Deputy Mac Giolla on 29 June last moved that leave be given to introduce the Bill and the motion was opposed by the Government. In accordance with Standing Orders, the Bill appears in Private Members' Time today. The Deputy who moved the Bill, Deputy Mac Giolla, may make a short statement not exceeding five minutes. The spokesman of any party opposing the Bill may make a statement of similar length and a Member of the Government will then make a statement.
Private Members' Business. - Landlord and Tenant (Ground Rents) (Termination) Bill, 1983: First Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed:
"That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to provide for the termination of ground rents in the interests of social justice and in accordance with the exigencies of the common good."
If this Bill is supported it will effect a long overdue reform in Irish land law legislation. It will end both the principle and the practice of an outmoded feudal concept and allow Irish democracy to be exercised for the first time on a relic of the colonial past. It will do more than that. It will end an ongoing injustice against hundreds of thousands of Irish people who have been battened upon by land speculators, avaricious people and opportunists in the legal profession since the foundation of the State.
Legislation to date has conceded the principle of termination of ground rent but it has devised schemes designed to feather the nests of the landlord class who have exploited householders over the years. The buying out procedures introduced in 1967, and repeated in the 1978 legislation, involve the giving of a golden handshake to the ground landlord. As well it involves spending taxpayers' money in handing out titles over the counter to those persons who can be intimidated or enticed into the process. That process has failed.
Despite the prohibition on future ground rents contained in the 1978 legislation, out of 400,000 people entitled to buy out, only 10 per cent have availed of it. The nest feathering aspect of this long overdue reform is also illustrated by the half measures contained in the 1979 legislation. Eviction for non-payment was abolished in 1978, years after the ACRA campaign had killed it stone dead because they could not succeed in doing so in any case. The landlords could still use the courts established by the people to threaten them with sheriff's seizures and even imprisonment for continuing with the strike against this unjust and unjustifiable rent.
As recently as May 18 of this year four jail sentences were imposed on Tallaght residents at Kilmainham Court and at Sutton Court. On May 26 three housewives were sentenced to from ten to 14 days in jail for non-payment. In fact, only today 1,200 signatures were handed in to a number of Deputies — Deputies from the south west area, myself and Deputy De Rossa — from people in the Tallaght area who were subjected to harassment and intimidation by a company in that area owned by the McInerney group. Thousands of cases have clogged the courts as the McInerneys and the Gallaghers and even the Irish Life Assurance Company — all behind various front names — have sought to intimidate householders into payment.
This Bill covers only those entitled already to the protection of the various Ground Rent Acts from 1967 to 1978. It is the best possible start in that it sets the date for total termination of those rents and the ending of the many complications involved. After this there will be a need to legislate to help the many thousands of tenants on expired ground rent leases who are not protected by existing legislation. These include householders whose leases have expired and who can be and are asked by the likes of the Earl of Pembroke for the full value of the premises they and their families have lived in for generations.
This category also includes people whose rateable valuation is less than their ground rent and who are thereby bereft of any protection. All the parties in this Dáil have pledged themselves to move against ground rent to a greater or lesser degree. This consensus should be exercised on this occasion if the Dáil is to be seen as effective in legislating against this admitted social wrong.
The Deputy has less than one minute.
I can anticipate that any Bill like this one will be objected to by propertied interests and that the Irish Landowners' Convention, as well as various ministerial speech writers, will be quick to cry "confiscation" and to say that not even this pariah of the private property spectrum can be got rid of without compensation. I agree that compensation should be paid and so does ACRA but it should be paid to the aggrieved parties, that is, the householders who have borne the weight of this unjust feudal tribute over the years. Happily the present Bill is more than covered by the terms of the Constitution in that Article 43 on private property states that the exercise of rights to private property ought, in a civil society, to be regulated by the principles of social justice.
The Deputy should now conclude.
Accordingly the State may as occasion requires delimit by law the exercise of the said rights with a view to reconciling their exercise with the exigencies of the common good. I suggest that this Bill would not in any way be unconstitutional but directly in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. I therefore propose that leave be given to introduce the Bill.
Limerick East): I think it would be fair to say that, if existing ground rents could be terminated simply by the enactment into law of a Bill declaring them to have been terminated without unacceptable consequences or implications, we would not still be discussing the matter; this Government or any Government over the past ten years or more would have done so. The fact is that, as a practical matter, existing ground rents can be terminated or abolished only by purchase. The single alternative to purchase is confiscation. It does not matter in what clothing a proposal for confiscation is presented, any scheme for the termination of existing ground rents that does not provide for the due payment of fair purchase prices to ground landlords amounts to confiscation.
The scheme may propose a termination date, as some people call it, some time in the future and may propose that the ordinary payments of ground rents falling due in the meantime are to be treated as the ground landlord's purchase money. However, payments of rents are not payment of purchase money. The ground landlord's property right is no greater than that of anyone else and likewise it is no less than that of anyone else. Until he is paid the purchase price, he is entitled to be paid his rent as it falls due.
The same holds for a scheme that would declare the fee simple to have vested in the ground rent tenant. That would propose that the parties thereafter would negotiate on purchase price. If the former ground rent tenant already had his fee simple, why should he negotiate with anyone? If, on the other hand, the payment of the purchase price is really intended to be made how can any such scheme be preferable to the Land Registry scheme which is still open to those who genuinely want to terminate the ground rents on the dwelling houses?
At the technical level, any scheme which proposes the abolition of ground rent by waving a legislative wand is open to one serious objection, that is, the difficulty and uncertainty it would create in the future. If a blanket change of status is to be conferred by legislation, it is essential that the scope of the legislation be quite clear. It is not always quite clear who is and who is not a ground rent tenant. Any one who was affected by such legislation, and who subsequently tried to sell his house or raise a loan on it, could perhaps find that he had been landed with an expensive legal tangle.
However, technical objections to this Bill, while they may be important, do not go to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that confiscation, whether open or disguised, is wrong in principle. I find it necessary to say this over and over again. I am not enthusiastic about referring to the Constitution in this context. Of course, confiscation would be unconstitutional. We have the opinion of successive Attorneys General on that. To those who see the Constitution as a merely technical obstacle to the abolition of ground rents without compensation, and who believe that a referendum on a proposal for the amendment of the Constitution is the way forward, I say this is not so. Confiscation is wrong in principle and would remain wrong regardless of constitutional considerations.
I have already said that purchase is the only legitimate way to abolish ground rents. It is now clear that the majority of persons accept this. Already upwards of 40,000 persons have abolished their ground rents by purchase under the Land Registry scheme. Many more are in the process of doing so. Apart from the Land Registry scheme, still more have bought out or are buying out in private conveyancing as well as under the purchase scheme which applies to ground rent tenants of local authorities.
The issue here in the vast majority of cases is that people with surburban property want to acquire the fee simple by buying out their ground rent. At present the general run is £12, £15, or £20 in ground rent. This can be bought out by a capital sum of somewhere between £130 and £160in toto depending on the ground rent.
As for the comments made by the Deputy on the rights of private property, what we are talking about here is people who have ownership of their own houses and a ground landlord who has the right to collect rent. This means there is a conflict between interested parties both in possession of private property. I do not follow the line of argument the Deputy put forward.
We are continuing our opposition to the Bill.
A Cheann Comhairle——
The Deputy does not have the right to reply. He may ask one question.
I have two.
Put them into one.
The Minister referred to confiscation. Does he believe that this Parliament and Government do not already have the right to confiscation in regard to private property, whether or not with compensation? Local authorities have CPO rights which are rights of confiscation with compensation——
A question, please, Deputy.
Why does the Minister believe that there cannot be similar rights of confiscation in relation to ground rents, which almost every Deputy is against because it is a socially unjust system?
(Limerick East): I mentioned this point previously when we discussed local authority compulsory purchase orders. Obviously in such cases property is acquired and compensation is paid out of taxpayers' money. As I said previously, it is a most peculiar ideological argument for a Deputy who purports to have a socialist philosophy to raise that the taxpayers in general, including pensioners, the poor and people in corporation houses should be levied millions of pounds——
Do we have——
Order, please.
(Limerick East):——in taxation, estimated somewhere between £40 million and £80 million, so that people who own their own houses could benefit individually to £150 or £160 a head. That is what we are talking about.
I am asking about confiscation.
(Limerick East): It is a most peculiar ideological argument, seeing where it is coming from.
Do we already have the right to confiscate——
I am putting the question: "That leave to introduce the Bill be granted".
Will those who are demanding a division please rise in their places?
Deputy Mac Giolla and Deputy De Rossa rose.
As fewer than ten Deputies have risen, in accordance with Standing Orders I declare the motion lost and the names of those standing in their places will be entered in the proceedings of the debate.
Another victory for law reform.