The speech which we have just listened to from Deputy Coburn is the sort of speech which I should have thought would have been made by the mover of the resolution to give this Bill a Second Reading. It was a speech which indicated the difficulties which are embedded in this problem. He pointed out the very serious considerations which would have to be taken into account before effect could be given to the provisions of this Bill. Unfortunately, until Deputy Coburn spoke, the House was left under a very grave disadvantage. The mover of the resolution to give the Bill a Second Reading took no pains at all to inform the House as to the real content of the measure, or the scope of the proposals. And yet this Bill is not a simple Bill. It does not deal with trifles.
The provisions of this Bill affect valuable properties, numbering almost 62,000 cottages, representing an original capital investment of almost £11,000,000. The properties, of course, to-day are worth considerably more than that. They are properties which belong to the ratepayers, to the local authorities. They are properties which have been built for the purpose of ameliorating the living conditions of a very large class of our population. If full effect were given to the provisions of the 1936 Act, which has already become law, the result would be to transfer from the community to private individuals the ownership of these properties. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is not in issue at the moment. What is in issue is whether equity and justice will be done as between one section of the community and the community as a whole.
If this Bill were to become law, the effect would be, within a very brief period, to strip the local authorities of all the assets which arise out of this original investment of £11,000,000 and to leave them a considerable burden of liabilities. Surely, if the leader of a Party with a social programme puts a proposal of that kind before the House, we should hear a reasoned speech in support of that proposal. Yet I would refer any Deputy who is listening to me now, and was not listening to Deputy Norton, to read the report of his speech in introducing this Bill, when it appears in the Parliamentary Debates, and he will not find in that speech one factual statement in support of this Bill. All that was said by the Leader of the Labour Party in support of the Bill was that it was designed to reduce the heavy burdens now imposed on the tenants. He said nothing of the additional burdens which would be imposed upon the already burdened ratepayers, ratepayers who, we are told by members of Clann na Talmhan, by members of the Fine Gael Party and by members of the Labour Party, are already overburdened. We will find on the Order Paper motions, in the names of responsible members of Clann na Talmhan, urging the State, urging the central authority and urging the general body of the community, to accept responsibility for burdens which are already imposed by law upon the ratepayers as a section of the community.
If there is any justification for the proposals that are contained in this Bill, if the contention is that the ratepayers as a body are in a position to accept the additional burdens which the provisions of this measure would impose upon them if it became law, what justification is there for the resolutions which will shortly come before this House asking us to relieve the ratepayers of burdens which they are already called upon to bear? These people cannot have it both ways. If the ratepayers are unable to bear the cost of the roads, if they are unable to bear the cost of the mental hospitals, if they are unable to bear the cost of providing additional houses for the people, what justification is there for saddling them with the additional burdens which the provisions of this Bill would impose upon them?
We had better look at these proposals in a realistic way. There is no justification for getting up here and making vote-catching speeches. We all of us must realise that the exigencies of the past five years, the need to maintain ourselves free and at peace, have involved this State in heavy commitments, commitments which will have to be discharged during and within the next 20 or 30 years, commitments which will have to be met each year out of taxation until they have been redeemed.
To build the 60,000 cottages, which would be affected by this Bill, the local authorities and the State between them have already accepted a liability for capital sums amounting almost to £11,000,000. When these cottages were built, there was an understanding that the cost of them would be borne by three interests, by the tenants, by the local authorities and by the State. In order to meet the view that it would be socially advantageous if tenants of existing cottages were enabled to become owners the Act of 1936 was passed; it enabled any tenant of a cottage who fulfilled the qualifying conditions of the Act to become the owner ultimately of any cottage in fee simple by the payment of a very modest annuity. The conditions prescribed assured to the tenant purchaser who was then paying rent an immediate reduction of cash payment of 25 per cent.
In the majority of cases, and in the case of over 40,000 of the cottages, the weekly rent averaged 1/2. Under the provisions of the schemes which have been approved since 1936, instead of a weekly rent of 1/2 which did not give the tenant one tittle of ownership in the house in which he resided, he is in the fortunate position, if he has applied to purchase his cottage, and if vested, of having an immediate reduction of 25 per cent. in the weekly payment of 1/2. Instead of paying a rent of 1/2 he pays a terminable annuity of 10½d. which, in the course of time will make him the owner of the cottage in fee simple. Surely it cannot be contended that a scheme which gives to the tenant an immediate reduction of that sort is unfair or unjust to him. At the same time, his purchase increases the obligations of local authorities. Bear that in mind. Of course when that reduction was given the local authority had to accept increased responsibility for meeting the charges on the loans. In circumstances such as these, no person can reasonably contend that that scheme was unfair or unjust to the tenant or imposed onerous burdens on him.
According to Deputy Norton, however, it is reasonable to say that a proposal which gives a tenant of a house an immediate reduction of 25 per cent. in cash payments is unfair and unjust. I think if most of us could to-morrow enter into an agreement to purchase our houses upon terms which would enable us to secure an immediate reduction of one-fourth in our cash outgoings, we certainly would not regard such a scheme as unfair or unjust, or imposing a heavy burden upon us. In that connection we must also remember that the houses which are being purchased under the 1936 Act have considerably appreciated in value since they were built. If you wanted to buy a house equivalent to one of these cottages to-morrow, you would pay very much more than £180 or £200 for it. These are the houses, 40,000 of them, that under the conditions of the 1936 Act, can be bought out for a payment of 10½d. a week, for as short a period, in some cases, as eight or nine years, but, in no case, running for longer than 29 years, even in the case of houses built immediately prior to 1923. The majority of our people are reasonable and fair minded and notwithstanding the statements which we hear from the Labour Party, few of them are going to accept the contention of Deputy Norton that the terms which have been approved of in a purchase scheme covering 58,000 of these cottages under the 1936 Act are unfair or unjust to the tenants. So much for Deputy Norton.
Deputy Murphy's case for the Bill was even more extraordinary. He said plainly that he did not believe in this purchase scheme at all, that he thought it much better for these houses to remain the property of local authorities. There might be something to be said for that view. At least, we know this, that as long as the houses remain the property of local authorities they are likely to be available for the class of people for whom they are built. That is another issue with which we are not concerned at this stage. I think Deputy Coburn is one who takes Deputy Murphy's point of view. So insincere and such a sham is the whole of this agitation for a reduction in the annuity payable under the cottage purchase scheme that while Deputy Murphy supported the Bill, he did so, not because he believed in it, but only because he felt the Act had become a dead letter. Here is a Deputy who declares he does not believe in the proposal he is advocating, yet he wants that principle to become effective, and to make the Act which he says has become a dead letter a live reality, an effective instrument for the transfer of the houses from the ownership of local authorities to the ownership of the tenants. In order to prove that the scheme was a dead letter, Deputy Murphy adopted a most extraordinary technique. Unlike his leader, Deputy Norton, he did put some figures before the House, but the figures he put before the House were highly selective.
The Deputy had been well supplied with statistics. He had, as I have, a tabular statement giving details of the transactions which have taken place in every county in Ireland under the Act of 1936. I know that the table is in three heads. One shows the number of cottages in the purchase schemes submitted by the boards of health; the second shows the number of applications made for purchase; and the third, the number of cottages vested. Deputy Murphy, in his endeavour to prove that the Act was a dead letter, gave the House very full information under two of these heads. He referred to West Cork first. West Cork being his own constituency, he was naturally most familiar with it. He told us that the number of cottages in West Cork covered by the schemes was 1,421 and that the number vested was nil. He also, however, in that connection rather significantly indicated that, so far as the members of the board of health of which he was a member when the 1936 Act became operative were concerned, they did not believe in the thing at all, so that when people wanted them to adopt purchase schemes and made applications to purchase, they thought it was a needless and unnecessary thing to have to make inquiries into title. He certainly gave me the impression that, so far as West Cork was concerned, everything possible had been done by the local authority there to discourage people from coming forward to make applications under the Act.
He went on to refer to Cavan and said that, in Cavan, 1,201 cottages were covered by the purchase scheme and that 918 cottages had been vested. The number of applications to purchase—they were 976—he did not give. If we take Cavan, we find that almost 80 per cent. of the cottages in the county under the control and in the ownership of the Cavan County Council have become the subject of applications to purchase and that of all the cottages in the ownership of the county, over 75 per cent. have been vested. That does not look as if the Act had become a dead letter in County Cavan. The same is true of a considerable number of other local authorities.
Monaghan was, I think, one of the other counties the Deputy referred to. In Monaghan, he said, the number of cottages covered by the purchase schemes was 555 and the number vested nil. I pressed him in relation to Monaghan and the other counties to give the really significant figure, that is, not the number of cottages vested but the number of cottages in respect of which applications for purchase have been made. No cottage can, or should be, vested until the tenant purchaser is in a position to get clear title. Is there any Deputy who would challenge that principle? Would Deputy Murphy, who laid so much stress on the fact that after a number of years only about 3,400 cottages had been vested, want a local authority to enter into a purchase agreement with the tenant of one of its cottages, and the tenant to bind himself by that agreement, and then to find that it was not in a position to give the tenant clear title and good title? Do Deputy Norton, Deputy Murphy and those who made so much play with the fact that so few cottages have been vested want local authorities to sell these cottages under false pretences to the tenants, to sell them when they themselves had not got the title to them?
The real reason why so little progress has been made is not that the terms of the Act are not attractive. The mere fact that nearly 10,000 tenants have already applied for purchase, even in the circumstances which have existed since 1939, shows that the terms are attractive. But there is, of course, this great difficulty, that a very large number, two-thirds, of these cottages were built prior to 1914. The agreements which were entered into between the farmer who had the land and the local authority which wanted to build a cottage thereon were so nebulous and so unbusinesslike, if you wish, that, in respect of the great majority of these cottages, title has not been registered and the local authority has no clear title at all. That is why there have been so few vestings.
On the other hand, there have been, as I have pointed out, a considerable number of applications to purchase. Let us consider the record in that regard. This Act became law at the end of June, 1936. Regulations were issued at the end of March, 1937, but it was found necessary to amend these regulations, and the regulations governing the submission and adoption and general administration of purchase schemes were not made definitive until 8th August, 1938. That is when the 1936 Act really began to operate. What has been the history since? On 31st March, 1940, within 19 months, if my hurried computation is correct, after the regulations had been made in final form, no fewer than 6,666 applications to purchase had been made.
In 19 months, 6,666 people had made applications to purchase. That does not look as if the Act was a deadletter, and it certainly does not look as if the terms were unattractive to the tenants. That was the position on the 31st March, 1940. On the 31st March, 1941, the number of applications to purchase had gone up to 7,156, and, remember, that at this time the emergency had well developed. Everybody knew that it would become difficult to get building material. Everybody felt that, perhaps for a time, it might be better if somebody else had the responsibility for maintaining your house rather than yourself. That was, as I said, the position as it had come to manifest itself on the 31st March, 1941. On the 31st March, 1942, the number had risen to 7,828. On the 31st December, 1942, nine months later, the number of applications to purchase had increased to 8,421. On the 30th September of last year, the number had gone up to 9,131, and on the 31st March this year the figure of 9,453 had been reached.
Mark the continuous increase over this whole period of the emergency when most people would have been glad to have allowed others carry responsibility for maintaining their homes in a habitable condition. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that every person who made an application to purchase was aware of the fact that, if purchase became effective, if the cottage were vested in him, he would have to accept responsibility, in this time of difficulty and in this time of high prices, for keeping his house in repair, and was aware, too, that, if he did not keep his cottage in repair, the local authority would, as Deputy Coburn has pointed out, come in and repair it for him, repair it, if you like in spite of him, and recover the cost from him. Over the four years since 31st March, 1940, the number of applications to purchase had gone up by nearly 3,000, or 50 per cent. over what it had attained in the 10 months immediately after the passing of the Act. I contend that, in the light of these figures, it is just ridiculous to say that the Act has been a dead letter, that the Act has not been attractive to the purchaser. On the contrary, the figures prove undeniably —for it is a denial of common sense and intelligence to contend otherwise— that the terms have been attractive and that the Act has been effective for the purpose for which it was designed.
Now consider the other side of the case. I have already pointed out that purchase schemes under the existing Act give to the tenant purchaser an immediate reduction of 25 per cent. in his cash outgoings on his weekly payments. They do not do that, as I have said, without transferring that burden somewhere else, and that burden will be transferred to the backs of the ratepayers. Because Deputy Norton and Deputy Murphy were at pains not to put the full facts of this matter before the House, and because Deputy O'Higgins, in speaking on this measure, pointed out how serious were the disadvantages which he laboured under owing to neglect on the part of those who were sponsoring this Bill to put the relevant figures before the House, I have circulated a statement here to-day which I hope will be of assistance to the House and will help them to appreciate what really is involved in the measure.
The first thing I want to point out is that, whereas, prior to the 1936 Act, the total amount that would have been payable by the tenants was £243,000 a year, under the 1936 Act, if every tenant availed of its terms, the aggregate cash payment of the tenants would be reduced to £182,000, but on the other hand, the liability to be borne by the local authorities would increase to £307,000 a year. If this Bill were to go through and full effect were to be given to its main provisions—there are two serious provisions in it: one, that the annuities should be reduced by 50 per cent., and the other, that upon the terminable annuity there should be an overriding limit of 50 years—then the position of local authorities would be that there would be 10,000 houses in respect of which they would not be paid one penny. Is there any justification for that? Is that anything short of expropriation? Does it matter very much whether the property to be expropriated belongs to a local authority or to a private citizen? Once you accept the principle of expropriation, where is it to end? If it is to be the cottage belonging to a local authority to-day, who knows what it will be to-morrow? Whose farm is it to be, whose land is it to be, whose business is it to be, once you accept the principle of expropriation? And the principle of expropriation is embodied in this Bill——
