There is nothing contentious in this Bill, although one can certainly argue as to whether the actual sums advanced from the Local Loans Fund in past years have been adequate for the social purposes for which they are largely required. I think it is legitimate to say that we would have liked to see the Bill coming to us sooner and the money provided within the existing limits used up sooner.
The Parliamentary Secretary refers, rather puzzlingly as far as I am concerned, to the welcome rise in local authority housing output. The Parliamentary Secretary must be as well aware as I am that this Government have placed effectively for some years past a ceiling on local authority housing output. That figure was fixed at 4,500 houses approximately and, allowing for the effect of the cement strike in the year before last on output—it fell to, I think, 3,800; there has, of course, been some increase this year conpensating for the strike—it is fair to say that for the last four to five years local authority housing output has remained at the level of 4,500. It has been firmly held down by the antisocial, retrogressive policy of the Government. In so far as housing output has risen, and it has risen to some degree, it has been entirely as a result of activities in the private sector, activities which are, of course, partly financed out of the Local Loans Fund. That we must accept and, indeed, I will have some comments to make on that later on.
I find it hard to understand why this policy of preventing the growth of public housing and depriving people of the possibility of getting a house in that way which is a retrogressive policy, it should have been followed— never mind being justified—by any Government, even a Fianna Fáil Government. There is a fact which bears repeating, although I rarely go back into the past and do not seek to make party points about what happened in past decades between our party and the other party, whether in Government or in Opposition, but there is one figure which I do take from the past and I revert to it again. In 1950-51 local authority housing output, under the first inter-Party Government, attained a figure of 8,000 houses. Since that time the wealth of this country has risen by something like 70 per cent. In volume terms, allowing for the increases in prices and the devaluation in the value of money, this country is 70 per cent better off than it was at that time. Assuming that a house today were the same as a house was then— I am sure there has been some improvement in quality—that means that we could build at the moment 13,500 local authority houses with the same proportion of the GNP as then. To the extent that quality has risen and the cost of housing has risen somewhat disproportionately, that figure certainly could be well over 10,000. If this Government were pursuing the policy that was pursued over 20 years ago by another Government, the scale of housing would be certainly between two and three times its present level. This Government have put it back to something between one-half and one-third of the level which it should be at if the same policy were pursued as was pursued 21 or 22 years ago, if the same proportion of gross national product were allocated to housing, if the number of local authority houses built were today the same in relation to the GNP in real terms as was the case in 1950. So, for the Parliamentary Secretary to claim that there has been a welcome rise in local authority housing output, when the Government have firmly held down the growth of local authority housing output and have kept it to a level which, in relation to the total level of national output is about one-half or one-third of what it was 20 years ago is, to be frank. inpertinence. The suggestion that the House would be taken in by this kind of nonsense does not do much credit to the Parliamentary Secretary's opinion of this House.
This is not specifically a housing Bill but I think I am entitled to make that point. The Parliamentary Secretary has so oddly made this totally unconvincing comment that he has drawn down upon himself my reply on this point. I think I am justified in commenting to that extent.
Coming back more precisely to the Bill, as against the Parliamentary Secretary's introductory speech with that unfortunate comment, the Parliamentary Secretary has mentioned that the Minister for Local Government has made an announcement of changes in the loan maxima for small dwelling loans. This change in the limits is, of course, welcome and, indeed, overdue. As I understand it, the loan maximum is being increased by £500 in Dublin and major urban centres and by £400 in the country areas. I have not seen this announcement yet. I think it was made only this morning. I would ask him to clarify whether the urban centres, where the figure goes up by £500 to £3,800 as the limit of the loan, include Galway as well as Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. I ask this because I think the House will be aware that the cost of housing in Galway is as high as or higher than in Dublin, one of the highest in the country, due to the shortage of land and what appears to be an inordinate amount of land speculation in the area which the Government and the Minister in particular, who is from the area, have in some way failed to control.
The increase in these limits is welcome, as is the increase in the income limit from £1,250 to £1,500, with, of course, the £100 per dependant up to four dependants allowance on top of the £1,500. I have to ask the Parliamentary Secretary here, and it is a question which has exercised the minds of many Members of the House, why is it that the limits effectively for the loan and for the grant are different to the extent that they are? I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to explain in terms we can understand why a man with £1,850 a year and with a wife and three children can get a grant but not a loan; why a man with £1,750 and a wife and one child can get a loan and not get a grant. If that distinction serves some social purpose it is, I am afraid, lost on me. That is the effect of the different limits which are imposed for grant and loan purposes. This seems clearly undesirable. The two should be aligned together in some more sensible way and people should not have to play skittles with the system in this way and find that as their income moves from one figure to another they become entitled to a grant but lose their entitlement to a loan. There is no sense in that. The fact that a man with twins gets another £100 does not seem to be a reason for depriving him of a loan but giving him a grant. There is no rationality.
On the question of the way in which these loan funds are used for housing. I have two further points to make. One is that the inspection system is totally inadequate. There are constant complaints about the shoddy workmanship in houses built by a small number of builders who do no credit to an industry whose standards are very high and most of which standards are maintained by the Construction Industry Federation. Unfortunately, the Government do not exercise any control to ensure that the small individual firms which do not adhere to these standards and which are not members of the federation, maintain standards.
The standards both of construction activity and of electrical wiring in some of these houses are terrifyingly bad. There is not adequate inspection. Indeed, in so far as there is inspection and in so far as the inspector says that the house is unacceptable in that form —and he does not do it often enough in some of these cases—the only effect may be that the refusal of the grant does not hurt the builder but hurts the person who is about to get the house and has to find the extra £280, or twice that sum of money if a supplementary grant is involved. That is not satisfactory. The Minister for Local Government should take power so that the local authorities will complete the work, as in fact they do in other cases where, say, the roof is defective and the landlord fails to repair it, and charge the builder. They might charge him an extra 20 per cent for overheads to encourage him to do the job properly in the first instance. It is unfortunate that that is not done. The law should be changed to get over this difficulty.
The money under the Local Loans Fund is not being used for the benefit of the purchasers but is used for the benefit of builders, not all of whom deserve to benefit from it in view of the fact that a small number of them do not maintain reasonable standards in their construction work. Indeed, the whole system of the grants is unsatisfactory in that one grant is payable to the builder, the other, only, to the person buying the house. In my view the grants should be payable only to the purchaser of the house and not to the builder at all.
Another point is that the system of local authority guarantees to building societies is one which tends to hive off a large proportion of the demand for loans to building societies because the local authorities, or at least some of them, operate a system under which the loan to be given can be 25 per cent greater if it is given by a building society on the local authority guarantee rather than if it is an SDA loan. This is a very clever way of pushing people away from local authorities to the building societies. It should not be necessary.
The effect, therefore, of the changes announced today will be quite possibly not so much to burden the Local Loans Fund by increasing the amount involved for loans but, because of the offsetting effect of increasing the limits further in relation to building society loans guaranteed by local authorities, the effect may be curiously to relieve the Local Loans Fund to a considerable degree because by increasing the limits in this way, many more people can make use of this guarantee because it means now that in Dublin and the other major urban centres a loan of up to £4,750 by building societies will be guaranteeable, if I understand the position correctly.
If that is the case, a whole category of houses will suddenly be brought within the guarantee scheme and people who might otherwise have had to make do with an SDA loan may be shifted to a building society. It will be interesting to see how this works out. However, it does not necessarily follow that increasing the limits will lead to an extra burden on the SDA fund. It is something that remains to be seen. They are the main points I want to make, I could, of course, develop the discussion on housing at greater length but I feel if I did so you, Sir, would find some good reason for inhibiting me and I do not wish to test your patience any longer.
