I move:
That Dáil Éireann condemns the action of the Minister for Local Government in urging city and county managers to revise local authority rent schemes on an exorbitant scale; that it deplores the Minister's threat to withhold housing subsidies from local authorities and the action of city and county managers in introducing rent schemes which can only result in further inflation and consequent economic hardship on the families of the tenants concerned.
This motion was provoked and made essential by the action of the Minister for Local Government, as outlined in its terms which are obvious to every Member of the House. In the economic conditions in which we live today, it would seem to most an obvious fact that Government Departments and Ministers have a special responsibility to see that in so far as they can affect, by their statements or actions, the trend of living costs of the ordinary people, such statements and actions should be directed to restrain costs from increasing. We have all seen within the past two or three years the disastrous, calamitous effect of certain steps taken by the Government, which had the result of increasing the cost of living. I shall not refer to them in detail but, in passing, would mention a particular instance, the turnover tax. Any step of this kind which increases the cost of living of the workers, the main producers of our society, has the inevitable end result of reducing the purchasing power of the wage packet or salary and incites in turn an inevitable demand amongst the people, justifiably, for wage increases. These wage increases again in turn are reduced in their real value by what has come to be called the spiral of inflation.
It is because of this step of the Minister for Local Government in inciting city and county managers to review existing rent schemes and to review them with a view to increasing rents, which must have an inflationary effect on the economy, that we put down this motion. We think it essential that the matter be discussed by the House and that an effort be made to bring the Minister for Local Government to see reason. Indeed, I do not know in this day of "instant Taoiseachs" whether the present incumbent of the office will be responsible for the discharge of the obligations of his Department this day week. It would seem that he may or may not: the things is in the balance. I am not concerned about that; it does not matter to us who the individual is. What we are concerned about is to see that there is a change of policy in the approach of the Minister and his Department to the question of rents generally.
There have been statements of a wild and irresponsible nature by the Minister and members of his Party concerning the tenants of Dublin Corporation houses; for instance, concerning the incomes of tenants of Dublin Corporation houses, which must be answered here and must be nailed for the falseness which is inherent in them. We have heard about tenants of corporation houses who are said to be earning astronomical wages or salaries. I have yet to meet them, and I would claim to have a closer acquaintance with them than the Minister, in so far as they are constituents of mine in large numbers. Indeed, while there may exist instances of families whose aggregate earnings may total a figure which would seem—if it is loosely used in argument as it has been here— to be extraordinarily high, these families are, if you examine them closely, usually families of adult people, each of them earning in their own right, each of them with his or her own responsibilities of keeping themselves and, in most cases, of saving as much as they can in order that they may get married. Anybody who is familiar with the problem which faces newly-married couples of this city today must admit that the costs of that undertaking—which it is most essential we should encourage—are going beyond all bounds of reason. The costs which face young people today about to get married do not need to be demonstrated by me. They are people who are exploited to the very last possible penny of their very often slender means, and more particularly exploited in the field of housing.
Young people about to get married must set about saving for a deposit for a house and I hope to have an opportunity in the very near future of exposing in this House a scandal in the matter of house deposits, in the matter of the usury rate of interest charged by builders to people who have put down house deposits of up to £700, which in some cases are liable to confiscation. If the loan is not granted by the local authority, such people have to pay interest while the builder waits on the loan from the local authority in some cases from nine months to one year. Such people are being denied the opportunity of seeing their houses until the loan is paid and they have put down the deposit and secured the loan. However, I will dilate on that, as I have said, when another opportunity offers itself. I cannot properly deal with it on this motion as I am tied to time.
That is the kind of problem that faces young people who are members of the families of tenants who live in Dublin Corporation houses. They have to try to get together such huge figures because the grasping greed of the builders and developers in this city demands huge deposits and huge prices for houses. When statements are made regarding huge aggregate family incomes, it must be borne in mind that each person in the family has a responsibility to save, and to think in terms of adding together the total earnings of the adults in a family is not to be realistic, because the total earnings in such case are not relevant to the actual amount which is used for the running of the household. Yet that excuse is used for the proposed savage increase in rents not only in the case of Dublin Corporation schemes such as Ballyfermot, Finglas, Coolock and Rathfarnham, but also in the case of schemes much nearer to the city centre which are on fixed rents. A proposal has been made and encouraged by the Minister, on his initiative, that the rents of such tenants, both differential rents tenants and fixed rents tenants, should be increased.
We think this is socially undesirable and economically disastrous. The whole thing reveals something which I have often referred to here before: the disregard and lack of knowledge of the problems facing corporation tenants with which the Custom House has been afflicted for so long and, indeed, with which the bulk of the Fianna Fáil Party have been afflicted for so long. Looking at the Official Report of the Dáil Debates of October 11th, when the discussion was proceeding on the Estimate for the Department of Local Government, at column 940, one finds a Fianna Fáil Deputy exposing his attitude in these words:
The Minister is now asking and urging local authorities to increase those rents and to help to reduce the new rents for the new home-owners and, indeed, to try to keep taxation down by making those pay who can afford to pay. Anybody who cares to trouble himself to go around some of the old housing estates in Dublin will notice the number of cars parked outside the homes and in the streets and can be in no doubt as to the position.
Let us take that for analysis as an approbation of the Minister's policy. By the way, the Deputy who made that speech is not a Dublin Deputy, but he has a lot to do with Dublin. He refers to the number of cars outside the houses of corporation tenants, and he obviously thinks it undesirable that there should be cars outside such houses. Obviously also he considers that the existence of these cars outside corporation tenants' houses connotes wealth. The principal reason why there are cars—and they are not there in the numbers suggested in this speech—and secondhand cars to be found outside the houses in corporation schemes is that it is cheaper to run a car to go to work than it is to pay the extraordinarily high bus fares demanded by CIE. That is a simple fact. The presence of cars outside these houses does not by any means indicate undue wealth. It is an economy. It is cheaper to buy a car on the hire purchase system and drive it to work, and possibly share the expenses with two or three neighbours, than it is to use the buses.
This gentleman suggested something else. He suggested that the workers were apparently living in luxury and rolling in wealth. He went on:
I think indeed that local authorities should go farther. They should make it mandatory on the tenant fully to declare his income and, indeed, any changes that might arise in his income, either upwards or downwards. If his income goes up he should notify it and if it goes down he should notify it.
That of course is typical of the kind of authoritarian, stupid person who has no regard for the individual rights of the citizen.
I remember when the idea of differential rents was first proposed. It was proposed by one of the great social pioneers of the century in this country. The principle behind differential rents was, to put it simply, that the workers in those days, which were far more difficult than they are now, should not have to pay the same level of rents when unemployed as they had to pay when in employment. It might be said that the concept was idealistic to some extent. The working out of that ideal did not prove to be what one had hoped for. In the event, the working out of the differential rent system resulted in one section of the workers being made to subsidise another section, and this was done by the manipulation of interested members of the local authorities, by the activities of the Custom House over the last number of years, and by the influence of the Custom House. When I say "the Custom House", I mean the Minister for Local Government.
One of the great disabilities of the system has been the inquiry into the circumstances and the income of individuals. It is not at any time desirable that the income of the ordinary citizen should be subject to scrutiny by outside sources, except in so far as it can be proved to be socially desirable. Here we have a Fianna Fáil Deputy who will go right down the line to have the income of the humble corporation tenant examined in detail and in every particular, and make it legally obligatory on him to report an increase or a decrease in income to, it is to be assumed, Dublin Corporation. No matter what his attitude might be on fixed or differential rents, he wants to impose this on the whole of the corporation housing estates.
We reject this. We say it is contrary to commonsense. It is unacceptable to the people and if a law is unacceptable to the people, it has always been found not to have been workable. Therefore, in tabling this motion, we are expressing the feeling that it is our duty in this House to impress on the Minister that the present actions of the City Manager of Dublin in trying to change the rents scheme in the Dublin area are not alone ill-advised and unacceptable but will never be made to work because the people living in these houses are incensed at the approach made by the City Manager at the instigation of the Minister. I want to pin the blame on the Minister because he is the one who thought up the idea. It is his brainchild and he must answer for it.