From my inquiries, and in so far as I can ascertain, I would say 20 at the outside. I will accept 17 as quite possibly being the correct figure.
What we are concerned with now is this small minority of guesthouses— perhaps 17 to 20 of the existing 500 registered premises. These 20 or so premises have, since 1960, obtained hotel licences under the 1902 Act and they subsequently got these licences renewed even though the law did not allow them to be renewed. The argument that is now being put forward is that there is hardship involved on those concerned if the licences are not renewed in future, as, in the ordinary course, they cannot be renewed, now that the matter has come to the Courts' notice.
I certainly have sympathy with the 17 or 20 people who find themselves out on this legal limb. I had a deputation from them and they all seemed, strange to say, to be adamant on one thing, and it was this: in relation to section 20, which is as clear as any legal section can be, and which provides that the premises have to be registered with Bord Fáilte before the licence can be renewed, they told me they were not informed of the position by their legal advisers and that they were unaware of the risk they were taking until they found themselves faced with these refusals. I am just pointing out to the House what I was told and, if that was the position, I have double sympathy for them.
Of course, there were many of the guesthouse owners who could likewise have applied for licences but were deterred by section 20 and even that is by no means the whole story. There were guesthouses the owners of which have, since 1960, gone to the considerable expense of purchasing one or two existing public house licences—one licence in respect of an application in an urban area and two licences in a non-urban area—in order to qualify for a licence for the guesthouse, and they undertook this expense because they realised—I must assume they realised —that under the 1960 Act they could not get a hotel licence or, rather, that they would be prevented from obtaining a renewal under section 20 of that Act. We must also keep in mind the position of these owners who in recent years have incurred considerable expense to bring their premises up to the standard necessary to secure registration as hotels by Bord Fáilte. There are many people who have done this, as Deputies know. There are many people who have so improved their premises that they have progressed from guesthouses to hotels. There are many examples of this type of people in my own part of the country and, indeed, generally throughout the rest of Ireland. They could all say, or at least some of them could say, that they incurred the expense primarily to ensure that they would get renewal of hotel licences acquired by them since section 20 of the Act became law in 1960.
All these people would now have a very real and a very legitimate grievance, and could, indeed, claim that they were being discriminated against, if any special provision were made for the 17 or 20 people who got their licences under the 1960 Act and who have had them renewed ever since although they were not entitled to renewals on the wording of section 20.
Guesthouses owners are in a competitive business and the law must endeavour to ensure that there is no discrimination between them. We cannot say that these 17 or 20 premises should be allowed to get their licences, while ignoring all the other guesthouses with similar accommodation. We must also consider what the consequences would be if they were all to be licensed. As matters stand, there are nearly 500 registered guesthouses and the number is increasing yearly. Granting that the majority of them have fewer than 10 bedrooms, the value of a liquor licence, with its right to sell drink to the public at large, is such that there can be no doubt at all, especially with the present position of grants being made available from Bord Fáilte, that many of these guesthouses with less than 10 bedrooms would immediately seek to come up to that standard so that in a couple of years we would be adding several hundred licensed premises to the existing stock. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I want to stress that all of them would be fully entitled to serve drink to non-residents and, in addition, by the process of buying a licence in any part of the State, would automatically acquire the rights to set up an ordinary public bar, as distinct from a dispense bar, to which they would otherwise be confined.
The objection is not just that this would mean the addition of several hundred licensed premises but that this would happen without any adequate justification. It is accepted that there are guesthouses that could advance a good case for a licence, but there are others that could not. The point is that, where you have guesthouses that could make a case, the case they could make has nothing to do with the fact that they are registered guesthouses. On the contrary, their case would be based on the services they provide over and above what is required of them as guesthouses.
The provision of 10 bedrooms for guests is not of itself a good reason for giving a licence which the law withholds from others. The great majority of guesthouses have no public dining room in which meals can be obtained by passers-by. Less than 20 per cent of them provide a meals service to the public, as distinct from their own residents. I am not decrying their value —far from it, for they are an essential part of our tourist structure—but, taking them individually, nobody could seriously attempt to justify a provision in which a licence to sell drinks to the public would be given, as a special privilege and by way of exception from the ordinary law, to an applicant who is not even providing a meals service to the public—and this is what it would entail to license these 17 or so guesthouses by virtue of the fact that they are guesthouses.
There are a number of obligations on hotels, which I shall not weary the House with, in relation to the provision of certain services to the general public. A traveller is entitled to be provided with food and drink. The provisions of the Innkeepers Act apply to them in regard to things lost, and so on. The Hotel Proprietors Act, 1963, provided that these statutory duties should apply automatically to the proprietor of every establishment registered as a hotel by Bord Fáilte, but, before that, all registered hotels were in practice subject to the common law obligations of innkeepers. It will, accordingly, be seen that registration as a hotel is a guarantee not only that the hotel provides certain minimum standards for members of the public but also that it has these legal obligations to which I have referred.
These obligations provided law in relation to hotels would not apply to the guesthouse at all. Indeed, it could well be argued that the ordinary restaurant that is providing a service for the public by way of meals, and so on, would be more entitled to consideration for a liquor licence than those guesthouses that are concerned solely with catering for their own individual guests and accept no obligation of any kind to the public.
I do not want to become involved in arguments as to the logic of the particular details of the procedure laid down in the 1960 Act. Suffice it to say that, as I have said already, possibly with hindsight, I feel that it was unwise to draft the section in this particular way. I think that if the House in considering the matter had provided that they would have to go to Bord Fáilte first and the court afterwards, it would have avoided the main complaint that these people have made to me, that their advisers did not bring it to their notice that the section was there and that they were gambling on being registered by Bord Fáilte the year after getting a licence from the court under the 1902 Act.
On the question of withholding registration, the position, of course, is that Bord Fáilte is not concerned whether the premises should be entitled to a liquor licence or not; that is an incidental consequence which follows, not because Bord Fáilte says so, but because the Dáil here said so in section 20 of the Act.
I have seen in my Department that there were strong representations made, even before the time of the Intoxicating Liquor Commission, by the people in the licensing business. They consistently objected to what they regarded as the excessive liberality with which licences were issued to premises purporting to be hotels. Indeed, even since the licence restriction which we are talking about here was introduced in the 1960 Act, publicans have repeatedly suggested that the law is still too liberal in this respect. While I do not want to be taken as meaning that I accept the objections of these people, I think I should mention them here in this House as they underline the fact that the immediate problem with which we are concerned here is a complex one in which all kinds of conflicting interests are involved and in which solutions that may seem neat and simple turn out, on examination, to be neither neat nor simple
I mentioned before that the present situation, basically, is that, since 1902, there has been a general prohibition on the issue of new licences. Any exception to the general rule must be based on some logical and coherent system, as otherwise we would have inequality and injustice.
Before I conclude let me say, in relation to what Deputy Lindsay has said— he stated or implied the same thing the last time we had in this House— that is, that legally these people can get their licences anyhow. He has referred to the fact that a case stated is pending. I am not going to speculate whether it will be successful or not. Deputy Lindsay seems to think that, apart from the present case stated, a decision of the Supreme Court is already on the record under which those people can get their licences. If this is so, all I can say is more luck to them. If the law is to be interpreted in such a way that those people can get renewal of those licences—licences that they should never have got in the first instance under this section unless they contemplated they would have a hotel of the type acceptable to Bord Fáilte for entry on the Bord Fáilte register—I say more luck to them.
Let the House be quite clear on this. It would be absolutely impractical—it simply could not be done—to change the law as we have it so as to enable every place which calls itself a guesthouse through the length and breadth of this land to obtain an intoxicating liquor licence. If the whole matter is being re-examined, as no doubt it will have to be in this House at some time, because licensing laws come up for review from time to time, then there will be questions for the House to decide. But, in the meantime, I reiterate that back in 1960 section 20 was put on the Statute Book by Dáil Éireann. It was accepted by the Opposition generally in this House. It was a recommendation of the Licensing Commission. The House, at that time, must have satisfied themselves it was a desirable reform in the law. Certainly, in the reading of it, it is quite clear; and nobody, certainly no lawyer, could be under any misapprehension that the 1902 Licensing Act was intended to be read subject to this section 20 of the later Act. The clear intention was that applicants who had not licences before 1960 could not have their licences renewed unless their premises were registered as hotels with Bord Fáilte.
If those people were ill-advised I realise that it is unfortunate for them. I do not understand myself why they have found themselves in this position because nothing could be clearer than what this House did, in its wisdom or otherwise, in the year 1960.
For those reasons I have given it would be utterly impracticable to accede to the motion by Deputy Lindsay, which I formally move to reject.
