I move amendment No. 2:—
Before sub-section (2), to insert a new sub-section as follows:—
A local authority shall not give any such guarantee as aforesaid unless such local authority and the Minister and the Minister for Industry and Commerce are satisfied (a) that any such sum borrowed by a building society will be applied for purposes conducive to the public interest, and (b) that such building society is financially sound, and (c) that such guarantee can be given without undue risk of financial loss to the local authority.
Much of the discussion which has already taken place on the first amendment would be appropriate to this, and, consequently, I do not intend to travel over the same ground again. I just wish to make one or two additional points. The Minister, in his remarks on the last amendment, referred to the fact that under Section 3 (1) he has indefinite powers as to the kind of terms and conditions he may impose in reference to the guarantee. I suggest that in itself is a further infirmity in this measure, and that the terms and conditions ought to be set out in the Bill. This amendment is an endeavour to give a headline as to the kinds of terms and conditions that ought to be imposed. One of the requirements that I would suggest, before a guarantee is given, is that the loan is for a purpose conducive to the public interest. I do not want a loan to be guaranteed by the local authority for the purpose of enabling a speculative builder to make some money, or for the purpose of enabling a building society to be in a position to use its surplus assets. While that may be right and proper, yet where the ratepayers' money is going to be involved, there should be some corresponding public interest concerned. If a building society which, after all, is a private profit-making concern, or speculative builders who are pre-eminently a profit-making concern, are going to be helped by means of public money then, at least, the public ought to be guaranteed that they are going to get something out of it.
The only thing that I could find from the Minister's speech on the Second Reading was that the ratepayers of the City and County of Dublin and the Borough of Dun Laoghaire are going to get out of this the somewhat grim satisfaction expressed in the last three lines of his speech where he said:
"It is expected that the proposal will do much to encourage the development of house purchase through building societies."
Well, we used to hear of the art of saying nothing in a lot of words. We have in that extract the art of saying nothing in a few words, because what was said means nothing at all—that this proposal is going to do much to develop house purchase through building societies. What public interest is involved in building societies being facilitated in their activities in connection with house purchase? Where is the public interest? I am not at all sure that the public interest would not, in present circumstances, be better served by a stoppage of the kind of house purchase that will be financed under this section. Everyone is in favour, as I think Deputy O'Higgins said, of facilities being given as rapidly as possible for the housing of the working classes. The particular kind of scheme adumbrated in this Bill is not one for the housing of the working classes, but one to enable people to purchase their houses.
Deputy Byrne has pointed out the very great hardships accruing in very wide areas in the City of Dublin and elsewhere at present through the operation of these house purchase schemes, where economic considerations intervene and prevent the tenants from being able to continue the payments of the instalments of the purchase money. Their whole life-savings are gone, in 99 per cent. of the cases, I should think, through no fault of the purchasing tenant. I am not at all sure that there is any public interest at all in this, and I believe that the only object at the back of all this is to enable the building societies to utilise their funds and to enable builders to make some profit. Where the public interest comes in I do not know, but at all events the object of the amendment is to ensure that there shall be some public interest before the ratepayers' money is jeopardised.
The second part of the amendment is really the part that was spoken of on the previous amendment, that no guarantee should be given until all authorities—the local authority, the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Industry and Commerce— are satisfied that the building society to whom the loan is being advanced is in a financially sound position. If it is the intention of the Minister to see that such a building society is in a financially sound condition, before he approves of the guarantee by the local authority, why not say so specifically in the Bill? I do not wish to repeat what has been said already, although I regard the matter as of some considerable importance. I want to ask the Minister if it is a fact, as I am informed it is, that all this matter of the relationship between the building societies, the guaranteeing of loans, or the guaranteeing against loss is, and has been for some time, under consideration by the Housing Commission. I am informed that that is so. That commission, the members of which are being paid very high salaries for doing nothing, so far as we can see, has been considering the matter for some time and has not reported on it. Why could not this proposal in Section 3 be deleted and await the report of the commission, which, as I say, is being paid at a very high rate and apparently has not dealt with this subject?
I want also to direct the attention of the Minister to the fact that the words "building society" are not defined in the Bill. Presumably, they must be building societies within the meaning of the Building Societies Acts, but you can have building societies which are not building societies within the meaning of those Acts. The mere mention of it in a Housing Act will not attract—I am open to correction on this, but it may not be held to attract—the various provisions of the Building Societies Acts.