asked the Minister for Local Government if he is aware that the present maximum income level relative to Dublin Corporation supplementary housing grants is £832 per annum; and that overtime earnings and the twelve per cent wage and salary increase have made many applicants ineligible for this grant, thus creating a disincentive towards house purchase; and if he will take the necessary steps to amend the law with the object of raising the income limit.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Dublin Supplementary Housing Grants.
33.
I am not in a position to make a statement in advance of the new Housing Bill in regard to the amendment of particular provisions of the existing housing law. I have already indicated, however, in reply to previous questions on the subject, that it is my opinion that local authorities may make reasonable allowances for family circumstances in applying the statutory income limit of eligibility prescribed for supplementary housing grants.
When the Minister adverts to family circumstances, does he envisage the circumstances of a single person who hopes to get married, wishing to purchase a house?
No. What I have in mind there is probably quite broad. It would be for the housing authority in each area to consider their own particular circumstances and the circumstances of those people who would be likely to seek these supplementary grants and then to devise a method of excluding certain payments. For instance, if a man were a married man with two children or with ten children, as the case might be, certain deductions could be made for the purpose of arriving at the figure of income that would be taken for the purposes of this particular supplementary grants scheme.
Can the local authority determine the figure without legislation?
My advice, when I brought the legislation to the House— I think I am on record as saying this— was that this type of freedom was envisaged as being covered by that legislation. It is, in fact, being operated in various ways by various local authorities throughout the country giving effect to their own particular views as to what best suits them and their own people. In some other cases their legal advisers have advised them that the law is not fully complete.
There is no hope of getting these legal gentlemen ever to make us a common answer?
It seems that as we try to do that we only make the answers more complicated for ourselves.
I suppose so. The law must be kept going.