Housing (Gaeitacht) Bill, 1929—Report Stage.

Mr. Connolly

I move:—

Section 7, sub-section (2). To insert before the sub-section a new sub-section as follows:—

"(2) No building grant or improving grant shall be made under this Act to any person

(a) who is in receipt of either a salary or pension (other than an old age pension or disability allowance) from the State or any public body or from the British Government exceeding £25 per annum;

(b) the poor law valuation of whose holding exceeds £10."

On the Committee Stage yesterday I had an amendment down involving three clauses which were discussed at considerable length. On the suggestion of some members of the House it was left over until to-day for the purpose of having it considered again. As Senators will notice, the amendment has been altered. Clause (a) has been altered and clause (b), as it stood yesterday, is eliminated, so that what was clause (c) now becomes clause (b). There is not much need to add anything to what I said previously, except perhaps to explain the change in clause (a). The main purpose of that clause is to prevent pensioners benefiting under the building or improving grants in preference to people who need them more, and the pension has got to be over £25 per annum before they are debarred. The mention of the British Government might perhaps require some explanation. The only reason for that is that ex-Army pensioners from the Great War would not be covered under the clause relating to salary or pension from the State, or from a public body, and it is simply to bring such pensioners into the same category as pensioners in Ireland, or who derive a pension from the Saorstát or any public body within the Saorstát. The clause which appeared on yesterday's paper limiting the giving of a building grant or an improving grant to those who had an income of over £52 per annum, I found it necessary to withdraw, not because I do not believe that the principle is right, but because I realise, as the House realised yesterday, that certain serious hardships might be inflicted upon those with very moderate incomes. I found it impossible in the time to get a formula which would adequately cover what I had in mind, and I have been forced accordingly to withhold it from this amendment. I might mention that the difficulty has been largely caused owing to the fact that the Report Stage is taken within twenty-four hours or less of the Committee Stage, and that does not, in my judgment, give an opportunity to secure what we want in a clause of this nature. At all events, I found it impossible to get such a clause as I would like to see embodied in the Bill.

Clause (b) of the amendment remains as it was yesterday—"the poor law valuation of whose holding exceeds £10." That is self-explanatory. Of course we have had assurances from the Minister that he and his officials will look after the interpretation of the Bill and that all will be well. I submit that that is not as it should be, that after all we are supposed to be perfecting legislation in such a form that it will be framed, as far as possible, so that no Minister or no administrative official can interpret the laws of the Saorstát as he wants. It is for that reason and in order to protect the public that we are here. I suggest that these two clauses would improve the Bill considerably from the point of view that I argued yesterday, namely that those who are in most need of the facilities, or the help that the Bill aims to give, will be protected, and that those who are pensioners, or who may have incomes, and who are not really in such bad need of the help of the Bill will be prevented from getting it until the other people are dealt with. That is the spirit behind the proposal in the amendment, and I submit it to the House for its favourable consideration.

Mr. Comyn

I beg to second the amendment and to urge, as far as I can, its absolute necessity. The Minister said last night that his object was to help the man who can help himself—the fear saidhbhir The object is to help the fear bocht. I think the philosophy underlying what the Minister said has this imperfection, that the well-to-do man ought not to be assisted out of State funds at the expense of the poor man who cannot help himself, unless, at the same time, you do something to help the poor man. The Minister also stated last night that in some observations I made I did not seem to understand how this Bill would work out. Coming as I do from the Gaeltacht, and with a little experience, both in the economy of the Gaeltacht and of the building of houses of the description which is here contemplated, I am quite satisfied that the people who get the grant to build these houses will, out of the money, be able to have something for themselves, and that you will have the very poor man—that is the man who is not able to give even his own time for nothing in the building of his own house—coming forward and making application for the £80 grant and the £80 loan. If he gets the loan and the grant, in the circumstances of the Gaeltacht he will be able to build a house of the description contemplated, and yet have something to represent wages for himself.

I am perfectly satisfied from the attitude of the Minister towards the Bill that his object is to do what is best for the Gaeltacht, and to make the Bill a success. This amendment will help him to make the Bill a success. Four or five times in the course of discussions yesterday, when amendments were proposed, the Minister said: "Well, I have a discretion. I will do that, but do not put it in the Bill, because I am going to do it." The more discretion the Minister seeks for himself the more difficult it will be for him to meet the big problems of the Gaeltacht. Another Minister yesterday when it was suggested that discretionary powers should be given him, met it by asking the Seanad not to give him discretionary power, that is, not to expose him to pressure. In many parts of this Bill discretion is given to the Minister. In each one of these cases that discretion will be availed against him for the purpose of exercising pressure upon him. Of course, he will probably resist that pressure, but it will take a lot of the work out of him. Here we come with this amendment. It is clean and neat, if I might say so. It comes down to the point. The Minister has in his Schedule a wide area, about six or seven hundred district electoral divisions, over which that £250,000 is to be scattered with a very light hand, because it will not go far. It is like a man who has a cwt. of corn to sow an acre. The Minister has a great number of townlands. The very extent of the area which he is supposed to cover is one thing that will put the greatest possible burden on his discretion, and he will have the greatest possible difficulty in working it, having regard to the very wide area he has to cover. It comes to this: We say that no person except a person with the old age pension or some small pension of less than £25, is to be eligible for a grant for housing in the Gaeltacht. The meaning of that is perfectly plain. It is to save the Minister from the tremendous pressure which is likely to be exercised upon him. He and his Department are approaching this question with, as I think, a clear vision, but pressure will be brought upon his Department by influential people, pressure which he will scarcely be able to resist, or if he does resist it, which will leave himself and his Department absolutely worthless for the real work. That is all I say. We say it quite distinctly, and that is what we mean by it.

The other part of the amendment which suggests that the grant should be confined to people with valuations less than £10 is of the same character. A man whose valuation exceeds £10 could come under the social clauses of the Bills to which Senator Johnson referred, Bills intended to improve the social condition of the people, or that they can repair their own houses. But when you have a small sum of money like £250,000, with £400 for each district electoral division which elected a district councillor in the old days, let him limit it down even to 80 electoral divisions as we suggested yesterday. That would leave about £3,000 for each district electoral division. That is a very small sum considering the cost of houses, and considering that the grant will be £80 and the loan £80 or less. As it is so small every care should be taken to reserve it for the people who are really in need of grants, which must be contributed by the very poor in the city of Dublin and in the country. It should be confined to the very poor, and therefore I hope the House will support the amendment, which has been framed by Senator Connolly and modified to suit the sense of the House as expressed yesterday. I hope, therefore, that the amendment will be accepted.

Minister for Lands and Fisheries (Mr. Lynch)

I would like to emphasise again that the intention underlying this Bill is not to give wages to any person for the building of his own house. The Senator has reiterated that to-day, although I think I emphasised it sufficiently yesterday. The idea underlying the Bill is that a man is to build his own house, and in doing that he is to be helped by the Government by getting an £80 grant and a possible £80 loan. We did not at all conceive the idea that such a man would utilise portion of that grant or loan for the purpose of paying wages for his own labour; in fact we have practically prevented that by providing that the house for which he will get this £80 grant will be a certain standard house for which the materials that he will have to buy will cost him £130 and the work of his handyman will cost him £50. We are securing, if you like, that he will not be paid for the building of his own house. He will be getting a grant and a loan from the Government for building it, and I think it would be entirely unreasonable to expect that he should be paid for his work.

Senator Connolly has stressed the question of the discretion of the Minister, and has said that the Minister wants discretion for this, that, and the other thing. I am not looking for discretion for myself, but surely the administration must have some discretion. Whether I am here to-day and away to-morrow does not matter. I want to have it in the Bill, whether I am Minister or whether one of the Senator's colleagues, in the very remote possibility of that party ever coming to administer the affairs of the country, will be administering this Bill, and I am perfectly satisfied that a great deal of discretion must be allowed at least to the administration. As far as the amendment itself is concerned it is just the same as we had yesterday. with clause (b), referring to the household income, cut out. As I said yesterday, if I thought the amendment was necessary I would not receive it in any hostile manner, because I think we should secure that the purpose for which the Bill was brought in is carried out, and I pointed out yesterday that in many of its clauses that is already secured. I pointed out that under clause 3 it was necessary that the house should be wholly insanitary. I pointed out the over-riding matters in clause 11, such as sub-section (3), which provides for a wholly Irish-speaking household, and I differentiated as between the Irish-speaking households, and again as far as the valuation amongst the Irish-speaking households was concerned.

If I wanted to get into the small points of the amendment I might ask, for instance, what is a disability allowance? You might say that everybody knows in general terms what a disability allowance is, but what does it mean in a statute? Where are you going to draw the line? Even there you would be giving a further discretion to the Minister, because he would have to decide what was or what was not a disability allowance. There are several types of people who might come under it, for instance, an employee of a local authority who had got hurt and who had been granted some compensation, small or large. This provision would not meet, for instance, the case cited by, I think, Senator Connolly yesterday, that even though the applicant himself was not in receipt of any salary or pension exceeding £25, he might have one or more members of his family in receipt of such salary or pension. If we were to exclude an applicant who is himself excluded but who has perhaps two members of his family in receipt of either pensions or salaries, these two might live away from him for a couple of weeks, and when he had qualified for the grant they might come back.

But there was one thing which, from the point of view of my Department, might not be so much apparent to Senators, but which has occurred rather strongly to me, and that is this: We are endeavouring, in connection with this Bill and with other Gaeltacht matters, to get little industries going in the Gaeltacht. For instance, we hope that from some of these houses we may eventually get one of the little girls to be trained to work in charge of a knitting machine, or something like that, work that might enable her to earn £1 or 25s. a week. Our aim is to get down to the very poorest, to pick out and train a little girl and enable her earnings to go into the house. Our idea was that that would enable the father to apply for a grant and a loan, and that the money she would earn would enable him to repay the loan. This amendment would cut entirely across our idea, because if one of these girls was earning £1 or 25s. a week in such a rural industry, that would exclude her family from benefiting under the Bill. I do not believe that that is the Senator's intention, and I am sure that he would not wish such a thing, but in fact that would be the result of it. That is the type of problem that, even if you were putting clauses into the Bill for ever, you could never really deal with, and you must depend on the administration for equity in these cases. A provision of this kind would undoubtedly add to the cost of administration, because very many inquiries would have to be instituted from different angles. Inquiries would have to be addressed to every salary or pension-paying authority to find out whether or not such and such a person was in receipt of any salary or pension. It might look very easy, but in fact very strict inquiries would have to be made. These inquiries would involve a delay, and therefore there would be a delay in putting up the houses.

With regard to the question of valuation, I believe that, normally, no person with a valuation of £10 or over will come under the Bill. I am perfectly certain that any Minister who comes after me will be as anxious as I am or as any Senators are, that the Bill is applied to the persons for whom it was conceived —the worst houses and the very poorest persons. But if you draw the line at £10, why not draw it at £8, £7, £6, or £5? I do not like drawing a line of that kind, because I have known cases in the Gaeltacht of holdings that I always believe to be very much over-valued, persons with valuations of £10 or £11 who had stretches of mountains for which they were valued, and I am perfectly certain that no Senator would give a £5 note for the whole thing.

You have isolated cases, and if you draw any line, no matter where, you may exclude persons that you would like to help. No matter how many lines you draw, no matter how you may attempt by legislation to keep any Minister in a straight line, some discretion must eventually be allowed. The inspector who will go around will be an ordinary civil servant who may be serving another administration to-morrow. His inclination will be to do his work in the fairest way possible, interpreting the Bill in the spirit in which it was conceived. It will be his duty to see that nobody benefits under the Bill who was not entitled to benefit under the Bill. That discretion will remain, no matter how much you curtail it. Some discretion will have to remain, and it is a question of the wider or the narrower discretion. and to draw the line in a matter of this kind is next to an impossibility. Even if we could agree on any line, I believe it would be wrong to draw such a line as this amendment intends to draw.

Mr. Connolly

I do not feel that the Minister has met our case at all. He said that the discretion that he enjoys may, in the very remote future, be enjoyed by some of my colleagues in the party to which I belong. That may be so. I would like to assure him that I am not at all interested in that issue at the moment. When we are dealing with legislation, I would like to feel that we are dealing with it on its merits. The Minister's case is a complete argument for the reduction of legislation to the very simplest terms whereby the Minister involved will have. in the main, sole discretion as to what is to be done. We admit that no matter how fool-proof we try to make legislation, in the last analysis the administration must have a discretion in certain directions. I think that the numerous clauses in the Bills that are presented to us indicate clearly that it is the intention of the Oireachtas to limit the discretionary powers of Ministers to the minimum. Otherwise why should it go to such pains to explain in such detail the various precautions that are afforded to the people of the State against a Minister and his officials? That, after all, is what legislation means to me, and I think that that will be generally accepted.

The Minister mentioned that the first idea which is covered by clause 3 deals with insanitary houses. and he seemed to claim that because a house is insanitary that will eliminate the necessity for the clause which I have suggested embodying in the Bill. Some of the most insanitary houses that I have seen in the country have not indicated poverty at all. I cannot speak of the Gaeltacht, but I think in most of the rest of the country some of the dirty gombeen public houses are amongst the least sanitary houses in the State, and I suggest that insanitary conditions do not necessarily denote poverty; very often indeed they denote gombeenism and the meanest type of miser, so that I think that argument goes by the board at once. The Minister went to great pains to labour the income clause and told us what he hopes to do for the young girls. That is a pretty worthy object for the Minister to have in mind, and I sincerely hope that he will be successful in it in all parts of the Gaeltacht. I believe that that is one of the things that can be done, and I speak from some experience. But I want to warn him that it will take time and money to get these people trained. Leaving that aside, what I want to point out is that the Minister was out of order in referring to the income clause at all, because it does not appear on the paper. I think the point with regard to the cost of making inquiries was a perfectly futile and childish one to put up. I do not suppose for a moment that the Department will undertake to grant a loan, whether for rebuilding or building on the new, without adequate inquiry, but the additional inquiry involved will not mean that it will have to circularise every public board in the country to find out if the individual concerned has a pension or has any grant from them. An inspector of ordinary intelligence would find that out. It would mean in effect that he would have two additional lines on his inquiry form, if there is an inquiry form, and on one of these lines would be stated whether or not the individual applying for the grant had any such pension or disability grant from any public body or from the State.

Mr. Lynch

And, of course, we have to take his word immediately.

Mr. Connolly

That would be a question for the Minister's inspector. I expect that he will have to take the civil servant's word for a good many things. According to his own statement a moment ago, he will have to take it for practically everything.

Mr. Lynch

It will not be he who will fill the form.

Mr. Connolly

There is no case at all in the Minister's statement that special inquiries would have to be made all over the country. That is perfectly ridiculous. What we want to do is to prevent what we do know exists and what has existed, and that is the local pull—I am not suggesting that it is a political pull, either in the sense of local politics or Dublin politics—but I do know that these things are very often worked, and what we want to do is to try to make this Bill so that it will reach people that it is honestly intended to reach. I do not for the moment care what Minister is in power; I would like to feel that, irrespective of who was in power, whether they were friends of mine or enemies of mine, at least they were trying to have honest administration. I believe that in these two proposals you hold some control over the civil servants, the local politicians and all the others, and I believe that they are both essential for the protection of the poor people who will not have any pull, whether that pull is in the hands of the gombeen man, the publican, the local politician, or anybody else, and it is for that purpose alone that I put up these proposals. I suggest that they are necessary, and I ask you to consider them in that light. We cannot afford to leave any more discretion with the Minister than we can help. That is what legislation is for, and it is in that spirit that I ask the Seanad to accept the amendment.

Question put.

The Committee divided: Tá, 16; Níl, 22.

Tá

William Barrington.
Sir Edward Bellingham
Sir Edward Coey Bigger.
Michael Comyn, K.C.
Joseph Connolly.
Michael Duffy.
Sir John Purser Griffith.
Henry S. Guinness.
Thomas Johnson.
Sir John Keane.
Thomas Linehan.
Joseph O'Connor.
Joseph O'Doherty.
John T. O'Farrell.
M. F. O'Hanlon.
Séumas Robinson.

Níl

Dr. Henry L. Barniville.
Samuel L. Brown K.C.
Miss Kathleen Browne.
R. A. Butler.
James G. Douglas.
Michael Fanning.
P.J. Hooper.
Cornelius Kennedy.
Patrick W. Kenny.
Francis MacGuinness.
James MacKean.
Alfred Byrne.
Mrs. Costello.
John C. Counihan.
The Countess of Desart.
John MacLoughlin.
Seán Milroy.
Sir Walter Nugent.
L. O'Neill.
Bernard O'Rourke.
Siobhán Bean an Phaoraigh.
Thomas Toal.

Amendment declared lost.

Mr. Johnson

I move:—

Section 8, sub-section (2). To add at the end of the sub-section the words "but not exceeding five pounds per cent."

This amendment has been put down mainly for the purpose of finding out, if possible, what is in the mind of the Minister in regard to the possible obligation that will be placed upon the recipient of the loan. I put down five per cent., but that is an arbitrary figure. I do not know whether it is possible to put down a maximum of that kind in the present state of things or not, but I think it is necessary that there should be an explanation to guide the House and to guide the applicants, even at this stage, but certainly to guide the House as to what is contemplated as a likely charge for the loan. I would not anticipate, for instance, that these loans would be granted for this class of house over a period of, let us say, more than twenty years.

Mr. Lynch

Thirty-five years.

Mr. Johnson

The Minister says thirty-five years. That surprises me, because it has been difficult to get advances made for houses built in the ordinary way of contract over a period of that extent, and I am very glad to learn that it is contemplated that the houses that will be built by this method are likely to be good security for a period of thirty-five years. Even at thirty-five years I do not know whether the Minister could go a little further and tell us whether five per cent., six per cent., seven per cent. or eight per cent., including repayment, is in mind. I anticipate that the charge upon the borrower will involve what will amount to a weekly repayment of anything from 2/6 to 3/6. The point I am making is that we are going to have a state of things whereby the very poorest portion of the community, having in fact built their own houses, will be in a worse position comparatively than the agricultural labourers in respect to the repayment of rentals. The man who builds his own house, having provided the material and skill, will probably be paying double as much as an agricultural labourer occupying a house under the Labourers Acts. I know it is not possible to get over the present situation regarding the cost of money, but I think it is desirable that we should understand as clearly as possible what is before us under this Bill.

On the last amendment I was glad to hear the Minister make a revelation as to what is in his mind regarding the facilities or opportunities he hopes to create to enable people to repay these loans, because, bear in mind, it is contemplated that before a person will have one of these houses he must borrow £80 as well as provide £20 of his own money. I am speaking now of the standard houses. As the Minister has pointed out, that will involve a considerable charge for a period of 35 years. Alongside that it now appears there is the intention to develop the economic side for the purpose of enabling the applicants for loans or grants to repay the moneys advanced. I should like if the Minister had revealed to the Seanad something of his policy with regard to the Gaeltacht as a whole. This housing problem is so intermixed with the general economic and social policy in regard to that part of the country, and to the people in those districts that it would have been pleasing to have heard the Minister say something with regard to his general policy. The little of his policy that we have got from him helps to explain to me, at least, what his hopes and intentions are. I would point out that the Minister has in mind that comparatively few people will be able to receive these £80 loans. Speaking in the Dáil, the Minister said:

When I said that the granting of loans would be regarded more as an emergency measure than the normal procedure, what I had in mind was that we were loth to saddle people in the Gaeltacht with perhaps a repayment burden which they could not pay rather than that we had any idea of trying to cut them off from any of the facilities under the Act. It is notorious, of course, that at the moment they find it difficult enough to meet the obligations they have to meet half-yearly or yearly, as the case may be, in the way of rates, land commission annuities and so on. The placing of any further burden on them by way of loan may not be to their advantage.

and so on. I am anxious to have it made clear that under the scheme, generous as it may appear to be, the applicants will not be able to build houses of the kind indicated without having that loan or an equal amount from some other source. If they can find an equal amount from some other source. a good deal of the case in favour of the Bill passes. But, having got the loan, it is going to impose upon the recipient a liability of perhaps 3s. a week for quite a long number of years.

Perhaps the Minister will give us a little more enlightenment on the point about the cost of material. In the estimate of his house, costing £275, he puts down £130, which is practically half. as the value of the material which has to be bought. I was under the impression from earlier statements that he anticipated that much of the primary materials such as stone, sand, etc., would not have to be bought at all, that they would be obtainable close at hand by the labour of the applicant and his friends and would not be paid for in money at all. If that were to be the case, possibly the cost of material should not be as high as one-half of the total value of the house. That. however, is a detail. I think we would have been better pleased if we had a fuller picture given us by the Minister of what he hopes to secure by this scheme, and what part it plays in the general scheme that he has for the Gaeltacht.

Mr. O'Farrell

I second.

Mr. Lynch

I gather from what Senator Johnson has said that he does not feel that his amendment could be agreed to. In his amendment he takes an arbitrary figure with regard to the rate of interest that may be charged on loans. Might I point out that the rate of interest charged on loans granted under this Bill must be governed by the rate at which the Government itself can borrow? If I tell Senator Johnson that I can almost guarantee that loans will be granted to borrowers at a rate of interest no greater than the rate at which the Government itself can borrow, his case, will, perhaps, be met. I do not believe for a moment that any borrower will be charged 7 per cent. Making a rough guess, I should say the rate would be 5¾ per cent. or 6 per cent. I do not want to be held to any particular figure, for apart from anything else I have not the power to agree to that.

The Senator said he would like to have had a statement from me with regard to my policy for the Gaeltacht as a whole. I did endeavour to make a statement of that kind in the Dáil, a statement outlining, in connection with this particular housing scheme, the kind of policy I had in mind. But in that statement I was only dealing with my policy in regard to the Gaeltacht so far as it affects this Bill in the way of providing that the persons who might benefit under the Bill, or who at the present time might not be able to avail of the benefits under the Bill might, through the action of the Department, be put in a position to take advantage of this loan scheme. When I started to give details of a scheme of that kind in the Dáil I was ruled out of order, and the reason I did not touch on the matter here was that I might also be ruled out of order. Of course, the matter is not quite relevant to the Bill.

Senator Johnson is afraid that the loans to be granted under the Bill are only to be, as he said, for the comparatively few. The statement that I made in the Dáil, to which the Senator has referred, is I think perfectly clear. In that connection I would like to reiterate this, that I hope the whole of the money to be provided for loans will be revised, just as I hope that the money available for grants will be. There is no question of restricting these loans to the comparatively few. I have no intention of giving loans and having them regarded as grants. When money is given as a loan it must be repaid. If we want to do otherwise, let us make the whole of the £250,000 a grant. There is a provision in the Bill for giving loans, and when these are given they must be repaid. As far as restricting these loans to the comparatively few concerned, I have given the indication to which the Senator has referred, that we hope to provide, by certain little industries, in one way or another for persons to whom at a given moment you could not give loans. We hope to be able, by some little industry, or perhaps under the sections dealing with poultry and pigs in the Bill——

Cathaoirleach

I must ask the Minister to confine himself to the amendment before the House. The amendment deals specifically with the rate of interest to be charged on loans. Senator Johnson dealt with some matters that, strictly speaking, were outside the scope of his amendment, but I ask the Minister not to follow the Senator's example. The amendment deals specifically with the rate of interest to be charged on loans, whether it is to be 5 per cent. or not.

Mr. Lynch

I must apologise for departing from relevancy, but I was simply commenting on the points made by Senator Johnson. To return to the question dealt with in the amendment, it would be impossible for me to say what rate of interest should be charged. As I have stated already, that must always depend on the rate at which the Government can borrow. If the Government had to borrow at 6 per cent. it would be unreasonable to lay down that the rate on loans under this Bill should be 5 per cent. At any rate, I could meet the Senator in this way, that I can almost guarantee him that no borrower will be charged a higher rate of interest than the rate at which the Government itself borrows. That is about all one can say on the matter.

Report Stage concluded.

Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 18 Dec 1929