asked the Minister for Local Government if he is aware that Dublin Corporation tenants of long standing who transferred as weekly tenants to houses repossessed under the SDA Acts do not receive any rebate in respect of their tenancy if they wish to purchase their houses; if he has received any proposals from Dublin Corporation to rectify this anomaly; and if there is any initiative he can take in the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Dublin Corporation Tenants.
15.
Approval was given in 1961 to a proposal by Dublin Corporation to sell, at market value, 233 dwellings repossessed by them and 188 of the houses have since been sold. Discounts for long-standing tenants under section 90 of the Housing Act, 1966, do not apply to such houses.
I have not received any subsequent proposals from the corporation about the sale of these houses.
The initiative to sell or retain the houses rests with the local authority, who are empowered by statute to use them for the purpose of any of their functions or to sell or otherwise dispose of them as they think fit. The local authority are required to pay the person from whom they recover possession the full value of the house, less the amount of any loan remaining unpaid and other expenses due to them.
Does the Minister not agree that a tenant who has been for 14 or 15 years a corporation tenant and who having applied for a transfer was transferred by the corporation to one of these houses and paid a weekly rent unaware of the fact that the house was a repossessed house under the SDA, is being wronged by Dublin Corporation by not being allowed any percentage rebate for the years during which he was a corporation tenant?
These houses are in an entirely different category. As I pointed out, the corporation are required to pay the person from whom they recover possession the full value of the house less the amount of any loan remaining unpaid. They are, obviously, therefore, required to get the market value of the house.
Is not the Minister aware that for quite a considerable time, due to the dangerous building crisis in Dublin, these houses have been let at ordinary weekly tenancies and that the tenants who were transferred to these houses were unaware that they were repossessed houses and regarded them merely as another corporation house?
But they were not; they were in a different category altogether.
Then, persons who are tenants of Dublin Corporation for not nearly as long a period as these people will get a rebate for the years that they have been tenants while those who, if you like, are unfortunate enough to be in these repossessed houses will get no rebate at all?
Most other corporation tenants would think they were fortunate to be in those houses which are generally of a higher standard.
Would the Minister——
We cannot have a discussion.
——favourably consider giving some rebate to these tenants?
It appears to me to be a matter of considerable difficulty because the corporation have a liability to the person from whom the house was recovered.
If the corporation are to recover the original full value and if the people are to get the present full value, there is something left over.
The full value is what they can get for it.
They are being valued at present day value by the corporation's valuer.
They are required to pay that, less anything due to them, to the person from whom they repossess the house. Therefore, I do not see that they are entitled to sell it at a reduced rate, at anything under the full value.