asked the Minister for Local Government if he intends to increase the income limit for local authority building loans and grants.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Building Loans and Grants.
28.
I have no immediate proposals to increase this limit.
Did I hear the Minister aright, that he has no intention of increasing the limit.
I have no immediate proposals to increase this limit.
Surely the Minister does not consider anything over £2,050 too high for the purposes of a grant for a young couple? That figure of salary represents a net £1,700 take home pay after deductions for income tax. How could a person be expected to build a house on such a slave wage? After doing away with the grants across the board, the Minister has now a way of preventing what he is talking about, the builder collecting. How about the individual?
A brief supplementary, please.
As regards the people who will be building houses, most of them will be getting the supplementary grant as most of them qualify for it. It is a fact that even this year we already have a tremendous number of applications for the grant with both the income limit and the amount of loan which is given, £4,500. So, it must be useful to a great many people. If there was a dropping off to the extent that nobody was taking it up, there might be a great deal more strength in Deputy Callanan's argument but as of now the position is that there are and there have been every year more people applying for grants than there is money available to give to them.
Would the Minister agree with the statement in the paper purporting to come from Cork City and County Manager that there was a 50 per cent reduction in the number of applications?
No, I would not agree.
He is telling lies, is he?
No. As a matter of interest, I have arranged to have the man in question asked how he arrived at those figures.
So, he was telling lies?
No. Like a number of people here, he talks about something maybe and he is not quite sure of it.
My information from our county is that applications have dropped. The local authority loan will shortly become a farce. If the bank rate continues to fall, the Minister will agree that there will be nothing in the loan for anybody.
The Deputy is imparting information rather than seeking it.
With your permission, I should like to answer Deputy Callanan when he has finished his speech.
I do not make speeches here. I am asking a simple question. Surely the Minister does not consider £2,050 a realistic income limit in this day and age?
That question has already been asked.
What I did say was that there are more people applying for loans than there is money to give them. Even with the immense amount of money the State is giving for SDA loans each year, there is still a bigger demand than it is possible to fill and this is true of Galway as well as other parts of the country.
The Minister introduced the present figure of £2,350 in May, 1973. Having regard to the national wage agreements that have taken place in the meantime surely the figure should be increased at this stage?
I would agree that if we had an unlimited amount of money it should be possible to increase both the amount of loan and the qualifying limit and there would be people, including myself, who would be delighted to raise the figures to a much higher level but that would be very poor comfort to those at the bottom of the list who are waiting to get a loan and who apparently are satisfied that the amount of loan they are getting and the income limit are suitable to them.
Question No. 29.
Further arising——
Question No. 29 is called.
I bow to the Chair.
It was raised sometime early in 1973.
In May, 1973. Inflation was not running at its present rate.
And they were not building the number of houses they are building now.
It is beginning to catch up on the Minister.
In 1972 it was 21,700.
Wait until tomorrow.
Fianna Fáil's mañana. We have been listening to that all the time. I have been listening since I came here about the terrible things that will happen, mañana. That is the motto of Fianna Fáil—"Wait until tomorrow; we will see what will happen tomorrow". It has caught up with you now. Every year we have built more than 25,000 houses and they need not be talking about tomorrow because we built them this year too.
When will you pay for what you have built? Will the Minister answer that one?
Will Deputies please allow Questions to proceed. I have called Question No. 29 on a number of occasions.
With your permission, may I say that apparently we are building too many local authority houses, because on the Adjournment Debate the Leader of the Opposition said there were too many local authority houses being built? Let Fianna Fáil Deputies swallow that one and go down the country with it.