On Thursday of last week I addressed a question to the Minister for Local Government asking him if he was aware of the increased rents now being charged to tenants of council cottages in County Donegal. In the course of a long and stormy debate, the Minister is on record as having said he did not receive this information from Donegal County Council until the day before. I am not in a position to know exactly when the Minister received this information, but I, as a member of Donegal County Council, do not understand why a differential rent scheme introduced on 14th April last was not passed on to the Minister's Department until 13th June. I am suspicious in view of the fact that this might be described as the eve of a miniature general election.
I raise this matter tonight because I feel that this differential rents scheme is a penal system. Differential rents have been applied to the tenants of council cottages in Donegal for the past 20 years but this scheme is, in effect, an excuse to increase the rents of every council cottage in the county. Might I sound a note of warning? When this was being introduced by the manager, the impression was given, not alone to me but I would venture to say to members of the Fianna Fáil Party on the local authority, that it was only in respect of new houses. The argument was put forward that the cost of building these cottages had in creased and the services to them improved and, therefore, it was only reasonable that increased rents should be charged.
This is not a fact. The position is that every council tenant from now on will come under the scheme. In effect, it means that if the tenant of a council cottage dies and his widow, his son or his daughter applies for the tenancy of that cottage, irrespective of the fact that they may have been living in that cottage for 20 or 25 years, the new tenant will now come under this scheme. In effect, this means that an increased rent will be charged to a household on a reduced income. This is the penal system about which I strongly protest to the Minister. I protest to him for this reason. He is on record as saying in last week's Dáil Debates, at column 638:
This new scheme was not planned in my Department. It was produced by Donegal County Council and was sent to my Department yesterday for approval. I have not seen it yet.
The Minister is well aware that his predecessor issued a circular to all local authorities warning them that if unless they brought in new differential rents—not differential rents based on fair means with less money to be collected but differential rents that would bring increased revenue to his Department—they would not get the finance to go ahead with their housing policy. If the Minister tries to tell me and the House that this scheme was devised by Donegal County Council and only submitted to his Department and that he had no foreknowledge of it, he may be kidding members of his own Party but he is not kidding me, not kidding the general public and, least of all, not kidding the people who will have to pay this money in the long run.
This is a penal system. It is outrageous. It is scandalous that in this society we boast about, people in this income group should be asked to pay rents as high as those this differential scheme will demand. In regard to this circular, let me say that this was the iron fist by the Minister and his Department. I was a member of the last Dáil when the then Minister for Local Government, Deputy Blaney, stated that rents would have to increase. If the Minister now tells me he had no prior knowledge of the differential rent scheme being sent to his Department, he is telling an untruth. He should admit that before this debate concludes tonight. It is easy for the Minister to say he does not know what is happening at the level of Donegal County Council. It is easy for him to say that the scheme adopted by them at their meeting in April was not submitted to his Department and he knows nothing about it. Men before him denied similar action.
Under the 1965 Housing Act the Minister took authority to withhold finance from every local authority unless they toed the line and increased rents. When the Minister says there is a low rent and a high rent, there will be more people paying the high than the low. I propose to illustrate that. Let me cite the case of a family living in east Donegal. I can give the Minister the name of this tenant and the name of the housing scheme in which he lives. I do not want to embarrass any particular individual, however, by exposing his income to the general public. It is for that reason only I refrain from naming council tenants. However, this is an actual case. The husband earns £6 per week, one daughter earns £4 per week, another daughter £2 per week, another daughter £2 10s and there is a son unemployed. That gives a total income of £14 10s per week. There are three children in the family and there is a rent allowance of 30/-, 10/- for each child. There is an allowance of £1 for the principal wage-earner and £2 for other wage-earners. This gives the family a rent allowance of £4 10s which, taken from £14 10s, leaves a rent calculation of £10. That amount is divided by five, leaving £2 per week plus rates of approximately 10/-. This means that a family of nine, comprising a mother, father and seven children, earning £14 10s per week, will pay £2 10s per week rent and rent in lieu of rates. This leaves them the princely amount of £12 per week to live on. Then the Minister tells us that this is a differential scheme whereby people who cannot afford to pay will be paying less and people who can afford to pay will be paying for them. This is the greatest folly I have heard since I came into this House.