Various Deputies who have endeavoured to express objection to this Bill have been pretty bankrupt in finding substantial grounds for opposing it. We have just had an example of the type of opposition that this Bill has encountered. Deputy Brennan's fear is that, if you make the tenants the owners of their cottages, some fellow some night will get out a ladder and take the states off the roof of his own cottage. Because the Deputy is afraid that somebody will do that, he will not vote for the Bill. He knows, of course, that, under the existing Act of 1936, a man who purchases his cottage is just as much entitled to take out a ladder and take the slates off the roof of it. Deputy Brennan sees nothing wrong with the 1936 Act which enables a tenant to become the owner of his cottage. He is not afraid, in the slightest, that the tenant who bought his cottage under the 1936 Act will take the slates off the roof, but he is greatly afraid, if this Bill is passed, that immediately all the tenants of labourers' cottages will proceed to take the slates off the roofs. Is it any wonder that we have a very comprehensive Mental Bill before the House at present when you get a fear of that kind expressed?
Deputy Allen said last night that he thought there was some occult purpose behind this Bill, that there was some sinister scheme behind it. Apparently, Deputy Allen is not let into the Party secrets. He has, apparently, overlooked the fact that in 1932 the Fianna Fáil Party set up an inquiry into the question of the purchase of labourers' cottages by the tenants. That commission of inquiry sat in 1932. There was a general election in 1933, and so anxious were the Party managers to make sure that they would get the votes of the cottage tenants that the chairman of the commission was told to get out an interim report immediately, a report which was used to try to ensnare votes for the Fianna Fáil Party in the 1933 election. As a matter of fact, the Party managers know well that they published handbills in the 1933 election telling the cottage tenants of the country that, if they voted for Fianna Fáil, they were going to get very fair terms indeed and offered to make the tenants the owners of their cottages.
All that, apparently, was good political propaganda in 1932 and in 1933, but Deputy Allen comes along now in 1945 and wonders whether this scheme is a right one at all, and whether it would not be better, in fact, to leave the cottages under the control of the county councils. If the question of the rents of labourers' cottages has ever been made a political issue, there is no doubt that the Party that endeavoured to cash-in on it on that ground was the Fianna Fáil Party, because they certainly used the age-old demand of the tenants for ownership of their cottages in a most unscrupulous manner, politically, in 1932 and 1933.
The case made for this Bill, briefly, is, that it is the desire on the part of those responsible for it and of those who are supporting it to make the tenants of labourers' cottages the owners of them, firstly, because it gives a man stability; secondly, because it gives him independence; and, thirdly, because it roots him to the land and encourages him to stay in the rural areas at a time when everybody deplores the drift not merely from the rural areas into the towns and cities, but when everybody is beginning to look aghast at the extent to which the population is not merely drifting from the land into the towns and cities but into another country. One of the best methods by which you can keep the agricultural and rural worker generally on the land is by giving him independence and stability, by giving him strength in an economic sense, by making him the owner of his cottage on terms which will not impose a heavy burden on him. The provisions of the 1936 Act imposed on the tenants of those cottages a burden which they are not capable of bearing, and which it is inequitable to ask them to bear.
The Minister, in his frenzied attempt to discredit the Bill and in his irresponsible description of it as a Bill embodying the principles of expropriation, endeavoured to tell the House that if passed in its present form it would impose a very heavy burden on the ratepayers. What are the facts? The proposal in the Bill is to make the tenant the owner of his cottage on the understanding that he pays 50 per cent. of the existing rent, and assumes liability for keeping the cottage in repair in the future. An examination of the official statistics shows that the average annual cost of repairs of cottages between 1937 and 1943 was £128,000. A reduction of 25 per cent. in the rents of labourers' cottages under the 1936 Act amounts only to £63,000, so that what the State is doing under that Act is this: it is saying to the tenant: "We will give you a reduction of £63,000 in your rent provided you take on a liability which, measured over the period 1937 to 1943, amounted to £128,000." Is that an equitable arrangement, having regard to the fact that, in the main, you are dealing with agricultural labourers employed at a wage of £2 a week, when they can get employment, and who have to contend with long periods of unemployment because of the nature of their vocation?
The Minister wanted to contend that the ratepayers would be saddled with an additional heavy burden if the cottages were given to the tenants on the basis that the tenants paid 50 per cent. of their rents instead of 75 per cent. as at present. If the matter were looked at merely from the standpoint of the burden on the ratepayers, it would pay some of the county councils to give the cottages to the tenants so long as the tenants were responsible for keeping them in repair. Take, for example, the case in the County Meath. In the seven years, 1937 to 1943, the average cost of keeping the houses in Meath in repair was £16,000 odd. When you calculate the rents of the cottages in Meath you find that the amount spent on repairs was 130 per cent. of the rents, so that when the Meath County Council collected all the rents from the cottages—let us assume for the purposes of the demonstration that the rents came to £100—they put the £100 on the table and went to the till and got another £30 on top of it. That meant that £130 went to a contractor to keep the cottages in repair. The whole rent, plus £30, went to keep the cottages in repair over that period of seven years. Would any burden be put on the ratepayers in Meath if, in these circumstances, someone gave the cottages away? If some of those houses were properly repaired it is not 130 per cent. of the rent that would have been paid for repairs, but about 200 per cent. In the same seven-year period the Cavan County Council spent 82 per cent. of the rent in keeping their cottages in repair. Eighteen per cent. was retained by the county council and 82 per cent. was spent in keeping the cottages in repair. Cork County Council spent 75 per cent. of the rent over that seven-year period in keeping the cottages in repair, while the figure for the West Cork Board of Health was 73 per cent.
The Kerry County Council spent 59 per cent. of the rent in repairs to cottages, the Kildare County Council spent 66 per cent., the Leitrim County Council spent 75 per cent., the North Tipperary County Council spent 56 per cent., and the Wexford County Council spent 41 per cent. of the rent in keeping the cottages in repair. Is it not quite clear, therefore, that if you give a tenant 25 per cent. of the rent to keep a cottage in repair when those repairs are costing from 130 per cent. of the rent in Meath to 82 per cent. of the rent in Cavan and down to 39 per cent. of the rent in Wicklow, that it does not enable the tenant to discharge the responsibility for repairs under this Bill? It is because of the fact that the tenant feels that he is being asked to bear a heavy burden, in taking on the liability to keep the cottage in repair, for a small reduction of 25 per cent in his rent and an extended repayment period as provided for in the 1936 Act, that the 1936 Act has not been attractive from the standpoint of the tenants.
The Parliamentary Secretary was compelled to admit that, in the nine years since the Bill was passed, only 14,000 persons made application to purchase their properties, out of over 62,000 cottages; and not even that number has been vested. It remains to be seen, therefore, how long it will take before the remaining applicants will purchase their cottages, having regard to the progress which has been recorded so far.
I do not mind telling the Parliamentary Secretary that, in a goodly number of instances, there is some method in the madness of some of those tenants in making application to purchase their cottages. Everybody knows it is hard to get repairs done now in the ordinary way, owing to the difficulties county councils experience, not to mention repairs to labourers' cottages. But before a cottage can be sold to a tenant under the 1936 Act, it has to be in good repair and quite a number of tenants I know made application to purchase their cottages, as being the quickest method of getting the cottage repaired. It was not the attraction of the Act that induced them to purchase the cottages: it was the fact that cottages in a bad condition must be repaired before the tenant can be made the owner under the 1936 Act.
I made inquiries to ascertain the position regarding estimates for repairs for this year and, in one instance where I was able to obtain the information, this particular county council budgeted for an average expenditure of £2 10s. per cottage and the average rent of the cottages in that particular area is £2 10s., so that for 1944-45 and 1945-46 the entire rent of the cottage is being spent on repairs. If it takes the county council the entire rent of the cottage, to get the cottage in repair, is it not obviously unfair to ask a tenant to keep the cottage in repair when allowing only 25 per cent. of the rent?
From the standpoint of imposing a burden on the ordinary ratepayers, there is no justification whatever for opposition to this Bill. The expenditure by county councils in maintaining cottages in repair, because of the methods adopted in keeping those cottages in repair, is at present imposing on the ratepayers a burden greater than any burden that would be imposed by the passage of this Bill. Some examples as to what is spent on repairs in individual places are of interest. In 1942-43, for instance, the Westmeath County Council paid £20 for every cottage, in repairs, in that year, and the rent it got from each of the cottages it repaired was £3 1s. 4d. Is there not a burden on the ratepayers there? The Leitrim County Council paid £23 for each cottage it repaired in 1942-43 and got £4 10s. rent from the tenant. The Kildare County Council spent £30 14s. 6d. on every cottage it repaired in 1942-43 and it got £5 0s. 4d. from the tenant. Is it not clear from the citation of these facts, which are all based on official statistics, that so far from imposing a burden on the ratepayers concerned, there is no justification whatever for opposition to this Bill? If, therefore, you want to make the transfer of the cottages to the tenants attractive, if you want—as the State did in 1936—to push the principle of ownership of cottages a step further, you can do that only by making the terms upon which these cottages can be bought attractive to the tenants. The fact that so few people, relatively speaking, have made applications to purchase their cottages proves that the 1936 Act is not attractive to the tenant.
We take the view that it is desirable that the tenants be made owners of their cottages on an equitable basis, on terms which would not impose a burden on them, and that can best be done, in our view, by the passage of this Bill. It fixes the repayment period at a maximum period of 50 years, and it gives the tenant a reduction of 50 per cent. in his rent. The principle of a reduction in rent has already been accepted in the 1936 Act; the principle of ownership has been accepted in the 1936 Act; the principle of the tenant accepting liability for repairs has been accepted in the 1936 Act; but the principles were then enshrined in conditions which would impose on the tenant a burden which the tenant felt he was unable to bear. We want to lighten that burden, so far as the tenant is concerned; we want to make him the owner of his cottage in order to give him an independence and stability in his homestead and in order to encourage the tenant to remain on the land. Everybody knows that, in the main, the tenants of labourers' cottages are agricultural workers; everybody knows that that is the most depressed class in the community to-day, because of its low standard of living; everybody knows that the struggle of the agricultural worker to maintain his wife and children, on the low rate of wages he receives, is one that nobody in this country envies.
The House has a special responsibility to those who occupy these cottages and who are in receipt of low wages. Even if making the tenants the owners of the cottages did impose a burden on ratepayers who are better able to bear that burden than agricultural workers, the House should not, because of that alone, hesitate to make the tenants the owners on equitable terms. We believe that ownership of these cottages by the tenants is a socially desirable development; we believe that it has national benefits and that it will have economic and agricultural benefits as well; and in the belief that these are benefits which it is desirable to bring about at the earliest opportunity, we ask the House to give a Second Reading to the Bill.
