with the slum dwellers. How can he expect slum dwellers to pay 17/6 per week, when he knows that for the past few months in the Dublin Police Courts notices to quit have been issued against slum dwellers, and people even have to give up Corporation-owned premises. The slum dwellers are not able to pay anything more than from 2/6 to 4/- a week. I ask the Minister for Local Government and the President if the day has not arrived when some authority ought to deal with the housing in areas such as those in North Cumberland Street and around Gloucester Street, where the people, a couple of months ago, were left on the roadside in the early hours of the morning. There is nobody dealing with these slum dwellers. The slums were never worse than they are to-day, and congestion was never so bad. The President is aware that the Corporation, a few years ago, had before them a report that there were 22,000 families herded in single-room tenements. The same thing exists to-day, but, if anything, it is worse than it was at that time, because of the number of tenements which fell into decay during the war period. The number of houses that were being built was not sufficient to replace those that were going into decay.
You will not improve their position by increasing rates and, consequently, rents.
We hear so much of that, and it is going on for the last twenty years to my knowledge, while the class of whom I am speaking are in a worse condition than they were ten years ago. These people cannot pay 17/6 a week, as proposed, for municipal dwellings. Somebody ought to get busy immediately and try to provide for them. I am sure if the Commissioners were to get a report from their Chief Medical Officer it would give them a deplorable account of what is going on in the slums of Dublin. I take this opportunity of saying that I support the proposal to give the benefit of the remission of rates to all dwellers in houses erected under municipal dwelling schemes. As was mentioned by previous speakers, in the same areas as these, houses are being built by various public utility societies, the average rent of these houses being 15/- a week, and there is a remission of rates. A few years ago in the Phibsboro' district a private speculator started building houses, grants were given in respect to them, and I am glad that even in the case of these houses remissions of rates were also given. This inequality of people resident in houses built under municipal housing schemes, who do not get the remission of rates, while those in the same area, living in houses built by public utility societies, get the remission of rates, is rather unfair. The house purchase scheme is an exceptionally good one, but I am inclined to agree with Deputy Johnson that at the end of forty years the houses will not be of any great value to the owners.
I look forward anxiously to the day when the Government will take up the question of housing for those people who are living in tenements. I know one instance where seventeen families, each of four or five persons, are living in a tenement house with panes of glass out of the windows, which are stuffed with paper instead, with one lavatory in the yard, and having to come from the top of the house practically to the cellar to get to the lavatory and to obtain water. That is going on in Dublin and it is time for it to cease.
I support the motion to reject the Seanad amendment. The President has emphasised very clearly the difference between the assistance given under the 1925 Act by means of the remission of rates to people who set up buildings in a city and in the case of the housing schemes that are dealt with here. The principal reason why I am against giving the remission of rates to houses under the building schemes we are now discussing is that, while rents in these cases are really terribly high, nevertheless the main building problem in the city requires to be dealt with, and while those rents are high, it must be remembered that the people living in the houses have good homes. If the Dublin Corporation is to be further prejudiced in the matter of its income I do not see how the main housing problem in the city is to be dealt with. Deputy Byrne has drawn attention to the position of the tenements. Under the recent building schemes the number of houses built is 1,782. They do not cater for the non-tenement population in the city, the demand for houses by people outside the tenement population, and a considerable amount of work still requires to be done for that population. Coming to the tenement population, it has been suggested here that people have been taken out of the tenements. People have not really been taken out of the tenements. The population of Dublin in 1911 was 304,802. At that time one-seventh of the population of the County Borough were living, four to a room, in one-room tenements. You had 43,985 people living under those conditions at that time—one-seventh of the County Borough population. Since the census of 1911 there has been an increase in the County Borough population of 11,669, and when the examination of the recent census has been completed, or that portion of it that deals with the tenement population, it will be shown that the increase in population in Dublin County Borough has been an increase in the population in the most congested districts, and we have, in the capital of Ireland, to face this position, that the number living four to a room in one-room tenements and comprising at present perhaps one in six of the population of the County Borough, is increasing, and that nothing that we have contemplated up to the present in the line of a housing scheme, good, bad, or indifferent, is dealing with or facing that problem.
It is quite clear that you have a housing problem in the country, outside the housing problem that presents itself in the Dublin tenements, but the problem in the tenements transcends any other housing problem in the country. That does not mean that you can turn aside from your other housing problem and leave it untouched, but you have to face the appalling position, from the point of view of the housing problem, that exists in the tenements. The President has raised the question, on the point of rents, as to whether houses can be provided at a lower rent than 17/6. It is a hardship for non-tenement dwellers to have to pay 17/6 a week for a home, but if you examine the conditions of employment and the other conditions under which our tenement population dwell it will be quite clear that the solution of the tenement problem in Dublin cannot be by the provision of houses at 17/6 a week for them, and that the city is likely, when this question has been fully gone into— as it must be gone into soon—to have very serious financial drains on it. We ought not further to put a drain on the purse of the city that we need not necessarily do until this problem has been thoroughly examined.
We only pull up when we come to consider the lower elements in life. No protests were made, except from these benches, when you were proposing to give the remission to wealthier people in the city.
What about these benches?
Is not the point quite clear to the Deputy that the people to whom you were proposing to remit last year or the year before were the people who were providing employment in the city and attacking the problem I speak of from one side?
Yes, but their premises had already been built.
I take it that one of the objects of the Minister for Local Government when he meets the Seanad on this matter—if the Dáil agrees with the Committee in this amendment— will be to explain why, if the intentions which he knew the Seanad had were so obviously nullified by the drafting, he did not in form the Seanad.
I did not know it at the time.
The Minister had a week to consider it. There was a week between the Second Reading and the Committee Stage in which to examine the effects of the amendment that was proposed; but he did not think it wise, he did not think it discreet, to inform the Seanad that there was some fault in the drafting.
He did not think it polite.
I did not discover it until yesterday.
Deputy Cooper is not correct in saying that it was because the Minister did not think it polite. The Minister himself explained that it was not a matter of politeness but of absence of knowledge. He only found out when he came to the Dáil that there was a blunder on the part of the Seanad and he thought he would take advantage of that blunder by tricking the Dáil and incidentally tricking the Seanad. He tricked the Dáil into agreeing with the amendment with the object of frustrating the intentions of the Seanad while pretending to agree with them.
I told them exactly what agreement meant.
The Minister may try to defend that kind of action, but it seems to me to be playing a lowdown game parliamentarily.
Deputy Johnson should not measure everybody else's standard of morality and honour by his own.
I am quite prepared to hear the Minister say that as frequently as he likes, but it is for the Dáil and for the public to appreciate the course that the Minister saw fit to adopt—to come to the House with the intention of telling the House that there was no result such as was expected to come from this amendment and consequently recommending the House to accept it.
Did you vote for it?
I do not believe the Minister—I do not believe his interpretation is the correct one. I believe the matter is altogether one of modifying a technical fault in the printing. However, that is a matter the Minister is better advised on than I am. He knew, he said, that there was a fault which would nullify the effect of the amendment.
And that I have omitted to tell the Dáil that—is that the policy you are on now?
If the Minister wanted the Dáil to achieve a certain end he would have proposed an alteration, in the form of an amendment, to achieve the end intended. To agree with the Seanad proposal, but to move a form of words which he knew would destroy the effects of the Seanad amendment is another matter. However, that is for the Minister to meet the Seanad upon.
The House in Committee has voted to disagree with this amendment, with the object of preventing the occupying purchasers of these houses getting the same benefit which the Dáil, with almost equal majority—I am wrong in that, but certainly with a majority sufficiently large—voted even to get recoupment of past payments from the same Corporation, which has involved an increased rate of 4d. in the £. They are willing to do that for the rich element in the community, but they are unwilling to do it for the poorer element in the community. They say: "We must not do that—the rates, the rates."
That is what the Dáil has been asked to do, and I submit it is not conducive to a proper respect for the Legislature, for the law, for order or for the maintenance of agreements. The proposal was a fair one. The proposal was one to make it possible for these poorer people in the community, not the very poor, but the poorer people in the community, to get something like the same benefits in regard to the remission of rates as was given to the rich.
The House has done nothing of the sort. The Dáil in this matter has simply followed up the policy which it has adopted and laid out for itself during the past four years. Under the Housing Facilities Acts of 1924, 1925 and 1926, provision was made for the remission of nineteen twentieths of the rates in the first year, eighteen-twentieths in the second year, and so on down for twenty years until, at the end of twenty years, the occupier of one of those houses, built under the Housing Facilities Acts, would pay the normal rate.
In the year 1922, the Government provided £1,000,000 for housing in urban areas, and, as Deputy Johnson himself knows, the Fairbrothers Fields and the Boyne Street area houses were built in Dublin mainly through that grant. The average price per house in Fairbrothers Fields was £950. Allowing £500 contribution from the State, there was left £450 to be paid by somebody. The Dublin Corporation paid £450, and I read out here this evening the various prices at which these houses were sold. Now mark this, that in the first place these people got £950 worth of property for less than half of that sum, and to Deputy Johnson and to everybody else of his class I say, deliberately, that when the Dublin Corporation paid over £700 for the construction of these houses, they paid it to workpeople in this City, and they did not ask for repayment from these workpeople of that amount. They asked for something less than two-thirds of that amount. In other words, if I paid a man £6 a week to build a house for me and then I said to him, when he had the house built, "You can take that house and I will only charge you two-thirds of what I paid you for building it," the man would be getting a good bargain.
The sooner we make up our minds that the housing problem is not to be dealt with by platitudes or by bribes, or by making unfair statements regarding the incidence of this economy, the better for everybody. Let the people know that every brick and every piece of mortar and every slate and every piece of wood put into a house has got to be paid for, and that the men earning their money in building that house have to be paid, too. That is the money that is affecting the rent. When we claim that rents are too high and that the cost of living is too high, and all the rest of it, examine what it is that is making the cost of living so high. We have done everything that we reasonably could to allow people to get healthy houses and to allow them to take possession of those houses, and to allow them to buy them. We cannot sell them at less than they cost, allowing for the subsidies we give.
In this case we have taken an average. The Minister for Local Government and Public Health has examined the average cost of five or six of the schemes operating since the million grant was given, and the average works out at £756. The houses were sold for an average price of £428, and £328 had to be put up. It was found by somebody. Under the Housing Facilities Acts the Government gave £100; it was larger under the million grant. The Corporation estimate of costs included a £100 subsidy under the Housing Facilities Acts and £70 in respect of the rating incidence I spoke of. For instance, if the rating of a house were £6 a year, in the first year the man would be charged only 6/-. Instead of that they levied the whole amount and gave him an advantage of £70 in respect of an item valued at £63 10s. Deputy Johnson has no right to say that people have not that advantage. They have that advantage. Deputy Johnson wants to give it to them again. I say that we would give them twice as much if we could afford it, but somebody has to make it up. All the time the people that Deputy Byrne has spoken of——
Can you afford the £19,000 you have already paid away on behalf of the Corporation?
I say we can, although Deputy Johnson and the Vice-President disagree with me in that. They say I am a bad judge. I am prepared to accept that I am a bad judge in that respect. I am further prepared to say that those people who built in Dublin since 1920 have built at an uneconomic price. They certainly have shown some courage, much more courage than the people on the benches opposite. They have shown great courage by sinking their money in schemes when the highest prices ruled. They put their money into something which now would not give them anything like the price they paid; they put their money into houses which, if sold now, would not pay them. I say of those people that for their courage and industry some advantage should be given to them and they should not be salted all the time.
In the case of persons who have rebuilt or reconstructed, every possible facility should be given. It is unfair in the case of a man living in one area surrounded, as he may be, by four people who do not build, that because he has built his house it should now be valued at the modern rate, whereas the houses of his four neighbours are valued at the rate existing 40 or 50 years ago. The houses have exactly the same accommodation, yet his house is valued at a higher rate by reason of the fact that it was recently built.
Deputies can easily rail about these things because they have not had the experience; they have not had to pay a high cost. They can only be interested in one thing, and that is finding fault with the Government.
The Committee has agreed with all the amendments except amendment 8, which has been rejected.
