I will certainly quote some of them. I do not want to transgress the rules of order. The Ceann Comhairle would only rule me out of order for being repetitious and it would not be my intention to disobey the ruling of the Chair. It is very difficult for the Opposition and others to accept the Minister's undertaking that he will, in fact, introduce a Bill in the near future to abolish the creation of ground rents and make it easier for tenants to buy out existing ground rents. The Minister said he would do this in the near future and then he said "months". When pressed as to how many months he could not be specific.
I suggested 12 months or 24 months and the Minister would not concede that maybe I was right and that I had, as it were, come to the truth of the matter and this particular problem will now be put on the long finger. What I object to is the Minister's sly legislative subterfuge in putting in this amendment to Deputy Collins's wellreasoned motion: "That Dáil Éireann deplores the Government's inaction in relation to ground rents." That amendment is deliberately put in to ensure there will be no division because, when the Government introduce an amendment to a motion, that amendment takes precedence. That is why the Minister's amendment is unfair. It is almost as phoney as the recent amendment to the Verolme motion in which the Government called on themselves to do something. The only place the Government's decision can be is in legislation passed by this House and nowhere else. This amendment is, therefore, phoney. It should read: "approves the Government's intention to prevent the creation of further ground rents". There is no Government decision as such. A Government decision can only be found in legislation and there is no legislation. We reject the Minister's undertaking. We will not accept him as bona fide until such time as he introduces legislation—then and only then.
The Minister has called on me to quote a number of quotable undertakings to identify, as it were, the stream of statements about the Government's intention to abandon the creation of future ground rents. We know that in addition to the Minister for Justice the Minister for Local Government has called ground rents an abomination. Deputy Collins quoted a number of statements from the Government indicating their intention to abolish ground rents and to introduce legislation to prevent the creation of future ground rents.
To my certain knowledge a statement was issued by the Government propaganda services about the middle of 1974 to the effect that it was the Government's intention to prevent the creation of future ground rents. An article appeared in The Irish Independent of 16th May, 1975, written by Chris Glennon, one of the political correspondents of that newspaper, on this subject. It stated:
A plan to enable many thousands of householders to buy out their ground rents without having to face huge legal fees, has been worked out by Government legal experts and agreed to by the Cabinet.
If it has been worked out and agreed to by the Cabinet why has it not appeared in the House? Mr. Glennon, in fairness to him, did not get this information off the top of his head; this information was provided through the normal Government services. It was reasonable that he should print that information bona fide, which he did. If he had information to the effect that plans had been worked out by the Government legal experts and agreed to by the Cabinet there is no good reason why the plans should not be before this House.
Mr. Glennon's article continued:
It is based on a system used by the Landed Estates Court, which went out of existence about 50 years ago, but which had power to give clear title to land where titles had been lost or where decisions could not be based on old titles.
Parliamentary draftsmen are already putting the plan into the form of a Bill, which also will fulfil the Government's commitment to ban the creation of ground rents in the future.
Despite pressure from tenant groups like the Association of Combined Residents' Associations (ACRA), there will be no provision in the Bill for the abolition, without compensation, of existing rents, assuming new and controversial significance in housing estates built around all the major cities and towns in the last decade.
That raises a question of a very important nature: the longer the Minister puts off the bringing into this House of such a Bill the more new ground rents will be created. Today new ground rents are being created bringing further hardship on those people who buy houses because, even if the Minister brings in this Bill during the next year, they cannot do away with their ground rents as such. My information is that leases were created yesterday and today and will possibly be created tomorrow and the next day imposing a great hardship on people. It is most unfair.
I should like to quote from an interesting letter from the Department of Justice to my colleague, Deputy Seán Browne, our assistant Chief Whip. This letter announces the time when the Minister intends to introduce the Bill. The letter, dated 3rd February, 1975, was written to Deputy Browne arising out of representations to him from the residents in Enniscorthy, New Ross and Wexford town, where there is a serious ground rent problem. The letter stated:
Dear Deputy,
I am directed by the Minister for Justice, Mr. P. Cooney, T.D., to refer to your letter of 25th January concerning legislation on ground rents, particularly in relation to the position of——
At this stage the name of the individual on whose behalf Deputy Browne was making representations was mentioned.
——whose lease has eight years to run.
The Government intend to introduce legislation which will prohibit the creation of future ground rents on dwelling houses and the Minister hopes to be in a position to arrange for the circulation of the necessary Bill shortly after Easter.
I can understand why the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has a smile on his face because Easter Sunday, 1975, was on 30th March. How could we accept the undertaking of the Minister, given during the course of this debate, that he hopes to have this Bill before the House in the coming months? The letter continued:
As regards existing ground rents, the Landlord and Tenant Commission have recommended the extension to new classes of leases and yearly tenants of the right to acquire the fee simple that is given by the Landlord and Tenant (Ground Rents) Act, 1967. These recommendations are contained in the Report of the Commission, entitled "Report on Certain Questions arising under the Landlord and Tenant Acts, 1958 and 1967" (Prl. 59), copies of which are abtainable from the Government Publications Sale Office, GPO Arcade, Dublin I (Price 17½p plus postage). Legislation on the basis of these recommendations, which will have to "mesh in with" the legislation to implement the Government's intention to prohibit the creation of future ground rents, is at an advanced stage of preparation.
An advanced stage of preparation is one thing, but an advanced stage of passage through this House is another, and that is what motivated Deputy Collins to produce this worthwhile motion.
The Minister's unfair method of avoiding division was by introducing his own amendment which then becomes the motion. It is agreed by all that ground rent is an immoral rent. It is an abuse of our concept of social justice and a penal taxation. I would go so far as to categorise it in the same way as I would rates and the effect they have on urban private dwelling houses. We in Fianna Fáil over the year have been committed to the prevention of the creation of future ground rents and we illustrated that commitment through the passage of the 1967 Landlord and Tenant (Ground Rents) Act. That showed our bona fide commitment to the whole question of ground rents. We have committed ourselves to the abolition of rates on private dwellinghouses. All these things are nothing new as far as this side of the House is concerned.
The Constitution provides that private property shall be protected against outside challenge or interference. We accept that requirement without demur and it leaves us in the difficult situation of trying to evolve a system whereby existing ground rents can be bought out. You cannot abolish existing ground rents through any kind of instrument that can be brought into the House because I do not think it would be constitutionally on. We have been advised that is the position. It has been said people who own existing ground rents have a right which must be recognised and respected because the law and the Constitution should apply to everybody equally, to those who are subject to ground rents and who bear the fierce hardship of paying them, and to those who own ground rents as a particular type of investment. Both sides of the problem have to be appreciated.
The Minister has suggested he intends to introduce in his package of legislation in this area some method by which ground rents would be made easier on people, some system through which buying out ground rents would be made easier. I hope that what the Minister means is that the burden of the purchase would be reduced to a minimum. This is a very important point. As Deputy Collins has said, the 1967 Act left certain categories of leases untouched. We admit that piece of legislation proved to be not as worthy as we had thought it would be. We found that out after experiencing its workings over a period of years.
The Minister has been prevaricating about introducing a Bill to prevent the creation of future ground rents immediately. We are giving him until after the new Dáil term begins because we know that the legislative process is so blocked up that the prospect of having this legislation produced and debated in the Dáil before Christmas is not on: the time is not there, again due to the Government's mismanagement and mishandling of the legislative process. They have a great capacity for blaming the Opposition for obstrucing and holding up legislation. That is only another excuse for delaying legislation which is so badly needed in relation to the problem we are now discussing.
I suggest to the Minister that in the matter of existing ground rents we might evolve a system equivalent to the Land Commission. We might set up a board to buy out ground rents. This theory is undeveloped and it raises a spectre which would be of some concern to whichever Government happened to be in power—the cost of buying out blocks of ground rents. A board could be set up to examine the possibility of buying them out on a three- or four-year purchase. The serious matter is that the money would have to be forthcoming to give effect to the conclusions of such a board and my only concern would be the cost, which would run into millions of pounds. We must have our priorities right and I agree with the Minister's point of view that the priorities of the State demand that the State should not be asked to the detriment of other areas affected by lack of finance to buy out ground rents at enormous cost.
However, this is the only way we can overcome the constitutional difficulty. If individuals, groups of individuals or companies have invested money in ground rents, the only way that can be dealt with is by the State buying these blocks or individual ground rents. What one finds most offensive about ground rents is that an innocent house dweller goes into a house, having bought out the fee simple, and thinks he owns his property. One of the great tragedies is that, in fact, he does not, because the ground landlord, if the ground tenant refuses to pay the ground rent, can come in on that property and take from the value of its sale the amount due and owing to him by the ground tenant. This is an appalling hardship and a very wrong social concept. I am afraid we must all share in the blame for having allowed such a situation to continue.
The main burden of our argument during the course of this debate is that the longer the Minister postpones the introduction of the Bill to prevent the creation of future ground rents, he is guilty of their continued creation because they will continue to be created during that lapse. It is an appalling prospect, is most unfair and is something the Minister should remedy as a matter of urgency.
There is also the suggestion that the Opposition are in some way obstructing the passage of this type of legislation. In any reforming legislation the Minister for Justice has introduced in this House, or that introduced by any other Minister, which tragically has been very little, the Opposition have never been found wanting in co-operating. Of course, we put down amendments to the legislation. I do not think legislation should merely pass through this House as a matter of the Government's right. The Opposition have an obligation to scrutinise legislation to ensure that it goes far enough or perhaps guard against its going too far. That is the undertaking we have continuously given the Government. Unfortunately they are undertakings we have not had to honour too often, because the lack of legislation of a reforming nature has been tragic.
During the course of the preparation of the motion in the name of Deputy Collins we had many discussions with various groups and many individuals concerned about the whole problem of ground rents. If there was one common thread running through those discussions it was the feeling by ground tenants that they were paying money for nothing; that, as far as they were concerned, they were paying a barren tax. One pays a tax and expects at least to get some form of return, either to oneself or to others for the common good. But there is nothing good in ground rents; nobody has said anything in their favour over the past number of years; there is no case to be made for them. We believe on this side of the House we have discharged our obligation to those individuals and groups who came to see us by placing this motion on the Order Paper. The Minister's amendment is a gimmick; it is phoney in the extreme; it is wrong, unfair and unjust. The only way we can have a decision is through legislation.