Deputy Corry gave notice to raise the matter referred to in Question 29 on the Order Paper to-day. I should like to hear what he wants to raise.
Adjournment Debate. - Cobh Town Tenants.
From the Minister's reply to a supplementary question put by me on this matter he did not seem to grasp the situation. He stated that he regarded a tenant who was in a position to pay £1,800 a year for a house as being reasonably well able to look after himself. There is no one individual paying £1,800 a year for a house. As a matter of fact, the statement I made was in connection with 25 holdings. When the first lease expired the landlord claimed the property and raised the rents on the 25 holdings from £100 to £1,862 and compelled the tenants, at their own expense, to rebuild according to the specifications of the architect. In another case the land was leased at £12 10s. per year. The buildings were erected at a cost of £12,000. When the lease of the ground expired about 1902 the bank had a mortgage on the place of about £5,000. The landlord refused to renew the lease either to Cummings or to the bank and the premises were let to other tenants at the huge rent of £415 per annum. Cummings had actually expended £12,000 on buildings, but when his lease fell in in 1902 he got no satisfaction. The buildings were confiscated by the ground rent landlord and let at £415 a year.
That is a state of affairs that should not be tolerated. On less than two acres of ground in Cobh there is a rent amounting to £1,862. The unfortunate man who expended £12,000 was given his walking papers when his lease fell in and his buildings were confiscated. We hear a lot about confiscation from time to time, but this is the worst case I know of. There are four houses on East Beach and these were leased at £4 a house. When the lease expired the rents were raised to £50, £50, £42 and £35 respectively. In other words, it meant raising the rents from £16 to £177. Those are definite cases of grave injustice. There are 26 shops closed down in the town because of the ground rents. Hotels have been put up for public auction, but nobody would take them on account of the ground rent and rates. The man who built the hotels is to get nothing. All these cases cry out for remedy.
During the last ten years all efforts to remedy the situation were in vain. The people now expect that under a national Government their condition will be alleviated. I suggest that the Minister should investigate this matter during the Recess and, when we reassemble, I hope he will have a Bill prepared that will do justice to these unfortunate tenants. As it is, those people can barely exist. In the past, we heard a lot about rack-renting landlords under whom rents were increased as improvements were made. In the case of Cobh the buildings were improved and then when the lease falls in advantage is taken of the improvement. This a matter that cannot stay on the long finger. Those tenants cannot continue paying extravagant rents for ever. It will interest Deputies to know that the rents, rates and taxes on the town reached the very big sum of £45,000. The absentee landlords, Rushbrooke and Smith-Barry, get a huge share of that money in ground rents. Unless some remedy is found by the Government I think we will be forced into the position that the tenants may have to bring about a remedy for themselves.
The question which the Deputy put to me to-day is concerned, as the Order Paper shows, with ground rents. The ground rent problem has not been one of the acutest problems: at least, we have not regarded it hitherto. Perhaps I read the Deputy's question too literally, but I feel that the occupying tenant, as distinct from the ground rent tenant, is in greater need of the protecting hand of the Legislature. A Landlord and Tenant Bill was introduced last year and was passed into law. The Party to which I belong, and which was then in Opposition, introduced a large number of amendments to that Bill. Some of these amendments, some quite valuable amendments, found a place afterwards in the statute. Some of them failed, but in the main, both those that succeeded and those that failed were directed in aid of the occupier.
When Deputy Corry mentioned a letting, the ground rent of which was £1,800 a year, he left me rather cold. I have a feeling of very great sympathy with many of the tenants in the Irish towns. I would be glad to foster any legislation which would alleviate their loss. I am not at all sure that any conceivable legislation dealing with the relation of landlord and tenant can do much to improve the lot of some of them; but in so far as it can it will have in me, so long as I remain a member of this House, an ardent supporter. I have not the same measure of enthusiasm to lend to the case of the ground rent payer, the man who has a long lease, who contracted to pay a very substantial ground rent.
Deputy Corry informs the House now that twenty-five tenants collectively pay £1,800 a year. I Deputy Corry stated that to-day I owe him and the House an apology. I understood Deputy Corry to say that there was a tenant who paid that very large rent and that Deputy Corry mentioned other tenants who paid other rents which seemed to me to be quite substantial. I stated then, and I state now, that any tenant who, by contract, deliberately entered into, agrees to take a long lease at a rent running even into three figures—the four figures are now explained by what the Deputy says—is not the subject of a very urgent problem.
If the Minister would allow me a moment I would like to explain. Those tenants, first of all, got their ground divided up between 25 of them. They then built their houses on that. When the lease fell in the landlord immediately confiscated the property which those unfortunate people had built up. It meant they had to accept a new lease at a much increased rent whether they liked it or not, or else have their property confiscated altogether. These were poor people and they are poor people.
I am not alleging in this House that the conditions of the lease to which the Deputy refers are fair and equitable conditions. I do not know whether they are or not. The Deputy has stated that they are not and for the moment I am prepared to accept that statement. But the Deputy has informed the House that the provisions of the lease fell in so far back as 1902, thirty years ago. Since that time there have been two statutes dealing with the relations between town tenants and the landlords. There was the Town Tenants Act of 1906 and we had the Town Tenants Act of 1931. The Act of 1931 was preceded by a Commission which inquired into and took evidence as to the conditions of the town tenants in various Irish centres including Cobh.
What am I to do now? I cannot by a wave of my hand amend the legislation. Is the suggestion that I am to appoint another Commission, or is the suggestion that without a further inquiry the Government should introduce a Bill at once or at the very earliest opportunity into this House? The Deputy will remember that my answer to-day was that at the moment I could not hold out any prospect of legislation dealing with the relations between landlord and tenant. I stated that because I have no intention to make from this bench any statement that will not be honoured. I am not going to state that there is an immediate prospect when I know that the state of Parliamentary business excludes the opportunity of the early introduction of this Bill, a Bill to relieve somebody whose lease fell in, away back in 1902 or whose lease may have fallen in five years ago. I am to urge my colleagues in the Executive Council to have their whole Parliamentary programme displaced to give way to a Bill dealing with the problem as stated by the Deputy.
Does the Deputy forget that from our predecessors on these benches we have received a heritage of many thousands of unemployed? Does the Deputy not realise that first things should come first? Does he not realise that we must first strive to relieve, as we are trying to relieve, unemployment in general, to resuscitate the dying industries of this country, to recreate some of the industries of this country that are dead? Does the Deputy forget that? Does he realise that that will entail a great deal of Parliamentary time? The Deputy appropriately directs this question to me. Does the Deputy close his eyes to the fact that the work of my Department, the ordinary heavy work is multiplied and increased by the unnecessary and irritating questions put to me and the unnecessary irritating speeches made outside this House, questions irritating one side of the community here and alarming the timid and conservative outside? Is he aware that all that means extra work for me and does he realise that he is requesting my colleagues to put their programme aside in order to deal with these matters?
The Deputy can rest assured that the grievances of the tenants in Cobh will receive the earnest attention of my Department, the earnest attention of my colleagues as a Government as soon, and just as soon as they can devote attention to it. I will not feed the people of Cobh up with false fancies by saying to them that "you will have in the autumn of this year a Bill" of this kind. I will not do that. I tell the tenants of Cobh and elsewhere something that they can absolutely rely on—that the Government drawn from the Party that espoused their cause so warmly in Opposition will not forget them on these benches and that everything in reason that can be done for the tenants of Cobh and the tenants in the other towns of this country to remedy substantial grievances and to restore all the equities as between two parties will be done at the earliest opportunity by this Government, but that this Government while weighing the many pressing needs of our community will see that the more grievously laden will be relieved first and that in the fullness of time we hope to give the community a programme which will perhaps not merely adjust contractual liabilities as between people in Cobh but may and will, I hope, lead to such better times as will lessen the gulf between what the tenant is able to pay in Cobh and what the landlords should exact.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.50 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 13th July.