Amendments Nos. 1, 3 and 4 have been ruled out of order.
SECTION 8.
Housing (Amendment) Bill, 1954—Committee and Final Stages.
Sections 1 to 7, inclusive, agreed to.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Question proposed: "That Section 8 stand part of the Bill."
On the section, I should like to refer to some matters, as I believe the Minister for Local Government will give some time on this question. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, acting for the Minister for Local Government, said in the other House at column 316 of the Official Debates on the 31st March, 1954:
"It has been represented to me that more houses would be provided for letting if lump-sum grants were available in place of the grant now payable by annual instalments over ten years under Section 19 of the 1948 Act. In Section 13 of the Bill, I propose to give a trial for two years to the alternative form of grant, which would be of an amount equal to that payable for an owner-occupied house."
I hoped the Minister might have been able—I understand it is not possible— to extend this to people who had built houses previously. I was approached by the managing director of a factory who had built houses for letting to workers. He said that if the money which he had invested could be paid in a lump sum he would build more houses. I am delighted to see the Minister is making provision under this section to do so in the future. He might consider ensuring in future legislation that money which is frozen would be unfrozen and allowed to be used for the purpose of building more houses.
It is, if you like, something of a hardship on those who pioneered this idea to find the money they have available to build more houses is tied up. That was the reason why I felt moved to put down the amendment which has been ruled out of order. I should like if the Minister would consider this implication when he is drafting future legislation relative to this section.
I do not think the suggestion made by the Senator is ever likely to be considered because, after all, would it not be a question of utilising the machinery of a housing measure to enable an industrial concern to provide itself with additional capital? I hardly think that that would be a reasonable proposition either.
I am sure that whatever way the Minister could get over the dilemma to make more money available to the industrialist to build the houses it would make no material difference to the industrialist provided he had the money made available. I can quite imagine the position of an industrialist who builds ten houses and finds his money tied up and who only gets one-tenth of the grant each year. If the industrialist had got all the money before, he could have built more houses.
He can have it both ways now.
I understand that. In fact, what the Minister is now doing is desirable in every case, but it does not get over the case of the man who has his money tied up.
There are not so many of these at all, but even as regards those of them who are there, I can scarcely see at any time in the future provision being inserted in our housing legislation to enable the payment of a lump-sum of whatever balance is outstanding.
I was approached by one person in Clonmel.
Question agreed to.
Section 9 agreed to.
SECTION 10.
I move amendment No. 2:—
To add a new sub-section as follows:—
(3) Sub-section (2) of Section 10 of the Act of 1952 shall have effect as if the following words were added at the end:—"less the amount of any allowance which such person is entitled to deduct from his income for the purposes of the Income Tax Acts in respect of a child or children under his care."
I raised the subject-matter of this amendment in the debate on the Second Reading, and I think there is a certain amount of misunderstanding between the Minister and myself regarding precisely the point I was trying to make. I would like to clear up any possible confusion that may be in the minds of Senators. Section 10 of the present Bill refers back to Section 10 of the Housing (Amendment) Act, 1952. The point of that section is to give to housing authorities the power to make grants under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts to classes of people not otherwise covered by the Act, and it provides a graduated scale for the grant in relation to the family income of the person concerned. The 1952 Act defines the way in which the family income of a person is to be calculated. It states:—
"In calculating the family income of a person applying for a grant under this section in respect of a house, it shall be taken to include the income received during the year ending on the date of such application by such person and by every member of such person's family who resided with him during that year and who may reasonably be expected to reside with him in the house."
This section imposes a means test on persons applying for grants under this Act and that means test is, I suggest, inconsistent because, in reckoning a family income of a person, allowance is made for the people living in the house who add to the family income, whereas no allowance is made for people living in the house the cost of whose maintenance subtracts from the net family income. The point I am trying to make in this amendment is that the means test should be consistently applied in both directions, that if a child who is a plus from the point of view of the family income is taken into account, that child who is a minus from the family income point of view should be equally taken into account.
The way in which I propose to implement this principle is quite simple. I have adopted the rule of thumb that allowances which are granted in respect of income-tax should be incorporated in this section and that in reckoning the net income every child should be given the same allowance that is allowed for children in the income-tax code. However, if the principle of the amendment is admitted by the Minister, I am not particularly wedded to the precise method of implementing it.
In the debate on the Second Reading the Minister dealt with the points I made, and I think there was a certain amount of misunderstanding between us. The Minister argued, in the first place, that under this section the income limit should be low. I perfectly agree that the income limit should be low, but what I am suggesting is that whatever the limit is, there should be a certain consistency in reckoning the means, whether high or low. It should be a net income and not a gross income as is provided in the section under the 1952 Act. Therefore, I am not really concerned with the level of income at all.
I stated in the debate on the Second Reading that I thought it was an improvement that the income limits should be raised, as they have been in this Bill, but whatever the income limits are it seems to me there should be consistency in reckoning what the income of the family is. The section as it stands is definitely unfair to the parents of large families.
The Minister's second point in reply to what I said on the Second Reading was that as this Act is permissive if the income limit was raised local authorities would no longer avail themselves of the powers under the Act. In the course of his remarks he referred to the limit being sky high. He also referred to there being no limit at all. I am afraid I cannot have made myself very clear because I never suggested at any stage that the limit should be removed. Therefore, if the Minister says the limit is sky high or there should be no limit at all and uses that as an argument against the point I am making in this amendment, I may respectfully say that I think he has misunderstood the point of the amendment.
I would be prepared to agree to the actual lowering of some of the income figures in the section if my principle were admitted. It would be fairer generally to the parents of large families in these areas if the limits in Section 10 were lower and if the principle of the family allowances were brought into being. I want to make it perfectly clear I am not arguing in favour of raising the limits at all, much less of taking them away entirely as the Minister suggested. I hope I have made clear in what I have said about the amendment what apparently I failed to make clear in my speech on the Second Reading, that I am not concerned with the height of the limit. I certainly do not wish to have some limit abolished; I am simply concerned with having consistency in reckoning the limits whether they be high or low.
I do not think there was any misunderstanding on my part as regards the case made by the Senator here on the last occasion. I suppose what has now been stated is somewhat more compact but the effect, according to my reasoning, would be all the same if the principles for which the Senator is agitating were to be conceded. The point is that he does not want to remove the limits but that whatever limits are determined should be subject to the reliefs that are afforded, say, in the income-tax code to people with families. But there are other factors as well as income-tax reliefs that would have to be considered in the determination of the net income if we were to concede the principle for which Senator O'Brien is arguing.
As I said on that occasion, I do not intend to go into the point raised as closely as the Senator has gone into it. What I tried to convey to the Seanad and to the country was this. These three sections in the Act of 1952 were inserted as a result of the experience gained of Section 7 of the Act of 1950, which was also a permissive section giving to local bodies the right to prepare their own scheme. Those who adopted the section, in the exercise of that right, entered into a terrific struggle as to whether or not there should be a means test. In quite a number of cases they started off by fixing a means test and in two or three months they proceeded to amend it and later still to amend it again. Some sections of the local representatives saw the danger of being given the freedom to determine their own limits in that way. A number of councils had intimated their determination not to adopt a supplementary scheme of grants at all after the 1950 Act expired in 1952. It was because of that experience that we decided in the 1952 Act to provide a limit, to set out in these three sections the maximum that local bodies might decide to give.
There was some doubt as to whether or not a local body had the right to give less than was set out in the Act of 1952. One local authority that I have in mind decided to give less, in fact, and as there was some doubt as to their legal right to do so we are clarifying that matter in this Bill before us. We are also giving general legal permission to local bodies to give less than what is provided here, that is, to give a smaller grant than the grants set out in these three sections. That has been done simply because we felt that local bodies were not prepared to commit themselves to the extent of giving a sort of free-for-all supplementary grant to private persons building houses for themselves. If, in order to produce the sort of neatness for which Senator O'Brien is struggling, you reduce the limits set out and stipulate the reliefs that he has in mind, more or less bringing about the same sort of result, it may be a neater way of doing things, but it does not seem to me to make any great difference.
I am not arguing this on the grounds that it can be justified, as the Senator says, from the point of view that you have an applicant who has a family that is earning and you have, on the other hand, an applicant with a family that is a burden, and in such cases, if one applicant is to be charged with the members of the family that are earning, the person with members of a family who are a burden should be given the reliefs that are due to him. I am not going into the struggle with the Senator on that matter, but I am saying—as I said in the discussion on the Second Reading—that we aimed here at a fairly low ceiling or limit, simply because we felt that it was as far as local bodies themselves were prepared to go and because we were catering for a class of people whose income limit was low and who would not be provided with houses by the local authorities. I am not prepared to agree to an amendment to the section as suggested by the Senator.
Surely the Minister's concluding remarks indicate that the sections in the Principal Act and in this Bill are meant to provide for people who do not belong to what is called the labouring class? The section provides that in discovering what the income limit is, all the income going into the house should be counted. Senator O'Brien's point in his amendment is a sound one, that if you are going to count the income of every character, you should also make some effort at counting the outgoings.
The amendment deals specifically with cases where there are dependent children. They are the people who most deserve to be housed, who most deserve help from local authorities and the State to get good houses. Those people who have dependent children are the people most in need of houses; they are the people to whom housing will do the most good; they are the people who, if properly housed, will give the best return for the money spent on housing them, as it will improve their health and subsequently will save money to the State.
Perhaps the objection the Minister has boils down to this, that it is an administrative objection, that the section is simple and no one wants to complicate it by putting in the kind of amendment that Senator O'Brien put down, which provides that if you count the income brought into the house by uncles or aunts or by working children over 16 years of age, you should also make allowances for the dependent children, who, as Senator O'Brien said, are a minus and not a plus. That might be a little more complicated but it certainly does seem, from the point of view of principle and indeed from the point of view of practice, to have a great deal of argument in its favour. I know it would complicate the section somewhat, but heaven knows that sections are complicated enough for evil purposes and it would be no harm to complicate this section a little bit to accomplish a thing with which I feel the Minister himself has a certain amount of sympathy.
I would have a certain amount of sympathy for the amendment put down by Senator O'Brien if it were going to be of general application to housing grants. We have had many Housing Bills passed through this House, each and every one of which was an improvement on its predecessor. We came to the point when it was considered advisable to give to local authorities a discretion in the making of a supplementary grant to persons who were undertaking the erection of houses for their own occupation. Difficulties arose in the interpretation of that Act and some local authorities did not avail of it at all, while other local authorities were very generous in its application. The time arrived when in 1952 it was found essential to make some general direction in order to be fair to the local authority and to the applicants in the particular counties concerned. Section 10 of this Bill proposes to extend the generosity of that Act and to raise the ceiling from about £280 to practically £500. I think we are making progress by doing that.
There is another question that is of great concern to local authorities at the present time. There is being placed on the shoulders of every local authority at present a very serious burden in the provision of houses for persons for whom it was never thought the local authorities would have to undertake housing responsibilities. The majority of local authorities throughout the country are doing their best in this respect. I would probably be inclined to support Senator Burke's first amendment, if it were in order, that there should be more generous grants to local authorities in cases where they engage in the erection of houses for persons in a position to pay an economic rent and who eventually engage in a hire purchase scheme. However, that is beside the point.
A very heavy burden is being placed on local authorities at present by the obligation to provide housing for the working classes and the class of persons who should be their first care. In addition to that we placed another obligation on them and asked them to encourage persons to build houses. That should be borne in mind in connection with the section. The section was introduced mainly for the purpose of encouraging persons, for whom the local authority might be compelled to provide houses, to do for themselves what the State and the local authority might do.
Senator O'Brien's amendment simply means that we should ask the local authority, and therefore the ratepayers for whom great sympathy has been expressed, to do something that the State is not being asked to do. Senator O'Brien's amendment does not propose that in connection with the State grant consideration should be given to the income less the income-tax rebates that might have been made. The State grant will be the same and the only source from which additional benefit might be gained by persons who have large families and for whom Senator O'Brien and the majority in this House have great sympathy is the rates. I would humbly suggest to Senator O'Brien that if we are going to make a start in that direction—I do not say that it has not a lot to recommend it—we should wait until the Bill expires, in less than two years' time, and we might then induce the Minister to consider that matter rather than put the obligation on the local authorities, who are doing a tremendous job of work at present in erecting houses for the classes I have referred to and in making grants to every other section that comes within the Bill.
Before the Minister replies, I should like to answer a point made by Senator Hawkins. The only reason why I did not press for the extension of this principle to State grants is that an amendment to that effect would be out of order on this Bill. I took advice on that before putting down the amendment and was assured that, as this amendment does not impose an obligation on the Exchequer but only on local authorities, it is in order. I certainly think that the principle I advocate should apply in the case of all grants, both State and local authority. I did not feel that it was in order to raise it but since Senator Hawkins has raised the matter. I take it that I am now entitled to refer to it. I did not refer to it, not because of any lack of consistency, but because in doing so my amendment would have been ruled out of order by you, Sir, or by the Clerk of the House.
Senator Hawkins says that the provision of these grants is an enormous burden on housing authorities. It certainly is. We have provided so much out of the rates now that we are not in a position to provide on the same lavish scale as we have done in the past. That is the problem. Eventually we will be driven to the point that grants will have to be allowed in relation to the efficiency of the housing authority, curtailing grants to people who are inefficient and giving some reward to the people who are efficient. It will have to be done some time or other. It is the only way in which the problem can be tackled.
If the case made for Section 10 were conceded an exactly similar case could be made for those who are covered by Section 9. Section 9 provides a scheme of grants that may be paid by a local body to land owners and sets out the valuations beyond which such grants may not be paid. It fixes the maximum to the occupier of land with a valuation not in excess of £12 10s. and on up to a valuation of £35. Would it not be just as fair to propose an amendment to the effect that there should not be similarity of treatment in the payment of grants to an applicant whose valuation was £35, who had an adult family who were working the farm for him and bringing certain income to the household and an applicant whose valuation was £35 and whose family were a burden to him? It is exactly the same principle.
I can quite concede that what appears to be a formidable case could be made to justify the arguments advanced for the amendment but that could be followed into the other sections, especially Section 9. You can follow it even further because in certain cases an applicant might have a wife in delicate health and he would not get any income-tax relief in respect of her and he might be going through a much more severe financial purgatory than a man whose wife was in perfect health and who had a young family. One cannot follow these things down all these avenues.
I tried to explain to the House that here we are trying to get a ceiling that is high enough to cover desperately deserving cases and trying to ensure that we would not frighten the local authority and prevent them doing anything at all by raising the ceiling too high.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sections 10 and 11 agreed to.
SECTION 12.
Question proposed: "That Section 12 stand part of the Bill."
I had hoped that the Minister might make these grants available from an earlier period. People generally start repairing houses from the month of March on, when there is plenty of daylight. I spoke to members on the other side of the House who were of the opinion that it might be desirable to do that but I notice that in the Dáil the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, acting on behalf of the Minister for Local Government, said—Volume 145, No. 3, column 312:—
"The grants under the 1952 Act terminate on the 1st April, and, in order to avoid a break in building operations, it is proposed to continue payment of the grants in anticipation of the passing of the Bill."
The Minister might be able to make it all apply from the 1st April. He is taking powers to do that. The idea is to allow persons who may have started early this year to benefit under the section.
The Senator must bear in mind that proposed reconstruction work must be submitted to the Department's inspector and must be approved of by him.
In that approval, a direction is given to the applicant as to what amount of grant he may or may not receive, what type of work he should carry out and whether or not the building is suitable for reconstruction. That is not entirely on the same par as a new dwelling. I think the Senator's suggestion in this regard is unnecessary because, whether or not the work was commenced before the 1st March, it must first be approved by the housing inspector before a grant can be paid.
I know people who have got the local authority to give them a certificate of approval. They have had the houses inspected.
If the local authority have inspected a house and approved of it, I do not see that there should be any difficulty.
But if you do not make it applicable to an earlier date, it may not be possible to grant the money.
I do not think we could meet that point very easily.
Question agreed to.
Section 13 agreed to.
SECTION 14.
Question proposed: "That Section 14 stand part of the Bill."
On the section I think the Minister and his officials might be interested in this point which I have to make. Until recently, in the case of houses built since the war, a grant of £400 was payable out of the Transition Development Fund, with the result that the housing authority could sell such houses to the tenant at a figure that would meet the loan charges and without loss to the rates. Tenants purchasing such houses would then be able to buy them on terms comparable with persons building houses themselves.
Within the past couple of years the subsidy limit for houses built by local authorities has been raised to £1,500 per house and no grant is payable. The result is that a family becoming a tenant of a council house and wishing to purchase such house will have to pay an annual sum that will meet the full loan charges of the local authority, thereby getting no credit whatever for any grant. Take, for instance, a person similarly circumstanced and building a house on his own. He would get grants from the State of £275 and from the local authority of £137, that is, a total of £412.
The amendment which I suggest provides that a newly appointed tenant of a local authority house who wishes to purchase the house within 12 months of his becoming a tenant will be able to do so on terms as favourable as if he built the house himself.
In my view, it is a great disadvantage that people in corporation or local authority areas who would like to purchase their houses do not get the same benefits as people who build a house. If I want to build a house for myself I will get a grant of approximately £400 while, on the other hand, if I am living in a council house and wish to purchase it I will not get a grant. It is desirable to encourage ownership because ownership encourages responsibility and, in addition, we would relieve the local authority of the burden of maintaining and repairing these houses. Those, of us who are members of a local body are aware of the cost on the rates and of the difficulty of having these houses repaired and adequately maintained.
We are precluded in a way, under the law as it stands, from selling these houses on favourable terms. I believe that is a disadvantage. I think that both the Minister and his officials would not like that to continue indefinitely because the Minister did help us considerably during his term of office in the matter of purchase schemes and in pushing through purchase schemes whereby people might become owners of houses. In that respect, I feel we have the Minister's sympathy with regard to any proposals of this nature.
Question agreed to.
Sections 15 to 21, inclusive, First and Second Schedules and Title agreed to.
Agreed to take the remaining stages now.
Bill reported without amendment, received for final consideration and passed.