I have given permission to Deputy Fitzpatrick to raise the subject matter of Question No. 5 of Wednesday, 3 December 1980. The Deputy has 10 minutes and the Minister five minutes.
Adjournment Debate. - County Cavan Rent Increases.
(Cavan-Monaghan): At Question Time today I asked the Minister for the Environment to give particulars of the increase in the rent of a person living in County Cavan whose name I gave, and if he would take steps to have the rent reduced as it is beyond the tenant's capacity to pay. The person I had in mind is a widow with two qualifying children and other children in the house who, while they are over the qualifying age, are still not bringing in any income. The Minister replied that the rent of this woman in 1979 was £3.42p. In accordance with the ministerial rent scheme for 1980, the correct rent for that tenant had risen to £16.51p. In fact, it was raised in her case to £21.97p but that was a mistake and I am not making any point out of it. I am taking it that the rent has been increased in this case from £3.42p in 1979 to £16.51p in 1980. Now, the only income that this woman has is a widow's pension to keep herself and her children. The only increase, or alteration, in her means between 1979 and 1980, when the increase took place, was the increase in the widow's pension. I have not the exact figures for that but, as we know, it about took care of inflation. As a matter of fact, inflation went ahead so rapidly that it did not cover inflation for the full year. This woman finds herself with an increase in rent of something like £12 per month. I am putting it to the Minister that that is unreasonable.
I have noticed that in my constituency there has been a dramatic increase in tenants' rents, which seems to hit hardest in the case of isolated cottages where the people are dependent on social welfare. That is because, for the first time the entire social welfare payment is taken into account this year. The Minister, in the course of his reply stated, by implication, that there was a hardship clause in the tenant's rent scheme of 1980 and that it was a matter for Cavan County Council to operate this hardship scheme and reduce the rent. All I can say is that I am surprised that the Minister should make that case, at a time when local authorities, including Cavan County Council, are starved of revenue, when they were pinned down by the Minister's Department last year to an increase of 10 per cent while inflation is 20 per cent. One cannot expect local authorities in that situation to be very generous when, in fact, they are having to dispense with the services of some road workers and put other road workers on a three-day week.
I am asking the Minister to amend the iniquitious 1980 rent scheme in so far as it applies to people who are dependent on social welfare. For all practical purposes this woman is dependent on social welfare. The Minister stated in the course of his reply that she also has land. I do not want to identify the lady, but the Minister knows the valuation of the land is £7.50 and the estimated income from the land on a poor law valuation basis is £2 per week. The fact of the matter is that she is living on snipe grass and that the actual income in her case is nil.
I put down this question for oral answer because of my experience and because I know that some rents have been increased much more than this one. Some of them have been increased from £5, £6 or £7 a month to as much as £40 a month. According to any standards, that is a brutal increase from one year to another. Why should these people who are living on the poverty line and below it be asked to pay five times their existing rent? That is what is happening. I have a file inches thick from this woman of letters saying that she cannot afford to pay this rent. Other people throughout the country, and I am sure in every county in Ireland, have the same story. The Minister cannot deny that people living in isolated cottages and depending on social welfare are the worst hit. It is most unfair to hit them.
When the Minister is replying I should like him to explain what change was made between 1979 and 1980 in the scheme for fixing rents of local authority tenants and particularly those who are dependent on social welfare. There was a dramatic increase, as this question shows, and there must have been a significant change in the machinery for calculating the rents. In this case the only change was an increase in a widow's pension. That increase was not generous by any means and it was said that it was intended to cover inflation.
As the Deputy should be aware, I have no function in relation to the setting of rents. In the case of individual tenants this is a matter for the housing authority who have an absolute discretion to reduce rents where conditions of hardship so warrant. The national rent schemes for local authority dwellings are worked out in the course of consultations between my Department and the Department of Finance with representatives of local authorities and the National Association of Tenants' Organisations. Arrangements are already in train for the preparation of a rents scheme for 1981. Recently I received representations from the National Association of Tenants' Organisations about the impact of changes made in the 1980 scheme in the case of recipients of social assistance similar to the case mentioned by the Deputy. The representations will be fully and sympathetically considered when the rents scheme for 1981 is being formulated.
I have not got time to go into this in detail. A circular letter H14/18 issued to the local authorities on 26 March 1980 explaining in detail the changes made. The main change was to cut out anomalies. Let us look at this in its proper context. The average rent of a local authority house throughout the country today is £3.50 a week. The subsidy the taxpayer has to pay for local authority houses is just over £60 million a year. I receive very few complaints about this scheme. In my own constituency I received none. I have defended the scheme. I have stated the facts about the scheme. I outlined what they were and I received no direct representation from anybody in connection with them. My Department did. The National Association of Tenants' Organisations brought to my notice cases similar to that mentioned by the Deputy. It will be looked into when we are formulating the 1981 scheme.
The manager in Laois-Offaly is very sympathetic in cases of genuine hardship and I have no doubt that the Cavan county manager is equally sympathetic. There is a section in the scheme under which he can adjust the rent accordingly in any case of hardship.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 4 December 1980.