I move, that this Bill be now read a second time. I do not know whether it is necessary to make any extended statement on the Second Reading of this measure. Deputies are aware that it is customary to bring in a Bill of this sort at the end of the year to extend the operation of a number of minor enactments which it is thought advisable should come under review from year to year, after they were originally passed. This measure continues for another year the same statutes which appear in Parts I and II of the Schedule to the Expiring Laws Act of 1933, with the exception of the Motor Car Act, 1903, which is being repealed by the Road Traffic Act of 1933 and the Workmen's Compensation (War Addition) Act, 1917, which is being repealed by the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1934. With regard to some of the other measures a Bill dealing with the poor law position generally will shortly be introduced which will make unnecessary, it is hoped, the annual renewal of the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1923. A permanent measure to amend the Local Authorities (Combined Purchasing) Act, 1925, is also under consideration, and an Aliens Bill has been introduced. With the exception of these three measures it is not considered necessary, at the moment, to introduce legislation of a permanent character in respect of the other Acts in the Schedules to the Bill.
Public Business. - Expiring Laws Bill, 1934—Second Stage.
I desire to ask the Minister whether the Government have any proposals under consideration to amend the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act of 1923. Every Deputy who lives in the city and who is in any way familiar with the circumstances that exist in the cities and towns throughout the country will be aware of the fact that the unfortunate tenants who are condemned to live in slum dwellings are being exploited in a most inhuman and shameful manner by rapacious landlords. A glaring example of the way in which they are being exploited by slum landlords has been afforded in this city where notices to quit have been served on people who have no means whatever, many of them applicants for unemployment assistance benefit which they have not yet received. These unfortunate people are compelled to live in filthy, insanitary slum dwellings. Their position is being used by slum landlords to wring out of the pockets of these unfortunate poor people the highest rents that it is possible to obtain from them. The Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act provides no protection whatever for these unfortunate tenants.
If the Minister for Justice has made any enquiries into the matter, those who have made the enquiries for him will, I think, have no hesitation in telling him that there are some tumbledown dwellinghouses in the city of Dublin from which rents of £200, £250, and £300 a year are being extracted from unfortunate people who are not able to buy bread for themselves or their dependants. This Act gives a certain measure of protection to a tenant, but I think we should have some proposals from the Ministry to prevent these unfortunate people from being exploited in the bare-faced way that they are being exploited to-day. Those who live in these slum tenements have no protection under this Act. These unfortunate tenants are entitled to expect that the Ministry, having regard to the exploitation which is being carried on in a most flagrant manner, would do something to deal with that very serious and growing problem. Deputies representing constituencies in the City of Dublin, no matter on what side of the House they sit, are all well aware of the fact that these unfortunate people are being exploited. We have got to put up with slums for another while, but I hope the Ministry will give some indication that they intend, at all events, to ensure that the slum landlord will not be allowed to squeeze those people in the present disgraceful manner.
I want to appeal to the Government to take immediate steps to deal with the matters just referred to. For many months the Corporation——
I want to point out that the Act on which it is sought to hang this debate is the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act, and it does not apply to those cases at all.
The motion before the House is for the continuance of certain Acts. The only legitimate amendment would be to move for the deletion of one or more of those Acts from the Schedule. It is, I fear, customary in this annual discussion to allow a certain latitude as regards advocating the introduction of legislation to supersede these Acts. Deputies should not enter into a detailed discussion of the social conditions obtaining in Dublin or elsewhere; that would be out of order. I am prepared to hear the Lord Mayor, Deputy Byrne, briefly on the point he has raised.
Those matters have been raised before. By letter, members of the Corporation have been promised that legislation would be introduced at an early date to remedy the complaints of tenement dwellers in Dublin. One case was brought to my notice to-day in which a woman in receipt of 21/6 relief is asked to pay 15/- rent. The House can imagine the rest, and see the need there is for immediate legislation. The Corporation, I understand, have already been in touch with the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, and been informed that the matter is being attended to. I would make an earnest appeal that the matter be speeded up, in order to save those scenes in the City of Dublin, where evictions are taking place because people in receipt of Poor Relief are not able to pay the high rents demanded.
Perhaps the Minister would receive a suggestion from me on this Bill in better part than he received the suggestions from Deputy Norton and Deputy the Lord Mayor. I would suggest to him and his colleagues in the Government that he should do away altogether with this institution of the Expiring Laws (Continuance) Bill. It is a hardy annual— a sort of annual blister that comes up here, for which I never could see any reason. There are something like eleven statutes in the schedule, some of which will disappear very shortly, and I would suggest that the Minister and his colleagues should consider taking them all out of the schedule, and doing away with this institution of the Expiring Laws Bill altogether. From the point of view of practitioners, it is better that we should know whether the Bills are permanent or not, rather than be wondering as to whether they are going to be continued. I would, therefore, suggest that this unnecessary institution of an annual Expiring Laws Bill should be dropped altogether.
Deputy Costello, I think, has delivered a very severe censure upon himself and those of his colleagues who had responsibility, when they were in power, for not doing what he now suggests should be done.
I never had any power to do it.
I presume that when the Deputy was Attorney-General he had a good deal of responsibility for the wiping out of out-of-date laws and replacing them with up-to-date measures. His influence in the Cabinet would have helped in that direction if he had tendered that advice. There is one satisfactory feature about this Bill, and that is that it contains a smaller number of measures to be extended than was included in similar Bills during previous years. Deputy Norton raised a question, which he dealt with briefly, but in a sufficiently explanatory manner, for the purpose of trying to find out, for instance, from the Minister for Justice when he hopes to fulfil the promise made in this House to introduce a Town Tenants Bill. Perhaps before the Bill is read a second time we may hear something from the Minister on the matter. We hope to hear whether the Bill is actually in draft, whether any policy decisions have been taken by the Cabinet on the matter, when it is hoped to have the measure in operation, and, as a result of the passage of such measure, to remove some of the grievances complained of by Deputy Norton. We have had another promise more than once from the Minister for Local Government regarding the desirability of and the urgency for the introduction and passage of a Bill for the purchase of labourers' cottages. Perhaps the Minister for Local Government will say something on the matter and take the House into his confidence——
That Bill does not appear on the schedules.
There is a Bill here which has a bearing on it—the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1883. I think, Sir, you will agree that that is the relic of old decency, and that it is time a progressive ministry would look into the out-of-date sections of that particular Act and make provision for the inclusion of the necessary sections of that Act in the Bill which the Minister has promised to introduce to enable the tenants of labourers' cottages to become owners of their own dwellings.
The Minister to conclude.
I think Deputy Davin dealt very cogently with the criticism raised by Deputy Costello to the effect that a Bill of this sort should be dispensed with altogether. I think the Deputy in his more responsible moments would not stand over that opinion, because if one looks at some of the measures here it will be realised that they are of a definitely experimental kind. The combined purchasing Act was introduced as an experiment. It is an experiment which required a number of years to work out, and in consequence of the experience which has been gained in the operation of the Act a permanent Bill is now going to be put on the Statute Book. Others of these are measures which have worked fairly well, but which do not represent the considered opinion of the Government in regard to the matters to which they relate. Take numbers one and two—the Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868, and the Corrupt Practices Commission Expenses Act, 1869; to evolve permanent measures would occupy the time of very valuable civil servants, and Ministers who may not, in the opinion of the Deputy opposite, be as valuable as the civil servants. Nevertheless an amount of the time of the Administration and of the Dáil would be taken up by the discussion and consideration of these matters, which would prevent more urgent problems— such as those to which Deputy Norton and the Lord Mayor have referred— from being dealt with. It is for that reason—because those measures represent temporary expedients which are workable—that we come and ask the Dáil to renew them from year to year, pending the time when the Dáil and the Government will be able to give fuller consideration to the formulation of permanent measures.
In regard to the question of the Labourers Act, 1883, I think I may say that the formulation of that scheme and the embodiment of the decisions of the Minister for Local Government in regard to it are at the present moment being proceeded with. With regard to the question of dealing with the position of dwellers in slum tenements, investigations to ascertain what steps are necessary to secure a remedy for that problem are proceeding. As Deputy Norton will know, and as the Lord Mayor will understand, I am sure, the matter is not a simple one. There are very many intricate problems to be examined and analysed, and on the basis of that analysis and examination it is hoped to formulate a scheme.
When will the Committee Stage be taken?
I propose to take it now, if the House agrees.