May I point out that since amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 are similar in principle, they may, if the House agrees, be discussed together and separate decisions taken on them if desired?
Housing (Amendment) Bill, 1952—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Debate resumed on amendment No. 9.
Before proceeding to discuss the amendment, may I ask the Minister one question? In dealing with the question of family income, unfortunately there is no definition of the word "income" in the definition section of the Bill. May I ask him does "income" refer to gross or to net income? If the Minister could give me some indication as to the purpose or the definition of the word "income"——
What does the Deputy mean?
Perhaps I might quote the section:—
"A housing authority may make, to or in respect of a person (other than a farmer) in respect of a house for which a relevant grant is made, a grant of an amount equal to...
(i) if his family income does not exceed £208, 100 per cent. of the relevant grant..."
If the Minister could indicate whether it is gross or net income that is referred to in the Bill, it would be of assistance to the House.
Every farthing is being covered.
I am not being in the least bit frivolous. I should like to hear the Minister's explanation.
Perhaps the Deputy would develop the point further, until we see what he wants.
My particular concern is the fishermen of this country. Most fishermen are not farmers and their gross income is sometimes out of all proportion to their net income. Under a recent Act passed by the Oireachtas, all fish must be sold through the successor to the Sea Fisheries Association. In other words, local authorities and Government authorities have an opportunity of finding out what the gross income of a fisherman is, and it is, as I say, out of all proportion to his net income. May I quote an example? Take, say, a herring drift-fishing boat. The gross takings of that boat may be £900 for the season but possibly in the last week of the season the entire trawl of nets is lost, and a trawl of nets may cost anything up to £600. If it were the net income that was contemplated by this section, I would have no objection at all to the section as it stands. It is most important from the small fisherman's point of view. Again, take salmon net-fishing. To rig out a small fleet of drift salmon nets costs approximately £600. The income derived for the season may be anything from £600 to £700, but the net income is much less. I am particularly interested in fishermen so far as this section is concerned. I am anxious to see that they shall derive the same benefits of this section that any other non-farmer would derive. If I can get an assurance from the Minister that the section merely refers to the net income of such applicants, I shall be satisfied. I think the House will agree that the section, as it stands, if it were to refer to gross income, would completely deny the ordinary small fishermen of this country of the benefits of the section. It is a matter to which I would ask the Minister to give careful consideration because it affects a considerable number of people in the constituency which I represent—West Donegal.
Again, we are throwing the onus on local authorities to investigate and find out the income of applicants. Somebody said the other day in discussing the Finance Bill, that the entertainments tax was an incitement to dishonesty, but how do we expect local authorities to investigate and find out the income of a migratory labourer? Again if it were a question of the net income, it might be reasonable but his gross income may be obtained from the Ministry of National Labour in Britain and it is out of all proportion to his net income. We all know that in Britain income-tax is paid as you earn and all employers return the earnings of migrants to the income-tax authorities—that is their gross earnings. We forget that possibly for six or seven months they are idle and that they are drawing unemployment assistance in this country. We forget the expense they incur when travelling to Britain and seeking employment there. We forget that while they are over there they must keep two homes. If the Minister could say that the section applies to the net income of the applicant or his family, then I personally would be satisfied.
Deputy MacCarthy, Deputy Ted O'Sullivan and I have down a couple of amendments to this section too. We propose that the ceiling be raised to £600 and that the smallest grant would be 40 per cent. of the relevant grant, in other words, that in the case of the £275 grant, £110 would be the minimum grant by a housing authority and that persons in receipt of up to £600 a year would qualify for such a grant. We have heard some talk about a man with an income of £208 building a house. I can assure the Minister that he would not build it in Cork anyhow, because he would get no advance from the county manager, who would say that he was not in a position to repay the loan. He said that in the case of men with far bigger incomes than £208. He has said it in the case of a man earning up to £7 10s. a week, that it was placing a burden on the man that he could not discharge and he would not give him a grant.
Deputy MacCarthy and myself know of the case of one particular man to whom he agreed to give a grant only because he got an increase of 7/6 a week in his weekly salary, bringing it from £7 10s. up to £7 17s. 6d. That was the deciding factor which influenced the manager in giving him an advance. I do not know what they would do in other parts of the country, but I think the idea of a man with an income of £4 a week, especially a man with a wife and family, building a house in Cork is absurd, and I do not think his application would be considered at all.
My opinion is that an income of £600 is the least upon which a man should attempt to build a house, if he does not want to be saddled with a loan which he would not be able to bear. The ceiling in the Social Welfare Bill is £600, and I think that should be the ceiling here also. A man earning £4 a week who has a daughter working in the woollen mills in Cork and a son working in a factory both earning £2 a week, bringing the family income to £8 a week or £416 a year, could not attempt to get a house built.
I think that the amendment tabled by Deputy MacCarthy, Deputy O'Sullivan and myself is a reasonable one, that the income ceiling should be £600 and that a man with an income of £600 should at least get a grant of £110, or 40 per cent. instead of 33? per cent. as suggested here for a man with £416. We have a fairly good experience of people looking for loans in Cork, and we know that the city manager or the county manager would not give a loan without considering very seriously a man's ability to repay it. They would not attempt to consider giving a loan to a man with a low income. Surely a man with a family should get some extra consideration. There should be an extra allowance for the man with a family to enable him to get a house built.
This section, in my opinion, if left as the Minister framed it, will be the means of stopping a very large amount of building under the Small Dwellings Act because people with an income of £208 a year could not attempt to get a house built and will have to be housed by the local authority. In any place close to a city I think that £365 is not sufficient at all, and in that case the Minister is only suggesting a 50 per cent. grant. I do not mind what per cent. of the grant people get. What I am concerned with is that I consider that a ceiling of £600 is little enough. If a man with a smaller income proposes to get a house built, I would be in favour of giving him more.
I am sorry that, in Section 10 and many other parts of the Bill, opportunity was not taken to give local authorities more power and more freedom when dealing with these grants rather than increasing the central control over their activities. I agree with the last speaker, and I think that, apart from the desirability of increasing the amount of freedom and giving extra powers to local authorities, it is impossible to make general rules for all the local authorities throughout the country to administer the grant because the conditions which local authorities have to deal with are entirely different in each county. The conditions which Deputy McGrath speaks of in Cork are very different from the conditions in Dublin and the conditions which Deputy Sweetman referred to in Kildare. Therefore, general regulations for local authorities under a Bill like this will be quite unworkable. I fail to understand why the Minister should not have allowed local authorities to draw up their own regulations in this respect. I am sure Deputy Byrne will agree with me that, as far as Dublin is concerned, to give a grant to a man with less than £4 a week income is perfectly ridiculous. It simply would not arise.
As far as Section 10 (1) (iv) is concerned, there again the ceiling of £416 is much too low. I think that the suggestion in the amendment to increase it to £600 will go a long way towards making the section more workable, and that the substitution of 40 per cent. for 33? per cent. will be a great help. It is a pity in this connection that the Minister would not allow local authorities to draw up their own regulations for the administration of these sections. After all, the local authorities are run by people who are elected locally, who know the local conditions, and to try to make general regulations for the whole country will make the administration of the Bill very difficult.
I join with those who in these amendments, are in effect objecting to the provisions of this section. I stated my objection on general grounds to Section 9, and the same objection applies here. I think that £600 a year is the minimum income. In fact, I do not like the limit on the income at all. A better method to deal with this question would be to limit the size of the house to, say, 1,150 square feet. Then you would automatically bring in a certain type of means test. I am in difficulty in discussing the amendment because I really dislike the whole section. But, if the section is to stand, I should like to see it amended. Therefore, I support the £600 a year proposal as being a step in the right direction.
I should also like to say to the Minister that certain builders have already built houses in the expectation of their clients getting a grant, that these clients have refused to take the houses, and that they are now left on the builders' hands. One builder told me that he has had six houses left on his hands. I do not know what the Minister proposes to do in such cases. I would support a minimum of £600 if the section stands, but I would prefer to see the section deleted altogether.
Deputy McGrath, Deputy O'Sullivan and some other Deputies considered this matter very carefully before putting down an amendment. The position is that the rural worker with an average wage of £4 per week has no opportunity whatever of getting a grant to build a house because the county manager when making advances for house building has laid it down that he must get two securities. Where will a man earning £4 a week get two securities? Even if he should happen to get these securities and a loan, the smallest rent he would be asked to pay would be £1 per week to cover the repayment of loan and interest charges. Indeed, it might be more than £1 per week. How could a man earning £4 per week pay that rent and support his wife and children out of what is left? Will he not bring on himself commitments that he can never hope to meet? The most he can do is lease the cottage in which he may be living.
Take, then, the man working in the city in receipt of a wage of a little over £6 per week and with a son or a daughter earning £2 per week. That man is over the ceiling and he cannot build a house because he cannot take advantage of the loans or grants mentioned here. I think it is absurd to have different ceilings in different Acts. We have a ceiling of £600 under the Social Welfare Act. We have a ceiling of £416 here. We will have some other ceiling in another Act. If £600 is the ceiling under the Social Welfare Act, why not make it the same here? We believe that as the section is framed it will be ineffective in operation and I appeal to the Minister to consider the matter and alter the section on the Report Stage.
This section carries the same objections as section 9. Surely the Minister does not suggest that people with incomes of £308, £312 or £365 will build houses. I take it that the people who would build houses would be married men with wives and families.
A single man can build a house as well as a married man. He may want to.
The Minister knows quite well that will not happen in practice. At the present cost of living there would not be a penny left for a man out of £600 for the support of his wife and children. I think Deputy M. E. Dockrell's suggestion is worthy of consideration. One could indirectly apply a means test by limiting the size of the house to 1,160 square feet. That would exclude the people who wanted a bigger and a better house. I think the section is utterly useless. The people who come within these categories will never build houses. There may be some exceptions where people might be lucky enough to get some money from a relative or in some other way.
Deputy O'Donnell is very innocent in pressing the Minister for an answer as to whether this is net or gross income. We all know it is gross income, calculated on the date on which the inquiry is made. Assuming that some members of the family might be earning on the date of the inquiry, the income is calculated on that basis even though the following week a son or a daughter might get married and the father would be left handicapped with the assessment that was made when the income was first calculated. This section is very objectionable. It leads nowhere. I commend Deputy M.E. Dockrell's suggestion to the Minister, since it would cause no embarrassment and no unnecessary inquiry as to every penny coming into the house. Inquiries in regard to income always place people in the position of attempting to conceal what they can from whoever is making the inquiry. I think the limitation of the floor space is the best idea and that would exclude those who would not be entitled to a grant, because if people have a decent income there is no reason why they should be subsidised by the ratepayers. Indeed, I would be the first to object to such subsidisation.
I voiced my appreciation of Section 9. I think I am now entitled to voice my objection to this section. The framing of the section reflects very little credit on the Minister or his advisers. The people in the categories referred to will never build houses and the Minister has wasted public time by introducing such a frivolous section into the Bill. It is stated in sub-section (2) of Section 10 that:—
"In calculating the family income of a person applying for a grant under this section in respect of a house, it shall be taken to include the income received during the year ending on the date of such application by such person and by every member of such person's family who resided with him during that year."
I would like to have from the Minister a detailed explanation of that sub-section. On what grounds will he refuse an application for a grant from a single man with an income of £3 per week living with his father, who is in receipt of a wage of £5 per week, or two brothers each in receipt of a wage of £3 per week? On what grounds can he refuse such a man an application for a grant if he decides to build a house? We know that the £ to-day is only worth 9/- as compared with 1939, and so far as Cork is concerned there are very few people there with incomes of less than £600 per year who would ever dream of building houses. If Deputy Desmond's suggestion is accepted it will relieve local authorities of the responsibility of providing houses for people for whom they are at present obliged to provide houses.
The cost of providing houses is a fairly substantial burden on local authorities in view of the fact that it has increased enormously of late. The latest figure before our local authority was round about £1,700. I think it would be good business to give to those people the maximum grant, to allow the local authority to give them the maximum grant of £275 to build the house rather than provide the £1,700 to build a house for themselves. In view of the statements which the Minister has heard on this section, I think he should withdraw it and substitute one that would be acceptable to the House and to the local authorities. This type of section would not be acceptable to anybody.
According to the wording of this section, it is intended to give as little as possible in the form of a housing grant. It is ridiculous to suggest that a person with an income that does not exceed £4 per week could in present circumstances qualify for a 100 per cent. housing grant. Nobody with an income as low as that will attempt to build a house in view of present-day costs. There is no prospect that these costs will come down or that the cost of living will come down. These are two facts to be taken into consideration when the question of a person's income arises in connection with qualifying for the grant. In my opinion this section is simply window-dressing. It may encourage people to believe that perhaps, by hook or by crook, they can qualify, but when they come to consider the facts, they will find that they will not be able to do so.
Some previous speaker mentioned that someone with a small income may be lucky enough to get a sum of money from the sweepstakes or from a relative under a will and can then proceed to build a house, even though he is only earning £4 per week and in that way can qualify for the 100 per cent. grant. It was also mentioned that perhaps a single man with £4, £5 or £6 a week could attempt to build a house. I do not think there is much point in that. If he intends to get married he will have to face the prospect of paying back the loan made available for the building of the house in respect of which he qualified for the grant. I think that would only encourage speculation. I believe myself that such a thing is unlikely and very remote.
I would like to remind Deputies that, in arguing with me about this section, it is not a matter of convincing me that the limits prescribed here are low. I know and admit they are. I am prepared to go as far as to say that, perhaps, I would not achieve very much in the way of enabling people, covered by the section, to build houses for themselves. I am trying to do what Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll said I should not do, but what experience has taught me I should do. It is all very well for the Deputy to say that these matters can be left to the local bodies. That is all very good, but they had their chance. If the local bodies have had the opportunity which the Deputy thinks they should have, and have not made use of it, is not that a reason why we should try and devise a general plan for them that would be likely to be acceptable and would be adopted by them?
Deputy Murphy has made the case that it is a waste of time to be discussing this section. Deputy Murphy and Deputy Desmond are members of the Cork County Council, and the freedom which Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll suggests local bodies should have in respect of this matter was available to the Cork County Council under Section 7 of the 1950 Act. What income did the Cork County Council, with all its wisdom and knowledge, stipulate in regard to these classes? When I set out limits up to £416, I am castigated by Deputy Murphy, and told that we are wasting the time of the House. The scheme suggested by the Cork County Council provided a limit for family incomes up to £325. I am going as far as £416. Yet, we hear all this talk about the freedom which the local bodies should have.
When Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll speaks on this and thinks in terms of the sort of a housing problem that you have in and around the City of Dublin, he is thinking of a problem that is as different as day is from night—of what a man may be able to do in the way of providing himself with a house with assistance from the State and the local authority. I am not saying that this will apply to a man with a small income. I know too well that he could not attempt to build a house for himself in view of present-day costs. But where is the use of my providing a very magnificent scale, let it be a floor-space scale or a high income level if, by doing so, I am just merely putting a barrier in the way of local bodies adopting any scheme at all?
It is all very well for Deputy Sweetman to tell us about the moral courage which members of local authorities have, and how, say, they would not mind segregating a man from his neighbours or hesitate about determining income or valuation limits. It is all very well for people to demonstrate that they possess that degree of bravery or moral courage. We know, however, from experience that when you ask a local body to fix a limit on these matters that one member will propose that it should be £5 per week, another member will propose an amendment to the effect that it should be £6, and, finally, they will agree on £7. Having done that, the scheme will be drafted on that basis. Then some member of the council who said nothing at the meeting goes home and finds that his neighbour is earning £8 per week. The two of them will discuss the matter. The neighbour will say that it is unfair that, because he is earning £8 per week, he should be ruled out. The member of the council he had the conversation with will return to the next meeting of the county council and put down a motion to rescind the previous decision. His proposal will be to raise the income limit to £8 or over. That kind of thing will go on until they finally reach the stage when the whole thing will be thrown over, and they will have no scheme at all. It is all very well for Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll to say: "Why not leave it to us local boys." I say it has been left——
What about the differential renting?
——and the procedure I have described is the procedure that has been followed at most of those council meetings. I am not saying that by way of criticism of members of the council, because, on the other section, Section 9, and when Section 7 of the 1950 Act was put through and afterwards, I had claimed that it was a section which imposed upon men who are giving their services free an onus which I do not myself think should be imposed on such men for the reasons that they do not like the task of having to segregate these classes on the basis of income or on the basis of valuation.
What does the Minister think of Deputy Dockrell's suggestion?
I do not think anything of it at all. Deputy Dockrell is again thinking in terms of a problem that has no association at all with what is envisaged here. If any house is to be erected under this section by labouring men in rural parts, I am thinking of a very simple, inexpensive cottage that would not reach 1,100 square feet at all. You cannot make a decision on the basis of the floor space. I would not regard that suggestion as worthy of any consideration in so far as this particular problem is concerned.
Mention has been made here of the gross income and the net income. Of course, there has been handed over to local bodies in this matter a difficult problem, but then, take local bodies who have the responsibility of governing a differential renting system. They have to determine these questions. I am not saying that they do not find it difficult, but it is no more difficult in those cases than it is in the one with which we are dealing. Deputy McMenamin was speaking of the case of a man who was employed for wages and members of whose family were also employed for wages. Deputy O'Donnell was speaking about fishermen who were self-employed. In the case of men who are self-employed, the local authority could have regard to the expenses a man would incur in following whatever occupation he was engaged in. However, when he states the case of the loss of nets, I do not know whether that could be regarded as a charge that could be deducted from annual earnings, because I think you can insure against the loss of nets. I do not know what attitude a local body would take towards a problem of that nature, but I would scarcely think, at first sight, it was the type of overhead that a local body could have regard to in arriving at the income of the man who was an applicant for a grant.
Deputy Murphy mentioned the case of a single man who secures a site in his own name and proceeds to build a house. The house is his and it is his income that will determine the amount of the grant he should get. No other considerations can arise in the case.
Does it mean gross or net income?
Does the Minister suggest that an insurance company would take a premium on fishing-nets?
I do not know what insurance companies would or would not do.
If he does, he does not know much about insurance companies.
I find it hard to believe that you could not get coverage in such a case.
Would the premium be a proper deduction in arriving at income?
I would not think so.
Then the Minister's solution is not a very proper one.
A Deputy
The local authority is the body which will decide.
Yes, the local authority will decide. They have a general freedom.
They have not. They are tied by sub-section (2) of Section 10, which is defined in such a loose way that nobody could know what it would mean. What will happen with that definition of sub-section (2) is that the local bodies will be flooded with requests to decide.
That refers to the cases where grant applicants are employed and working for a fixed wage. The local authorities still have freedom in dealing with self-employed persons.
It is very clear in sub-section (2) of Section 10: "In calculating the family income of a person applying for a grant under this section in respect of a house, it shall be taken to include the income received during the year ending on the date of such application by such person and by every member of such person's family who resided with him during that year." If the applicant were a single man his brothers and sisters would be the members of the family.
If the applicant is a single man and has a site in his own name and applies for a grant to the local body, it is his earnings and not the earnings of anyone else that will be taken into consideration.
That is not in the section. It is very bad drafting if that is what it is intended to mean.
People on local bodies with any intelligence should be able to decide.
They are not being allowed to have any intelligence.
It is not "his" family, but "such person's family" which under the section included all the members of the family.
The remarks I made to Deputy Murphy and Deputy Desmond apply also to Deputy McGrath. The only answer that can be made is to refer to what is provided here in the scheme. Deputy McGrath can tell me that this was not his personal point of view and so can Deputy Murphy and Deputy Desmond, that what I am thinking of is what has emerged as the combined wisdom of the Cork County Council.
After being sent back from your Department.
There is no use in confusing the matter. We know the reason why. Settle up these other differences amongst yourselves and it will not be sent back from my Department at all. I am not talking about what any individual Deputy or any individual county councillor on any particular council may think.
Neither am I.
What I am thinking of is the scheme submitted to my Department by the Cork County Council.
There is an answer to that.
There is an answer to that.
There is an answer to everything.
Will Deputies allow the Minister to speak?
We can keep on concluding and replying for a long time. I do not want to stifle discussion in any way but I want Deputies to appreciate that Sections 9, 10 and 11 are sections about which we can have the same kind of argument. Deputies can talk at the Minister as if they were trying to convince the Minister of something of which the Minister is perfectly conscious. If he is conscious of these things, he is also conscious of the fact that county councils and urban councils have been very sceptical about this whole matter and, as a result of my contacts with members of local bodies who spoke to me, I took it, very openly, freely and honestly, I believe that in what I am doing in these three sections I am representing, not what is in every one of their minds, I am sure, but what is in the minds of the majority of members of local bodies. I have no hesitation at all in making that claim.
I am asking Deputies, if they have remarks to address to these sections, not to address them to me as if I did not realise that these income limits are low. I admit that. I admit that the valuations stipulated in regard to other classes are very low. I admit all these things but I feel that it is better that we should have a scheme set out here that is likely to be uniformly accepted and applied and that it is better that we should do at least a half justice rather than refuse to do justice at all in any shape or form until we get complete justice. That is my case and that is my plea.
If any local authority is going to like it, it is not represented in the House, at any rate.
The Deputy will find in the course of time that what I have claimed here is not far from the mark. If the Deputy has read some of the discussions that took place in these councils where they adopted the free for all schemes, and if he had read of the alarm they expressed because of the amount of money required to meet the commitments in respect of them, he would have a view that would be very closely related to mine. All I am asking Deputies is, in whatever further remarks they have to make, to have some regard to the fact that we must finish this discussion some time. While I am prepared to go so far as saying that these are very, very low figures, they are in my view the best that we can do.
It is only right that members of the Cork County Council who—I will not say have been attacked —but who have been referred to by the Minister as making cases based on our own individual opinions, should state that that is entirely wrong. I want to point out to the Minister that any remarks we make are nothing personal to the Minister, but refer to the Bill. The Cork County Council sent up schemes to the Department of Local Government, in which £600 was the income level. They had a very much higher valuation than the Minister has in his scheme. That was sent up unanimously by the Cork County Council—South, North and West Cork. It was sent back by the Minister's Department for some trivial thing such as the question as to whether utility societies should come under this or whether an individual who was having a house built by a utility society should come under it. The matter was referred to a sub-committee who, I will admit, were just as conservative as the Minister is in the terms of this Bill. That sub-committee reported after this Housing Bill had been introduced, and nobody bothered upsetting it, because the Housing Bill had been introduced. If the Minister or his officials will look up the scheme sent up by the Cork County Council, in the first instance, it will be seen that it was the unanimous decision of the council and that the figures were very much higher than the figures in this Bill.
Like Deputy McGrath, I should like to correct the Minister. I should much prefer that we would discuss this matter from a national point of view rather than adopt a county versus county attitude. As the Minister has given the impression to members of the House from other counties that Cork may be acting as a collective body in this, it is well, as Deputy McGrath has mentioned, to lay emphasis on the fact that the figures as quoted by the Minister are not correct, in so far as, when we were dealing with Section 7 of the previous Bill in the South Cork Board of Health, of which Deputy McGrath, Deputy MacCarthy and others of us are members, we agreed unanimously that the amount would be £600.
And 100 per cent. grant.
100 per cent. grant.
Yes. Unfortunately, a difficulty confronted us that was not foreseen by the local authority but was pointed out by the Department. It was the fact that in parts of County Cork many of the applicants were getting the Government grant through local public utility societies and that meant that, legally, there was a doubt as to whether these applicants would be eligible for the local grant from the council. The records of that are in the Minister's Department. Let the Minister check up and he will find that, whatever the faults of the Cork County Council may be, these matters were dealt with. If the legal difficulty had not confronted the Cork County Council, the amount which was fixed unanimously by that body would have justified our claims in this amendment here.
As regards the matter mentioned by the Minister as coming from the county council, it is well again to draw attention to the fact which Deputy McGrath has mentioned that a sub-committee of the council was set up to discuss that matter. Their findings were not passed unanimously by the Cork County Council because, when the findings of that sub-committee were reported back, this Bill had been introduced. We were discussing this Bill and, because we believed that we were not in a position at that stage to send up a final scheme of our own, considering that the Minister had introduced this Bill, the matter was left in abeyance. Not for one moment can we leave the Minister under the impression that collectively the members of the local authority in Cork agreed to these figures.
If that matter is clear, all I would say regarding the statement made by the Minister is that I can see two difficulties. First of all, the Minister states—and it is, perhaps, some consolation to him to know—that a single man may be entitled to the grant under Section 10. Our main difficulty, as members of the local authority, is to house people who have families. If we cannot give them the advantages of a grant under this Bill we will be compelled, more or less, by law, by the report of our county medical officer, if we build houses in any township or village and if these people apply for them, to give them to the married people with young children who are living in condemned houses. The Minister knows—he has stated quite clearly in his reply here that the section is far short of the requirements— that we can never utilise this section to the advantage of any of these applicants. I would like to see single men also getting grants, if possible, but we must start at least by saying that the married man with a family must come first and our first obligation must be to him.
The other point stressed by the Minister was similar to the point raised on Section 9. I did not enter into the discussion on Section 9. The Minister put up the same case on Section 10, that is, the worry that will be involved on the part of individual members of local authorities in case they offend their neighbour. We should not be in public life just to be able to facilitate our friends and neighbours.
If these sub-sections of Section 10 are passed and become law in their present form, they provide the easiest way in the world of offending neighbours and friends who may be looking for a grant. How can any member of this House say to a man who is in receipt of £417 a year: "Unfortunately you can get nothing"? How can he say to an applicant who may have an income of £313 a year: "All you will get is 50 per cent. of the grant, but if you had £1 10s. a year less, you would get 66? per cent. of a grant"? The very fact that this section was broken into so many parts is, I believe, an incentive to would-be applicants to do all in their power to justify their assertion that they are in receipt of a lower wage than may be coming into the home. Deputy Murphy mentioned the difficulty of other members, and I believe he was perfectly right in doing so. If an inspector of a local authority visits a home to ascertain the income of the family, he will base it on what the family earned in the previous 12 months, but there is no guarantee that the same income will be coming into the home for the following 12 months. I believe that, no matter how the Minister tries to get over this, it is fantastic to think that the section can be made operative in its present form. There is no possible alternative to the amendment. The Minister did say, of course, that he had in mind the small type of house that would not cost more than £1,100. Surely the Minister will have to admit that the smaller the house, the smaller will be the Government grant and, incidentally, the local authority grant. It still means that the applicant, because the grant is smaller, is committed to finding a large sum of money himself. I honestly believe that the Minister has put forward no justification for the section in its present form.
I should like to ask the Minister a question. Will persons to whom Section 9 is intended to apply be entitled to take advantage of the provisions of Section 10 instead, if they so desire? Instead of being assessed on their valuations, if they have a little bit of land, will they be allowed to take advantage of Section 10?
I have an amendment, amendment No. 13, proposing that they should be allowed to do so.
It certainly would be an improvement and it would answer a lot of questions. The House adopted Section 9 which provided grants for people who owned land but, to my mind, Section 10 is much more liberal altogether. The people who will pay for most of the grants given under Section 10 are the people whom Section 9 is supposed to cover, but they themselves will be getting less on the basis of their income. I want to point out to the representatives of the farmers on the Cork County Council that they should be a little bit careful inasmuch as they are the people who are going to pay most of the money.
Mr. Byrne
Are you trying to gag your colleagues?
I want to ask the Minister——
Mr. Byrne
Ask the Minister to accept the amendments.
I honestly believe that as compared with Section 9 which the House adopted unanimously——
It did not.
It was carried out without any opposition.
It was not.
There was some slight talk on it but no action.
It was put to the House and voted against.
There was no division on it. It is on record now that the House adopted Section 9 and the grants provided for under Section 10 compare more than favourably with those contained in Section 9.
I should like to ask is the Minister serious in suggesting that a house can be built out of a family income of £4 per week, because that is what is suggested in this section? Remember it is the family income, not the income of the head of the family nor any single member of it, but the total family income. It is suggested seriously in this piece of legislation that a house can be built out of such a family income of £4. You would not build a henhouse out of such an income. I think Deputy Murphy has brought an important point to the notice of the House in regard to sub-section (2) of this section. It is well to read it over again:—
"In calculating the family income of a person applying for a grant under this section in respect of a house, it shall be taken to include the income received during the year ending on the date of such an application by such person and by every member of such person's family who resided with him during that year."
The Minister is trying to suggest that if a young man who is a member of a family gets a plot for the building of a house, the total family income in his case will not be taken into account but only the income of the young man who is the applicant for the grant. If that is intended, it is definitely not provided in that sub-section. We all know from our experience of various local authorities throughout the country that if such a case did arise and some young man were to apply for a grant in order to build a house, if we had a certain type of conservative law agent, such as many of us have experience of, that sub-section could be interpreted to mean that the total family income must be assessed and the young man would be completely ruled out. The sub-section in itself is completely objectionable in so far as the income limits are concerned. To think of a man with an income of £4 building a house is just nonsensical. Whoever was responsible for putting that suggestion in the Bill, that an applicant would try to build a house out of an income of £4 a week, does not live in the country. He might live in the Custom House but he has no contact with the country. To build a house out of a family income of even £6 a week would be very difficult. There is a slight possibility that a person whose total family income is £8 a week might avail of the grant.
In my own area of County Dublin this section of the Housing Act, 1950, was not made operative. It may be some day. The majority of the council did not feel that they should make it operative. My opinion was that they should have. Perhaps some day they may make it operative. If they ever do, anybody who is applying for a Small Dwellings Act loan under this Bill, will be deprived of the benefit of a grant, because there is a regulation that nobody will be provided with a Small Dwellings Act loan in County Dublin unless he has a minimum income of £7 a week. In County Dublin, under the Small Dwellings Act, we have built to the extent of about £4,500,000 already, and we expect to go almost as high again. I suppose we are entitled in County Dublin to receive equal treatment with the Cork people. That is a very high aspiration, but we consider that, in time, we may get similar treatment. These are my views, but, as everybody in the House seems to be agreed as to the undesirability of this section as it stands, I ask the Minister to accept the amendment.
I only want to say again, as one of those responsible for putting down the amendments, that these scalings are entirely too low. If a low-income man wants to build a house he has to look for a loan, and his ability to repay that is considered by any local authority, building society or insurance company which may be inclined to advance money. When these low-income men cannot get a loan, the question of giving a grant will never apply. In the suggestions made by the Cork County Council subcommittee after this Bill was introduced, £325 was for the full grant. The Minister has now, rightly or wrongly, suggested a scaling above that, and we suggest £600 as the very minimum.
It is considered by many people that one-eighth of a person's income is what should be applied to housing. Under the differential rents scheme it is under one-sixth. But surely with £4 a week or thereabouts a person cannot attempt to do any of the things which the Minister has in mind. He wants to encourage people to build houses for themselves, even people with a moderate income. But his lower scale is far too low and so is the top scale in sub-section (4). I suggest that the Minister should reconsider the matter on the Report Stage and amend these figures.
In discussing the section earlier, I asked the Minister to define what he means by family income. I asked was it gross or net income.
I was trying to do it when you were not here.
I heard what the Minister said and it is in response to that that I have got on my feet. The Minister was formerly the Minister for Agriculture and had control over the fisheries of this country. He now turns round and tells this House that the fishermen can recoup themselves for loss of gear at sea by insuring the gear. I maintain that the gross income of fishermen is completely out of proportion to their net income. They may fish for a season and make a gross income of a certain amount, but at the end of the season they may lose their gear or even their boat, thereby reducing the net income to something nominal. The Minister's answer to what I said was that the fishermen had a remedy, that they could insure their gear and their boats.
I am asking the Minister, as a former Minister for Agriculture who had charge of the fisheries of this country, can he tell me the name of an insurance company in this country which will insure a fisherman's gear. I defy him to give me the name of one insurance company that will do that. Even the vessel itself can only be insured against total loss and that total loss must occur in certain circumstances specifically laid down in the insurance policy. A fisherman's gear in many instances is not lost through inclement weather but through the action of a tramp steamer cutting the trawl of a fisherman or through a glut of fish in the nets which weighs them to the bottom and in many other ways. There is no method of insuring against that loss. If the Minister would define what he means by family income and say the net income I personally would be satisfied, but to say that the fishermen can insure against these losses is, I submit, absurd. I press the Minister again to define what he means by family income.
I said when the Bill was introduced that with these low amounts here you are only leading men into temptation. If they borrowed money to build a house they could not possibly make the repayments out of an income of £208 a year or even the top one, £416 or £8 a week. I cannot see how they would get a loan from any local authority or insurance company. I strongly recommend the Minister to consider the amount suggested in the amendment by Deputies MacCarthy, O'Sullivan and McGrath. If a person applied to the Dublin Corporation for a loan and his total income was £416 a year, our city manager would not consider it. Deputy O'Donnell was worrying about the definition of family income. I think Deputy Byrne will bear me out when I say that the Dublin Corporation consider the income of the head of the family and the income of sons and daughters who are earning. That is the only way you can do it and that is what is in the Bill. Section 10 (2) provides:—
"In calculating the family income of a person applying for a grant under this section in respect of a house, it shall be taken to include the income received during the year ending on the date of such application by such person and by every member of such person's family who resided with him during that year."
I take it that "such person" means the father. It says "every member of such person's family".
A sister, if living with him.
Yes.
If the son is the applicant, how do you interpret that?
If he is the applicant all one can do is take his income. I take it the Minister meant the father and his family in the same way as we interpret it in the Dublin Corporation. If the son is getting married and he is the applicant, then I agree with the Minister one would take only his income. It could be interpreted by saying "every member of such person's family". I want to substantiate what I said when this Bill was first introduced. I think the figures mentioned here are far too low, and unless an individual has a little cash to put down he will have no hope of getting a loan anywhere. I think the Minister should favourably consider the suggestion put forward. Any person with only £416 per year is merely being led into temptation. If he fails to meet his repayments the sheriff goes in with an order, and we will then have to give him a corporation house.
I must confess that I have listened to the debate on these amendments with a certain amount of amusement. It is amusing to see the Minister getting flayed from his left by Deputy McGrath and Deputy MacCarthy, and see the entente cordiale somewhat disturbed by the Minister attacking Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll. The peculiar thing is that in the discussion on this section the only contribution that appears to me to have any validity is that made by Deputy Allen.
Against it?
Yes. That is the only contribution that has any relevancy at all. Unfortunately, when I was opposing Section 9. Deputy Allen did not give me any help. I was against Section 9. I thought the income limits far too low. I think the income limits in this section are also far too low. I agree with Deputy Allen — and I intimated at the end of the discussion on Section 9 that I intended to put down an amendment in respect of the farmers' income limits on the Report Stage—that as between the two the limits under Section 9 are even more restricted than those under Section 10.
I find some difficulty in understanding the viewpoint put forward by Deputy Murphy from Cork. He said he was in favour of Section 9 and he said Section 10 was a very bad section. If one is in favour of Section 9, I believe one is bound to be equally in favour of Section 10. I think both sections are wrong. I think there is an overwhelming case for the point of view that I put forward on Section 9 and Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll put forward on Section 10 for leaving the matter to the discretion of each local authority.
The only reply made by the Minister to Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll on this section was that he was thinking of a problem in respect of Dublin and that Dublin's was a peculiar problem, and the rest of the country could not be considered on the same lines and that there must be complete uniformity everywhere. The Minister seems to have forgotten that, in this Bill which he has introduced, there are six different provisions in relation to Dublin as compared with the rest of the country. If different provisions are relevant for Dublin and Cork—though I have already explained that I do not enter into discussions in connection with Cork—in this Bill, if there is a separate provision in regard to the small dwellings limits in Part VI for county boroughs, as apart from the rest of the country, and if it was proper for the Minister to introduce a separate provision in regard to small dwellings applications as set out in Part VI, why would it not be equally proper to sub-divide the limits as between people in the county boroughs and those in the country areas? We all know it costs more to erect a house in a county borough than it does in a rural area. The site costs a great deal more in a county borough.
The more discussion that went on on this section and on these amendments the more it became perfectly clear that the case made against Section 9 was a good case and that the Minister should have accepted it just as I think he should accept the case now made in relation to Section 10. Deputy O'Donnell raised a point that we have been discussing privately in relation to family income. I do not know what sub-section (2) of Section 10 means. I am sure that if the Minister were to send that sub-section to the legal advisers of the various housing authorities that will draw up schemes under this Bill, all 27 of the county council legal advisers—to ignore for the moment urban councils and so forth— would give varying opinions as to what constitutes a family. Is a family different from a household? On one interpretation a family could be described as a unit living together in a home. If a man was a widower living with a son and intends to go into a new house with that son I think one could make a case under the wording of the section for including both the father's income and the son's income. I do not think that is what we mean to do. The drafting is too loose. If there is a young man living with his sister in a flat in Dublin and he intends to get married and wants to build a house of his own, under the section as it stands it would be possible to construe it as meaning that not merely should his income be taken into consideration on the date of the application but that his sister's income should also be calculated. The question arises then as to whether it is net or gross income.
Taking the income limits in the section, £416 per annum is approximately £8 per week. It is not exactly £8 per week because the Minister has taken a rough figure of 52 weeks and has overlooked the fact in his computation that there are 52 weeks and three days in a year. Therefore, the £4 per week man does not go into the 100 per cent. grant. He goes into the 62? per cent. grant. Taking the man with £8 per week, one man earning that salary may be living at home with no expenses except travelling by bus to and from the city.
You have another man who in order to earn £8 a week, has to travel around and spend a substantial sum in the way of expenses out of his £8. Is it fair that these two people should be equated? Surely the expenses which a man has to pay in travelling are a fair and proper deduction. He can say, for example, as he can under the Income-tax Acts, that it is net income that should be counted when he is being considered for a supplemental grant under this section.
It was suggested, by way of a remark that was passed across the House, that it was desirable to leave these things fairly loose for local authorities. They are not being left loose for local authorities which are being tied up by this section. It is the interpretation that is put on the section, and not the interpretation which a local authority may wish to put on it, that is going to govern the allocation of the grants. I submit that it is entirely relevant to the discussion of amendment No. 9 to know what is meant by sub-section (2). I would suggest that the proper way of dealing with sub-section (2) would be to include this in it, that income should be assessed in the same manner as it is assessed for the purposes of the Income-tax Acts. If that were done, then whatever limit is ultimately arrived at, would have the effect of equating the case of the man who has no expenses in order to earn his living, with the man who has very heavy expenses, such as a traveller, in order to earn a living. Some travellers are paid on a salary plus expenses basis, while others are paid upon an all-in total figure. I want to ensure that they will be enabled to make a deduction that will meet their case.
Let me put a simpler case to the Minister. Will contributions to superannuation funds be taken into account when calculating income, or will it be the gross amount? In the case of Córas Iompair Éireann men, there is a deduction at the source in respect of superannuation. Will these men be entitled to take the superannuation figure off their income before they know whether they qualify for a grant under a local authority scheme under this section? I want to know, further, will local authorities be entitled to make further restrictions if they wish, not by way of income but by way, for example, of residence? Will a local authority be entitled to say that the scheme will be only open to residents in the local authority area? If we could have an answer to that it would solve one of the troubles that was mentioned by Deputy Allen. These are things which should have been put with greater clarity by the Minister in the Bill. If they had been, then, while we might have differed on figures, at least we would have known what we were differing about, but at present it is impossible to understand it.
I would appeal to the Minister to reconsider this matter before the Report Stage. We are pretty worried about the ceiling, not so much about the amount of the grants. We are worried about the ceiling because it will be of no use at all in places like Cork City and suburbs. In view of the opinions which have been expressed, I would ask the Minister to reconsider the matter before the Report Stage.
I also would appeal to the Minister to reconsider it. There is no hope at all of anyone with £4 or £6 or even £8 a week getting a loan to build a house. In the County Kilkenny, the county secretary has to mind his own position and, unless he thinks a person will be able to repay a loan, he is not going to sanction it. The lowest income he is prepared to consider is £9 a week. If a person cannot get a loan, there is no point in his getting the grant. A man could not hope to build a house with the grant alone. The Minister has stated himself that he feels these figures are too low. If we all feel that way, it is only common sense to suggest that the Minister should amend the section on the lines suggested by Deputies on all sides of the House. I think he should accept the general wish of the House on this.
Deputy Dunne pointed out that he was a member of a local authority that had not adopted this scheme, and yet it had succeeded in lending over £4,000,000 to people in the County Dublin. That would look as if, in some parts of the country, the building of houses by private persons was not influenced very much by this grant at all. The argument has been made here that no person, under the scales set out, would qualify to get a loan under the Small Dwellings Acts. I know people who got loans under that Act, and they are not earning more than £4 a week. I can prove that they were entitled to get the loan under that Act, and that their rents will be lower than if they had got a local authority house. The argument has been made that these people would not be regarded as security by a county manager to get a grant under this. The peculiar thing is that you have some of these people earning £4, £5 and £8 per week, and they are put into local authority houses at 25/- a week. The local authority will collect the rent off them, and yet some Deputies argue that the same local authority or the county manager, would not regard them as security for a grant and would not give them a loan.
When local authorities take the same responsibility for the ownership of houses built on the loans which they advanced under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts, as they do for the houses built by themselves, there should be no difficulty about this. Deputies here were telling the House that there is no one on this scale who will get a loan. No local authority would get a loan under the Small Dwellings Act——
We do not know anything about that.
Cork is, of course, the exception to the whole country.
That is generally accepted.
Yes, we know that. I believe what Deputy Dunne has pointed out, that the County Dublin local authority has succeeded in advancing over £4,000,000 under the Small Dwellings Act, without the aid of any grant. It shows there is little or no demand for these grants from local authorities at all. In my long number of years in this House I never saw such a large number of Deputies anxious to put a burden on their own local authorities as I did this evening.
As the mover of this amendment, might I just say that if Deputy Allen read the section and the amendment, and if he were here when we were speaking, he would not be trying to twist the whole thing in such a fashion as he has done? There is not a word about a loan. It does not apply at all. Those Deputies from Cork and myself did not mention a word about loans in this discussion. We spoke about grants and Deputy Allen should know that.
We agree, but the Deputy mentioned loans.
Grants are what are before us.
Do I take it it is permissible to bring in the section itself? It is very difficult to disentangle the section from the amendment? Will there be a separate discussion on the section itself?
There will be afterwards; I am not preventing the Deputy from discussing it, because it seems to me to hang together with the amendments.
Apart altogether from the limits imposed and whether or not they should be increased, no matter what the figure is, there is this objection. I doubt if this system of the means test in the section will be workable for a loan. I do not think it is fair to put such a tremendous administrative responsibility upon a local authority. They are overburdened as it is. The staffing question is becoming very acute in local authorities and to put anything of this nature on them would be intolerable. In rural areas it is very difficult in many cases to determine what the limits of the family income are, because they are spasmodic. I cannot see it working at all. There has been a discussion here as to whether or not loans come into it but anyone with a family income of less than £180 is bound to need a loan for the balance of the cost of the house, and I must say I am in agreement with the Deputies that it would be quite impossible for these persons to get a loan. They would never get sureties which would be accepted. Sub-section (1) of Section 10 does not mean a thing as far as the building of a house is concerned.
There is one thing I would like to say in this section. First of all, as far as I can see, it is an attempt to repeal certain sections of the 1951 Act that were proved to be quite unworkable. I know that in County Cork we tried to devise a scheme under these sections of the 1950 Act. First of all, in regard to the scheme we devised we found it was so expensive that it was very difficult to operate it and the Minister and the Department refused to accept it. To be quite honest we were quite glad that the Minister and the Department refused to accept it. However, there should be a State grant for housing and if there is to be a grant for housing it should be a State grant and should begin and end with that.
If the State believe that a supplementary grant should be given to certain classes of the community, then the State should include that in their original proposal and not say: "This is what we are going to give to A, B, C and D, but if the local authority likes to do something else they can do it." I believe that the subsidisation or the grants given for housing should be given from one authority and not make the whole position complicated and expensive in its administration. It should be done from one centre and from one authority only. That is a suggestion I would make to the Minister in regard to this section.
Deputy Lehane has made the point that Cork County Council submitted to my Department a scheme to which, as he put it, it was fortunate from Cork's point of view that my sanction was not accorded. I must correct that statement because it is not, to my knowledge, a correct picture of what happened. Neither was the picture painted by Deputies McGrath and MacCarthy in that regard. The position in relation to Cork is that Cork Corporation——
Will the Minister allow me to say that I am speaking of Cork County Council?
I know you are, but I have to blend the two together. They found it difficult to blend them on the subject, so I will.
The Cork County Council built houses; Cork Corporation did not.
Cork Corporation prepared a scheme and because of a local problem in regard to sites they decided to give these supplementary grants to people in the city who went outside the city boundary and built their houses there. The legal advisers of Cork Corporation told them that they were not on a firm footing from a legal point of view in doing that, and the Cork County Council came along with their scheme.
The giving of grants within the borough was agreed.
But there were no houses built.
There were.
The Minister is entitled to make his statement without interruption.
I am dealing with the Cork problem and I am trying to relieve myself of a charge that has been levelled against me that I refused to sanction the Cork Corporation or the Cork County Council scheme because of the amount of money involved or for any consideration other than a purely legal one. That is why the Cork Corporation and the Cork County Council could not agree on this residence problem. The Cork County Council in their scheme stipulated that any applicant would have to be resident for at least six months in the county council area before he would be entitled to get a supplementary grant from the county council, with the result that you have this seesaw between the two authorities. Of course, while that situation lasted I could do nothing to solve the problem. Since that is the position, there is no use in trying to pass it over——
That is not the position.
——as if I were responsible for bringing that situation about. Deputy O'Donnell showed himself to be interested in a particular class of people who could be affected under Section 10. I suggested to him that if he had remained to hear what I had to say on that point, and had not depended on what he was told by somebody else, he would perhaps have got a clearer view of what was in my mind. I did suggest that there might be the possibility of insurance. I also suggested that in the case of self-employed persons the local body to which they had applied for a grant had a good deal of freedom in arriving at the items of income that could be properly regarded for the purpose of determining the amount of grant, if any, that each applicant should receive. It is perhaps giving the local bodies a difficult task. When Deputy Sweetman suggests that I should clarify this position, Deputy Sweetman should be one of the first to realise that perhaps it is better to leave it as it is than attempt to clarify something that would not be easy to clarify. The local bodies, in regard to persons who are employed for wages, will have little difficulty. They will have some in regard to those who are self-employed. I am conscious of what these difficulties are, but it is better that they should have that sort of general overriding discretion in determining questions of that nature.
They have not got it under the Bill.
There is nothing against their having it.
You can do it quite easily by making sub-section (2) say that the local authorities can define family income according to the needs of the area.
There is nothing in sub-section (2) to prevent it.
There is everything as at present.
They are approaching this in a fairly liberal fashion and I think it is better that we should leave it at that. My claim in regard to this section is exactly the same as I have made in regard to Section 9. It is a conservative section. Deputy Gallagher and other Deputies talk here— I have no objection to their talking— in terms of people who are building houses through the assistance of lending organisations of one kind or another. Some Deputies can only think in terms of building through loans. They seem to forget that there are people, even poor people, even when the grants were £80, who without loans at all, erected simple cottages. There were simple cottages erected by people of the labouring class—not many, but some—without any loans at all. Deputy Gallagher and those who think in terms of building houses through public utility societies and large advances, seem to forget that there are small farmers who, if you gave them the option of applying for a loan to the Land Commission towards the erection of a house or to the county council, through the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, that rather than charge their holding in that respect, they would scramble in one way or another and, with the assistance of a State grant plus a grant from a local authority, and the credit that they would obtain from traders who would know them, would endeavour to build the type of house that we have seen going up all over the country for the last 25 or 30 years. I am not claiming that this will be done in any wholesale fashion. I know men on £4 a week who will do it. To hear some Deputies speak on this matter you would think that we were removed, I do not know how far, from the problems of these rural people.
What is contained in this section will be of no interest at all in Cork City, I am sure. It will be of no interest to the type of men that Deputy McGrath, Deputy MacCarthy, Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll and other Deputies have in mind, but Sections 9, 10 and 11 will have some bearing, at any rate, upon the problem that we know in the rural parts. Monaghan County Council, for instance, which is a neighbouring county of my own county, stipulate an income level of £4 a week for a man. The people who stipulated that income limit knew the problem with which they were dealing. They knew that many of these people would not get a loan. They knew that some of them would not, in fact, seek a loan but that they might get a site from some relative or other for nothing and that they might be able to put in a certain amount of their own labour. The ways and means that can be adopted by country people with initiative and who are not, if you like, spoiled by this whole idea of loans and advances of that nature, are surprising.
I am not claiming for this section anything more than it is. I should have stated that the £4 which I have mentioned was stipulated as the amount earned by a man who would apply for a loan under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act.
I am not recommending this section in the sense that it is a cure-all. I can quite see that some Deputies, looking at this problem as it affects them in their own immediate locality, may find some disappointments in it. I am trying not to look at it from the point of view of Cork City or Dublin City because in these big centres the problems to be contended with are not problems that can be solved by these sections at all. Therefore, I regard these sections as designed and suitable only for a rural problem.
There are as poor districts in Cork County as in any district in Ireland.
I am admitting that. I am saying Cork County the same as any other county, but I am talking about Dublin, Cork City, Limerick City and other big centres of population. I could not see in what way Section 10 would be of any use to the people who have to be catered for there. The numbers who will be covered by this section are very small as compared with the numbers that will be covered by Section 11 or Section 9. We will come to Section 11 later.
I must resist all these pleas that are being made to me to raise this limit and that limit. I say that Section 9 is conservative. I say that Section 10 is at least as generous to the classes that are catered for by it as is Section 9. Taking the three sections as a whole, they are designed in that, if you like, conservative fashion in the hope that the different local authorities who adopted schemes under Section 7 of the 1950 Act, and who would not adopt schemes again, will be induced to do so.
I am in a position, as Minister, to say that a number of local authorities who adopted schemes under Section 7 of the Act of 1950 would not adopt schemes in future if an open section, such as Section 7 of the Act of 1950, was here included in this Bill. I am sure that if such local authorities would not adopt a scheme, the councils who refused to adopt a scheme under Section 7 of the Act of 1950 would certainly not adopt a scheme under the conditions which it is sought to insert in this section. The attitude of these local authorities is: Let the scheme, however conservative it is, be one under which we know the amount we shall have to provide and the amount of money we shall have to borrow each year in order to implement the scheme. Having regard to the knowledge I have of the attitude of bodies who adopted the scheme under Section 7 of the Act of 1950, and also of the attitude of councils who refused to adopt that scheme, I recommend these sections to the House, conservative and all as they may be, because I know that, by doing so, I am likely to get the framework of a scheme that will be acceptable to all. At a later stage, in a year or two, if local authorities think that they should go a little further, this scheme can be amended and improved upon.
Deputy Corry mentioned that this was a retrograde step. The Deputy must remember that in this substitute for Section 7, I am providing for the payment of a supplementary grant in respect of the reconstruction of houses as well as for the erection of new houses. That will also apply to the classes of people covered by Section 9 and those covered by Sections 10 and 11—the case of a man, say, who would buy out his cottage from a county council. If his cottage requires improvement he can add a room to it. If it is a three-roomed cottage, he will receive an £80 grant, a four-roomed cottage a £100 grant and five-roomed cottage a £120 grant, and the councils will be free to give him a supplementary grant as well. That will apply to members of the working classes who are owners or tenants of houses all over the country. That was not provided for in the section which this scheme is designed to replace. It also covers the water supplies and sewerage provisions of this Bill. Local authorities can also give an equivalent of the State grant to the classes mentioned here if they so desire.
Deputy Lehane has given expression to the view that it is not right that the grants should be divided up in this fashion and that whatever they are, they should be given by the one authority. I suppose there is something to be said for that point of view, but there is also a good deal to be said for the point of view that the State in its efforts to encourage housing decides upon giving grants to all those who erect houses for themselves, irrespective of the classes to which they belong, or irrespective of the earning capacity of the people concerned. It does that, not because it believes that all of them require that sort of assistance but in order to stimulate the provision of housing and as a general proof of the desire of the State to promote housing. That need not be the approach of the local body. The local body is nearer to the people it serves, and it can say: "We can still take a step in that direction but we shall not go so far as the State has gone. We shall provide only for those who, but for the State's generosity, would not be able to erect houses for themselves. We will go a certain length towards assisting certain classes." I do say that, while there does appear to be a case for the point of view of the State, there is on the other hand a very good argument for the other line of thought.
I am not apologising for those sections at all even with all their limitations. I am not saying that they will achieve wonders. I do not think anything of the kind, especially in regard to the people who are covered by Section 10, because it is a little more generous in one way than Section 9 is in relation to the class for which it caters. At the same time, I believe that the people covered by Section 9 will have somewhat better opportunities of taking advantage of the provisions of the section. I do think, however, that I shall be able to convince local authorities—and they need to be convinced—that they are not being let in for something that would impose an almost intolerable burden on them. We must establish that fact. If we were to provide a wide open section saying that the income limit should be say £10,000, we could do all these things quite easily and wash our hands of the whole thing by saying to the local authorities: "Did we not give you all the powers you wanted?" If we wanted to wash our hands of the problem in that way, I could do it very easily, and get out of the House in about half the time we have spent on this Bill, but I do not think that would be the right thing to do. It is because of that, and because I see other people's points of view, that I must insist upon the general scheme of things as outlined here.
Would the Minister tell us what effect this section will have on the scheme adopted by Cork Corporation under Section 7 of the 1950 Act, in the case of houses built in the borough of Cork?
We shall deal with that on amendment No. 22.
I am somewhat surprised at the length of the discussion on this section. We were up against this problem in the Dublin Corporation and we decided that we would not make any grant at all. We made no grant specially from the Dublin Corporation towards the building of houses. The grant that is given in Dublin is the grant given by the Government. One of the questions that we were afraid of when we discussed the problem was this: "If we decide to pay £ for £ with the central authority and are going to give a grant of £275, who is going to benefit by it?" We came to the conclusion, as a city council, representing all sections of the people, that the person who would benefit would not be the person whose house was being built, but the person who built the house for him. We were very much afraid that, if we were to give a grant of £275 from the Dublin Corporation, that would go right into the pockets of the builders. I think that was a reasonable point of view for the city council to adopt.
Under the old Bill there was provision for this £ for a £ to be paid by local authorities. It is interesting, however, to examine how many local authorities have failed to do that, how many local authorities have found that it is a successful way of dealing with it. As the Minister says, there are two aspects. I admit that I do not understand the Cork problem. There may be a problem there peculiar to Cork. I do understand the problem so far as Dublin is concerned and so far as the ordinary rural area is concerned. Under the provisions of the Small Dwellings Act, 90 per cent. of the value of the house can be granted by way of loan if the house is value for the money, and if there is a Government grant of £275 and provision for a loan of 90 per cent. of the value the person whose house is being built need not put down one penny piece.
Rubbish.
It is not rubbish.
It is 90 per cent. of the balance.
Under the Act, it is 90 per cent. of the value of the house. I am not concerned about how it is interpreted by certain local authorities or certain local engineers. I am concerned about what the law is and the law says 90 per cent. of the value of the house, and our trouble is the question of value.
Who is to determine the value?
That is the point. I do not know how value is determined, but I do know that if we are to give out money from the central authority and to give out £ for £ from the local authority somebody will get value out of it, but it is not the owner of the house. That is what I am afraid of. As I say, in Dublin City we decided that if houses are built and are good value for the money paid for them, and if there is a Government grant of £275 and a 90 per cent. advance under the Small Dwellings Act, no money at all should be paid by the individual in cash for the house. I have always maintained that in Dublin it is desirable that the person whose house is being built, who is getting a Government grant of £275 and a 90 per cent. advance under the Small Dwellings Act should have some little stake in that house to the extent of £75, £100 or £150.
If we look at the problem in a reasonable way we will find that within this section there is an effort to prevent what one might term avoidable waste. That is what I see in the section. It might be better if, instead of putting it in the way it is in the section, the Minister said that the local authority may grant a sum not exceeding £125 in addition to the Government grant under such conditions as they may prescribe themselves. On reading the section, I considered that the idea behind it was to have some sort of uniformity right through the country, some sort of guidance, some encouragement to certain local authorities who are providing nothing at all to give some additional grant. That is the way I read the section. I thought it was the Minister's intention to bring about some system of uniformity and to encourage councils who did not provide money to provide it. If that is so, then it is undoubtedly desirable.
The Minister mentioned the problem of the house built in the rural areas which is not built in the way a house is built in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford or any other city, where a man and his relatives or friends help to build it. In parts of the country that I know of, under the suggestion made here, with the Government grant and a local authority grant, a house can be erected in that way which would not cost a penny piece to the individual.
There will be the cost of his own labour.
He puts his labour into it, his neighbours put their labour into it and he can build his house and in the end will not owe one penny piece.
The house that Jack built.
There is nothing of the house that Jack built about it. Excellent houses have been built all over the West of Ireland with which I am very familiar and I know how they were built. I certainly would like to see more houses built. There is a provision here for a grant of £275 and the local authorities ought to be encouraged to assist in every possible way not only in regard to the reconstruction but the building of houses. The demand in the amendment is that if a person has a family income not exceeding £12 a week we should give that person £275——
40 per cent.
I am dealing with amendment No. 9 and it provides that the individual is to get an amount equivalent to the relevant grant if his family income does not exceed £12.
No.
The amendment is to delete all words after "grant" and to substitute £600 for £208. £208 is £4 per week and £600 is very near £12 a week. I am putting it on that basis. I do not think that is a realistic approach.
What basis are you putting it on?
On the basis that I say. I am putting it on the basis that under the Small Dwellings Act one can give a person 90 per cent. of the value of the house. If the house is good and proper value the applicant can get 90 per cent. of a loan under that Act. If the applicant gets £275 from the local authority he has not to pay one penny piece for the purpose of becoming the owner of that house, and he pays the 90 per cent. back in instalments over a period of 35 years. There is nothing unreasonable in that.
That is political buffoonery.
It is neither political nor buffoonery. It is common sense. I do not see why in those circumstances a local authority should have to give such an applicant a free grant of another £275.
That is not asked for.
The amendment is to substitute £600 for £208, unless I am shockingly stupid.
Unfortunately that is what you are.
And the section will then read that if the family income does not exceed £600, 100 per cent. of the relevant grant may be given. Is not that what it means?
It also means that the housing authority may make a grant. They can give 50 per cent. or 60 per cent.
What this section is asking the local authority to do is to give a person who has a family income of £12 per week, 100 per cent. of the relevant grant; in other words, in addition to the State grant the local authority is asked to give him another £275. The whole purpose of the amendment is to enable the local authority to give this £275.
Those who tabled this amendment are members of local authorities and they know their job just as well as the Deputy does.
I, too, am a member of a local authority, the Dublin Corporation. That local authority has had to face this problem. It is a big problem. We said we would not grant one penny piece other than the £275 given by the central authority and nobody can say that that is holding up house building in Dublin. What is really wanted in relation to this matter is a little bit of common sense. The Minister has told us the difficulties he had with local authorities in Cork and elsewhere. He is endeavouring here to get some uniformity and to encourage local authorities to give a grant in addition to the relevant grant described in the Act. I think that is desirable. I think the Minister ought to get an opportunity of testing it by experience. What the amendment seeks to do is really to go back to the provision in the last Act of giving £275, a provision that was not availed of by local authorities and was in fact a complete and utter failure.
I am sorry this debate has been so protracted but I cannot leave it without referring to the attitude adopted by Deputy Captain Cowan. He is a member of the Dublin Corporation. I give that body full credit for doing their work in their own excellent way. There is no necessity, however, for Deputy Captain Cowan to come in here and try to tell other members of local authorities, who are also trying to do their best, that they do not understand what they are doing or try to put legal implications into amendments that are far removed from such implications in actual reality.
Deputy Captain Cowan came in here to defend the Minister. He does not have to do that. We had a very interesting discussion prior to Deputy Captain Cowan's entry into the debate and we listened to each other's viewpoint patiently and attentively. Deputy Captain Cowan found this a suitable opportunity to adopt the rôle of leading counsel for the defence. Even under the 1950 Act local authorities were not compelled to give a grant equivalent to the Government grant. The phrase used was that they may make such a grant. They were not compelled to make it. We are not now asking that they should be compelled to make it. Deputies should consider the attitude of a member who tells us about the lovely houses he saw in the West of Ireland which were built through neighbourly love and the comrades coming together after their day's work was done to build the houses.
I said that if he was to get £570 for it, it would cost him nothing.
The Deputy forgets that in order to qualify for the grant of £275 the applicant must build the house to a certain standard and the house must conform to certain specifications. Is it right for a Deputy to suggest that neighbours coming together in their spare time in the evening can build a house which will be in conformity with the standards required by the Department in order to qualify for a grant? I know of cases where neighbours co-operated to build a cottage. One will travel long distances in the country before one will find a sufficient number of trained operatives to build a house in conformity with the standards set.
This amendment gives full freedom to the local authority to give 100 per cent. grant if it wishes. If there is a Government grant of £200 the local authority may give a grant of £200. They are not compelled to give it. Day after day in the rural areas we hear complaints of lack of initiative and restrictions on local government. Give us local government. Give local authorities the freedom they ask for. It will not be abused.
Question put: "That the figure £208 stand part."
The Committee divided: Tá, 49; Níl, 26.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Killilea; Níl: Deputies Doyle and M.P. Murphy.
Níl
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Davin, William.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Anthony C.
- ffrench-O'Carroll, Michael.
- Finan, John.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Larkin, James.
- Lehane, Patrick D.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rooney, Eamon.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
Question declared carried.
|
Aiken, Frank.Allen, Denis.Bartley, Gerald.Beegan, Patrick.Blaney, Neil T.Boland, Gerald.Brady, Philip A.Brady, Seán.Brennan, Joseph.Brennan, Thomas.Breslin, Cormac.Buckley, Seán.Burke, Patrick.Butler, Bernard.Cogan, Patrick.Colley, Harry. Lemass, Seán.Little, Patrick J.Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).MacCarthy, Seán.MacEntee, Seán.McGrath, Patrick.Maguire, Patrick J.Maher, Peadar.Moylan, Seán. |
Collins, James J.Cowan, Peadar.Crowley, Honor Mary.Cunningham, Liam.Davern, Michael J.Derrig, Thomas.De Valera, Eamon.De Valera, Vivion.Flynn, Stephen.Gallagher, Colm.Gilbride, Eugene.Harris, Thomas.Hillery, Patrick J.Hilliard, Michael.Humphreys, Francis.Killilea, Mark. Ó Briain, Donnchadh.O'Reilly, Matthew.Ryan, James.Ryan, Mary B.Sheridan, Michael.Smith, Patrick.Traynor, Oscar.Walsh, Thomas. |
I take it that covers amendments Nos. 10 and 11?
Yes.
Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 not moved.
Might I intervene? In the course of the debate on the Vote for Defence I, unfortunately, stated that there was no division upon the retrospective clause. I now find that there was a division in which I did take part. I want to correct the matter.
Question proposed: "That Section 10 stand part of the Bill."
We have had a discussion on the limits. Can we get down to sub-section (2) to try to see if we can evolve something which means more or that expresses better what is in our minds than the phrase that is here in the sub-section? I pointed out to the Minister earlier the different ways and the possibilities of the different ways in which this sub-section could be construed and could be interpreted by different local authorities and their advisers throughout the country. The Minister's answer to that is that it is better to give freedom. The sub-section does not give freedom. It is not the way in which the members of the local authorities want to interpret it which is going to count but the way in which the particular legal adviser construes the words. We have heard time and time again from the non-legal members of this House that it is very undesirable to make difficulties which the legal gentlemen have to be brought in to solve. It is a good principle when that case is put forward and it should be put forward in this case.
As the section stands, all that it is going to do is to raise complications, raise ambiguities, raise doubts. It is a section that can be drafted quite simply. First of all, we want to discover what number of persons earning money the Minister intends to include. The second thing we want to discover is whether it is to be gross income or net income. I put specific cases to the Minister before; for instance, the case of the man who, as a commercial traveller, has to pay very heavy travelling expenses, who is paid, perhaps, on a flat commission basis, which commission includes his earnings in the ordinary lay sense of the term, plus the expenses that he has to pay going through the country, the expenses of his motor, his petrol, oil and so forth, and his hotel expenses. Some travellers are paid by way of salary and expenses; others are paid by way of one gross salary figure, which is intended to cover both expenses and earnings. Which is going to be taken in this case? Which does the Minister wish to be taken in this case? Personally, I feel it would be much better, whether we agree or disagree about the actual figure of the limit, that we should take the net limit of the person's income, because, generally, you will be fairly equating all people within the ambit of any scheme.
So far as the family income is concerned, we should make it clear beyond question that what we are considering is purely the incomes of the person who is buying the house and his wife. In considering the limits that are laid down by this section, I do not think it is right that a father who has a grown-up son who is about to be married, and who is living with the father at the date of the application, earning wages at the date of the application, should have his son's wages added to his income if the father is making application to build a house for himself. When the house comes to be built, that young man would probably be going off to make his own home elsewhere.
What we ought really to consider is the income of the people that are going to the new home. The income that is going to be received in that way is the income that is going to be available for the repayment of the loan, for the repayment of the expenses in the building of the house. We might have correct knowledge of the means as assessed on a particular date, and within a week or a month the means change altogether. Clearly in an application like this we must take the date of the application; there is nothing in this section to suggest what date should be taken. You could either take the date of the application, the date on which the house was commenced, the date upon which the departmental grant was allocated, or you could almost take any other date that you wish up to the date on which the grant was ready to be paid. That is an example of bad drafting. The Minister will say that he wants to leave those things to county councils. Under the section, as drafted, I do not think the housing authority can contravene the terms of the section, and you come back again, therefore, to getting one of my fraternity to determine for each of the county councils what the section permits the local authority to do. If you want to leave all these things such as what "family" means, such as what "income" means, such as what date is relevant, to the particular housing authority, you have a very simple way of doing it, and that is, to substitute instead of sub-section (2), as it stands here, something to the effect that the family income, relevant date, and so forth, are such as shall be determined by the housing authority in the scheme which it draws up. Then each housing authority can do it in their own way, in their own scheme, and nobody can come along and say afterwards that what they have done is in contravention of this section and is, therefore, something that has made the scheme void or invalid.
Certainly, as it is, it does not achieve what the Minister has stated he wants to achieve, to leave freedom to the local authority. If that is what he wants to do, then let us put a sub-section in the section giving that freedom and it will save, as I say, a lot of heartburnings and a lot of decisions in different areas.
As far as this section is concerned, I agree with its general principles, that it is desirable to protect both the local authority and the local ratepayer from what might be an excessive charge. The scheme, as we know, under the 1950 Act, did not operate successfully and there is a reasonable attempt made here to bring in a scheme that will operate.
As far as sub-section (2) is concerned, it would not be desirable to leave too much pickings to the legal profession. I would like the Minister to look carefully into it, but I do not entirely agree with Deputy Sweetman that it is not quite clear, as far as the date is concerned. As I read it, it provides for the family income for the year ending on the date of such application, so that the year will date back from the date of the application. With regard to the question of family, it is quite clear that the meaning is the family of the applicant, that is, his wife and sons and daughters. It might be no harm to clarify it to a certain extent to avoid difficulty.
Deputy Sweetman is, perhaps, overemphasising this matter. Some similar problems arise for local authorities in assessing income under other schemes. For example, there is a scholarship scheme in practically all counties which is based on a means test and for which there is a qualification in regard to income. The local authority or the officials of the local authority have to ascertain the income of the applicant or, in the case of a scholarship, the income of the applicant's parents. So far as I know, they have not had any great legal difficulty in arriving at the income in these cases. I admit that there may be more money involved in regard to schemes under this section, but the same principle operates.
We have had to send our scholarships on no less than two occasions for decision.
You may have too many lawyers on the committee.
I think there is only one.
He was an active one.
Even one.
On another occasion an auditor passed a comment on our interpretation and the auditor was wrong.
I also disagree with this section. It is nearly impossible to set forth conditions which will be fair to everybody. As I said earlier, in those circumstances the fairest way to deal with this matter is to throw it wide open to everybody. At present, there is great anxiety to have better houses and more houses built. That is one of the reasons for the introduction of this Bill. Every house that is built adds to the existing pool of houses. We have a housing shortage. Where it is so difficult to assess the exact contribution that the local authority should make to the individual, justice is best served by giving an over-all payment. In that connection, if the section is to stand, £204 is far too small an amount. It should be a larger amount.
In connection with the section as a whole, I mentioned earlier that I thought a fairer way of dealing with the question of differentiation between various persons applying for the grant would be to do it on the basis of square feet. I suggested 1,150 square feet— that any house over that would come in either for a smaller grant or for no grant at all. I would ask the Minister to examine that suggestion. I am seriously thinking of introducing an amendment on the Report Stage on those lines, but I would like the Minister to consider it. It would shut out the higher income groups, who look for a larger house, from the full benefits of the grant, that is, if the Minister thinks such a differentiation is advisable. Personally, I do not think so, but I object to the section and am opposing it.
Deputy Dockrell is objecting to this section on grounds that have already been decided by a vote of the House. I have no objection, since the general question is being decided now as to income limits, to re-examining this section, especially sub-section (2). It has been very carefully gone into. We appreciate that it is something that it is not easy to provide for clearly. We feel that the sub-section leaves with the local body, as it is right it should leave, the responsibility. It does not give it to them definitely nor does it debar them from using that responsibility and determining these questions in their own way. It is not any more difficult than, in fact, it is not as difficult as, the operation of a differential renting system. I am not saying that that may be an argument in its favour, but I am saying that, if they can operate from week to week and month to month, a difficult renting system, I do not see why they should not be able to operate this also. I have no hesitation in giving the House the assurance that I will have this examined again.
I do not see any possibility of mentioning a net or gross income, because I think there are dangers in doing either. For example, I see that there are certain things that a local body would want to make allowance for. In the case of a traveller who has certain expenses, the local authority should have regard to those expenses in determining the man's income, but there are other expenses, mentioned by Deputy Sweetman, that, in my view, the local authority should not take into account in the same way.
Superannuation?
Yes, or insurance, or any contribution that is made by the applicant to a fund that is set up and designed for his benefit and the benefit of his family and for his protection. I do not think that should be regarded as an item that should be deducted. It is dangerous to mention either gross or net and, no matter what examination is made here, Deputies will find that it is best to leave it, difficult as it is, to the local authority itself.
They have to decide many cases that are equally difficult and I have no doubt they will be able to come to a decision in this case.
I move to report progress.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.