I can well appreciate the Deputy's expressed fears in regard to the misuse or the abuse of this section by those who would like to dodge the column, as it were, and to get a little more than they are entitled to or to get it a little easier or to be allowed off with doing the job less well than it should be done.
Regulations will have to be made in this matter for the guidance of local authorities. The first point is that the local authority will be required by my Department to certify the circumstances of any particular applicant who may come along to our Department or who, through the local authority's prompting, may come to us, and so on. The problem has been brought to light, so far, of people who apply, specifying the amount of work that must be done and the estimate of the cost and who write back and say: "The grant you are giving is all right and the supplementary grant from the county council is all right but there is £200 or £300 more work to be done and we have not got the money to do it." That has more or less raised the problem.
Merely because a man is 40 years of age and living in an isolated part of the country in no way entitles him to qualify. That, and that alone, is not enough to qualify him for this minimum repair grant. The person would be of the type who cannot do anything for himself or the amount that he could do for himself or the amount of money he could provide from his own resources, added to the total amount available, would still not do the job under the normal reconstruction or repair grant procedure.
It is only when that stage has been reached that the question of whether or not an applicant would qualify for special repair grant consideration would arise. The local authority, at that stage, by virtue of their knowledge and various other operations of which they are in control in their functional area, will be in a very much better position than any other agency to certify to my Department that a particular person lives in a house that is unfit at the moment. They can certify that the person living there cannot do much for himself; that the financial resources are nil or next to it. They can certify that he cannot, because of physical incapacity or old age, do any actual work that would supplement the grants, as many country people do in these cases. By and large they can certify that the applicant may be old or infirm, that his life span or expectancy is probably not very long. They can certify that the minimum repair—possibly the repair of the roof or even of half the house, most of which may now be falling down—to put the house into proper repair by way or roofing, new windows, doors, ceiling, and so on, would, in fact, while it could not be regarded as ideal or coming up to the normal standards of a desirable type of dwelling, nevertheless, in these types of circumstances, provide such a person or such persons in these very poor circumstances with a habitable home and shelter for probably the remainder of their days which, in the normal run, might not be very long altogether.
It is for that type of general and exceptional hard case, for whom nobody has been able to do much in the past and for whom the local authority, for good, economic reasons, are not inclined to do much at present, and you cannot blame them, that we want to cater for here. It is for that type of person who, for one reason or another, we have not been able to cater and who is not likely to be catered for through our normal re-housing by local authorities, and for whom grants in the past have not been sufficient, this type of section has been devised. In general, that is the category to whom the section will apply.
I do not visualise a widespread application of this section at all. It is the hard case and the exceptional case that we hope to deal with under this section—not the letting-out of somebody, merely to let him out, or to give something to persons to which normally they would not be entitled. That is not the intention of the section. So far as I can regulate it or control it, through the local authorities, such a person will not get any benefit or be allowed away with anything under this section that the ordinary applicant throughout the country is not entitled to get under the general sections.
The House will appreciate that to go into all and every aspect of the various circumstances which could add up to bringing about an operation under this section would not only be very difficult here in the House but would also be very lengthy and probably when we would be finished, we would still have left out various unthought of cases and circumstances. To get a full picture, anyway, in a general sort of way, you could apply what I have said to your own area where you can see that such an operation under this section would be of immense help and in fact would be the only way in which you could help somebody in your district.
I can see that this section might be of help where, as is not unusual in the country, a few neighbours of maybe an old man or an old woman or an old couple would come to their aid in doing vital repairs. This would be of assistance to those few neighbours who in the past, indeed, may have done more than the grants would propose to do for these same old people. It is there that I think we could look to these neighbours by giving them this encouragement and help through these grants.
Those neighbours, with the aid of the supplementary amount from the council might, in fact, repair the house of the old couple whom they respect, whom they want to see remain in the district rather than see them go to the county home where they might have to arrive eventually for their own protection because of the state of the house. It can be used and will be used to supplement the charitable instincts and practices of our people in rural Ireland who over the years have done a great deal of this type of work without any grants from the local authorities. Together with the local authority assistance we can do something to help hard cases.
