Would it be possible to have this Bill postponed until the proposed Town Planning Bill has been considered, as it stultifies the Town Planning Bill?
Public Business. - Housing Bill, 1929—Third Stage.
The Seanad went into Committee.
Cathaoirleach
It would be possible to postpone any Bill if the House so desired.
I think this Bill is too important to postpone it. There are many people looking forward to the passing of this Bill, and I think we should go on with it.
Sections 1 and 2 agreed to.
I move:—
Section 3, sub-section (1). To add at the end of the sub-section a new paragraph as follows:—
(e) to any person being the tenant or owner of an agricultural holding which constitutes his sole or main source of livelihood and the poor law valuation of which does not exceed £15, erecting on the said holding a house to which this Act applies a grant not exceeding £60 in respect of the said house.
That applies to a section of the community who are a very hardworking and industrious people. Under the existing economic conditions of agriculture they find it very hard to make ends meet. Their income naturally is very small, and at the very outside would be only in or about £80, out of which they have to pay rents and rates value for at least £20. They have to pay for artificial manures and feeding stuff for their stock, which means that eventually they have only about a pound a week to live on. Consequently it would be very hard on these poor people to embark on building houses for themselves. Under the Bill as it stands a grant of £45 would be no inducement to them whatever. These houses have to be built to a special standard. The houses they are living in at present are undoubtedly in a very poor condition, as I am sure most of the Senators are aware. They are low-lying, as a rule, thatched cottages with mud floors. As the Bill stands it seems to me it is only intended to benefit cities or larger towns, that is judging by the facilities or grants that have been given to utility societies or town-planning bodies. I have no doubt those societies are doing good work in the cities and are deserving of that special consideration, but the farmers cannot make any use of these organisations or societies, for they do not exist in the country at all. Another important aspect is that State aid should be confined to the poor. As the Bill stands the most well-to-do people in the land have an equal claim with the small farmer, and very little consideration is given to the small farmer class, in view of the fact that they can never vacate the houses they are living in unless they get special consideration from the State to which they are entitled. I would ask that they be given the assistance they require to enable them to build houses.
I beg to support the amendment. It has been very carefully drafted with the object of securing that the people who are intended to have the special benefit of this should only benefit to the extent of £15, which would be given to people who are really working men. The only distinction between them and the ordinary wage-earner is that they have the means of constant employment. My notion of the grounds upon which State grants can be justified is that in addition to the benefits which they confer on the individual the work to be done is also a benefit to the public. You provide houses for the poor working people in order that healthy families may be brought up and the State advanced in that way. If that is the principle, and I think it is, and I think the Minister will agree with me that is the principle, then there is no class more deserving of special consideration than the small farmers, working men who live on holdings of less than £15 valuation, and whose sole or main source of livelihood is their farms. For the information of Senators who may not be very well acquainted with the conditions of rural districts in the west and south of Ireland, I would like to say that assistance for the rebuilding of the small country farmhouses would be of the greatest possible national benefit. A great number of them are thatched houses—sod-roofed, covered by thatch—with crevices and rat holes. They have existed for hundreds of years.
I have often heard of and seen families wiped out by tuberculosis, and the reason always given to us was: "Oh, consumption was in the family." I am speaking in the presence of a very eminent medical man and I offer the opinion with all respect that the consumption was not in the family but in the house. Therefore, I think it would be of the greatest possible benefit if some special encouragement were given to the small farmers, workmen who work on land—which is their true description. I think it would be of the greatest possible advantage if some encouragement were given to them to build new houses. It would be an advantage not merely to themselves in greater comfort, but an advantage to the country, because we would escape the scourge of consumption which is ravaging this land. In this amendment we do not seek to make any serious inroad on the small sum of £200,000 which is available. What we want is to call the attention of Parliament to the fact that these people are in a special class, and to bring them into the queue so that they may be considered by the Minister and by Parliament in a particular way, and that due care and thought will be given to the peculiar necessities of their case. When larger measures are introduced by the Minister they would then be in a favourable position for special consideration.
I do not think that those who occupy the larger farms are entitled to any special consideration in respect of free grants. They may be entitled to special consideration in respect of loans, but, speaking as one of that class myself, I do not think that the larger farmers are entitled to free grants, as distinct from loans and other facilities, but I do think that the smaller farmers, not merely for themselves but in the public interest, should be considered. For that reason, I ask the House to accept this amendment, not because it means an expenditure of money, not because it trenches on the artisan class—we do not expect very much out of this £200,000—but because theirs is a special case deserving of special consideration and special legislation. It may be said they are entitled to £45. What we ask for them is £60, and the reason for that is that the house of a small farmer must of necessity be a somewhat larger house than that of an artisan, for portion of the work of the farm has to be done in the house. That is the reason why I ask that this little concession should be given to the small farmers. Some of them are inarticulate at the moment. How long they will so remain is another question, because the people for whom Senator MacEllin speaks in this motion are really the Irish nation. I would submit the amendment to the consideration and, if I might use the expression, the indulgence of this House.
I support the motion with one or two provisos, and in doing so I am in the unfavourable position that I am not able to catch any votes because of my support of it. I consider it has sufficient merit to deserve support, and to get it disinterestedly. I think it is very difficult to confine the valuation to £15 as that is too high. The Minister knows that in the Gaeltacht there are houses which are unhygienic, built under the level of the roads, with cesspools emptying into the houses, and the medical officers are unable to condemn them though they are richly deserving of condemnation, because if they were condemned their occupiers would have nowhere else to go. If you reduce the valuation to £10 it would give a chance to those people whose houses the medical officer would condemn if he could afford to condemn them. It is sad to think there are houses unfit for human habitation but the medical officer cannot condemn them because it would mean putting the people out on the roadside, though they would be far healthier on the roadside than in these cesspools and tuberculosis-breeding homes. In these districts good houses can be built for £60. These people do the work themselves. Some of them are all-round men. Their forefathers built the houses, and if they had an overseer to direct them in making the foundations damp-proof, and raising the houses from the level of the manure heaps, I think a remedy could be found without much expenditure.
This is an ordinary Housing Bill and not a Bill to deal specially with congestion in the country, or to deal with any special public health problem in the country. With regard to Senator Gogarty's references, the special housing legislation promised for the Gaeltacht is entirely separate from this. I want to be clear on that. If there are specially congested housing districts in the West special legislation has been promised to deal with that. I want to dispose of things that have been brought across the discussion so that we can get down to the main question. I want to dispose of the Gaeltacht question involved in that. That is a special matter in regard to which the Minister for Lands and Fisheries is at present in discussion with the Department of Finance. In connection with proposals dealing with the sanitary side of things, the sanitary authorities have their own means and responsibilities for getting rid of insanitary conditions. This is a pure housing matter, and the objection to the Senator's amendment is that the persons for whom he proposes to increase the grants are the persons who if people are to be hit at all will be least hit by the reduction of any grants.
Experience in house building, so far as the administration of the Acts goes, shows that owing to the economic circumstances to which the Senator refers, such building is cheaper in those areas than in other areas. There is no site value involved, and stone, sand, and often lime can be conveniently got, and without paying for them. In addition to that the unskilled labour involved in the building of a house is often provided by the recipient of the grant, so that the people for whom this increased grant is asked are the people who can best get on with the reduced grant. The question as to whether there ought to be a grant of £45 for such people in those circumstances is arguable in view of those facts. We have a very special housing problem to deal with, practically all over the country. We do not want to put the country up against the towns in these matters, but from the sanitary and social point of view there is a burning problem in the towns.
Well-to-do people are getting grants while poor people in the country are not assisted in the way they deserve to be.
There is no use in saying that well-to-do people and big landlords are getting this money. If they are satisfied with love in a cottage and a maximum of 1,250 square feet to live in, there are no restrictions on them from getting this grant.
It appears that the poorer people in the country are not entitled to any consideration.
This is an ordinary Bill. The Senator speaks of people living in the country in houses with a £15 valuation, but the problem there is very different from what it is in the towns.
Does this Bill debar farmers of £10 valuation from getting grants?
No; they can get a grant of £45.
There is one point I would like to put before the Senator who moved the amendment. There is nothing to prevent seven or more persons of the class whom he wants to benefit from forming a public utility society and receiving in respect of one house £60. It is a very desirable development that instead of an individual seeking the assistance of the State for his own house independently of everybody else, that a group of people should form a public utility society even for country houses. It is a very simple matter to form a public utility society. That society could make a claim for a subsidy under this Act. I submit it is a very desirable procedure, and the Senators who are backing this amendment should promote it. There is nothing whatever to prevent any association with which Senator MacEllin is connected from forming a public utility society without expense and getting the grant of £60 for the building of houses. If there is only one house needed in a locality under the jurisdiction of the society, then they get £60 for that house, but you would have this advantage, that there is a group of people showing an interest in housing and that that group is exercising some sort of supervision over the way the grant is expended. In every way it is desirable that the public utility society system should be encouraged even for the class of houses the Senator seeks to promote. You get not only the £60 subsidy, but you have got the co-operative effort, which the Senator will probably agree is a desirable one, to encourage, particularly in that part of the country in which a Senator is interested. Co-operation takes many forms, and this is a co-operative effort for housing. It is a mistake to assume that public utility societies could only operate in the towns. It is perfectly open to them to operate in the country as well as in the towns and cities.
Amendment put, and on a show of hands declared carried.
I move:—
Section 3, sub-section (3). To insert before the sub-section a new sub-section as follows:—
(3) Whenever the Minister is satisfied that a house in respect of which a grant may be made under this Act was erected for occupation by a particular person in substitution for another house which, while occupied by such person, was rendered uninhabitable by coast erosion, the grant (if any) made by the Minister under this Act in respect of such house may exceed the appropriate limit specified in the first sub-section of this section, but shall not exceed such of the limits specified in Part I. (exclusive of the Note appended thereto) of the Second Schedule to the Housing Act, 1925 (No. 12 of 1925), as is appropriate to such grant.
This amendment has reference to the damage done by coast erosion. On the Second Reading the Minister was good enough to promise that he would consider an amendment by which the grants under the Housing Act of 1925 might be applied to the particular class of people who have been deprived of their houses by the action of the sea. The amendment applies only to the occupiers of the houses—that is, an occupier can build a house, or a public utility society can build a house for him, but it does not apply to the owner of a house unless the owner of the house builds a house for the person who occupied a house destroyed. I hope that the House will favourably consider this amendment so as to enable an increased grant of £60 to be given to those people who have suffered.
I think we might accept this amendment. Its intention is to come to the assistance of the unfortunate people who suffered by the act of God at Greystones. It is framed in such a way that it is only the people who have actually suffered can benefit.
What happened was not altogether the act of God. It was, in part at least, due to the ignorance of the old Local Government Board, which built a rotten harbour, and when the wind came it took it away.
Might I correct the Senator? The Local Government Board never built a harbour.
I grant you they did not, but they put certain blocks of concrete into the sea at unsuitable places.
It is the Board of Works that built the harbour.
Yes, the Board of Works, but that does not take away from the fact that it was done under the sanction of the old regime.
Is this amendment retrospective, or will it apply to houses destroyed by coast erosion in the future? If it does, I do not think we will know the ultimate result.
To benefit under this amendment the building of the houses to replace those that have been destroyed must be completed before the 1st February next.
I desire to support the amendment.
Cathaoirleach
The Minister accepts the amendment with the permission of the House.
Amendment put and agreed to.
Question—"That Section 3, as amended, stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
Sections 4, 5 and 6 put and agreed to.
On Section 7 I would like to know if the Minister is in a position to make any statement regarding the remission of rates in those cases where that has not been given so far. If he is not in a position to make such a statement I do not want to press him, but I would like to know whether he is or not.
I am not in a position to say whether any changes have taken place in County Dublin, in which the Senator was interested, except to say that the matter will be considered by the County Council.
Can the Minister say whether the Dublin Commissioners will give consideration to those cases which did not get the remission?
The position in the City of Dublin is this, that under the first two schemes the Commissioners, in assisting private persons, gave both remission of rates and grants. Under subsequent schemes they gave a choice to the persons concerned as to whether they would take a grant equal to the Government grant or take the remission of rates. After the first two schemes, when building costs had gone down to a certain extent and when there was more of a demand for the limited amount of money available, they decided to give either the one or the other, and the houses to which the Senator has referred came in under the third scheme, so that there is no prospect of that situation being reviewed. The persons who got houses under that scheme must have known exactly the terms on which the houses were built, and the terms under which they were obtaining them.
Is the Minister aware that in the case of houses built in Cork under the same Bill and at the same time the Commissioner, appointed by the same Minister, gave the full benefit, while the Dublin Commissioners gave the people concerned the choice of one or the other? Why was there this difference between Dublin and Cork under the one Department and under the one Act?
It is not a question of being under the one Department and being under the one Act; it is a question of the administration in Dublin by the people who are responsible and who were dealing with Dublin problems. In the same way, Cork has its own problems and its own administration. I am not aware that there is the difference that the Senator spoke of, but I am aware that certain definite conditions were arranged by the Commissioners in Dublin for assisting house-building and that these conditions have been carried out in respect of people who knew what the position was. The amount of money at the disposal of the Commissioners is such that they can only afford to give to private persons a sum equal to the grant the State gives, or to give them the remission of rates.
I had better try to make the position clear to the Seanad. A building scheme was started in the City of Dublin five or six years ago, and the first persons to avail of it got grants and the remission of rates. Then there was a for a period. Some other houses were then built by the same builder in the same district and on the same plan. These houses got grants, but the people who bought them got no remission of rates. Since that remission of rates was refused that building scheme has gone on further, and the further houses are getting the remission of rates, with the grants that were given in the case of the early buildings. Those unfortunate people who stepped in the middle and who bought their houses through banks, through public utility societies and through insurance societies find themselves in the centre of a big block of houses, and their houses, which number twenty-two, are the only houses in Dublin that are not getting the benefit of the Act. On my advice these people wrote to Cork and found out that the Commissioner there gave both the remission of rates and grants to people building or buying new houses. Is it fair that the Local Government Department, which has control of the finances of this Act and of the previous Housing Act, should say that these people in the Phibsboro' district should get no remission of rates, while the people around them, who came there both before and after them, are getting the remission? I want to know why that mean type of economy is indulged in in the case of people who were enterprising enough to step in and buy houses, and why they should be deprived of what everybody else is getting. I ask the Seanad if that is fair. If the Minister wishes I will produce for him letters from Cork stating that a remission of rates was granted in the case of houses there.
The Senator speaks about meanness——
It is a mean economy. That is my view.
He referred to the meanness of the Commissioners in their attitude on this matter——
What I want to know is if it is true?
Well, the Senator has made statements which suggest to the Seanad that certain things are true, and now he asks me if these things are true. In the City of Dublin to persons building private houses the Commissioners gave, as they were entitled to do, a grant equal to the amount given by the State, plus the remission of rates in respect of the earlier schemes. But after a certain period they stopped that, and in the case of all schemes that came on after, as well as in the case of private persons who wanted to build, they gave the choice of taking a grant or a remission of rates. If the Senator wants to suggest that, having adopted the system by which they simply gave an alternative, subsequent to that they went to other people and gave them grants plus remission of rates, I would like him to state that definitely as a fact, because he has been simply suggesting it. From my knowledge of it that is quite untrue, and if that impression is to be created in the minds of Senators I think it ought to be created by a very definite and considered statement.
I will give the Minister the official letter from the Cork Corporation.
Cathaoirleach
We are talking about Dublin, Senator.
I was drawing a comparison to show that the Commissioner in Cork, in order to encourage building, gave all the concessions that it was in his power to give, and that in Dublin the Commissioners did not give them, and I want to know why not.
Cathaoirleach
The Minister has been very explicit about it. He said that the remission of rates was given in substitution for the grant, and he wants to know if you can state whether the grant and the remission of rates were given contrary to the provisions of the Act under which grants were given.
I will send the Minister all the correspondence, and I will ask him to go into it. I want to know why the people in Phibsboro' are treated differently from the people in Cork.
There would be no use in the Senator sending me the papers because he has sent them already and I have already replied to him in the same explicit way as I have done here.
Cork got the concession and Dublin did not.
And let it be understood that the poorer section in Dublin did not get the benefit that other people have got in regard to the remission of rates.
Sections 7, 8, 9 and the Title ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Seanad went out of Committee.
Bill reported.
With reference to the remaining stages I am in this position: Since the beginning of the month I have been unable to make allocations of money to persons, building and applying for grants, and I would be glad to have the remaining stages taken at the earliest possible moment. I do not know whether it would be possible to get them this evening.
That could be done next Wednesday if a motion is put down to suspend Standing Orders.
Cathaoirleach
Yes.