In respect of the remission for this year, as the Bill reads, application must be made before March. Is it possible to make application this year in view of the fact that the Bill is only being discussed?
Committee on Finance. - Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Bill, 1946—Committee and Final Stages.
Section 1 agreed to.
SECTION 2.
Question proposed: "That Section 2 stand part of the Bill."
It is. Section 7 provides for that.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 3.
I move amendment No. 1:—
To add to the section the following sub-sections:—
(4) Where a contribution in lieu of rates on agricultural land occupied by a State authority for the public service is made to the council of a county out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas and, in reckoning the amount of the contribution, credit is taken for the amount of the allowances to which the State authority, if it were the rated occupier of the land, would be entitled under this Act, the Minister for Finance may make to the council as part of the additional grant referred to in sub-section (2) of this section a grant of an amount equal to the amount of such allowances.
(5) In this section the expression "State authority" means an authority being a Minister of State or the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland.
This is to enable the Minister for Finance to pay the county council an agricultural grant in respect of the land in each county occupied by State authorities for public purposes. As the House is aware, it has been customary for the State to make a payment, sometimes described as a bounty in lieu of rates, in respect of property occupied by the State, which property is not rateable property and therefore is not rated. The position is that several Ministers hold land for public purposes in various counties and, unless statutory authority were given to enable the Minister for Finance to contribute towards the rates which otherwise would be payable in respect of that land, no grant on account of it would become payable to the county council. This amendment is to enable the Minister for Finance to pay the county council an agricultural grant in respect of land held by Ministers for the purposes of the State.
Amendment agreed to.
Question proposed: "That Section 3, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
I am sorry I was not in for the Money Resolution. The Minister may have given his explanation as to my difficulty in regard to sub-section (2) of this section. On the Second Reading, I raised a question as to the way this money was to be provided. At the time, the Minister suggested that I was in error as there were precedents for it. The Minister mentioned tuberculosis and housing. So far, I have not been able to find any precedent in any Acts bearing on the subject.
Would it be on Section 9?
No, Section 3 (2). The Minister said he would give an explanation on the Money Resolution. Subject to whatever he may have said, I should like to press this matter further, because I can find no Act of this House or its predecessor which gives the power to be given under this sub-section. Every Housing Act contains an upper limit beyond which the aggregate of the grants under it cannot go. There is only part of a Housing Act which seems to give some authority for this and that is the provision with regard to loan charges in the 1932 Act. Even under that Act, the schemes have to be approved by the Minister and there is a maximum of 66? per cent. with regard to the percentage of loan charges which the Minister is empowered to pay. If, for instance, he found that the amount he was called upon to pay was unnecessarily high, he could reduce the percentage below 66? per cent. My contention is that some safeguard appears in every Act which empowers money to be given from the Central Fund to local authorities by way of grant or anything else. So far as tuberculosis is concerned, the 1908 and the 1913 Acts do not contain any provision for grants. All the money for tuberculosis under these Acts has to be found by the local authorities. Grants are made, but these are made by way of an Estimate presented to this House.
Of course there will be an Estimate for this also.
So far as I can see, every grant is estimated for in advance. In this case, we are being asked to guarantee that we will pay whatever amount of money may turn up next year. That is not an estimate. No one can give an estimate of the amount required for next year under this sub-section. It will depend on the rate struck by 26 different county councils. The Minister shakes his head. He started off, first of all, by ignoring this, and then, when I pressed it, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. Then he got to the point that he was to give an explanation on the Money Resolution. It looks as if there is something at the back of it. I do not want to go any further, because I am more or less repeating what was said on the Second Stage and I would prefer to hear some explanation from the Minister as to the precedents for this.
I hope Deputy Sheldon has not taken umbrage at the fact that because he was not here I did not feel it necessary to give the House an explanation of a provision which no other Deputy seemed to desire. If the Deputy had been in his place when I took this Money Resolution, I would have pointed out to him again what I have already pointed out, that there is nothing at all unusual in this provision. It occurs in many statutes.
For instance?
It occurs, for instance, in the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous) Provisions Act, 1932, which says this:—
"The Minister may, with the consent of the Minister for Finance and subject to the prescribed regulations, make out of moneys to be provided by the Oireachtas..."
I think the Deputy will find precisely that phrase in sub-section (2).
Yes, but not the first part of the phrase.
"And subject to the prescribed regulations"—the prescribed regulations being regulations made by the Minister, not by the House.
And laid on the Table of the House.
Laid on the Table of the House, certainly.
"... make out of moneys to be provided by the Oireachtas—
(a) during such period, not exceeding 35 years, as the Minister may determine, a contribution towards the annual loan charges incurred by a local authority in respect of money borrowed by them for the provision under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts, 1890 to 1931, of houses to which this section applies——"
not exceeding 66? per cent. of such annual loan charges in one case and not exceeding 33? per cent. of such annual loan charges in the case of another category of houses.
There is precisely the same provision. Deputy Sheldon tries to imply that there is an essential difference between the provisions of Section 6 of the Housing Act of 1932 and the provisions of sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the present Bill because, he says, there is an overriding limit fixed as to the total amount of expenditure incurred under the Act of 1932. That is quite true but then the Act of 1932 was an Act which was intended to operate over a long period of years in circumstances which the Oireachtas, when that Act was passed, could not foresee with any sort of reasonable assurance. It has been in operation for 14 years now and during that period the limit fixed by the original Act has been increased several times. But the Act which we are now dealing with relates only to two years—the current year, in respect of which the total amount required could be assessed with very close accuracy— so closely, I think, has it been assessed that, when the final account comes to be struck, perhaps about £29,000 more than the £1,000,000 which was originally contemplated, may be required—and the next year. Next year, unless there is a complete revolution in the attitude of the ratepayers and representatives of the ratepayers on the local authorities generally, we may assume that the obligations to be met by the Exchequer in respect of this Act will not be considerably more than they were this year.
But, at any rate, the amount of that obligation will be readily determined some time in February of next year, in time to permit of the Estimate, which Deputy Sheldon rightly thinks is an essential element in this matter being brought before the Dáil. It is essential, because without the Estimate the moneys cannot be voted by the Oireachtas, and if the moneys are not voted by the Oireachtas the Minister for Finance is powerless to implement the sub-section and, of course, it falls to the ground.
And the Oireachtas is powerless.
Oh, no. The Oireachtas is never powerless.
You suggested it could not go back on its word.
The Oireachtas is always the final judge of the circumstances existing at the particular time that its consideration has to be brought to bear upon a particular problem; what the Oireachtas does to-day in respect of present circumstances does not necessarily affect its judgment or fetter that judgment in any way when it comes to deal with the circumstances of to-morrow. But we can assume that it is reasonably probable that the Oireachtas next year will adopt the Estimate necessary to give effect to the provisions of sub-section (2) of Section 3. To try to get back, that puts the Oireachtas in relation to the sub-section in exactly the same position as the Oireachtas was in relation to the Act of 1932 because, though there was an overriding limit put as to the total amount of money that could be advanced under that Act when that Act was passed, the amount of money being such as was considered necessary to enable the programme which was in contemplation when the 1932 Act was passed to be carried out, nevertheless, if the Deputy will look at the Estimates for my Department he will see that every year there is included a sub-head dealing with the obligations which have to be met under Section 6 of the Act of 1932. Not only that, but he will also see there other sub-heads dealing, for instance, with the grants to be made under the Tuberculosis Acts or dealing with the grants to be made under the Acts regulating the treatment of venereal disease, and so on. So that there is nothing unusual in the provision which is being made here. It is not necessary for us to put in an overriding limit in this case. It is not necessary because we can reasonably foresee what are the commitments of the Oireachas in relation to this section.
Would the Minister care to forecast to the nearest £100,000?
I would not at this stage.
No, but this is the stage at which we are passing the Bill.
I am prepared to say that in respect of the current year the total amount that will be required to implement that is not likely to exceed £1,030,000. It may be more or it may be less next year, because, after all, there are certain factors operating to vary the situation either way. It is quite possible, I think, that in relation to a number of materials which we require for the construction of roads and perhaps even for the construction of houses, that there may be a fall in price. If there is, naturally, the estimates of the local authorities will be correspondingly reduced. On the other hand, if the present trend continues, it is quite possible that the rates may be a little higher, but, provided that the local services continue to be administered with present-day economy, even if that leaves a considerable margin for further economies, and provided also that the Government in respect of, say, the road-making activities of the local authorities, continue to give them the same generous assistance next year as they did this year—and they have already undertaken to do that—I do not anticipate that there will be any very considerable increase or any real justification for any very considerable increase in the rates of the local authorities next year.
Frankly, I had half-hoped that the Minister had a case but, if he has a case, I have not heard it. He suggested that the only difference is one of degree between this provision and the provisions of the 1932 Housing Act. My difficulty at the moment is that the Minister's statement bristles with so many errors and inconsistencies that I hardly know on what to seize. The Minister read out the enabling section of the 1932 Act. It begins by saying that "the Minister may with the sanction of the Minister for Finance", and he asks me to believe that that is only slightly different in degree from "the Minister shall make". The one is permissive. The other is mandatory. It is entirely wrong to suggest that what we are doing now has any relation to cash. Later on we can turn around and say: "We will not give you the money." In other words, the local authorities have nothing on which to go because this House is sovereign and it can turn around and change its mind next April or May, or whenever the financial provisions come before it. As far as the promise in the Bill is concerned it is not worth very much.
I think that what is really wrong is that we are trying to make something work which at the present time does not work too well. The present system creaks and we have to bring in this extraordinary provision. The Minister cannot find a similar section or sub-section in any other Act. He quotes the grants given under the Tuberculosis Acts. There are no grants under the Tuberculosis Acts. The word grant does not appear in those Acts. When the Minister quotes the wording of his Estimate I would remind him that the wording of his Estimate is inaccurate because it specifically says grants under those Acts and, in fact, the Acts make no grant at all. What the Minister really means is that he asks the House and the House makes the grant in respect of expenses to local authorities under those Acts, but the grants are not given under the Acts. No statutory provision is made. There is no statutory provision anywhere for anything comparable with this.
The Minister says that we need not anticipate anything revolutionary. I am afraid he is underestimating our local authorities. My argument really relates to next year because nothing can be done this year. Taking the figures for the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties the total valuation on agricultural land which received abatement last year under the old Act was £6,991,919. A few simple calculations will show that on that basis—and, of course, the valuation of agricultural land in the Twenty-Six Counties is not going to vary very much—we discover that out of every shilling increase in the rates the Minister for Finance in this House will be asked to pay back 6d. That is general over the Twenty-Six Counties. If you take any particular county—Donegal, for instance— on this year's figures out of a total warrant of £234,000 odd the State's contribution will be £120,555, which is about half, or perhaps a little more than half. Now if the Minister for Finance thinks the Donegal County Council are not going to see that out of every shilling they put on the rates in the next year the State is going to pay 6d.—if they can get away with a shilling increase which is going to cost the taxpayers 6d.—he is being very optimistic indeed.
I discussed this matter with some other Deputies and I tried to get them to see my viewpoint. They all sheered off because as members of local authorities they wanted to keep quiet. They thought the local authorities were going to make a very good thing out of this and that it would be better for them to keep quiet. The Minister says this applies to one area and that is so. But it is increasing and the next step will be that the present Minister, or some other Minister, will come in with a Bill and say: "Look what you did in 1946; you gave the E.S.B., or the C.I.E., or some other semi-State bodies power to go and spend money and you contributed half of it." That is all right. The authority was given in 1946. The Minister quoted the 1932 Act as a precedent for this and I shudder to think what this may be quoted for as a precedent in the future. If you allow the same divergence you will be running into grave extremes.
The whole trouble I see about this is that it is impossible to amend it without stultifying the whole procedure. I am only too anxious to see a good measure of relief given to the rates on agricultural land. If this section were amended the Act would cease to have any meaning at all—if it has any meaning, since the Minister considers that it does not bind us at all.
We can turn around and tell the local authorities that we have no authority to give them that amount of money. I am trying to get the Minister to admit that this is an extraordinary way in which to deal with this matter. I have made my protest and if in the future anybody endeavours to use it as a precedent there will be something to show that it did not pass without protest and that it was passed as an extraordinary measure to meet an extraordinary set of circumstances. Therefore, it should not be quoted in the future. The Minister tries to justify it by saying that these other grants are given on the same basis. That argument does not hold water. He relies on the 1932 Act but in the 1932 Act there is a marked difference between the two enabling sections. As far as the housing grants are concerned the amount to which the aggregate grants could attain was definitely laid down.
It is only under the loan charges that the Minister has a shadow of a case and under the loan charges they are, first of all, permissive; secondly, the Minister has to make regulations which are laid before this House; and, thirdly, he can mend his hand by changing the percentage grants. I would not have so much objection to this if someone were made answerable to this House for the money. The Minister has no control and neither has anyone else over the amount of the rates. Under the Local Government Act of 1946 the Minister can see that an adequate rate is struck. The Minister has no power to go to any local authority and tell it that its rate is too high.
One other slight difficulty that I see in this matter is that the Minister has said that in February next we will have a fairly good idea as to what we have promised now. No doubt that will be a great consolation to us. But under the 1946 Local Government Act we may not have a fairly good idea. There is nothing to prevent the county manager going to the local authority in the following January of 1948 and saying: "I require a supplementary rate of 5/- in the £." I can see this measure giving the Department of Finance and the local authorities a lot of headaches before they are finished with it. Even in respect of this year there are a few headaches already. The local authorities are wondering who is going to pay the interest on their overdrafts in respect of the amounts they have lost on the collection of the rates by issuing credit notes. The Donegal County Council have issued credit notes somewhere in the region of £23,000. They are now in the position that they have an overdraft of £23,000 more than they should have had. That position is common all over the Twenty-Six Counties.
I do not want to give the Minister too great an opportunity of following a red herring. I would prefer that he would deal with this by admitting that he has had to take an exceptional way out of an exceptional set of circumstances.
My difficulty in discussing this matter at all is that I do not know at which bird Deputy Sheldon is pointing his gun-barrel, because I thought the only issue between us was the very narrow one as to whether the terms of the sub-section were unprecedented. I quoted to the Deputy a section which I thought very fully answered that. Deputy Sheldon said that that is no answer because sub-section (6) begins: "The Minister may, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, make grants out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas", whereas sub-section (2) says "the Minister shall make", and he tries to deduce from that, as I must admit with some reason, that Section 6 is permissive and that sub-section (2) is mandatory. Unfortunately for Deputy Sheldon's contention, and for the view which I once took as Minister for Finance, the courts have held that the word "may" used in another section with a similar context is not permissive but mandatory. The Supreme Court held that in a case arising under the Military Pensions Act, 1934. If the Deputy will study perhaps the last Local Government Act of 1946 he will see that a certain amount of circumlocution has to be used wherever the Minister is given discretionary powers and where the provisions of the statute are intended to be not mandatory but only permissive—"The Minister shall in his own judgment, etc.", or some such phrase is used. So that, as far as the difference between "may" and "shall" is concerned, in such contexts as this, I think there is very little to choose. Of course, the Housing Act of 1932 is not the only precedent I could quote. I do not want to weary the House by reciting the rather involved phraseology of some of our statutory provisions but there is the Public Health (Medical Treatment of Children) (Ireland) Act, 1919, sub-section (7) of Section 1 of which provides: "Any expenses incurred by a local authority in the execution of this Act ... shall be paid to the local authority out of moneys provided by Parliament". As I say the phraseology is not the same but the purpose is the same. The purpose is to pledge the credit of Parliament just as the purpose in sub-section (2) is to pledge the credit of Parliament.
There is no question of approving of schemes or regulations?
There may be in the Medical Treatment Act, but that does not make it any different because we approve of the scheme in the Bill here by legislating it. The scheme of rating relief provided for in the Bill is approved of by the Oireachtas. It is the Oireachtas which is framing the scheme of relief. The scheme here is approved of by the Oireachtas. That is one of the characteristics of this procedure, that by an Act of Parliament we solemnly indicate our approval of this system of relief for agricultural land and we pledge, as far as we can, that the Minister for Finance so long as he has the support of the Oireachtas, a fact which will be signified by the Oireachtas voting this money, will implement the scheme.
Again, sub-section (2) of Section 7 of the Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act, 1919, relating to the power to recoup losses, provides that in the case of a scheme carried out by a local authority, the regulations shall provide that the amount of any annual payment shall be determined on the basis of the estimated annual loss resulting from the carrying out of any scheme or schemes to which the section applies, subject to the deduction therefrom of a sum not exceeding the estimated annual produce of a rate of one penny in the £, levied in the area chargeable with the expenses of such scheme or schemes. So I think we can take it that there is nothing novel in the undertaking written here in sub-section (2) of Section 3. As to whether that is the best way of dealing with the problem or not, I do not think that is a matter that can be raised at this juncture. It is a matter that might have been raised on the Second Stage of the Bill.
I am at a loss to understand the Deputy's point in relation to the overdrafts of local authorities. The Deputy said that some local authorities have issued credit notes in anticipation of the Bill going through and that by reason of that fact, they have had to lie out of, for example, £23,000 in the case of Donegal, pending the implementation of the Statute. Surely the Deputy is aware that very considerable sums under the old agricultural grant have been released to local authorities? I think a sum of £1,400,000 has already been released to local authorities so that I think the overdraft problem is not worrying them unduly. I do not think that we can debate at length now all the matters that have been raised by Deputy Sheldon. I hope that perhaps on a more suitable occasion he will raise the issue in a more formal way. Then we can go over the whole ground, not by way of speech and rejoinder, but by reasoned statements which perhaps, while they may not convince either of us, will educate both of us.
I want to make it clear that I am not raising this point in any contentious way. All I want is to have it made clear that this provision will not be used as a precedent in a more extraordinary way. I must say that I am not convinced by the Minister's quotations from other Acts because, as far as my recollection goes, there is generally some provision in these Acts by which the Minister is made responsible for the money. In this case I do not see that arising. However, I do not see the House getting excited about it and having made my protest I am content. I am glad the Minister cleared up the point about the overdraft. I did not know anything about the moneys that had accrued to local authorities but if no undue overdraft expense has accrued through the delay in bringing in the Bill, I think that is fair enough. I think the Minister will agree that if by any chance any local authority has had to find overdraft accommodation and been put to further expense, something should be done about it because it was not the fault of these authorities that the Bill was delayed from July until October. If this Bill had been brought forward, as the Minister said, some time in July the difficulty would not have arisen. What the difficulties were that delayed a small Bill like this from July until October I do not know but that is beside the point. The best I can do is just to say that I agree to differ with the Minister as to whether this is or is not a precedent.
Section, as amended, put and agreed to.
SECTION 4.
Question proposed: "That Section 4 stand part of the Bill."
This is practically a repetition of the definition which appears in Section 2 of the Act of 1939. The amended definition is due to the fact that the Bill applies only to agricultural land in rural areas.
Will agricultural land in urban districts get the benefit?
Not if they increased the valuation. They do not get the employment allowance.
It really means that less relief is given them?
That was provided for in the Local Government Act of 1946. As the Deputy will remember, there is provision for each county borough. As far as borough and urban districts are concerned there is a different rate of assessment. As far as they were urban districts which were either established or enlarged since 1898 there is another system. All are codified more or less in the Act of 1946 by the sub-sections to which I have referred. This Bill does not touch land in urban areas at all.
Were not valuations in urban areas arbitrarily reduced?
Sections 4, 5, 6 agreed to.
SECTION 7.
I move amendment No. 2:—
To add to the section the following sub-section:—
(4) The secretary of the council of a county may from time to time amend a rate or assessment made on a tenement of agricultural land in a rate book kept by the council so as to give effect to the provisions of this section.
This amendment is consequential upon the provision of sub-section (3) of Section 7, which allows claims for employment allowance to be admitted prior to the 1st day of February in the financial year.
A difficulty will probably arise here. Is it not going a bit too far to make provision in respect of next year? I think difficulty will be created in the offices of local authorities, as it will now be possible for an employer to delay putting in his claim until 1st February, 1948, and a certain amount of extra work will devolve upon the officials. I was wondering if the Minister on the next stage would bring in some provision to deal with the matter. I think the officials may be faced with claims for abatements in 1948, while the amount of the grant that the State is going to make will not be determined until 1st February next. I wonder if there is a case to be made for next year? After all, everybody knows the value of the abatement that is made for employment. It is all right to make provisions for this year, but we should take special precautions to see that there is a safeguard, as otherwise the accounts of local authorities might be left in a state of chaos in 1948.
The Deputy voiced quite a number of doubts which I had before I yielded to his perverseness on a previous occasion, and included in the Bill sub-section (3) of Section 7. It is quite true that the provisions of that sub-section may induce people to become a little more careless than they ordinarily would be. On the other hand, suppose they do not put in claims in time, then they will receive an assessment greater than would have been the case if the claim had been put in early. The rate collector might perhaps be more difficult to convince in the case of a late claim than in the case of one put in in due time, which enabled him to investigate it properly. In any event the Bill is, to some extent, an experimental measure. As the Deputy knows it will run only for two years. I think we might try out the provisions of sub-section (3) of this section in a more normal year to see how it works.
I take it that the purpose of the amendment is in respect to the next financial year, and that if an employer was late in putting in an abatement claim, in the event of having to pay the full assessment, this would allow the credit to be carried to the next year.
That is not the purpose. The purpose of this amendment is to allow the secretary of a county council when he has received a late claim and is satisfied that it is a valid one, to see that credit will be given to it.
In respect of that year? It does not say so. Would it not be possible to read into the amendment that a man had paid the second moiety by 1st October, 1947, and then put in a claim in respect of that financial year, which is admitted, but he would have already paid his rates? What would be his position then? Would he get a claim from the local authorities for the amount of the grant, or would it be carried to his credit in the next financial year?
I cannot see anything to prevent him getting a refund immediately he established the right to claim.
Amendment agreed to.
Question proposed: "That Section 7, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
It has been pointed out that the position of rate collectors is seriously interfered with as a result of this provision, as they will naturally have less fees. Can anything be done about it this year?
I do not think it arises on the provisions of the Bill as it stands, but it can be dealt with administratively, and we are looking into that aspect.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 8 agreed to.
SECTION 9.
I move amendment No. 3:—
In lines 14 and 15 to delete the words "for the financial year ending on the 31st day of March, 1947", and substitute the words "for a financial year to which this Act applies".
This is consequential on the amendment of sub-section 3 (2). It allows late employment claims to be considered in the year ending 31st March, 1948, or any other year in which this Act may be continued.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 9, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 10, 11 and 12 and Title agreed to.
Bill reported with amendments.
Report Stage?
I wonder could we get the remaining stages this evening? It will facilitate us in getting the Bill through the Seanad and in removing all these difficulties about which Deputy Sheldon has told the House.
Agreed to take remaining stages now.
Bill received for final consideration and passed.