Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1979: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. J. O'Leary)

Detailed information about this Bill has been set out in the explanatory memorandum. In the circumstances I propose to confine my statement to the Seanad to a broad outline of the general intentions of the measure.

In general, the Bill is intended to validate changes made, in anticipation of legislation, in the housing grants, subsidies and loans provided for in the Housing Acts, 1966 to 1970. Included in the Bill are provisions which will enable such changes to be made in future by statutory regulations rather than by special legislation on each occasion. The Bill will also strengthen the statutory controls over the prices of new private houses and flats. It will introduce an optional arrangement for pre-sale structural works to local authority houses and will enable certain land now vested in the Minister for Health to be transferred, principally for housing purposes. The Bill will enable the Minister for the Environment to direct a housing authority to sell, or not to sell, houses of a specified class. The purpose here is to ensure that houses specially designed and constructed for the accommodation of categories such as elderly persons or physically or mentally handicapped persons will not be lost to the local authorities' housing stock. At the same time, changes are being made also in the Building Societies Act, 1976.

Senators may be aware that the administration of the new house grant scheme was delegated on a trial basis to Meath County Council in May 1973. In Counties Longford and Westmeath the schemes of grants for reconstruction work and the installation of private water and sewerage facilities in individual houses were also devolved to the county councils in the following August. These experiments in devolution ended when the new grants schemes for new houses and house improvements were introduced in July and November 1977, respectively, in order to ensure consistency in operation and to avoid duplication of administration.

Section 2 will enable similar exercises in the devolution of the administration of housing grant schemes to be made in the future if the circumstances so warrant.

Section 3 will allow me to make a grant towards the administrative and general expenses of an approved body which represents, or promotes the formation of, co-operative housing groups or voluntary associations. I would like to see this form of activity expanding. The success of co-operative housing depends largely on the dedication and initiative of the groups or associations involved. One body who has been to the forefront in this regard are the National Association of Building Co-operatives who were established in 1970. The Government are anxious that this association be given every encouragement and have approved a grant towards their administrative and general expenses in 1979.

The grant provisions of the Housing Acts, 1966 to 1970, are inflexible in that the amounts of grants payable and the detailed qualifying conditions are specified by the Acts, so that changes which were found to be desirable from time to time in the grant schemes required amending legislation. To meet this situation, sections 4 to 6 of the Bill will confer a broad general power on the Minister or a housing authority to pay a grant for specified purposes, subject to such regulations as may be made. It is intended that the proposed regulatory powers will be broadly in line with similar provisions in the 1966 to 1970 Acts and the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act, 1962, but modified to take account of changes made since 1972 in anticipation of amending legislation. Future changes in grant schemes can be effected by regulations under these sections. In accordance with section 5 of the 1966 Act, every regulation made under the Bill will be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made and it may be annulled by resolution of either House.

Section 4 provides a statutory basis for new house grants payable by the Minister. Subsection (2) outlines the aspects of a grant scheme which may be incorporated in regulations and varied subsequently. Subsection (3) enables the Minister to lay down technical standards. Subsection (4) provides for certain cases of hardship. Between July 1977, when the £1,000 new house grant scheme for first-time owner-occupiers was introduced, and the end of May 1979, 18,557 grants were approved and 10,860 grants paid.

Section 5 deals with house improvement grants payable by the Minister and follows the same approach as section 4. It will enable us to get away from a legislative code containing separate detailed provisions relating to ordinary reconstruction grants, further grants, essential repair grants, improvement grants payable to housing authorities, water and sewerage grants, and so on. In the Bill, I have described a wide range of grants as house improvement grants and my aim is to simplify still further this grant scheme in the future. Incidentally, section 5 (1) will enable the Minister to pay a grant to a housing authority for improvement works to their rented houses; this replaces section 24 of the 1966 Act.

Section 6 will enable a housing authority to pay a grant to a person providing a new house and to pay a grant or make other assistance to a person carrying out improvement works to a house, subject to such regulations as may be made. The Minister may also contribute to the expenses incurred by a housing authority in this regard.

Section 6, when taken with section 22, validates the payment of grants by the authorities and the making of contributions by the Minister since 1 February 1972 in respect of improvement works to houses used for the accomodation of physically disabled persons. This worthwhile scheme was extended to include accomodation for severely mentally handicapped persons from 1 July 1975 and I increased the amounts of financial assistance substantially from 1 November 1977. Apart from that special scheme, and certain transitional cases, grants or supplementary housing grants have not been generally payable by housing authorities since 1977. Section 6 is, therefore, mainly an enabling provision to cater for any schemes which might be considered appropriate in the future.

Another important scheme provided for in the Bill is the making of grants to approved bodies providing housing and caretaker accommodation for elderly persons. In April 1978 I announced details of a package of financial assistance for these cases, comprising grants, loans and annual subsidies. These financial aids were improved with effect from 1 February 1979. Section 7 will empower the Minister to pay grants to bodies approved under the scheme, subject to such regulations as may be made.

Section 8 deals with house improvement loans and replaces section 40 of the 1966 Act and section 4 of the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act, 1962. It will enable a housing authority to make a secured or an unsecured loan to a person carrying out improvement works to a house, subject to such regulations as may be made. The maximum unsecured loan, which is being increased from £200 to £600, can be varied by regulations in the future.

Section 9 will authorise the Minister to pay subsidy to housing authorities towards the annual loan charges incurred by them in providing sites for private housing, subject to such regulations as may be made. The section largely replaces a corresponding provision in section 44 of the 1966 Act, but it is less restrictive as regards the amount of the subsidy. I have taken steps to increase the supply of serviced land available by increasing substantially the allocation for sanitary services this year and, in August 1978, I asked local authorities to consider the development of part of their land reserves with a view to making sites available for private housing, particularly as an incentive to tenants or prospective tenants of their houses to secure their own accommodation. To stimulate this activity, I increased the site subsidy available. I regard this scheme as an important element in our efforts to curb increases in house prices.

Subsections (1) and (7) of section 10 validate the subsidy system, which applied in the period from 1 April 1973 to 31 December 1976, under which most of the loss on local authority housing provided for letting was transferred on a phased basis to the Exchequer. Up to 31 March 1973 the payment of housing subsidy to local authorities was governed by section 44 of the 1966 Act, which is being repealed. Since 1 January 1977 the loan charges incurred by housing authorities on the provision of houses for letting are generally met in full by the Exchequer. Section 10 (2) provides for the payment of subsidy in accordance with the arrangements in operation since then, subject to such regulations as may be made.

Under section 10 (5), subsidy payments can be made either to the housing authority or directly to the agency from which the loans were obtained. In the case of moneys borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works, subsection (6) will allow subsidy to be effected by writing off moneys owed to the commissioners by housing authorities. This would result in savings in administrative costs, but, unfortunately, it is not feasible to introduce this change just yet. When the change is made, it is intended that the amount written off should be clearly identifiable in the Estimates and in the Appropriation Accounts for my Department and that the Minister should be answerable in the Dáil for the sum involved.

Section 11 of the Bill will provide a statutory basis for the low-rise mortgage scheme, which was introduced on 22 November 1976. Earlier this year I modified the scheme so that certain two-person families, comprising one parent and one child, can qualify.

Section 12 provides statutory authority for the payment by the Minister of an interest subsidy from 1 June 1977 on certain house purchase loans made by a building society and guaranteed by a housing authority under section 42 of the 1966 Act. The loans were made between 1969 and 1972 to householders, mainly in the Donaghmede, Finglas, Kilbarrack, Kimmage and Tallaght areas of Dublin who qualified for the normal local authority house purchase loan at a fixed interest rate of 9 per cent. The societies charged their normal variable mortgage rates. Section 12 will enable the Minister to subsidise the mortgage interest rates, so that in effect a flat 9 per cent is payable.

Section 106 of the 1966 Act requires a housing authority to put each of their rented houses into good structural condition before selling it to the tenant. In order to speed up the arrangements for purchase, a new optional procedure is proposed in section 13 whereby the authority and the tenant can agree on the nature, extent and cost of the works necessary to put the house into good structural condition, and the tenant may, within a specified period, carry out the works directly or arrange to have them carried out. The authority would pay the tenant the agreed cost of the works when they have been satisfactorily completed. In the absence of an agreement, the normal arrangement whereby the works are carried out by the housing authority will apply. The section also provides for statutory rights of appeal to the Minister under both arrangements.

Section 14 extends the general power in section 5 of the 1966 Act to make regulations by enabling them to be applied either generally or to specified classes of areas, houses, loans, persons, works or other matters.

Section 15 validates rates relief given before 1 January 1978 arising from the introduction of improvement grants in 1972 and 1975, respectively, in respect of houses occupied by physically disabled and severely mentally handicapped persons and provides for rates relief consequent on the restriction of new house grants between January 1976 and 6 July 1977.

Section 16 provides that a housing authority may exercise a discretion as to whether or not they should obtain a report from a medical officer of health of the local health board when determining the order of priority to be followed in all letting of houses in accordance with their approved scheme of letting priorities or only in cases where priority is claimed by an applicant on medical grounds.

At present, a housing authority have power to decide under section 90 of the 1966 Act about the sale of any of their houses. I want to ensure, however, that special purpose-built houses which would normally be unsuitable for family use—for example, elderly persons' houses—are not lost from the rented local authority housing stock. On the other hand, I feel that most local authority tenants should be given the opportunity of purchasing their houses. Towards this end, section 17 enables the Minister to direct an authority to offer for sale, or not to sell, as the case may be, houses of specified classes.

The provisions of section 18 are rather complex and I want to explain them in some detail. There is an obvious need for controls on the prices of new houses. This view is shared by the main political parties and, indeed, by many builders. I want to emphasise, however, that I do not envisage that whatever form of house price control is implemented following the enactment of the Bill will remain unaltered indefinitely. A flexible approach must be adopted and controls adjusted, in consultation with interested bodies, to take account of changing circumstances.

Section 18 replaces section 35 (2) of the 1966 Act, under which the system of certifying reasonable value in respect of the prices of new houses and flats has operated up to now. It is generally agreed that the existing provisions do not provide an adequate statutory framework for the control of house prices. Under them, the Minister simply refused a grant for a house where the consideration being charged was greater than what was, in his opinion, reasonable value for the house. I have become aware of abuses and circumvention of the CRV system and I feel it is incumbent on me to take action to stop these malpractices, particularly to safeguard the position of conscientious builders who are prepared to comply with the spirit and the letter of the law. These abuses have been mentioned by public representatives in the media and in complaints made to my Department by aggrieved house purchasers. The controls which I propose to introduce under section 18 of the Bill were welcomed by practically all the Deputies who spoke when the Bill was before the Dáil. I am sure that they will commend themselves also to the Seanad.

Section 18 has two main purposes— first, to empower the Minister to prohibit lending agencies from advancing loans for the purchase of new houses unless a CRV is obtained for each house; and secondly, to oblige builders who have got CRVs to abide by the terms of the certificate and to enable the Minister to take effective action against those who fail to fulfil these obligations. Subsection (2) gives effect to the first purpose. This subsection is an enabling provision which will apply only to such categories of loans and for such periods as the Minister may by regulations provide, having regard principally to trends in house prices, costs and earnings, the availability of mortgage finance and the national housing programme.

The remainder of the section deals with the second purpose I have mentioned as well as making general provisions relating to the issue of CRVs. The broad concept of reasonable value, as enshrined in the 1966 Act, is not being changed in any material way nor does the section introduce innovations in the approach to the determination of what constitutes reasonable value.

Section 18 (4) contains an enabling provision relating to the question of whether or not site costs are reasonable. Section 18 (5) provides for an appeal to the Circuit Court against the refusal of a CRV. This is the first time that provision has been made for an appeal against such refusals. I understand that there are practically no delays at Circuit Court level at present. Officials of my Department will be as informative as possible about reasons for refusals in discussing CRV applications with builders.

Subsection (8) requires a builder to ensure that a house is constructed in accordance with his application for a CRV and that the price charged is in accordance with the terms of the certificate. It also obliges the purchaser to see that where a CRV has issued and he enjoys the attendant benefits, the price paid by him corresponds with that specified in the certificate. This should deter any collusion between the builder and the purchaser to circumvent the CRV requirements.

Subsection (10) will allow the Minister to refuse to consider for a period not exceeding five years any application for a CRV from a builder who has got a certificate and has supplied false or misleading information or failed to fulfil the requirement under section 18. The Minister will have to notify the builder of his intention and the reasons why he intends to take the action. The builder will then have an opportunity of making representations in the matter and he also has a right of appeal to the High Court against the Minister's decision. This should prove an effective deterrent against abuses of the CRV system and I envisage that the power will be invoked only in exceptional circumstances.

Section 18 should provide an effective statutory framework for the operation of controls on the prices of new houses and flats which benefit from State funds or which are financed by mortgages from the main leading agencies. The purpose is to strike a fair balance between the interest of the public authorities, the householder, the builder and lending agencies.

Section 19 will extend the categories of persons who may take and receive a statutory declaration for the purposes of an application for a grant, loan or subsidy under the Bill. This will facilitate applicants.

Section 20 proposes to amend section 30 (2) of the Building Societies Act, 1976, which governs the powers of the Registrar of Building Societies to investigate the affairs of building societies. The point at issue is similar to that for which provision was made in the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) (Amendment) Act, 1979. The section will extend in certain respects the Minister's power to make regulations under section 77 of the 1976 Act in relation to the amounts and purposes of building society loans. The amendment proposed has been found necessary in the light of experience since the coming into operation of the 1976 Act. For example, from time to time, it is necessary to reconcile the anticipated level of mortgage lending for new houses with the financial needs of the national housing programme.

Section 21 will allow the Minister for Health to transfer, mainly for housing purposes, about 54 acres of land held by him at Navan Road, Dublin, to Dublin Corporation and the Commissioners of Public Works. That Minister at present holds the lands in trust under section 21 (3) of the Saint Laurence's Hospital Act, 1943, and amending legislation is necessary to allow the lands to be transferred for other public purposes.

Section 22 validates the payment of grants or subsidies made by the Minister or by a housing authority from the date of commencement of the particular grant scheme or subsidy arrangement.

Section 23, the Schedule to the Bill, repeals those sections of the Housing Act, 1966, and of the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act, 1962, which are superseded by various provisions of the Bill. In all, 30 sections are being repealed, wholly or in part, and ten sections of the Housing Act, 1970, will be spent when the Bill becomes law. Section 23 also repeals sections 90 (6) (a) and 98 (5) of the 1966 Act, which allowed a housing authority to require payment to them, generally referred to as a "claw-back" payment, of part of the profit made on resale by a tenant purchaser of certain houses.

Finally, section 24 of the Bill relates to the Title, collective citation, construction and commencement. It provides that different provisions of the Bill can be brought into operation on such day or days as may be fixed by order by the Minister.

Before I conclude I should like to place on the record that before presenting this Bill to the Seanad or recommending or getting Dáil approval to certain amendments, I had special regard to recommendations made to me by the Construction Industry Federation. The Federation's press notice of 1 June 1979 criticising the Bill contained several inaccurate and misleading statements. I do not wish to repeat all the points which I made in a press rejoinder issued on 1 June. I want simply to reiterate that, since this Government resumed office, there have been numerous meetings between the CIF, the Minister, the Minister of State, and senior officers of my Department, at which various aspects of the CRV system were discussed. I informed the Federation, as recently as 23 April last, that as soon as the Bill was published, any observations they might wish to submit in the matter would be carefully considered. On 25 June I was informed that the Federation did not wish to add to their views as set out in their press notice of 1 June.

In similar circumstances, the Irish Building Societies' Association, who are concerned about aspects of section 20 of the Bill, also submitted to me a memorandum setting out in considerable detail why they felt that the section as originally drafted should be changed. To meet their request for changes, the original section was amended when the Committee Stage of the Bill was before the Dáil to provide that the question of the mortgage rate applicable to building society loans shall not come within the scope of regulations made under section 77 of the Building Societies Act, 1976, as amended by section 20 of this Bill. Other amendments at that stage provide that, where the Minister refuses to grant a certificate of reasonable value, pursuant to subsection (5) (a) of section 18, the applicant will have a right of appeal to the Circuit Court.

We have already seen the practical advantage of this Housing Bill. As from 9.30 this morning an explanatory memorandum and application forms are available to the public about the new imaginative scheme of house improvement grants to reduce dependence on oil. I have arranged that copies of these forms will be available today to Senators and Deputies. Heretofore this change should strictly have been effected by a new Bill but this would inevitably lead to undue delays. The oil situation is serious. It requires urgent action and we have taken that.

The Bill was generally welcomed by all parties in Dáil Eireann and I commend it now to the Seanad.

Mr. Reynolds

The main purpose of the Bill is to ensure that we get a better type of house and that we will get it built quickly or at least it should be the main purpose of the Bill. The first difficulty facing young people who are thinking of getting married and who wish to build a house is the purchase of a site. That can cause many delays. Then there is the question of planning permission and when they get over that difficulty they have to apply for a loan either through a building society or a local authority. There is a delay there as there is in respect of the £1,000 grant from the Department of the Environment and now we have the CRV system which is going to cause greater delays. The Minister has the power by regulation to do something to speed up this. The Fianna Fáil manifesto before the general election stated that a £1,000 grant would be provided but if one looks at the cost of houses today compared to two or two-and-a-half years ago one realises that figure will have to be substantially increased. In addition, the amount of loan, despite the fact that it has been increased in the past few months, will have to be increased again as will the income level for loans.

The figures in respect of housing costs have not yet been channelled into the Department of the Environment. I am one of those unlucky enough to be a builders' provider. Since January or early February cement has gone up by 25 per cent. The retail price of a ton of cement at the moment is £44.50 and this is the main material used in the erection of a house. I say this for the information of the Minister of State: during last year cement has been in very short supply and it is in shorter supply today than at any time during the year. I know that is not a matter for the Minister's Department but they should interest themselves to see that supplies are made available.

For the past few months cement has been imported from many countries and naturally the cost of blocks has increased by 25 per cent. These increases have come in only since the end of January or early February and they have not been channelled through to the Department of the Environment. Plaster has increased by 25 per cent and chip-board which is used for dividing rooms has gone up by 20 per cent. Polythene, roofing felt and damp-proof courses which are used on the floors and walls have gone up by approximately 50 per cent. Wall insulation which is used in cavity walls to keep out dampness has gone up by 50 per cent. Glass has gone up by 20 per cent, roofing tiles by 20 per cent, gutters of all types and sewerage fittings have gone up by 40 per cent and copper piping and copper fittings which are used to supply water through the houses have gone up by 50 per cent. Timber has increased by 15 per cent, paint by 15 per cent and there are increased carriage costs.

In addition, importers and manufacturers have more applications with the National Prices Commission for further increases and I wonder where the Minister is going to find the money. It is his obligation to find it to keep the building programme even up to what it was last year despite the fact that it has dropped. Wages have substantially increased and contractors' charges have increased due to higher premiums and insurance and to costs of oil and diesel oil. The Dublin local authorities applied to the Department of the Environment for £17,150,000 and they got £10,300,000. That figure will have to be increased by 50 per cent to give the same number of houses built in Dublin this year as were built in Dublin last year. That is a very substantial increase and we cannot shut our eyes to it. If the money is not increased the number of houses being built will continue to drop.

I want to refer to the building societies. It is a pity that the Minister should touch building societies. They have served a useful purpose down the years and any interference with them by the Government could be dangerous. I am sure the Minister of State in his reply will tell us that there is no danger of any interference but I have no doubt that he would not be taking this power unto himself without some type of interference. For instance, some younger people at the moment are channelling their money into a building society with a view to getting a loan to build a house when the time comes. They might interest themselves in a £15,000, £20,000 or £25,000 house but the Minister could say at any time that the building society cannot lend any more than £15,000. Under this Bill there is nothing to prevent him from doing that. That would be a very dangerous situation and would discourage other young people from channelling their money into the building societies. For that reason the Minister should have a serious look at this.

The Bill sets out various proposals and schemes that have already been introduced and in respect of which guidelines and circular letters have been issued to local authorities. Regrettably, it has very little in it to meet the present housing needs of a number of local authorities. As regards improvements and extensions to local authority houses and accommodation for growing families, there is no money available to local authorities to put extensions to those houses which were originally built for a husband and wife but where there is now a large family. In my area a three-roomed house was built 13 years ago for a man and his wife. They now have 10 children and there is no way that the local authority can provide money to build extra rooms. Local authorities have been told that they cannot use council revenue funds to do these jobs nor can they use the capital allocation for this purpose. That is a pity. The Minister should provide the money for this type of work.

Disabled persons also need extensions to their houses, whether for the purpose of getting wheelchairs through the house or for other reasons. Again, local authorities cannot provide the money. The grant payable to a disabled person is £2,500. That is the maximum amount of money they can get. Some 50 per cent of this is paid by the local authority and 50 per cent by the Department. For instance, if there is a mentally handicapped child in the house or if somebody gets a heart attack, £2,500 will not go far in providing special accommodation for such person. We are prevented from spending money from our capital allocation or from any other funds for this purpose.

In rural Ireland a number of houses built over the years do not have any sanitary services. On numerous occasions local authorities all over the country have made requests to the Department to make money available for the purpose of putting sewerage and general services into these houses but without success. The Minister will have to give some thought to this.

Legislation by regulation as provided in the Bill is not satisfactory or desirable. When the Minister took control of the local authorities' finance he then had tighter control on everything to do with the local authorities. The limited amount of money that they can collect or that is made available to them by means of grants from the Department is not sufficient to meet their housing and other needs. There is also a danger in this Bill that the power to regulate could be taken from this House or from the Dáil. As far as I know, a regulation cannot be amended; it must be withdrawn. On reading the Bill one cannot be blamed for thinking that there is the danger of a means test coming in for housing grants for repairs or reconstruction. I hope the Minister, when replying, will assure us that there will not be any means test, that people, no matter what their income, will get the £1,000 grant and reconstruction grants.

The number of houses being built is declining each year. In 1976, 7,263 local authority houses were built, in 1977 the number was 6,333 and in 1978 it was 6,073, a drop of 1,190 on the number built in 1976. I cannot help but wonder what the position will be by the end of 1979. How much further will it have declined? What number of houses will be built in the coming year? I think it will have dropped much more substantially. I hope I am wrong because there is a danger in letting the building industry ease up. A number of contractors in this city and in rural Ireland fear there is going to be much unemployment in the building industry and naturally none of us wants to see that happen.

Income limits for small dwelling loans recently increased to £4,000 for a maximum loan of £9,000. It will be a considerable burden on any man with an income of £4,000 to meet the repayments on this because on a rough calculation the repayments would be in the region of £1,000 per year which is a bit more than a quarter of his income and he will also have to pay some income tax. He may get some relief on the interest but he will have still to pay some income tax on his £4,000 which leaves him with very little left. The only answer I can see there for people on that type of income is that their interest charges should be subsidised in some way. At the moment from the figures available the cost of a house is £16,000 in the rural parts of the country and over £20,000 in the larger towns or cities. In those circumstances the £1,000 grant is not much and I certainly think that the Minister should look at this to try to increase substantially this grant and the loans.

There are a number of people who try to build their own houses. In their off-peak periods farmers and people who are employed on the land do a lot of this work themselves. They pour foundations, lay the blocks, they probably employ somebody to help them put on the roof and they complete the inside work and that is a rather long, slow job. Some of these people have been sanctioned a loan of £4,500 and some of them have been sanctioned £7,000. Now the maximum is £9,000. The people who were sanctioned £4,500 when that was the maximum amount of loan or the people who were sanctioned £7,000 when it was the maximum amount have applied for an increase but there is no way they can get it. The Minister should have a look to see how they can be helped because they find themselves now in all sorts of financial difficulties. They are not able to find sufficient money to complete their house. There should be some means of helping these people. I am not saying they should be given the full £9,000 but certainly they should get a portion of it to make sure they get the house completed. The main purpose of the Bill should be to get as many houses built as possible.

To deal with the certificate of reasonable value, we all know that there have been a number of complaints about the issuing of approvals in these cases. These delays have held up payments of grants and the sale of houses. I think there will have to be some type of limit introduced on this, say, 21 or 30 days, but certainly no longer than 30 days. It is ridiculous that people should be held up for grants. It is unfair to the contractor, to the purchaser and it is unfair generally. Something has to be done about the delay in issuing approvals.

The Minister made reference to the CRVs and said that people or contractors had a right to appeal to the Circuit Court, but according to the Bill the Minister need not give the reason for refusal of a CRV. I do not think that is fair. I think if a contractor or a house purchaser applies for a CRV he should be told, it should even be put in writing, the reason he was turned down. There is no point in saying that people have a right to appeal to the Circuit Court. The Minister says that there is no waiting list in the Circuit Court now. He may be right—I do not know—but if he is it is the first time in my life there was not a waiting list. We hear various debates on the Department of Justice in the House and there is always a reference to delays in the courts.

The final point I want to make is about the letting of local authority houses. Up to now when the houses were advertised the county manager normally sent the applicants to his chief medical officer. He or his health inspectors investigated the applicants and he sent back a recommendation to the manager as to who should get the house. I am sure it works satisfactorily in every county but in reading the Dáil Debates I see that there may be one county that has a complaint about the system. However, I do not think that county should be allowed to make up the mind of the Department of the Environment. This is one area where the local authority must be seen to be fair. The system works satisfactorily and it should be left as it is. I doubt if I would be prepared to give the power to the county manager because the MOH has more information available to him with regard to sickness in the house than the county manager.

I want briefly to make a remark about houses for the elderly. I happen to be a member of one of these bodies who have built a number of houses for the elderly. We built 17 houses in 1969 and the cost per house to the local St. Vincent de Paul Society was £150 per house. Under the proposed new scheme we hope to build 11 houses and the cost per house is going to be £2,290. You can work out inflation how you like; you can work out all your calculations, but the net result of it is that we were much better off under the old scheme than we are under the present one. Ten years ago we were able to build houses with a local contribution, plus grants, plus all the aids that we got at the time from the Department of Local Government and from the local health authority and from the local authority. Our costing was £150 as against £2,290 and I certainly think the Minister will have to have another look at this scheme.

I want to conclude on this note. We all want to see itinerants housed but none of us wants to have them beside us; I think that is a fair enough statement and most people will agree with it. There has been no mention at all in this Bill of itinerants. They are a problem all over the country, in rural Ireland as well as in our big towns and cities, as anyone can see. The Department of the Environment are generous enough to local authorities; they give them 100 per cent grants. That does not mean much now, with the change of the rating system, but one suggestion that would help the local authorities would be if they build houses for itinerants that that amount of money should not be taken out of their allocation. That would not be a great gesture on the part of the Department of the Environment who are very loud at times about helping these people.

Ruairí Brugha

I welcome the Minister's speech and the Bill. It is a very comprehensive and rather intricate piece of legislation and it takes a bit of grasping. I would like briefly to ask a couple of questions in order to enlighten myself. Section 18 is a very intricate section and I agree with what the Minister has said. The principal aim is to try to keep down the price of houses and that is a community ideal which we all welcome, but it seems that some difficulties are emerging. First of all, the Minister, in the Dáil, agreed to an amendment allowing for an appeal to the court against refusal to provide a certificate of reasonable value. As far as I understand it, the Minister does not give the reasons and the question I would put to the Minister, practically speaking, for his reply at this stage or at a later stage, is how can the court deal with it if the information is not available? In other words, what is the court going to decide in relation to an appeal? On what grounds?

The other question that arises relates mainly to small developers. How is a developer to know how much he should pay for land? This is very important and I have had some correspondence about it. If a developer is going to be refused a certificate of reasonable value that refusal may be based on the price of the house, or of the houses, or may be based on the price of the land, but the builder cannot build on the land unless he buys it and the Minister should provide some means whereby a developer would be able to calculate how much he should pay for the land and where he would have to stop. Otherwise I can foresee here a slowing down of the whole business of house building, which is something we do not want and I am sure the Minister does not want.

I welcome the memorandum which has been available since this morning and I would like to raise one or two points in connection with it. I am sure the Minister knows that solid fuel burners, can, in some circumstances, be dangerous. Even the old type of solid fuel anthracite burner that was in use here until oil became popular could go out of order in the sense that you could not stop the coal from burning, in the way you can switch off a central heating system. It is possible that there may be dangers here to which the Minister should draw attention in the data that has been circulated. For example, I understand that if the central heating pipes are indirect there is a danger that if the circulation of the water is dependent on electrical pumps and if the power is cut off and the fuel does not stop burning you can have problems. It strikes me, first of all, reading what has been in the papers over the past week or so, and also reading through the memo, that there may be quite widespread demand for the very generous grants which the Minister is offering, because the whole question of energy is a topical one; everybody is talking about it. In those circumstances you may have quite literally many, many thousands of applications for grants. It is doubtful that there will be available a sufficient number of competent people to do this kind of work. You could have a sort of build-up of the number of people getting in touch with small builders, getting in touch with plumbers, here, there and everywhere. The Minister should be alert to the dangers of inadequate work being done, leading to more serious dangers, dangers of explosions, and so on, in houses.

I would suggest to the Minister that he consider house inspection, or the provision of some kind of certificate. I know it is not reasonable to require people to have an architect's certificate in order to obtain a grant, but if it is not practicable for the Minister to have the local authority inspect the work — and it does not seem to be practicable if you get 40,000 or 50,000 applications — at least there is a need for more care with solid fuel burners because they are not the same as oil or gas burners. One of the responsibilities of the Minister would be to ensure that the work is done competently by competent people. It would be a tragedy if there were dangers involved in providing grants for such fires and I commend the Minister to look into this situation.

Mr. Moynihan

We are here today dealing with very important legislation in connection with housing. For a substantial number of Oireachtas Members and local authority members housing is a priority responsibility. This is quite understandable as housing is such an elementary human requirement, following food and clothing.

The proposals before us will be more fully debated on Committee Stage, when each section can be fully examined. We are all conscious of the changing trends in society. Earlier marriage and earlier demand for housing have thrown tremendous responsibility demands and challenges on to the Minister and the housing authorities. The community today falls back mainly on the three bases for the provision of housing — private development, local authority housing development and voluntary co-operative development. All three are making and will, of course, continue to make, a major contribution in meeting the needs of an expanding community, demanding housing at a substantially earlier age than heretofore.

At the present time, the challenge of providing adequate reasonable housing is a very formidable one and has been for a considerable time. I am sure it is well known to the Minister, as it is known to every housing authority, that the list of applications for rehousing by local authorities is growing at a frightening rate. This must be related to two factors — and Senator Brugha has mentioned one — not only the price, but the difficulty of getting suitable and adequate building land facing the private individual, the private developer and the housing authority. This must be the chief basis on which the Minister and the housing authorities must plan an adequate housing policy. As of now, having regard to inflated land prices, with such a variety of frightening prices for sites, ranging from £20,000 down to £3,000 or £4,000, people with average Irish wages are scarcely in a position to compete in that type of market. Therefore, with housing being such an elementary requirement, the responsibility falls jointly on the Minister and on the housing authorities to develop a comprehensive plan to provide an adequate area of building land.

We are fortunate in this country that there is more than adequate land to satisfy our housing needs. I am conscious of the difficulties, as everybody in this House is, of drafting the necessary legislation to bring into effect a comprehensive scheme of land purchase for housing development at prices that our level of incomes can meet. This is a fundamental requirement that the Minister will accept has to be faced in the fight to secure proper housing for all.

I would strongly urge on the Minister that the private sector is a fundamental part of housing policy and, as an inducement, half the £1,000 grant should, as heretofore, be paid when the roof is put on the house, the balance to be paid when the person occupies the house. This should not involve any great change. It would make no change in the Government's financial contribution for private housing grants. It would be a tremendous help and incentive to persons in the private building sector, especially wage and salary earners.

The other important aspect in dealing with private housing is the loans structure. I would agree with Senator Reynolds — and I am sure the Minister is aware of this from his knowledge of local authority housing — with the present level of wages and salaries, taking current negotiations into account, where total earnings are taken into account by local authorities in the granting of loans, there is, despite the recent increase of £500, an urgent need to raise the limit to at least £4,500, otherwise the number of qualifying applicants will decline substantially. I am seeking not to have the £9,000 loan increased, but the qualifying ceiling. Repayments on the £9,000 loan will continue to have a fairly substantial impact on the incomes of the numerous applicants.

In endeavouring to develop a comprehensive building programme in all three sectors — private, public authorities and voluntary bodies — in order to build the maximum number of new dwellings, the Minister and the local authorities, jointly, should have a comprehensive review of all existing houses. This is an area where there has been considerable neglect over the past number of years. Every experienced member of a local authority here who is conversant with the operation of essential repair grants and handicapped persons grants, will realise that the limitation of these grants has contributed to a substantial number of dewellings becoming uninhabitable, and being condemned. More liberal regulations and extra finance could have salvaged such dwellings for many future years.

The existing essential repairs grant is governed by regulations that mean it would keep a house together for the lifetime of the resident, which is important for the resident concerned, but given present housing needs, to have included possibly a toilet and bathroom at the time the essential repairs were carried out could have salvaged that dwelling for many years to come. These are points which we will go into with the Minister in more detail on Committee Stage.

I welcome the handicapped persons grant. It is well known to local authority members in this House that a substantial number of applicants for the handicapped persons grant are persons who are incapable of carrying out the necessary adjustments and repairs to their houses. In many instances, they have not the competence, or the initiative, to get contractors to do the work. I would strongly urge on the Minister that in implementing the essential and desirable handicapped persons grant, local authority housing organisations should be given the power to carry out this work because in many cases the applicant has neither the resources nor the capital to do it. He struggles on and the house becomes derelict and is condemned, a house that with care and some extra finance and maintenance by the local authority could have been preserved for future families.

Another matter to which I should like to refer is that of the layout of open spaces and play areas. Today, many people passing through our older housing estates would conclude that housing authorities had recreated slums to a greater or lesser degree. With adequate land available today, we should give greater consideration to open spaces and play areas. We are all aware of the vandalism, delinquency, violence and psychiatric and other forms of ill-health prevailing today. Statistics will show that these occur in the areas with the highest density of population. Substantial sums are being provided to improve the situation and to eradicate many of these evils. It would be a fitting gesture if more substantial sums were made available to provide better layouts in local authority housing schemes so that there could be more play grounds and so on. This more than anything else would contribute to a more law-abiding society.

The Bill stipulates that through the housing authorities the Minister proposes to sell houses to the tenants. I think this is superfluous. As members of local authorities are aware, the authorities in the country have been most intelligent and generous in their approach to tenants' representations in regard to purchase schemes. However, in the final analysis the decision to purchase remains with the tenant, whether he will purchase or whether he will vest his cottage.

The Minister referred to special category houses and he specifically mentioned houses for the elderly. In my opinion no housing authority could ever consider selling such houses. It would be illogical and unrealistic for them to do so. I never came across any authority which had any disposition to do so and I hope I never will.

In conclusion I will say that in comprehensive legislation like this one would have thought there would have been a focus on the matter of housing itinerants. Everybody knows that this programme in some areas has met with substantial success and in others with only part success. We all agree that mistakes have been made and that a new thinking and a new approach will have to be made in the matter. The full impact of the resettlement of the itinerant community has rested with the housing authorities up to the present. I suggest that possibly there are very many private housing developments in which one or two itinerant families might be accepted. The Minister should provide for the right to purchase either new or older houses in areas where this would be acceptable to the community for people who have had no housing and no shelter. Acceptability is a real essential in the housing of itinerants as well as the good will and help of the community.

I hope that on Committee Stage we will have further beneficial discussions with a view to making this really workable legislation in the matter of providing houses for our people.

Mr. McGlinchey

As a member of two authorities in County Donegal for 24 years I can claim to have some experience of the housing records of various Governments, particularly as far as my own county is concerned. I was amused at the crocodile tears which Senator Reynolds shed today when he expressed disappointment in the fall in the number of local authority houses being built in recent years. Senator Reynolds said that in 1976 over 7,000 houses were built but that in 1977 the number dropped to 6,333 and dropped even further in 1978 to 6,073. Is Senator Reyolds seriously suggesting that the Fianna Fáil Government which assumed office in July 1977 were responsible for the drop in the number of houses completed in that year, or is he suggesting that Fianna Fáil could be held responsible for the drop in the number of houses completed the following year, because they had begun before the election? The allocation for houses was issued in May 1977 and houses completed in 1978 had to have the money provided for them by the Coalition Government.

I am a member of the Letterkenny Urban Council and next week we hope to allocate 34 houses. I was present at a meeting in October 1973 when the plans for those houses were approved by the council. For four years we beseeched the Coalition Minister for Local Government and his Department to sanction those 34 houses. We failed to do so, and the general election came and we still had no houses. The Coalition record, as far as Letterkenny is concerned, is that in their four years in government, not one single local authority house was built in the largest town in County Donegal.

Business suspended at 1 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.

Mr. McGlinchey

Before the adjournment I was discussing the failure of the Coalition Government to build houses particularly in my native county. I pointed out that in the four years during which the Coalition were in government not one single house was built in Letterkenny, the largest town in County Donegal. When the new Government were elected, we found that the 1977 allocation for housing which was made in May of that year provided no money whatsoever for us but in 1978 the present Minister provided funds for 34 houses and this year funds for an additional 20 houses on 31 developed sites. I appeal to the Minister to provide extra money for housing because as a result of the failure of the Coalition during those four years we now have a situation where we have 148 applicants for 34 houses. Many people who are very deserving of houses must wait possibly for years for homes that they are entitled to, because a Coalition Minister was not prepared to provide homes for them over a long number of years.

The housing record of the Coalition, despite what Senator Reynolds suggested, was disastrous. Not alone was money not provided for housing, but local authorities were ordered to stop buying additional land. Up until a few years ago, we had a pool of land which was bought when land was cheap. As a result of the order made by the Coalition Government, we could no longer buy extra land for houses.

There was a lot of discussion about grants today and we also remember that during the lifetime of the Coalition, anyone earning over £2,300 per year could not obtain a grant because the Government of the day believed that anyone earning over £41 per week did not need a grant to build his or her home. I wonder how many people earning under £41 per week considered themselves in a financial position to build their own homes. When Fianna Fáil were re-elected, the £1,000 grant for new house purchase or new house building was introduced. This was a very desirable measure at that time. Since then, the SDA loans were increased to £9,000 and the improvements grants were increased to £600.

The new house grants and the improvements grants are not in line with modern costs. I have often felt that reconstruction or improvement grants should be higher than new house grants so that people would be encouraged to preserve old houses. If they got a reasonable financial injection more old houses would be improved. Across the Border some years ago there was no such thing as a reconstruction grant, but the grant there now is in the region of £3,000 and it is resulting in many old houses that otherwise would be allowed to decay being preserved. The gap between the SDA loan of £9,000 and the present costings of house building is too large. Young people should be encouraged to provide their own homes, relieving the local authorities and the State of this responsibility. It is very difficult for young people to buy sites costing in the region of £4,000 to £5,000 even in rural Ireland and to build houses costing in the region of £15,000 on the £9,000 SDA loan. The low rise mortgage scheme introduced by Deputy Tully, as Minister for Local Government, was a very good thing and was certainly an encouragement to people on the housing list to provide their own houses. The Minister should expand this scheme and should increase the subsidy payable to people on the housing list.

Will the Minister carefully consider the question of guarantors for SDA loans? In some counties, the local authority insists on only one guarantor but in other countries, including Donegal, applicants for SDA loans have to give two guarantors. This is completely unnecessary and is in many cases an embarrassment and a hardship to the applicant. If an applicant were to default in his loan and leave the country the local authority hold the deeds of the house and all they have to do is take possession of it. Why, then, is there need for guarantors? People are slow to sign a guarantee because they do not understand the implications. They mistakenly think they are being saddled with a very heavy responsibility. Once their names are given to the local authority along with the names of their banks, their financial standing is immediately under scrutiny by the local authority. This can be a source of embarrassment to guarantors.

The Donegal county manager at one time introduced a rule that a person could not act as guarantor for more than one or two loans. In small villages this could have meant that there were no guarantors available. Under pressure, this rule was changed, but we still have the situation where an applicant for an SDA loan must have two guarantors. The time has come for the Minister to remove the need for guarantors. It is a disincentive to persons seeking money from the local authority when it should be a priority to encourage as many people as possible to provide their own homes.

Young people planning to get married may not be in a position to provide their own homes right away and should have facilities provided for them. The Minister should encourage local authorities to build more flats for newlyweds.

In the last ten years Army barracks have been opened in all the Border counties. In Donegal they have been opened in Letterkenny and in Lifford. It has been our experience that several hundred soldiers based in these barracks are on the waiting list for houses. The need for additional houses in these areas has increased as a result of the Army presence. The Minister should consider building, or having the NBA build houses for the Army in towns where military barracks have been provided. To build houses for the Army would not be wholly desirable in that a soldiers' ghetto should not be established, but extra housing should be encouraged in towns where there are Army barracks, with a stipulation that a certain number of those houses should be provided for soldiers. Housing is certainly one of our more urgent priorities. In most towns and villages there is considerable frustration. People living in bad, overcrowded conditions cannot visualise themselves getting houses for many years to come because a sufficient number of houses is not being built. I hope that in areas where the Coalition Government failed to provide houses this Government will give recognition to that fact and will provide extra money to make amends for the past.

Mr. Markey

This Bill was first presented by the Minister for the Environment in April of this year. It is now, three months later, coming before this House. It was debated in the Dáil on the eve of their recess. One would have thought that, it being such an important matter, it would have been given much more time than has been allocated to it by the relevant Minister. Having regard to the time it has taken to get through the Dáil and the changes that have been effected in the Bill there, one must conclude that it might well have got through without many of those considerable changes in it but for the vigilance applied to it in the Dáil. It is regrettable, it being such an important measure, that in this House also it comes before us on the eve of a recess.

It is an important Bill, as is any Bill relating to housing. The importance can be gauged from a number of aspects. The Government are faced with a problem in regard to housing which is largely of their own making. They have adopted a certain philosophy and attitude towards housing in the public sector which I do not agree with and which is creating more problems than it is solving.

One must go back to the manifesto produced on the eve of the General Election of 1977 to see where this problem first arose. In that manifesto Fianna Fáil gave a specific undertaking that they would increase local authority house purchase income limits and maximum loan limits to realistic levels and that they would review the whole system of housing finance. I now invite Fianna Fáil to adopt realistic levels in relation to both income and loan limits and to undertake a review of the whole system of housing finance. While this Bill contains certain commendable amendments to our existing housing legislation, there is still quite a lot which it has not yet tackled.

The philosophy of the Government is at fault in regard to the problems which exists in the housing area. When one does a few sums in regard to the number of local authority houses that have been started and completed in recent years, there is no doubt that the capital allocation given for local authority housing in the past two years does not add up to a very pleasant outlook for the future of local authority housing. In regard to housing starts, figures supplied by the Minister in response to a parliamentary question show that for 1978 the figure is 5,805, which is the lowest figure since 1971. Indeed, during the years 1976 and 1977 it exceeded the 7,000 figure and it now falls below the 6,000 level mark. That fewer local authority houses have been started than hitherto means that fewer will be completed. The figures supplied in the White Paper as regards houses completed over the past four or five years indicate this trend. The number of local authority housing completions in 1978 was estimated to reach 6,000.

This compared with a figure of something in excess of 8,000 and 7,000 for the previous couple of years. One can get some indication why this has happened and where it will lead not only from the manifesto but also from the White Paper and the Green Paper which the present Government issued after they took office in the summer of 1977. There was a rather extraordinary statement under the heading of housing in the Programme for National Development. It said on page 70:

... there is a general lessening in the degree of urgency of local authority housing needs, even though there has been little or no falling off in general demand and significant arrears still exist in some areas.

This is a rather contradictory statement. That statement says that there is no great reduction in demand and that there are still substantial arrears of housing. That would have led me to a different conclusion than that reached in the White Paper, which said that there was a general lessening in the degree of urgency of local authority housing needs.

The capital allocation for local authority housing for 1979 was given by the Minister as being approximately 6 per cent over the figure for 1978. In response to a question in the Dáil the Minister said that local authority housing completions overall would be of the same order as in 1978 when over 6,000 houses were completed. When one looks at all these figures one realises that we started off with a low rate of housing starts in the local authority sphere, a low rate of housing completions afterwards, and that the capital allocation for 1979 was only 6 per cent above the figure for 1978. Bearing in mind those figures, when one sees that there has been an extraordinary increase in the cost of housing one must conclude that the allocation is not at all adequate for the needs.

It is no harm to look at the figures presently applied to housing grants, and even reconstruction or house improvement grants, to see how they compare percentage-wise with the overall cost of housing now and ten years ago. Ten years ago one could build a detached bungalow above the minimum specifications for £3,500. The new house grants obtainable could amount to £600, which would represent approximately 20 per cent of the total cost of the house. In other words, 20 per cent of the total cost of a new bungalow ten years ago could be obtained in grants. The £1,000 new house grant, taking into account that a similar type bungalow can cost today anything ranging from £18,000 to £25,000, works out at 6 per cent of the overall cost of providing a new bungalow. One immediately sees that the level of grant vis-à-vis the total cost has deteriorated alarmingly, from something in the regions of 20 per cent of the overall cost to the present 6 per cent. There is certainly a need for the Government to have a more realistic look at the level of grant.

The same sums can be applied in regard to house improvement or reconstruction grants. The figure now is £600. The same sum can be applied in regard to house improvements or reconstruction grants. The figure now is £600. Adding a room and kitchen to a house can cost anything from £7,000 to £10,000. When one compares the percentage relationship there with what was applied, say, ten years ago, one sees that again there is a very alarming reduction in the allowance available to a person carrying out house improvement work. There is not only a need for an increase in the level of grants applicable for new houses and also house improvements, but there is a case for the indexing of such grant levels to the cost of housing from year to year. That should be more or less automatic. When the cost of housing increases the rate of grant should increase accordingly if we are to maintain the same proportion as applied in recent years. There are between 30,000 and 35,000 families awaiting housing. I do not envisage any reduction in that number in the light of the capital sum allocated and the rate of house completion and house starts in the local authority sphere.

No later than the next decade we will be faced with a problem which has not confronted us since the foundation of the State, namely, the replacement of the existing stock of local authority houses. Many existing local authority houses were built in the 1920s and 1930s, and are still relatively young houses. When they move into the 60-year bracket, one has to envisage replacement. That will be a problem in addition to providing new houses.

The replacement of existing housing stock raises a number of questions. This Bill could have contained measures to improve the situation so that we would have better housing stock available in future. For instance, derelict sites still exist to an extraordinary extent around this country. Notwithstanding the cost of housing sites on the fringe of towns, one finds, within towns and urban boundaries a considerable number of derelict sites, in respect of which local authorities have not obtained compulsory purchase orders so as to make them available for local authority housing. A speeding up of the procedures for compulsory purchase must be encouraged and this may require legislation.

Under the Planning Act, 1976 if there was failure to erect houses within five years there would be a withering effect in regard to the planning permission. I had the reservation at that time that five years was too long a period. With the demands for housing today five years is too long.

There are some commendable sections in the Bill but even in some of them, I notice a certain reservation on the part of the Minister. He is unwilling to go as far as one would have liked. Section 2, which contains reference to the devolution of administration of housing grant schemes to local authorities, is merely a continuing of the power that has been there since 1977. I do not see written into that section any indication of a willingness on the part of the Minister and the Department of the Environment to devolve much more in the future. Such devolution avoids the delays that take place between local authorities and the Department carrying out separate and duplicated inspections of housing sites, plans and all the problems that go into the administrative procedures involved in creating a new housing scheme. The duplication would be avoided by more devolution. I would like to have seen more willingness on the part of the Minister for this to happen than is indicated by his speech and by the Bill.

Section 3 is welcome. It gives an indication of help to co-operative housing groups and voluntary associations. Unquestionably, much more could be done in this respect. How much help is given at present, or has been given in recent years, to co-operative housing groups? This avenue should be explored and utilised more than it has been in the past. Local authorities are notorious for the time it takes them to plan schemes in conjunction with the Department. If they are given authority for a housing scheme of 60 houses, they can do a certain amount of the planning procedures themselves. There are still lengthy delays involved, and the more encouragement we give co-operative housing groups the better.

Land banks have always presented problems for local authorities. It is good that subsidies can be provided under this legislation. County managers, and too many local authorities, have not been willing to project present and future housing needs within their own jurisdiction sufficiently to encourage local authority members to take the plunge and buy land in anticipation of future requirements.

Section 11 deals with the low-rise mortgage scheme. While the low-rise mortgage scheme has worked satisfactorily to date, it needs a review in regard to the restrictions applied. From the outset I felt there were too many restrictions to what was a commendable mortgage scheme, for example the length of time an applicant has to be on the waiting list, and also the provision in respect of children. We should review these restrictions.

My sympathy goes out to childless families because they suffer psychologically from these restrictions. To prohibit childless families being seriously considered under these schemes is unjustifiable. The new procedure under the low-rise mortgage scheme where instalments rise on an incremental basis for the first ten years is a welcome new measure. I would strongly urge the Minister to take this matter up with building societies and other lending agencies to see if they would follow in line with this local authority measure. It is very helpful. It means that more people are able to take local authority houses on a purchase scheme from the initial allocation date. This is what we all want to see. A scheme whereby a bigger local authority housing loan would be given commensurate with the amount of savings the applicant was able to show would be an incentive to people to save from an earlier age. Young people generally do not see any great value in saving money. They do not see the intrinsic national benefit in it.

It has always amazed me that there is always a wide divergence between the capital allocation for housing requested by local authorities and the amount allocated. The most recent figures available to me show in some instances the amount allocated by the Department was only about 60 or 65 per cent of the amount requested. I should like the Minister to give a reason for this. I should have thought local authorities are responsible enough to propose a figure which can stand on the basis of their projections as regards their housing needs for the future, and the amount of work they can do within the coming 12 months. That they always received only 60 or 75 per cent, on average, of what they sought seems strange.

That is all I have to say at this stage. We will be able to debate a few other points on sections of the Bill. This is a worthy Bill. It does not contain as many incentives as I would have liked. I have tried to indicate the incentives there could be. The philosophy and attitude of the Government in regard to housing will have to change. It is well to provide facilities for housing in the higher price bracket, but our housing problems arise mostly where persons have neither the means nor the ability to provide their own housing. That generally arises in the local authority sphere. I hope the Government will review the requirements of local authority housing.

Mr. Jago

I welcome the Bill. It gives housing grants and assists persons to get houses and to repair and improve houses. It also provides incentives and thereby assists the building trade and the provision of jobs so sorely needed.

There are a few points I would like the Minister to interpret. The important change wrought by this Bill is that it allows grants to be varied by regulation, without the necessity for legislation. This will make for speed and efficiency. The Bill provides measures to keep down the cost of land. Many years ago local authorities were asked to buy as much land in their area for development as possible. There is one question I would like to ask in connection with the interest repayable to local authorities. As far as I know, the Government are responsible for recouping to local authorities interest paid on moneys borrowed to purchase land. Is the repayment of this interest made within the financial year or only when building starts on the lands so purchased? If it is withheld to the stage of building, it may encourage local authorities to speed development. On the other hand, if a local authority have to provide not only the money for purchase of land but for servicing that purchase, the powers of the local authority may be weakened. I would like the Minister's opinion on that.

On the question of the CRV, say there is a case where a person is about to purchase a house, and, using an arbitrary figure, the builder says that house will cost £17,000, and produces the CRV for £16,000 and that CRV is 12 months old, in which case there has been a 12 months' lapse in which there has been inflation, can the person concerned still get the grant, and pay the builder £1,000 more than the figure on the CRV?

In some areas there is a shortage of land for local authority housing. Cork city is one of those areas. A survey carried out in Cork city found that there is an amount of accommodation over business premises which for a small expenditure could provide flat accommodation which would suit newly-married couples, or maybe couples whose families have grown up and gone away, thus releasing houses for larger families. One would have to persuade the landlord to spend money on these premises. It probably would not be a very good financial investment, but under this Bill is it possible for an owner of such premises to get a grant to do such work? Is there any means test in relation to that? Section 5 (2) (e) says:

... requirements in relation to the financial and family circumstances of the person to whom the grant is paid, ...

If there is a means test, there would not be much chance of persuading a company who owned a commercial building that it would be a good financial investment to provide living accommodation in that building for persons. There is one other point on the question of grants. There is the right of housing authorities to impose conditions of their own. I would like the Minister to illustrate what that means. I welcome the Bill and I am sure everybody here could give reasons why there should be more money for everybody under the Bill, but in present circumstances everybody is seeking to increase his income. Small groups are seeking to increase their incomes, irrespective of how they affect the economy. Everybody is seeking to have taxation reduced. Everybody would like the Government to spend more money for him. How you relate all that, I do not know. We have to accept, in a Bill such as this, that the Minister in conjunction with the Minister for Finance has to decide how much money he can give and we have to accept it, although we would like a lot more.

Mrs. Robinson

Like other Senators, I regret that this Bill comes before the House at the end of this parliamentary session. It was ordered for today, with six other Bills, and we know the Dáil is adjourning this evening for the summer recess. This does not make us optimistic that amendments would be acceptable to the Minister because he would have no other House to go back to until October. It is a feature of this time of the year that there are a number of Bills, normally fairly technical Bills, that the Government try to get through before both Houses adjourn. I regret that this Bill is one of them because it is a Bill about housing, and the housing crisis is one of the greatest political problems and challenges before all of us in Ireland today.

Although it is called the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1979, the Minister stated in his opening speech that a large part of the Bill was intended to validate changes which are already made in anticipation of this legislation in the housing grants, subsidies and loans which are provided under the Housing Acts of 1966 to 1970. Then there is the controversial attempt to control private house prices through tightening up the CRV system under section 18 of the Bill.

The initial anticipation that any of us must have in seeing a Bill called the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill coming before the House is somewhat dampened by the minor aspects of the problem the Bill proposes to deal with. We, in this House, must begin by trying to assess the Government's housing strategy in the light of the problem as we see it and can identify it. On both sides of the House it has become very clear that we are aware of the dimensions of the problem and that this Bill will do very little to meet the basic urgency and dimension of the housing crisis that exists in Dublin city, county and elsewhere in Ireland. All we can hope is that the expression and strength of view held by various Senators will impress itself upon the Minister and that at the start of the next parliamentary session we will have a genuine attempt to begin to cope with this problem and to introduce the kinds of reforms that are going to be necessary if we are not to have a terrible social upheaval and a great outcry and disillusionment from homeless people, from young people who cannot get houses, from people living in substandard and inadequate housing conditions and from families waiting for years on the local authority housing list.

We have to begin by looking at and assessing the housing strategy of the Government. This is not easy because we are not faced with a clear and coherent overall strategy, rather we can look at certain aspects of it which have become very plain. There is a clear shift from local authority housing to reliance on the private sector. This was part of the overall approach of the Government. It was evident in the manifesto and has been carried through to the White and Green Papers. This reliance on the private sector was to provide a stimulus and to ensure that more houses would be built and would be available. Unfortunately, this has come unstuck in many regards. First, it would appear the private sector has gone up market and there are fewer ordinary houses being built. There is more of a tendency to concentrate on the upper end of the market, on luxury houses which are now selling at increasingly high prices ranging from £40,000 to £100,000 and in some cases in excess of £100,000. There has been a decline, even in the private sector, in the building of ordinary houses, even though the cost of ordinary houses has also risen at a phenomenal rate.

Despite the evident failure by the private sector to do what the Government hoped they would do and provide a resource of housing stock at reasonable prices, the amount of money available to local authorities has declined in real terms to a very serious extent in comparison to the sharp rise in building and site costs. The result has been a severe and persistent decline in local authority housing. For example, the number of local authority houses built in 1976 was 7,263; in 1977 it declined to 6,333 and in 1978 it declined to 6,073. Will it fall below the 6,000 mark in 1979? The pattern is the same in relation to the numbers of houses started which have also declined and are fewer than in other years in the seventies.

We have a situation where neither in the private sector, for the reasons I have given, nor in the local authority or public sector, is there the kind of concentration on ensuring a rapid increase in the number of houses available that one would think would be a logical response to the gravity of the situation and to the genuine housing crisis which exists in Ireland at the moment.

Parallel to that there is the spiralling phenomenon of the rise in house prices. These figures have behind them a weight of social distress and division. The price of an average house financed by building societies has increased dramatically over the last few years. The average price in 1976 was £12,113. For the first quarter of 1979, this had risen to £21,774, an absolutely phenomenal increase in the average price of houses financed by building societies. The average price of a building society house in the first quarter of 1978 was £17,139. For the first quarter of 1979 it had gone up to £21,774—an increase of £4,635 in one year, from March 1978 to March 1979. If we are talking of an increase in the average price of a house from March 1978 to March 1979, we see how totally inadequate and unresponsive the £1,000 grant for couples buying a new house is. That has not only been absorbed but absorbed almost four times by the rise in the cost of housing. We should not spend too much time on figures. They have to be seen in a social and housing context—in the context of our policy towards ensuring that families will have adequate housing. That should be a major priority and we should divert sufficient resources to it.

I have moved from the problem of the focus of the present Government's housing strategy, the focus on the private sector, the failure of the private sector to meet that challenge and the tendency to concentrate on the upper end of the market, on the provision of more luxury houses, the decline both in allocation of money in real terms to local authorities, and the decline in the building and completion of local authority houses and now I would like to turn to another aspect of the problem, that is, the high cost of sites and the necessity for radical reform in the capacity of local authorities to acquire sites. It has been a fairly widely shared view for a considerable time that the fact that people can make large speculative profits, which are now relatively untaxed, out of sites in urban areas by being cute enough to buy up a run-down or derelict site in anticipation of it being needed for building purposes, is socially undesirable. It is very divisive and the kind of policy which most other countries have rejected for understandable social reasons.

The Kenny Report in the early seventies tackled part of this problem by recommending the possibility of controlling the prices of sites on the perimeter of cities and towns. This was an inadequacy of the Kenny Report because it is just as important, and in many instances more important, to control the price of sites in the inner and centre city areas. We need to tackle this problem in a radical and dramatic way because it has now assumed extraordinary proportions.

The entire land bank of sites available to Dublin Corporation is adequate for 2,000 houses. These sites are in the possession of Dublin Corporation. The number of houses being built is approximately 650 to 670 and Dublin Corporation have now in excess of 8,000 families on the housing list. Even if the corporation got enough money tomorrow to build on every site available to them, they could not provide houses for even half the families on the housing list.

That is what I call a housing crisis. That is what all of us who operate as public representatives and who do advisory work in our constituencies hate to have to tell individual families: "Yes, we know you have been five years on the housing list. Did you know that there are 8,000 other families on the list and that if Dublin Corporation took over active control of every site available to them, we still could not meet the needs of half the families on the housing list?" That is the dimension of the crisis.

Then we see other figures emerging from another source, a survey of the derelict areas in Dublin. This again shows some phenomenal characteristics because this survey has shown that 9 per cent of the land area in the city of Dublin is derelict. That is a fairly high percentage and it amounts to something in excess of 2,000 acres. Apparently a great deal of this derelict land, about 40 per cent, is in unknown ownership. Through neglect or oversight or a lack of adequate policy in relation to housing, we have an inadequate land stock and yet the phenomenon of a large number of derelict sites. This is because of a laissez faire attitude towards the whole problem. We are not approaching housing as the most important priority for families in the city of Dublin specifically and in the country generally where the problem is comparable and where others can point to similarly dramatic figures.

If we concentrate for a moment on the city of Dublin, which is the major local authority area, we see that we tolerate very ugly and despoiling derelict sites in many areas. Local communities do not know who owns the sites and see them now as breeding places for rats, because they are used informally as dumping grounds. They are unable to get adequate information about what is planned for these sites and it is clear from this survey that in about 40 per cent of the cases the corporation themselves do not seem to know who the owners are. All of this would be dramatically different if we approached the potential housing land in any urban area, either in a city or a small town area, as part of the natural resource, as part of the potential housing stock of that community and if the local authority were in a position to buy the sites at reasonable cost so that they would be available for housing in the future.

When the subject is raised the tendency is to say that it raises all kinds of constitutional problems relating to the acquisition of property. Are people not entitled to their full profits? Must they not be able to make any profits they can if the land is wanted by the local authority? Unless it can be compulsorily purchased within the narrow confines of the CPO, then is that not the end of it? We have been living with this kind of constitutional shadow for long enough. Either it should be seen that the ownership of private property is not unlimited but is very substantially circumvented by the provisions of the Constitution or else we should have a constitutional referendum. We should not put before the people the need for land to be available to the local authorities for housing or other amenities. If it is felt that the constitutional provision relating to private property presents a major problem, then let us put it to the people of Ireland. I have no doubt at all that the thousands of people without adequate housing at the moment, the thousands of young couples who cannot get a home, the thousands of people who for years have been on the lists of the local authorities would be an overwhelming voice for making any necessary change in the Constitution. I have some doubts as to whether it requires a constitutional amendment but if so that would be an important issue to put before the people by way of referendum.

We come to the other ways in which people try to get the money for houses and there was reference to the question of mortgage interest and SDA loans. I was pleased to hear Senators on the Government side of the House criticising the inadequacy of SDA loans under present circumstances. It is important in a matter like housing that there is less political sniping from one side of the House to the other and a greater effort to show the inadequacy of the loan system in present circumstances. One has to look at the actual figures and how they translate into the reality of workers with families in the country.

The problem with the SDA loan system as it is operating at the moment is that it is totally inadequate for the current housing needs. The regulations confine the availability of the loan to a person whose income is in the region of £80 a week and then the amount that can be obtained on the loan is £9,000, necessitating payments in the region of £20 a week. Any site that a person might try to acquire must now cost between £1,000 and £2,500. I cannot think of any sites that would be available under £1,000; the price is more likely to be up to the £1,500 mark and the SDA loan will only be paid over when the house is completed. The person is faced with the cost of the site and it is a most unlikely eventuality that the house could be built for less than £15,000 under present conditions. How is somebody to bridge the gap between the £9,000 and the cost of the house and meet all the other costs such as the cost of acquiring the site in the first place? We are now seeing a catch 22 situation in regard to the SDA loan system: if you qualify for the loan you cannot find the capital to bridge the gap between the amount of the loan and the cost of getting the house built. There are people who are getting themselves into very serious debt problems. They borrow beyond their ability to repay with recurring problems for them and for their families.

The picture as it is painted is one which requires a radicial appraisal by the whole of our society. I do not think that the whole question of the provision of housing is one that should be left totally to the Government and then that a Government at any point in time should be blamed solely and in toto for a failure to meet demands. Housing demands are the hardest demands to meet and form a very substantial portion of the requests and the applications coming through to anybody operating an advice centre. What is needed is a better sense of awareness among the public themselves. It is important for local communities to think in terms of the housing stock for that local community and the need for a minimum standard of housing for every family. The Government should be able to command that a sufficient proportion of the overall funding is diverted to this particular need. That is where successive Government have failed to get the message across. They have, perhaps, glossed over the difficulties and failed to bring home the number of families in grossly substandard housing or in flats.

Each of us could probably give graphic pictures of the conditions that families live in. Certainly the state of the private accommodation in which some families live in the Rathmines area is something of which we would be very ashamed if it were written up in the News of the World or some other lurid paper in another country. Yet that is the reality which we allow to continue. There are families living in overcrowded, damp, substandard, appalling conditions and with no hope. The real problem is that, as an elected representative hearing these problems or going and seeing people in these conditions, it is very hard to offer them any hope. It is very hard to know, in what amounts to such an emergency now in the city of Dublin, if you will get an offer of housing within any reasonable time. This is something that is not sufficiently appreciated by the community as a whole.

I was struck very much by the very widespread reaction to the PAYE marches in Dublin and in other cities around the country in recent months. There was a sort of spontaneous feeling among people that they wanted to go out and march because they believe that the PAYE worker is being victimised and is bearing too great a share of the taxation burden. They believe that others are being favourably treated and that they are being discriminated against. So far as a genuine order of social priorities is concerned, it is on the housing question that tens of thousands of Irish people could well get out and march. Housing is totally inadequate and substandard at the moment for so many families, yet there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is no hope.

Every time a young couple think they may be getting together enough money to get a house they see another record broken in another town in Ireland. Looking at the papers, particularly the property pages, in the last few months, there has been a kind of sick pleasure taken in the fact that a new record has been broken for the cost of a house in Limerick or Galway or Dublin. We are up to a six-figure mark. We need to examine how socially divisive, how unacceptable and how contrary to the spirit of a republic in any real sense those kinds of figures are and the gap they promote between families. The social issues underlying this should be examined in great detail.

It is difficult to spend a great deal of time assessing the detailed provisions of this Bill because it is such a limited measure. It does not begin to take the kind of radical steps that I was talking about. It will do nothing to increase the land stock available for houses. It only continues and validates a system of grants and loans which already exists.

There are one or two interesting and useful things in the Bill. One of them has been referred to by a number of Senators and relates to specific grants to co-operative housing organisations. I would appreciate figures from the Minister of how much money has been made available to voluntary co-operative housing organisations, to what extent this is a growing phenomenon in the housing area and to what extent this particular section can be used to increase significantly the housing available. If there was any way of doing it, I would urge the Minister to try to exercise his influence to prevent the decline in the capacity of local authorities to provide housing and instead to turn the tide and to place them in a position to improve the new housing stock.

This Bill refers to maintenance grants and grants for restructuring. We need a great deal more emphasis on the maintenance of existing housing stock. Here again the picture is a very gloomy one. There is far too little funding available for maintenance and the conditions under which it is available often favour those who are better off and actually discriminate against those who cannot put together enough money to meet the rest of the cost of any renovation or reconstruction.

There is one area not specifically mentioned in the Bill where the Minister or the local authorities would make available grants for improvement of houses to cope with the energy crisis, placing a proper emphasis on conservation, insulation and ways in which houses can be improved so that they do not require the same amount of energy to heat them, thus cutting down on present wasteful uses of energy in the home. The Minister recently announced a grant for the building of a fireplace if a house does not already have one or the installation of a boiler to be heated by solid fuel. This is a step in the right direction. It is the kind of thing that the Government should be promoting. However, it is limited in its application and it does not highlight, in a way that I believe we should highlight in a Bill of this kind, the need for emphasis on improvement of the existing housing stock.

Another reason for laying much more emphasis on this aspect would be that it has a very substantial employment element. There are jobs and skills involved in insulating houses and in investigating the whole area of district heating. These kinds of improvements are necessary for us, faced as we are with the severe energy crisis, and also would be an important way of ensuring that the existing housing stock is maintained and improved.

This problem is worse in the inner-city areas and in the poorer areas of the outer city, where there is the difficulty of getting any kind of minimum maintenance. I know there is a particular difficulty at the moment because of the present go-slow. The lack of incentives for people living in these houses to carry out maintenance themselves has resulted in a substantial wastage and decline of the existing housing stock. This makes no sense at all, given the overall crisis in providing new sites and new housing stock.

Since the subject is such an important one on which one would like to hear the views of every Member of this House, I regret that the legislation itself is not really focussing on the major problem and is coming to us with a number of other Bills at this tail-end of the year. I repeat what I said at the outset. I would welcome a Bill from the Government at the start of a new parliamentary session which would genuinely begin to meet the various kinds of problems which go together to form the major political crisis facing us—the housing crisis, which is evident all round us today.

Mr. Dowling

I should like to add my voice to the voices of the many Senators who have already expressed their opinions on the Bill. I have much in common with some of the comments that have been made on both sides of the House. Where social concern is a factor Members on all sides of the House express themselves fully and effectively. On this occasion we have heard many contributions and many suggestions that I trust the Minister will take into consideration in the on-going development of legislation. The real factor of grave concern is the promotion of better family life by better housing and job opportunities. Having said that and having agreed with the social concern of the Senators on the Opposition benches, the first thing we should do is put the situation in order. We should bring reality into the housing situation and bring into focus the true problems and the cause of the situation as it is today.

Let us consider the capital programme for 1979 and capital expenditure affecting the building construction industry between 1975 and 1979. In 1975 there was £115.14 million available for housing; in 1976 it fell to £105.18 million and in 1977 it fell to £99.29 million. These are years of the Labour Minister and the Coalition Government. There was a reason for this decline which was responsible in no small way for the situation as it is today. If we look at the figures we see that in 1978 the budget estimate was increased to £142 million from £100 million. In 1979 it was further advanced to £165.30 million. So we see the real concern of a Government in making the necessary finance available to meet the particular crisis.

We know that in the years of the decline during the Coalition Government, under their Labour Minister, the local authorities were told to stop buying land. If there is no land available we know the difficulty that could arise in the development of a programme. It takes at least three to four years from the time land is purchased to the time a development takes place. So we have a carryover and a legacy of decline from the Labour Minister in the last Government. When we took over in 1977 we found that the building construction industry was wrecked and the unemployment content within that industry was very substantial.

Considerable strides have been made and the Government have done a substantial service in the development of a forward-looking programme. I should like to compliment some of the speakers from the Opposition on the selection of reading material because apparently they have studied the Fianna Fáil manifesto in great depth and detail. I am sure they learned much from this when they examined it against the problems of their own Government during that period. However, I am sure Senator Robinson will read the report of my speech and in the course of the discussion I hope to give the answer to some of the problems she raised.

Having explained and put on the record the true facts of the situation, we must move along from there. I am concerned, as the Minister and the Government are concerned, about the people who require local authority accommodation. Dublin has been mentioned and some erroneous figures have been presented. I have been a member of the housing committee of Dublin Corporation for nearly 20 years. I know the problems of society here. I know the situation with the development of the city and with the increase in population. This increase in population comes from many counties. Dublin is a complete entity which must be examined on a separate basis because there is not the inflow in other counties that there is in Dublin. I felt, as indeed did Members of the Opposition, that enough money was not being made available to meet the development problems of society. They are ours because of the trends and we must face up to them.

There is a housing programme and there is a housing shortage, but in every city there is a housing shortage. That is one of the signs of a living city. If there was no housing shortage in Dublin we could say that there were other problems. When we go through the country and find empty houses, we know the reasons. We see the decline in population and the problems that bring about this situation. Nevertheless, we should strive to ensure that we eliminate this problem at the earliest possible moment. An effort has been made. These are the facts of life that we read from the capital programme dealing with the years from 1975 to date. I hope this trend continues. If so, we will get somewhere towards the elimination of the problem here.

There are many other problems. I agree with Senator Robinson when she speaks about the question of land prices and about some form of control. The basic factor is the price of the commodity. If somebody indicates that this land will now be used for housing development, it should not mean that there will be an excessive increase in the price of that land. We must look at this situation in its entirety to see how we can improve it.

In relation to the certificate of reasonable value, I am not so sure that it has not put up the price of houses. It is a certificate of reasonable value for whom? Is it a certificate of reasonable value for the person who wants to buy a house at £12,000 when the builder looks for £14,000 or £15,000? Very often the builder will look for the last ounce out of the last sod. He is not concerned about the purchaser who wants reasonable value. I hope that in time to come we will have another look at this situation and give reasonable value to the person with the capacity to meet a reasonable situation. He has been disregarded in the past. While the certificate of reasonable value in theory and in practice in many cases has been a success, it has not got to the root of the problem. If we have no £12,000 houses on the market and if people are going to strive for the upper limit, we will have a serious situation. Once they apply and the house is of reasonable value at that particular figure, it disregards every other factor along the line. Every builder will try to get the maximum from the certificate of reasonable value. There has been an amount of connivance and fraud and I hope people who are deceptive in this way will be brought to heel.

The Minister has indicated in the course of his speech that he is aware of many of these factors that have caused distress and grievance. I hope the people responsible for these grievances will be brought to heel and that the unfortunate people who are purchasing their houses will be compensated. That is the only way to deal with unscrupulous people. Builders as a whole are a responsible group of people operating sometimes under very difficult circumstances. Weather factors, price factors and so on should be taken into consideration together with the employment factor.

Have the construction industry been fair or reasonable in their approach to the whole problem of the training of personnel to meet a situation where work forces are required that cannot be obtained? They, too, have to look at their own situation and put their own house in order.

As public representatives we have a part to play. With the upward and downward trends in the trade cycle we are going to meet periods of prosperity as we are going to meet periods of depression. There is going to be a lot of money available and there is going to be less money available during certain periods. We must make adequate provision to meet the circumstances as they develop. Over the period they have been fluctuating upwards and downwards. Sometimes Governments are not really responsible when there is a cutback but on other occasions they are responsible. From their point of view a positive approach to the problem is to cut back for a variety of reasons.

A number of items have been mentioned in the Minister's Bill — all very valuable steps. A forward-thinking Minister will always meet a situation, examine the problem and move forward. Legislation itself is an ongoing process and we are going to have the deficiencies and shortcomings of this Bill amended in future Bills. Perhaps some of the factors require a trial period to sort out the problems and to ensure that their operation is effective. I hope that many of the items that have been mentioned by speakers on all sides of the House will be taken into consideration.

It is no solution to place the blame on the present Government or indeed on the previous Government. We have a collective responsibility here to ensure that our social conscience is reflected in legislation and it is our duty in this House to stimulate the Government into taking the necessary actions. While there will be political sniping from time to time, this is part and parcel of our set-up. Nevertheless everyone is really concerned about the real problem, namely that a man should have a house to live in, at a reasonable price. It may mean, as Senator Robinson said, that a radical transformation will have to take place. If that is the way that the problem has to be solved, we will have to measure up and see how radical we can be within the limits of the law to meet this ever-increasing problem. The population increase in the city is a problem and there is no doubt that the general trend, if it is not impeded by previous legislation, is that there will be an upward surge in the population in other sectors. Therefore, the problems of Dublin today are the problems of other sections of the community tomorrow.

It is important that we take note of the problems of other areas, whether they are areas that are depressed and run-down, or whether they are areas that have the same type of problem as Dublin city. I am sure when these matters are examined in the future that we can give the same type of sympathy and understanding to the problems of other counties as indeed we give to the capital city here. Different counties will have different problems from time to time. These have to be tackled not on a blanket basis but on the basis of the need that exists in the areas at that particular time. We want to see everyone with a home, a proper home where family life can develop in the way we would hope it would develop. The basic factor of a home is indeed most important.

I must come back to the question that has been neglected, the training of skilled operatives. I hope that both AnCO, who are doing a substantial job, and the building industry itself will have a new look at this problem. There are problems within the industry that have brought about other problems. There may be slow-downs that are not the responsibility or the result of Government action but are the result of action outside Government or indeed Opposition control.

There is also the question of providing accommodation for the young and the newly-married and assistance to the local authorities to ensure that the aged are effectively looked after, because far too often these people are forgotten because they are unable to fend for themselves. We have a huge responsibility to these people who have served this nation wisely and well in many ways during the years. I hope that where additional aid, facilities and moneys are required to make them happy in their present accommodation or in their future accommodation, that all the necessary aids and assistance will be at their disposal. It is sad on some occasions to see well-equipped dwellings provided for the aged and some item of equipment that could be of great assistance, either by way of warning devices or by way of communication with other people in the same building or the same complex, omitted because of cost. Nothing is too good for the people who have served this nation over the years. Members on all sides of this House have expressed their concern for the aged and the young people who are about to make their homes.

I hope the Minister will take into consideration the whole question of the cost factor in the provision of accommodation for the people who intend to purchase their own homes. If section 18 needs to be amended in the future, the Minister might take into consideration some of the problems that I have mentioned. To me it is a one-sided situation at the moment where the man looks for the maximum amount of profit from a given space. Maybe in the future we would say that houses of a particular price group should be built in a particular area so as to facilitate people who are anxious and willing to purchase their own homes but have not got the capacity to meet the higher cost. Who is to get the benefit from the certificate of reasonable value—the builder or the purchaser? I would say it should be the purchaser. As house prices are escalating, it is sad to say that they are moving away from the grasp of the average individual. I think Members of this House and Members of the other House might even find it difficult to purchase a house in the future judging by the vast escalation of prices.

I know there are many other problems that I have not touched on, but nevertheless I feel the views that I have expressed are views of concern in relation both to the aged, the young people and the people who wish to purchase. I hope the Minister takes all these factors into consideration, perhaps not in this legislation but in the future, and that we will have a solution to the problem at the earliest possible moment. Then we may say that we in this House collectively have made a substantial contribution to the development of housing policy. Whichever Government are in power, if they take note of our pleas and of our considered opinions, many of them based on many years experience, I am sure that they will not go wrong.

Mr. Howard

I believe in the theory that it is an advantage to the passage of successful legislation that those on the Opposition side of the House, while welcoming the features of the legislation that they will find worth while should, at the same time, not hesitate to criticise aspects of it that fail to measure up to the expectations of the people. I intend to pursue that course as constructively as possible.

There are parts of the Bill that I welcome and that are necessary. The reservations that I hold in regard to it could best be expressed by saying that in general terms I do not accept that it offers hope or prospects of housing to many thousands of people, particularly young couples and those living in unfit and over-crowded conditions. The people that I refer to can own or become tenants of a house through three separate channels. They can buy a house, they can build one or they can apply to the local authority provided their income is not greater than £4,000 per annum.

With regard to local authority housing, being a member of a local authority myself and having a few weeks ago been on a local election canvass, I am acutely conscious of the need and the requirements of many people in relation to housing. We cannot avoid accepting that local authority houses are not being built in the numbers that are genuinely required. I want to refer to the 1978 programme of Clare County Council. The amount sought and the whole policy of this county council in regard to house-building is done entirely on the basis of need. In 1978 the application for a housing allocation was for £1.1 million. The amount provided by the Department was just under two-thirds of that figure. The cost of a local authority housing unit, taking in site costs and so on, in County Clare is £12,700. Therefore, the shortfall represents about 40 housing units, or approximately 40 families in need of housing who will not be housed as early as they would be had the full allocation been granted. I am referring to the problem solely as I have seen it in my own county.

Senator Robinson spoke of a time-lag of something like five years in relation to the length of time a person remains on the housing list of Dublin Corporation before he is housed. It is not quite as long in County Clare but it is in the region of three years. Even that I regard as an unreasonably long period. Bearing in mind the high proportion of young people in our population, we must recognise that the question of the housing needs of our people is going to be a crucial issue in the years ahead. Unless we are prepared now to take the steps necessary to deal with that problem we will face a crisis of frightening proportions.

Those people whose income exceeds £4,000 a year or approximately £77 per week are not eligible for local authority housing and have either to buy or build a house. The market conditions at present do not make it realistic for people who are just above that borderline to contemplate either option. To buy a house in a housing estate in my town would cost upwards of £20,000. If that full amount had to be borrowed, which of course would not be the case, it would cost something in the region of £60 per week to service it. Assuming that a person contemplating buying a house costing that much money could from his own resources provide, say, 20 to 25 per cent of the cost, he is still faced with a weekly repayment bill of something in the region of £50. That on an income from £80 to £100 is not realistic. Still referring to local conditions, he can build a house provided that he qualifies for the SDA loan which is subject to an income limit of £9,000 and provided he does not have to purchase the site. If he needs to buy a site and requires a builder to construct the building, there is no way that £9,000 or even £14,000 would be adequate for his needs.

I put it to the Minister that the time has arrived for the Minister and the Government to look very thoroughly at this £9,000 limit. It should be raised to a minimum of £15,000. I suggest that the income limit should be raised from £4,000 to £7,000 or £7,500 because there is little point in providing a loan of upwards of £15,000, which is the requirement of a person who is going to build or buy his own house, unless the income limit is also raised. A person on a lower income will not have the capacity to meet the repayments that the higher loan will require.

Many Senators referred to the fact that housing costs have doubled in a little over two years. In County Clare housing costs have risen from an average of £11,000 in early 1977 to something like £20,000 to £22,000 today. The result is that the demand for local authority housing has increased. The pressure is on local authorities to construct houses. If they make an application based on need—as in the case of Clare County Council—it is wrong of the Department to reduce that allocation. By doing so they are depriving people of houses at a time when they require them. I do not think sufficient recognition is being given to the reality of the situation that is being posed by the high proportion of young people in our population. We must recognise that. We must take steps to cater for their housing needs. If we do not do so there will be a crisis of severe proportions in a few years time.

I welcome section 3 of the Bill. That is the section which will enable the Minister to make payments of expenses towards housing co-operatives and voluntary associations promoting housing. I want to ask the Minister if that includes, as I assume it does, for example, the rural housing organisation in Clare and in certain centres in the west? I hope it does because that organisation in the past four or five years has pursued an ideal that deserves total support from every quarter.

Their ideals and objectives are to build low-cost houses in rural towns and villages on a non-profit-making basis. Where this has taken place it has the effect of rejuvenating these rural towns and villages. It is a concept that is worth supporting. I am conscious that the RHO would benefit and indeed their finished product would benefit if they could be assisted under this section. I hope that the Minister has that in mind.

Section 4 covers the £1,000 house grant. There is no doubt that when this grant was introduced two years ago many people gained the impression that if you were building your house for the first time you were eligible for this £1,000 grant. The reality for some people has been otherwise. Many people have found that for one reason or another they have been ruled out as being eligible for this grant. For example, people found that because of some slight technicality or some rigid interpretation of the regulations, they lost the old grant and did not qualify for the new one. Hardship was involved in these cases. There has been correspondence between myself and the Minister, some of it successful and some not. I hope that the Minister will avail of this opportunity to see that these people who got caught between two situations and who found that they were not eligible for either grant are helped and that in fairness and justice their problem is looked after.

In his speech the Minister said that steps are being taken to facilitate residents in Finglas and Kilbarrack and other areas in Dublin. I would like to draw the Minister's attention to a situation in Shannon which is unique in the sense that the tenants there are tenants of SFADCo houses. I am not making a political point when I say this, but during the general election these people were given the distinct and clear impression that if they were to purchase these houses they would qualify for the £1,000 grant. When they attempted to do that the reality was otherwise and they were refused. If we are to make provision for certain benefits to go to areas that have been mentioned, I would like to ask the Minister to consider that particular situation because the tenancy and the houses in question are unique.

It is only fair at this point with the escalating cost of housing that we measure the effectiveness of the £1,000 grant. When it came into existence other grants were abolished. Some of these other grants could be as high as £900 for farm workers and for people in sub-standard houses and in reality the gain there was a mere £100. There were others who qualified for a State grant of £325 plus a supplementary grant from the local authority. If you compare the value of these grants, as Senator Markey did earlier, of, say, £700 to £900 when the cost of housing was perhaps half what it is today, it is obvious that the £1,000 grant needs to be revised upwards. As a proportion of the total cost of house building it does not represent what the old grants represented when they were in existence.

I wonder if section 4 (2) (d) or some other part of the Bill would provide the Minister with the power to deal with a situation that has arisen in some housing areas. I am referring to houses that have been occupied for a few years and then sold and restructured — or even reconstructed by their original owners —into flats. There is a planning permission factor involved there but some people succeed in evading it. This development is causing annoyance to neighbours in those areas. In addition to the annoyance to the neighbours there is also the fact that it is downgrading their property, or at least the neighbours think so. Therefore, I ask the Minister if he has power under this Bill to deal with that situation.

I have read the Bill and I have listened to most of the discussion here today and there is one aspect of the Bill which has caused me concern. That is section 5 (2) (e). I do not feel that it has been highlighted to the extent necessary. There are very wide implications in that subsection. It raises very clearly the question of a means test. I understand the Minister has stated elsewhere that it is not the intention to use that subsection in that way but if that is so why is it included in the Bill? It reads:

requirements in relation to the financial and family circumstances of the person to whom the grant is paid,...

I understand that the Minister indicated elsewhere that it was not his intention to apply a means test. If that was the case, why is it necessary to include that subsection in the Bill?

I fully support section 9. It is the section which enables the Minister to subsidise local authorities in the provision of sites for private housing. The Minister should insist that the local authorities should make these sites available at cost to the people who are building houses, without any inclination, or any intention, or desire on the part of the local authority to make a profit on these sites.

Section 16 provides that local housing authorities may, if they so desire, dispense with the county medical officer's report when it comes to the allocation of local authority houses to people on the housing list. I would regret to see councils and local authorities dispensing with the county medical officer's report as being an essential part of the letting system of local authority houses. The system has worked well and, by having the county medical officer's report as the central point, or one of the primary parts of the letting system, you ensure that houses are let on the basis of genuine need. I would honestly feel that if local authorities were to dispense with the medical officer's report, there would be a certain risk that people would be housed on the basis of whom they knew, rather than on the basis of real and genuine need. I would strongly urge the Minister, and genuinely suggest to him, that he should withdraw the section. I would like to see that power or insistence remaining that the county medical officer's report will continue to be a central part of the letting system of local authorities.

Section 17 enables the Minister to direct local authorities as to whether they should sell, or not sell, houses under their control. I am not entirely happy about it. I believe that it represents a further erosion of the powers of local authorities and it is another step in the sequence of events which has over the years, succeeded in taking away power from local authorities and lodging it in the Custom House.

I come to section 18 and the CRVs. I have a feeling that I might be ploughing a single furrow because of the views I intend to express on the CRVs and the Minister's proposals in relation to them. I feel that there is a valid reason why the other side of the case should be presented. The Minister in his speech today said "...to empower the Minister to prohibit lending agencies from advancing loans for the purchase of new houses unless a CRV is obtained ...". That represents sweeping powers. I know that the objective of the CRV is to control the soaring costs of housing, but in there is an implication that the responsibility for the soaring costs of housing can be left squarely at the door of the builders. It would have been desirable for the Minister to indicate to us, or give us an analysis of, the reasons why housing prices have doubled in the last two years.

The Minister also referred to words like "abuses" and "circumventions" and, indeed, gave a compelling reason why the CRV system should be strengthened. If this power to prohibit lending agencies from advancing loans for the purchase of new houses unless a CRV is obtained is applied ruthlessly—that may be a strong term to use, but assuming that it is—then I fear one of the effects will be to discourage builders from engaging in the building of houses for resale. If that happens, and if they are encouraged to direct their building activities to other types of construction, it does mean and will mean that the number of houses available will be correspondingly reduced; it could mean fewer people employed and it could mean less activity in the building industry.

While there is a compelling reason to strengthen the CRV system, nevertheless, this danger to which I refer exists, and I doubt if it has been given the consideration it deserves. Again if the CRVs are used, as I say, ruthlessly, where the margin of profit available to a builder is not sufficient, to his mind, to cover the risks involved, again it will be a compelling reason why some, and perhaps even many, will discontinue house building. If that should be the case, then it imposes a far greater burden on the local authorities, or on other agencies, to provide these houses.

Some categories of people are ready and obvious targets for a bit of bashing from time to time and the builders are, of course, no exception to this. People who often engage in that bashing, which is not entirely confined to builders, have always a tendency to look at the top tier of the profession or the group they are discussing, to look at the giants of the trade. They seldom consider that down along the scale, the middle and lower ranks, there are people for whom that type of criticism or bashing is totally undeserved. Unless the powers the Minister is seeking are very carefully operated—and I, of course, accept that provision is made for the certificate for exemption—it will discourage house-building to some degree; there will be a drop in output and, in the end, it could create very serious problems. I recognise that this is, perhaps, taking quite an unpopular line but, nevertheless, I am genuinely concerned about the dangers that are there and am worried about these sweeping powers that are involved in this legislation. I will look for reassurance from the Minister that he is conscious of the fears I have expressed in this regard and that they will be borne in mind if and when the powers that this Bill proposes to bestow on the Minister are being implemented.

Finally, during the course of the Minister's statement and of other speeches here this afternoon, reference was made to the progress in providing houses for old people, disabled persons and so on, very worthwhile progress, necessary and deserved, and even more so in the years ahead of us. There is, however, one category of people that seem to be left aside, they are a category of people whose need local authorities, even perhaps at a higher level, have a reluctance to recognise. Over the past few weeks, we were devoting our time to another Bill not entirely unrelated to what I am referring to, and that is the case of unmarried mothers. I have noticed—and I have raised this point elsewhere—that local authorities do not recognise, or do not respond, to the courage of an unmarried mother in attempting to rear her child and often rear it in very unsuitable accommodation. The social conscience of all of us should be large enough to recognise that, in a housing programme at local authority level, the needs of these unfortunate people would be given attention. As I said in the beginning, there are good points which I welcome and there are points about which I have reservations. I have expressed my views on these and look forward to making a further contribution on Committee Stage.

Miss Harney

I welcome this Bill which is a validating Bill. It is desirable that every married couple should have and own their own home. Living in unfit and uninhabitable dwellings leads to very unhappy marriages and upsets the whole social status of our society. Many surveys done by social workers and those involved in combating crime in our cities have indicated that a large part of the trouble is caused by the fact that people live in old houses in bad condition, overcrowding and so on. The housing programmes that our Government undertake, not only affect, in a very real way, the standard of living of many people but will affect the whole social fabric of our society. It is only right and proper that a Bill of this nature should get the attention that it got in the other House, and the attention it is now getting in Seanad Éireann. It is important that we, as a society, should provide low cost houses for young married couples. Most people on an average income could not possibly afford the luxury of a home, with such high interest rates. It is time we considered the subsidising of interest rates, so that young married couples would have some real hope, within a short time of getting married, of owning their own home, providing a sound basis for their marriage.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in this House about the money spent on housing over the past few years. If I could just recall the amount spent by successive Governments between 1975 and 1979, the figures speak for themselves. In 1975, £115.51 million was spent on housing; in 1976, £105.18 million; in 1977, £99.29 million. In those three years under the Coalition Government the figure declined each year. In 1978 it rose again to £135.46 million and the estimated amount to be spent in 1979 was £165.30 million. It is important to recall those figures because there seems to be some misunderstanding whether or not the present Fianna Fáil Government are keeping up the level of expenditure in housing.

Senator Robinson rightly referred to what has now become known as the Kenny report. This was a committee set up by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1971 to examine the high cost of providing serviced land for houses. The terms of reference of that committee were:

1. To consider, in the interests of the common good, possible measures for—

(a) controlling the price of land required for housing and other forms of development,

(b) ensuring that all or a substantial part of the increase in the value of land attributable to the decisions and operations of public authorities... shall be secured for the benefit of the community.

2. To report on the merits and demerits of any measures considered, with particular reference to their legal and administrative practicability.

3. To advise on what changes in the present law may be required to give effect to any measures recommended.

The Fianna Fáil Government set up that committee because between the years 1963 and 1971 the average price of a serviced site in County Dublin rose by 530 per cent as opposed to a 64 per cent increase at that time in the consumer price index. That committee reported on 7 March 1973, shortly after the Coalition Government took office and it seems to be a pity that none of their recommendations was considered or implemented by the then Government. If they were, the problem that the present Government now face, where houses are rising by an average of £4,000 per annum, would in some way have been alleviated. When we are talking about housing policies and about two Governments and their different housing programmes it is worth considering those measures.

Senator Robinson said that the Kenny report recommended that building land should be controlled. We all agree that the price of building land in the past few years has gone out of all proportion and that it is a substantial factor in the high cost of providing houses. It is worth noting what the committee said on page 27, chapter 6, section 56 of their report:

We have been unable to find any workable system by which the price of all building land could be controlled.

It is important that we recognise that fact because if it were possible to control the price of building land it would be very easy to keep the cost of housing down. Unfortunately, it is not possible, because, as the committee went on to point out, land, unlike other commodities, has unique features, each acre depending on its situation, which decides on the price in that area. The only way one could control the price would be to establish a tribunal, which would be costly and cumbersome. The cost of it and the time it would take would probably mean that the land would still be the same price after they had made their investigations and recommendations.

That committee went on to recommend that the only possible way the price of land could be controlled was under what they called a "designated areas scheme". It is worth implementing their recommendations. Under this scheme a new jurisdiction was to be conferred in the High Court to which areas in all our major cities were to be designated and the court would decide how the land was to be used for the following ten years. After an area was designated a local authority could acquire the land within the ten years at the existing use value plus a certain percentage for the inconvenience caused to the owner having to move and so on. The use value would be decided upon by one High Court judge with two assessors, one assessor having valuation experience and the other having town planning experience assisting him.

Unless we have some control over the price of land there is no way in which we will ever be able to keep the high cost of houses down. It is worth examining the possibility over the next few years of setting up that detailed system which the report outlines. If that were done in 1973, when the report was submitted to the then Government, many of the problems that we now face would not be with us—for instance the cost of houses which is rising by £4,000 per annum, an unprecedented figure, which no young couple with average incomes could possibly afford to keep pace with.

When we discuss housing we must consider the fact that so many of our developers have left housing estates in unfinished conditions. They have built their houses, taken their money and gone off and left the estate in an absolutely dreadful condition for people to live in. In our local elections manifesto the Fianna Fáil Party recommended that builders give some sort of bond to the local authority which they would only get back if they left the estate in a finished condition. It is worth implementing that scheme so that the housing estates are left fit for people to live in, so that the roads are finished, lighting and so on is provided, walls are built, dumps are not left and so that the housing estate is left in a proper order for people to have a reasonable standard of living and a reasonable place in which to live. What happens in many cases is that the builder leaves, the local authority does not take over the area for a number of years and these estates are absolutely dreadful sights, they are terrible places to live in and they put very many pressures on young mothers with young families in those estates. I recommend the Government to introduce immediately a substantial bond system whereby private developers would give the Government this bond and would only get it back when they had shown that they had left the estate in a reasonable condition and fit for people to live in.

I welcome this Bill which is simply validating what has already been in operation for some time. It is time that we seriously looked at our whole housing policies, and that we made it possible for all young couples to own their own homes. I agree with Senator Howard who urged that more recognition should be given to unmarried mothers to provide houses for themselves and their child or their children as the case may be. It is important that they too be seriously considered by local authorities.

It is not enough just to have a comprehensive form of public house building, it is important to encourage young people to invest in their own houses, to save money, and to make it attractive for them to own their own homes within a few years of starting work. The only way we can do this is by controlling the high interest rates and the high mortgage rates that we have at the moment and by making some real effort to give our young people some chance of owning their own home which is the basis of a happy marriage, which is the basis of a sound family system which will help in no small way towards alleviating the many social problems in the form of crime and so on that we currently have in very many of our big cities.

Mr. O'Brien

I congratulate the Leas Chathaoirleach on his election to his new office, and I wish him very happiness and success in his post.

The number of contributions made on this Bill and the length of time given to it in the other House, together with the number of times that housing matters appeared on the agenda of all of our local authorities, is a clear indication of the importance with which people regard the housing situation.

While there are some very welcome measures in the Bill, there are some disappointments and some omissions. Much has been said on both sides of the House as to which of the Governments have the better record in house building. Each side can quote figures to support their own argument. One set of figures that we should not lose sight of is the 1978 capital allocation for local authority housing, where there is a very great difference between the amount of money requested by the local authorities for housing needs in their respective areas and the amount allocated. I am a member of both Cavan County Council and Cavan Urban Council and I know the amount of thought put into the preparation of lists of applicants for house and for reconstruction grants. When these applications were being compiled they had due regard to the needs in the particular area.

In County Cavan the amount requested was £1.134 million and the amount allocated was £642,000—56 per cent of the amount requested. The amount of money allocated to that local authority for housing development amounted to little more than half of what was considered necessary by the executive in that county. A number of other counties are at the 70 per cent mark. Sligo is at 63 per cent, Monaghan-Leitrim is 70 per cent and a large number of local authorities find that their allocations lie somewhere between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the amount of money that they consider necessary so as to have an adequate housing programme carried out in their area.

In urban areas the same thing applies. In Clones the amount requested was £134,000 and the amount allocated for the year was £4,000. In Ceannanas Mór £145,000 was requested and £60,000 was allocated. In the Cavan urban area where there is an acute housing problem, the amount requested was £523,000 and the amount allocated was £400,000. The undeniable trend shows that the housing programme for this year will not come anywhere near meeting what the executives of local authorities consider necessary. That is supported by the fact that, while in 1976 7,263 local authority houses were built, only 6,333 were built in 1977 and 6,073 were built in 1978. From figures available this year there are no indications that we are on the upward trend.

It is regrettable that this Bill has little to offer in relation to improvements and extensions to local authority houses in order to accommodate growing families, and little to offer with regard to higher grants in providing houses for disabled people or with regard to providing further sanitary services to local authority houses that were built without these services in former years. There are a very big number of local authority houses without running water or sewerage facilities. This applies to a degree even in some urban areas.

In any area where there is a great shortage of houses people are paying very exorbitant rents for poor flat accommodation. In some of these flats on second and third floors it is a more than difficult job for parents to bring up young children. The accommodation provided is wholly inadequate, in some cases it is insanitary and at the best of times it is difficult for mothers to bring up young children in these high up second and third-storey flats.

There is also a dire shortage of old people's dwellings. Because of the failure in the past, and little sign of improvement at the present time in providing old people's dwellings, we have a demand on hospital space for old people. If we had old people's dwellings in sufficient numbers we could often interchange houses where the family have grown up and left the parents, so that they could move out to an old person's dwelling, which would be easier to heat and more suitable for them in every way, and a larger family could move into the larger house. Because of the failure to provide a sufficient number of these old people's dwellings this interchange of tenants cannot take place.

The points system, which operates in the allocation of houses and which is basically very fair, operates in most parts of the country. However, under that scheme in areas where houses are in short supply parents with one child have little hope of getting a house and childless couples have none at all. Childless couples are living in flats, in poor housing accommodation, for as many as ten and 15 years with not the slightest hope of getting a house under the points system where houses are in short supply. One can add on to that the cruel fact that because of the type of housing these people must live in a childless couple have not the slightest hope of ever being able to adopt a child under the conditions laid down by the Adoption Board. That imposes terrible suffering on those people. It is the duty of local authorities to see to it that people in that situation should not, in addition to not being able to secure a house themselves, have to go through the agony of being denied the opportunity of adopting a child because of the housing conditions under which they are forced to live.

It was stated by a speaker from the other side earlier today that during the time of the National Coalition Government an order went out from the Labour Minister to local authorities that they were not to purchase land. I do not know in what part of the country that happened, if it happened at all, but it did not apply to County Cavan. During the period of the National Coalition Government, hundreds of acres convenient to different towns in County Cavan were acquired for housing and industrial development. In the period before the coming into office of the National Coalition Government relatively little land was acquired for that purpose in County Cavan, so I would like to correct that matter right now.

With regard to certificates of reasonable value, fundamentally it is a good idea that we should have such a provision. How it will operate is an entirely different matter. Some builders, maybe not many, give very bad value. They build houses with inferior materials, the workmanship is often substandard and soon after buying these houses people find that major repairs are necessary. That is not the general pattern; the vast majority of builders give good value, but it is too bad that the other type of person is allowed to operate at all. There is no doubt whatever that in various parts of the country people have purchased houses at very high prices and found then that repairs costing in some cases up to £2,000 and £2,500 were necessary within a period of three to four years. People who perpetrate that kind of trick on the general public should be put out of business as quickly as possible.

The escalating cost of housing will mean in the near future that local authorities will be called on to provide more houses. The only way to get away from that is to increase the grant to the private builder. The percentage of occupier-owned houses here, is very high in comparison with other countries in western Europe. Irish people take great pride in being the owners of their own dwellings. Tenant purchase schemes introduced in later years, have added greatly to the number of occupier-owned houses. That was a very welcome development, but the cost of building a very moderate house at present is going beyond the capacity of young married couples. We have had a phenomenal increase in the price of sites. Sites convenient to some towns which could have been bought five, six or seven years ago for £1,000 are now costing between £5,000 and £7,000. That imposes a tremendous burden at the very initial stages where a couple set out to buy or build a house. When we take the cost of the house and the high percentage increase in housing materials and labour costs, the cost of building quite a moderate house runs into £15,000 or £16,000. That means that the average couple has to borrow a very big sum of money. If people are forced to borrow as much as £9,000, then the repayments amount to £1,100 per year. That is over a quarter of the income of that applicant. It was an old maxim that housing should not cost more than one eighth of a person's income. We are now reaching a stage where in some cases the cost of housing is costing more than one quarter of the income. That should command the attention of the Minister and all public representatives. We are approaching a time when the cost of housing will be simply prohibitive for a very big section of the people.

I will not dwell on the £1,000 grant which was already referred to but everybody must admit that £1,000 which was part of the election manifesto of the Government, and was introduced by them soon after assuming office, does not go anyway near paying as big a percentage of the cost of a house now as the £900 grant that was available to certain sections of the people, did before that time. It would probably be quite reasonable to say that a £2,000 grant would not afford the same relief as a £900 grant did for some sections of the people some years ago. If the Government are in earnest about encouraging private sector building, the grant must be substantially increased; otherwise an ever-increasing number of people who would in better circumstances set about providing a home for themselves will be forced to turn to the local authority for housing. That would be a most unwelcome development.

The only way to prevent that development is to give a substantial increase in the grant to people building their own houses, and to develop the scheme of subsidies outlined in the Bill, to enable local authorities to provide serviced sites to intending builders at a cheaper rate. Nobody can deny the escalation that has taken place in the cost of building materials, the price of sites and in the cost of wages. Nobody can deny that there has been a vast increase in housing costs. There is no sign of that stopping. Costs continue to grow, so that the increase in the number of people who will have to turn to local authorities for housing accommodation will in the near future present a very big problem.

I sincerely urge the Minister to have a look into that and to do whatever can be done under the provisions of this Bill, or by way of a future amendment if necessary, to prevent a rapid increase in the growth of the number of people who will have to turn to local authorities when they could be in a position to set about building their own home.

Mr. Connaughton

There are parts of this Bill that I welcome but there are others that are not nearly ambitious enough to solve what is becoming a very major national problem. Over the years housing has always been a problem for every Government but it is certainly more acute now for a few basic reasons that were mentioned in the Bill. I am afraid that this Bill will not solve them. However, the first and most important aspect of housing is that it is quite a reasonable aspiration for any young man and his wife to have the comfort of reasonable housing accommodation in their lifetime. Unfortunately due to the growth we have had over the years, thousands of people will never be able to own their own houses.

Unfortunately, I see a new category of persons about to enter the scene—a category I classify as the new poor. They are the people who heretofore could reliably be counted on to get a loan and be able to service the loan and build their own house. For some of us who were new to politics in 1977 I will recall some facts briefly. When we were told that in order to stimulate the building industry and to arrive at a situation whereby first-time house purchasers would be given £1,000 of a grant, it appeared on the surface to be a useful type of development, tempered by the fact that it came at the time of a general election. It is easier to be wise after the event, but in my view the housing situation has got a lot worse since that £1,000 grant came into operation, not because of the £1,000 on its own but because it seemed to influence other factors.

When there is an upsurge in the economy, as we witnessed in 1977, and to a lesser degree in 1978, a certain type of house will be made available, but the profits accruing from such a development will not come back to the people actually buying the houses, in other words, the middlemen, the bigger type operators, get away with the gravy most of the time. I cannot understand the situation where the cost of building materials rose by about 11 or 12 per cent in 1978, and the cost of housing increased by almost 36 and 37 per cent. Who got the gravy in that situation? I can assure the Minister it was not the house purchaser, and the £1,000 grant was of very little use to him. We will have to get away from the mentality that the £1,000 grant in the last general election manifesto was the cure for the evils confronting house purchasers, that it was the answer to the problem of house builders.

I believe, with my colleague Senator O'Brien, that as far as possible it is important that people should be encouraged to build their own houses. There are many good reasons for this, not least of which is that when the onus is put on a person to provide his own house in the private sector, taxpayers' money will not be used to the same extent. What has happened? Take the local authority loans at the moment—a maximum of £9,000. From a rural point of view the loan is £9,000 and the maximum income is £4,000, or £80 a week. To service that £9,000 loan for 25 years works out at approximately £23 a week. I cannot understand where most of the people are getting the difference between the £9,000 loan and the actual cost of the house, which can easily be at least another £9,000. We are finding, in constituency work, that this is becoming a real problem. For the first time in the last two or three years I have heard people say that while they could get the £9,000 loan there was no way that they could build a house. This has to be very poor music in everybody's ears, because this means that those people will now turn to the local authority for a house. While I have no doubt it is vitally important for the local authority to gear themselves that way, I think this is a step in the wrong direction for this Government.

The time is ripe for another look at the £1,000 grant itself and the cost of houses and sites. The time must also be ripe for a hard look at a subsidy on interest charges. I have no doubt that current interest charges on vast sums of money—£15,000 or £16,000 or even up to £20,000—are crippling house purchasers or builders. If there is to be any type of reasonable development in housing in the next year or two it must come from this quarter. We have to balance that against the fact that every day our interest rates are rising rapidly. We are now at the beginning of a credit squeeze. Only two days ago I heard that the Agricultural Credit Corporation refused a farmer a loan to build his new farmhouse—a first-time house—in return for the deeds of his land, which would have been worth well over £120,000. I regard that as a terrible credit squeeze. I have reason to believe that the building societies are putting the boot in at the moment. In most cases one is required to have £2,000 lodged with them for a period longer than six months. I would like to hear the Minister's views on that subject.

While interest rates are extraordinarily high, I cannot understand why building societies are not in a position to give a full loan to persons eligible to build a house. At the moment they give 85 per cent or 90 per cent. Some countries on the Continent give 100 per cent loans. If a man is eligible for a 90 per cent loan why is he not entitled to a 100 per cent loan in return for the deeds of his house? This is causing great difficulty with many new house buyers because the marriage age is beginning to lower every year and young people are finding it very difficult to get the necessary 10 per cent deposit.

There is another aspect of housing I am very concerned about, that is, the building of what used be known as the rural cottage scheme—local authority housing for small farmers.

I find now that this new poor category of persons, small farmers with poor returns from their acreages, are living in very bad housing. They are in a catch 22 situation. They are not able to build a house themselves; they may be entitled to the £9,000 county council loan, but they would not be able to meet the repayments. Several applications have been filed with one local authority. While some are being built quite slowly, I have a fear and a dread, that if this particular scheme is not stepped up, particularly in the small farm areas, the designated areas in the west, families will not live where they should be living, and we will have more problems in the big towns and cities. I would ask the Minister to make sure that in forthcoming budgets there will be sufficient money made available to local authorities to ensure there is an upswing in that particular scheme.

In the last two or three years a certain category of farmers were unable to build their own houses. From a social point of view, it is vitally important that they are allowed to live in their own area because rural depopulation suits nobody. I will be asking the Minister to ensure that, in forthcoming budgets, the necessary finance will be made available to ensure that this scheme will be encouraged.

I should like to put a few other points to the Minister. Some of the occupants of local authority houses which have neither sewerage nor water would be delighted to reconstruct their houses, but unfortunately they are unable to finance a project big enough to instal sewerage and water and to carry out the necessary reconstruction to qualify for the Department of the Environment reconstruction grant. Half a loaf is better than no bread. The Department should look favourably on persons who put up a reasonable amount of money on their own behalf. People in the lower income bracket cannot afford a big instalment. I assume the Department would look favourably on an increased grant for those people. They are on the differential rents scheme and are paying for the house, but they are not getting the normal facilities one would see in an ordinary house. One would hope that the law governing this would be changed first of all to give such people the incentive and the initiative to get on with the job, and that houses of this nature would be reconstructed, and maybe at some later date, water and sewerage would be added when those people could afford it.

I would like to take this opportunity of mentioning the vexed question of ESB connection, which is a deterrent to many young people building their own houses. As far as this Bill is concerned, one might say this is a separate problem for the ESB, but it is not because it is a constituent factor as far as house building is concerned. ESB connection charges have soared. I know several people in County Galway who have to do without electricity because the charges are too high. This is a factor as far as house building is concerned. I would ask the Minister to take it up with the relevant authorities because, at the moment it is a huge problem in some areas, particularly in backward areas.

It is mentioned in the Bill that a number of people have been caught out between the old grant scheme and the new £1,000 scheme. I would like to place it on the record that whatever rules might have to be made or interpretations bent in some way, there are a certain number of people who built their houses in the last couple of years, who are residing in them but have not got a grant. I made representations on behalf of those people and was told that unless an application had been received for the relevant grant in question, whether it was the old or the new, these people are not entitled to a grant. Strange things happen our post, and have been happening for years. The most important evidence anybody can have that a house is being built is to go to see it.

Some of those people—I can think of four or five of them, and I will supply the Minister with their names in relation to the wording of the Bill, and maybe there might be a chance for them—built their first house at great expense and inconvenience to themselves, and did not get a grant, either the old one or the new one. That is not good law. I believe they have been discriminated against, even though I understand that rules have to be made and certain dates have to be set. In fairness, we have to accept that they built the house, paid the same amount of money as anybody else, went through the same trouble, and they should be entitled to some form of a grant. I ask the Minister to take note of that.

A number of my constituents built houses that happened to be a few square feet above the maximum allowed, through no fault of their own. I have no doubt that, at the beginning, most of those house builders were guided by architects, builders and so on, and they had little, if anything, to do with the dimensions. I know a few cases where the houses were ten or 12 or 20 square feet over the limit. It is hard luck for anybody who finds himself at a loss of £1,000 because of somebody else's mistake. Perhaps there could be a reduced rate, provided that the square footage involved was not too great. At that stage we would be talking about the type of housing that should not be grant-aided, and I accept that. I am talking about the genuine mistake because when a house is built there is nothing one can do about it. It is not possible to reconstruct it or to have the dimensions brought back to a stage where you can be grant-aided. I ask the Minister, in view of this Bill, to take upon himself to review this area. There cannot be that many cases which would be worthy of consideration but where they are only a few square feet over the guidelines, they should be reviewed with a view to giving some type of grant, if not a full grant, because they deserve it.

I am delighted to see it is proposed to give some assistance to housing co-ops. I hope that the Minister, through the local authorities, will pass the message that building land should not be hoarded where there is a hunger for housing and that the land will be made available at a reasonable price. There is no doubt that the value of sites has increased out of all proportion. It is vitally important that sites be made available as cheaply as possible. Taking everything into consideration we are entering a period when we will have fewer people building their own houses. There will be tremendous pressure on the local authorities to provide housing for them. I would ask the Minister to ensure that every possible help is given to people who want to build their own houses and to ensure that the local authority programme is stepped up so that the less well off, who will never aspire to owning their own house, will have proper accommodation.

Mr. Kilbride

I do not intend saying a great deal on this Bill, but in the light of the present housing situation I feel compelled to make a few observations relative to the economic pressures being placed on people of any age in the lower income group. I mean the people from the middle class down, who are eligible to borrow and who would be in need of and anxious to build their own houses. The circumstances of these people have deteriorated immensely within the past couple of years. It is accepted by all who are aware of the housing programmes and the expense of housing, that it now costs at least 70 per cent more to provide a house, even in rural areas where labour is not as scarce, as specialised or as controlled as in a place like Dublin. These people in the middle income group got a grant of £900 which was related to roughly three-fifths of the amount houses are now costing. That is putting housing at the lowest possible calculated increase. For that reason, it is necessary for the Government to bring the amount of grant aid into line with the proportional increases in costs. It is to aid people to procure houses that we give grants. The payment of a £900 grant, under what is now known as the old scheme, was more beneficial, relative to present-day costs, to the builder. It is important that encouragement and aid be given to young persons establishing a home by giving them an adequate grant.

The people in need of houses today are the flat dwellers in towns and cities. Anybody acquainted with the living conditions of flat dwellers in any large town—not to speak of Dublin city or any other city—is aware of the inhuman circumstances in which these people live. In my own county a number of houses were let out in flats. When these couples had children, the local authority found it necessary to give them preference for new houses when they were available. Hardly had the people who occupied those flats left them than there was another set of flat dwellers living there—at almost double the weekly rent. That is a discouraging situation.

As a member of a local authority I find it costs so much to buy a site at this time that most young people getting married take a flat, although they have to pay an exorbitant rent—up to £25 and £30 a week. This is dead money. They will never own this accommodation. This will be a tragedy for the whole family—parents and children. Young people should have an opportunity to buy a site on which to build their own houses. This could be subsidised. I suggest to the Minister and to the Government that a nominal charge be set for a site and the balance of the actual charge could be subsidised. This is the real way to encourage young people to acquire their own sites and to set up their own homes. The problem is not very great if a person owns the site on which the house is to be built. I appeal to the Minister to give consideration to subsidising sites, particularly for young people.

Borrowing is a formidable problem for all people, irrespective of whether they are building or buying a house. I know a person who bought a small house at £12,000, repaying the loan over 30 years. He hopes to do it in less time, but, nevertheless, he will have to repay more than £30,000. Transferring this house, looking up the title and having it checked cost him in solicitor's fees over £500 and almost a quarter of that also went to the local authority. That is in full accord with the system of local authority loans to a person who builds a house. I can give details of this to the Minister should he wish.

Younger people who have yet to build a house and who buy a site are faced with this situation. What encouragement have they? What hope have they? Does society intend making any adjustments to make it possible for these people to set up a home? Is it the Government's intention to make conditions in society such that it will be possible for them to set up a home? These are the real difficulties facing young people today. I would suggest to the Minister that the policy of siting homes and industry in large cities and towns, which has been pursued by different Governments over the years, might be looked at and altered or reversed if necessary. Industry should be centred over the country generally so that the hundreds of young people who travel to Dublin every Monday morning on trains to take up employment here could find that employment in the locality where they live. That should be a long-term policy of the Government. It would be a remedy for this terrible problem that confronts the people who need houses in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and other large cities and towns.

It is not for the purpose of painting a black picture or for what political kudos I can get from making such observations that I am speaking. I am speaking justifiably, fairly, and as far as I can, with an analytical outlook. I am making suggestions which should be immediately apparent to the Government and they should apply them to remedy the problems.

Housing has shifted to the private sector in the last couple of years. The number of people who needed houses and the number of people who availed of the opportunity of going into house building were such that it was a matter of who was in first. People believed that it was only a question of putting one's name down and one would get a £1,000 grant. Unfortunately this was seen by many as a marriage gift because it was referred to by the Taoiseach as a grant for newly-weds. We know that that is not so. It was merely an increase of £100 on the grant they had been receiving. As far as the ordinary man is concerned, if he was given the opportunity of reasonable employment in his own locality, it would automatically ease the pressure on housing in the bigger towns and the significance of this £1,000 would be greater instead of which it has become insignificant in the face of the spiralling costs that we have witnessed over the last couple of years.

The circumstances of people in need of local authority housing seem to become more difficult as time goes on. It has been observed here, and as is evident to everybody, there is a generation of people marrying at an earlier age. Even if we are to have a pro rata increase in employment, we are barely keeping step with the needs that arise. The arrears that have arisen over the past 20 years are still with us and will be with us as long as we pursue the policy we are pursuing.

Houses are being built on the basis of need and the people who are in a position to invest money will be looking at the implementation of a housing scheme on the basis of how much money they can get out of it. It is a feature of society. Everybody who is at present in need of a house has to contend with this attitude on the part of the builder and on the part of the people who may be fairly described as speculators, people who buy up large tracts of land and leave them on the sidelines for years until such time as a boom comes, as happened in an area that I know well. This should not be allowed to continue and it has been happening over the past four of five years.

Senator Robinson stated correctly that a large area of Dublin is derelict and there is no ownership and it might be used for housing. There are areas in County Longford where planning permission has been granted. These planning permissions have been there three or four years and the people have not built on those areas. At present there is a demand and a need for housing and a real effort and a genuine approach to the whole question of housing is required. I would not like a situation to obtain where everybody would expect to have a house overnight. I would like to see a system whereby employers or Government agencies would save a certain amount of money out of the wages or salaries on behalf of every young person to be put away towards providing a home for him. If people started to do this at 16 or 17 when they get their first employment they would have a reasonable nest egg which at 22, 23 or 24, when they would be getting married, would put them in a position to have in their own coffers a good proportion of what it would cost to build a house. It would be giving them the incentive and the thrift habit and would enable them to provide a home rather than going elsewhere and spending their money on non-productive entertainment.

I will not keep the House much longer. The small farmer who has been resident in what was known as the old thatched cottage, or the old farm house where he had 15, 20 or 30 acres of land for two or three generations, generally is not in a position to build his own home without aid. The kind of home that he would have to build today at the cost incurred in doing so is very discouraging to him. The question of title has been a serious barrier to people anxious to build houses in those circumstances. His grandfather or his father may have owned the place and title was not transferred. I have suggested to Longford County Council that the appropriate thing to do would be to get the Government to issue a directive that where such title was not good and the person was not in great financial circumstances the local authority should obtain a CPO for a site and build a small farmer's cottage or house. The non-operation of such a scheme has left rural Ireland denuded. If the Minister applied himself vigorously to this it would alleviate the position.

Many other cottages that were built in 1932 for people who emigrated to England and who, as a result of growing old, did not continue to occupy them, are locked up and not occupied. The need for houses exists side by side with this situation. An inventory was taken by a Minister some years ago of the number of unoccupied vested cottages in the country. In the various countries the numbers were tabulated and submitted to the Minister. Where such cottages exist, an approach should be made to the people who have not occupied them for many years, and they should be bought by the Minister after free negotiation, or by the local authority. That in itself would put the country in a position where the ordinary man needing a house of the kind referred to would be able to get it and, instead of having locked-up houses and people living in flats, there would be an easement of the problem of housing.

There are some things in the Bill which I welcome and there are others which I do not welcome. I do not like the idea of the test for eligibility for a house being in the hands of an authority other than the county medical officer. Health standards and the family circumstances are the real test of a person's need for a house. In the case of a bad house and a young or large family, or in the case of certain illnesses, first preference should be given. The person qualified to give direction effectively in this regard is the county medical officer. It will be a sorry day when we will have houses allocated not by medical officers because of health qualifications but by somebody else, who will write to the Minister—not necessarily the present Minister—saying: "There is no longer any judicial approach to this matter: you can fix it up for me." This is something that can come in consequence of this kind of exercise. I would appeal to the Minister not to implement this provision but, whenever he feels there is a need to be met, let him tackle this problem without bringing about the position that can arise in consequence of this section being applied.

Mr. McDonald

I shall be brief in my contribution as we have had a very full debate on this Bill with some 15 or 16 Senators contributing. Practically every valid point that it was possible to make in regard to housing has been made. Therefore, I should like to confine myself to one or two points that my colleagues have omitted.

From my experience I find the new practice of ribbon building in every part of the country will create tremendous and expensive problems, especially for the local authorities, in the years ahead. From a scavenging point of view the country is now more and more ecology conscious. The cost that our local authorities have to bear in providing a service up to a standard that the public require now and will certainly demand in the future will be increased. Also, from a sewerage and water point of view it adds to the cost. It increases the danger of people coming out on to the road every 50, 60 or 100 yards from their homes. On the arterial road system there are planning regulations that apply. Even on those roads, for example the Dublin-Cork or Dublin-Limerick roads, you find new houses being built. This is not in the interests of long term future development.

I should like to join with the Senators who have appealed to the Minister to be more generous with the elderly and expedite the building of either maisonettes or flats in the vicinity of churches and shops for them. In that way we would be able to provide more local authority houses for young families. We ought to be very conscious of the fact that we have the highest percentage of owner-occupation in the EEC. This is something that we should be proud of. We have always had that tradition of people wanting to own their own hearths and homes and they very rightly take a pride in it. We have a category of people, either disabled or incapacitated in some way, who have to be looked after. Although it is very costly the Minister and his Department should endeavour to be as generous as possible in providing grants either for reconstruction or adaptation so that people who are incapacitated can be assisted to stay in their own homes as long as possible and not have to rely on institutional aid.

There is another point worth mentioning as far as local authority housing is concerned. If you have the opportunity of visiting certain regions in the European Community—for example, the border region between the Netherlands and the German Federal Republic—you find the fantastic contrast in local authority housing even in areas where the border is the roadway. You see the variations which their architects are able to include in a housing scheme. In every town one goes through in this country one finds that the architects, even though they are paid a percentage on the total cost of the construction, seem to get away with designing houses with absolutely no variation. Unless we step up the variations and have some sense of ecology I can see these larger housing schemes quickly becoming concrete jungles. It will not cost the State any more to insist that the architects and planners use some imagination at the very beginning so as to provide a better environment for the people who are living in local authority housing.

I support Senator Kilbride when he asks for the provision by the local authority of subsidised serviced sites. Young people nowadays who seek to provide their own accommodation are taking on a tremendous task with the ever-increasing cost of housing. We should go to meet those people as far as possible. It is one way for them to save. Serviced sites would be an advantage and an encouragement. If anybody wants encouragement at this present time it is the young people who are thinking of settling down and getting married. We should do everything in our power to ease this burden and give them encouragement in facing their future lives in good and decent living conditions.

Local authorities should be encouraged to provide more maisonettes and flats for the older people. The Minister is perfectly right in the Bill where he is going to ensure that these will not in all cases be vested so that the local authority will continue to have houses available for this category of people. I wish the Minister continued success.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. J. O'Leary)

I should like to thank Senators for their contributions to the Bill. The overall national housing programme is developing generally in a satisfactory way. There were 24,000 houses built in 1976; 24,548 in 1977; 25,444 in 1978 and in 1979 at least 25,500 houses will be built. No authoritative source has established that we need to build more than 25,000 houses a year but we are committed to building between 23,000 and 27,000 houses a year up to 1980. This was clearly set out in the White Paper published some time ago.

Senator Reynolds expressed concern about increases in building costs. He referred to items such as the price of cement. Costs in the building industry are expected to increase by 15 per cent this year. This compares with an increase of about 35 per cent in building costs during the first year of office of the Coalition Government in 1973-74. The estimate of 15 per cent of increases in costs this year is based on increases already made and in the pipeline in relation to building material prices. It also takes into account increases in earnings broadly in line with the current draft national agreement. The estimate was based on consultation with representatives of the building material sectors and with the industry generally.

Senator Reynolds spoke about a means test for grants. An essential feature of the grant provisions is flexibility. It will enable increases to be made in amounts of grants and in conditions or even for the introduction of a new grant scheme like the house improvement grants to reduce dependence on oil. On the other hand, the flexible provisions in the Bill will enable a means test to be applied. I have no plans for the introduction of a means test. I do not wish to introduce a discordant note but I would like to put on the record of the House that the Coalition introduced savage means tests and valuation limits for new house grants and reconstruction grants in 1976 and early 1977.

Senator Reynolds referred to the question of an applicant for a house purchase loan who got approval for the then maximum loan of £4,500 and inquired as to whether that applicant would have been eligible for the current maximum of £9,000 by the time the house was completed. The answer is no. Maximum loans are related to the date of either the pouring of the foundations of the house or the signing of the house purchase contract. The maximum loan of £7,000 which related to loans for houses where the foundations were poured or a contract signed after 26 May 1977 was increased to £9,000 in the case of foundations poured or contract signed after 1 September 1978. To have been approved for a loan of £4,500 the applicant would have had foundations poured or the contract signed on or before 26 May 1977 and it would have been immaterial when his house was completed thereafter. As I have said, the date of the pouring of the foundations or the signing of the contract is the important date for the purposes of maximum loan approvals.

Senator Brugha referred to the fact that reasons should be given for refusing applications for CRVs. He also inquired about how a builder should decide how much to pay for land. As regards a builder not knowing what to pay for sites, regulations specifying the maxima for different areas, densities and so on which could be acceptable for CRV purposes would, of course, be known to those engaged in the selling end as well as those involved in the purchase of sites. Therefore, no builder could argue afterwards that he bought the site in ignorance and was being penalised unfairly.

If subsection (4) is invoked there will be a right of appeal to the Circuit Court against a refusal of a CRV on the grounds that the value of the site is not considered reasonable. Paragraph (b) of subsection (4) expressly gives the Minister power to issue an indication of whether the price proposed to be charged or paid for a site represents reasonable value. This is to ensure that, in the event of paragraph (a) of the subesection being brought into operation, a small builder purchasing sites will know where he stands vis-à-vis a CRV application before he pays for the sites. This will be welcomed by many small builders.

Senator Brugha mentioned the question of possible faulty workmanship in connection with solid fuel installations. In the explanatory leaflet on the new grant scheme which was released this morning, it was pointed out that the Department strongly advises that work should be carried out by competent people. It was also stated that it is particularly important that a back-boiler system should be suitably vented and also fitted with a safety release valve. The onus is completely on the owner of the house to ensure that the back boiler is properly installed.

In regard to section 18 of the Bill, Senator Reynolds made two main points, namely that the Minister be required to give a decision on a CRV application within a period of 30 days and that the Minister be compelled to give the reasons for refusing to grant a CRV. I will deal first with the question of imposing a statutory time limit and spell out the reasons why I am opposed to the idea.

A satisfactory standard of service has been provided to date and this is partly due to the absence of rigid time limits and the consequent flexibility which the present system allows. Last year, almost 2,400 decisions were issued and the average time taken for a decision was only 15 days. In May of this year, the average time taken was only 12 days. The number of cases taking more than a month is very small—about one in 20 according to a recent check—and would usually involve some abnormal aspects which might necessitate a site inspection.

Even if one were to accept the idea of a time limit, it would have to run from the date of receipt of all necessary information, not from the date of application, since applications are frequently incomplete. The level of information required may vary from one case to another depending on the amount of detail needed to justify the price, unusual aspects and so on. At present many of the requests for further information and clarification are made on the telephone or during interviews where it is easier to explain what is involved and quicker than making formal written requests, as the amendment would require. For example, during the recent postal difficulties, the informal approach was of benefit to builders. A time limit like 21 days might in exceptional circumstances be impossible to meet with resultant granting of CRVs by default. I am sure Members would not welcome such a development. I am talking about a short term situation which might arise following a decision to extend the CRV system with a resulting increase in the volume of applications. Here also we have to be realistic and recognise that it is extremely difficult to recruit the professional staff, particularly quantity surveyors needed. In any event, the Minister is answerable in the Dáil for any undue delays.

At present the only reason given for a refusal is the obvious one, that the price exceeds the amount appearing to the Minister to represent reasonable value. I am aware that many builders feel that they should be given particulars of the reasons but I am afraid that it is not as easy as it may seem at first sight. I might mention that my predecessor, Deputy Tully, resisted similar requests. Strictly speaking, the concept of the house and site as one unit being reasonable value for a certain price does not permit one to give a specific reason, such as that the land was too dear or that overheads are too high, because in the final analysis the cost of the various elements is irrelevant so long as the total price is reasonable. It often happens that a builder has paid over the odds for a site but because of economy of building and management operations he succeeds in getting a CRV. Indeed, the information given by builders is often so inadequate or the price breakdown is so different from the Department's approach to the calculation of reasonable value that it is impossible to pinpoint accurately which elements are making the price higher than what appears to be reasonable. Other factors such as efficiency, good buying practices and so on are also relevant.

We will discuss that on Committee Stage.

To impose a statutory requirement about particulars of reasons would mean that the Department would in every case have to look for much more detailed information from the builder than he has to submit at present or even than he may have at his disposal, even though such information may not be necessary to enable a CRV to be granted as is the case in the vast majority of applications at the moment.

I can assure the Seanad that this section of my Department shall be as helpful as possible to builders in processing their applications for CRVs. They meet the builders and their representatives quite often to discuss applications but they cannot give the reasons for the refusals at present; they ask them to submit a fresh application or a fresh figure.

Senator Reynolds mentioned about a shortage in the supply of cement last year. He was somewhat worried about the state of the building industry. The building industry is back again on the right road. Due to the massive injection of capital by the Government out put in the building industry in 1978 exceeded the 1973 level for the first time. I do not wish to labour the industry's difficulties in 1974 and 1976 but last year output increased by 14.4 per cent to reach an all-time high level. Output will increase by a further 7 per cent this year notwithstanding the problems caused by the oil sheiks. Output is one aspect. What is also important, of course, is the fact that since July 1977 the number employed directly in the building industry has increased by about 7,000. We expect that there will be a further 2,000 jobs this year. Over and above those figures, there have been increases in employment in ancillary industries. To sum up this point, the building industry is in a healthy state. We are keeping in close touch with the suppliers of cement to ensure that short-term and mediumterm needs are met. For the first time we have given certain indications of prospects for the industry in the medium term.

Senator Moynihan referred to essential repair grants, but I think he tended to confuse this category of grants with the ordinary improvement grants scheme. The essential repair grant scheme is designed to help prolong the life of houses in rural areas, usually occupied by elderly persons, which it would not be possible to bring up to the normal standard of habitation at an economic cost. These grants have an important part to play in rural areas and I should like to point out that when we resumed office in 1977 the maximum grant from the Department was £80, a meaningless amount in the light of current costs. We have increased this maximum to £300. There is no limit on the amount which local authorities may contribute or spend on the execution of the works.

Senator Moynihan also mentioned the disabled person's grants scheme. A number of points have been raised in relation to these grants for the adaptation of houses occupied by persons suffering from physical disability or mental handicap. To clarify these points, I would point out that there is no limit, statutory or otherwise, on the amount of grant assistance which local authorities may make available for this purpose up to the full cost of the works. The present maximum contribution from my Department is £1,200 per house which represents a trebling of the £400 available under the Coalition. Local authorities may, if they think fit, arrange to have this work carried out on behalf of the applicant.

Senator McGlinchey raised an interesting point in relation to the guarantors for housing loans. The position refers to Donegal County Council where, apparently, guarantors are sought for local authority house purchase loans. I would like to make it clear that my Department never insisted on a local authority seeking guarantors. However, the question of incorporating a guarantor clause in their house purchase loan scheme is a matter for each local authority who have power to do so.

My Department generally express disapproval of the practice of requiring guarantors for local authority house purchase loans. Circular letter 5/67, which issued to local authorities in 1967 in relation to the Housing Act, 1966, clearly indicated that the seeking of guarantors was against the spirit and intention of the house purchase loan scheme.

This is a matter which might appropriately be taken up by Senator McGlinchey with his own local authority.

Senator Markey spoke about the inadequate levels of new house and improvement grants. While we would all like these grants to be higher, we must bear in mind that the taxpayer must in the end carry the cost of these grants. This year's Estimate for the Department includes an allocation of £30 million for private housing grants and when one compares that figure with the £4½ million budgeted for that purpose by the Coalition in 1977 one can see the considerable improvements in grant assistance that have been effected over the past two years.

In regard to Senator Jago's question about a person paying a price in excess of the CRV price, I should like to refer him to section 18 (8) (b). From that it can be seen that one is only entitled to depart from the CRV price in order to meet a legitimate charge under a price variation clause or to take into account the provision of items not included in the original price. I should confirm for Senator Jago that one of the primary intentions of this Bill is to provide that in the future grants can be altered by regulations rather than by legislation. It will mean that the amount of grants can be increased and alterations effected faster. If Senators or Deputies are not satisfied with them, the regulations can be annulled by both Houses of the Oireachtas.

Regarding Senator Jago's query about the interest on money borrowed by local authorities for the purchase of land, that interest is recouped to them. The system is rather tricky. They are recouped at the time when they pay off the first instalment to the Commissioners of Public Works in respect of the loan for the overall development of the scheme. I shall write to the Senator on that matter explaining it in detail.

Mr. Jago

Thank you.

Mr. J. O'Leary

I agree with Senator Jago and with other Senators that there is a shortage of building land being provided by some local authorities. But my Department have been in touch with local authorities requesting them to purchase building land and to endeavour to ensure that they would have at least a five year land bank in reserve. That is the target or objective.

Senator Robinson said that the Bill validates changes effected since 1972 and deals with minor aspects. In her view it will do little to meet housing problems. It seems from her comments that she took a superficial glance at the Bill. The Bill validates changes but, more importantly, provides a flexible legal framework for house improvements grants, new house grants, house improvement loans, the low-rise mortgage scheme, the site subsidy system, the scheme for the subsidisation of local authority housing. To suggest that such is minor, illustrates a lack of appreciation of housing on her part.

The Bill provides also a flexible CRV system and introduces a number of other changes. I do not wish to reduce the tenor of the debate to a political level, but the Senator's contribution generally was in this vein. I feel disinclined to bore this House with too many statistics, but it is only fair to say that she was very selective in her approach. She made no mention of the public capital programme on housing. This expenditure dropped from £105 million in 1976 to £100 million in 1977. The provision for this year is £165 million. She referred to increases in house prices since 1978. I suggest that she might take a look at Table 19 of the last edition of the quarterly bulletin of housing statistics regarding trends in house prices, house costs, the CPI and earnings.

Senator Robinson spoke about the need for a shift in emphasis to house improvements. In January, 1977 the Coalition Government imposed restrictions on eligibility for grants for this work. In November, 1977 the present Government introduced a simple grants scheme. This year expenditure under the scheme is estimated at £17 million, excluding expenditure on the new scheme to reduce dependence on oil. This compares with some £2½ million in 1977.

A number of Senators raised the question of the rehabilitation of itinerants. As the House is aware, the programme for the rehabilitiation of itinerants has been in operation since 1964. The main objectives of this programme are to provide opportunities for a better way of life for itinerants, to promote their absorption into the general community and, pending such absorption, to reduce to a minimum the disadvantages to themselves and to the settled community resulting from their itinerant way of life. I know that strenuous efforts have been made in this respect by many local authorities over the years. Available information indicates that, to date, almost 1,222 families have been accommodated. Of these 805 families have settled in standard houses and seem to be adapting well to their new surroundings. A further 250 families are living on serviced sites and 67 families in trailers, or mobile homes, on approved sites. I know that many more families wishing to settle have not had an opportunity of doing so. The most recent survey shows that 946 families were still on the roadside. I am advised by those in close touch with the problem that perhaps one-third of these would have no ambition to settle at present. The remaining two-thirds are willing and anxious to do so. The community has a responsibility towards these people. The championing of travelling people has required courage and dedication at local level when one bears in mind that quite often proposals to settle itinerants are actively opposed by the settled community. I would appeal to those people to study the positive achievements of the settlement programme and to help and encourage itinerant families to overcome their early difficulties of settlement.

The provision of training centres for teenage itinerants constitutes a relatively new and necessary extension to the itinerant rehabilitation programme. I would consider the work carried out at these centres, organised by voluntary groups and local authorities, as being a key factor in terms of the ultimate solution of itinerant settlement, education and employment. The industrial and vocational training provided enables itinerant teenagers to avail of the opportunities offered by society and in return to contribute to the benefit of society.

All local authorities have been asked to intensify their efforts on all aspects of their programmes in regard to travelling people. Particular emphasis was placed on providing halting places for transient families. The importance of appointing social workers has been stressed also as they are of tremendous help in this progress towards settlement and in assisting the travellers to adapt to new conditions. Senators will be aware by now of the generous financial assistance available from my Department for the provision of accommodation for itinerant families, including 100 per cent grants to local authorities for the provision of residential sites or halting places. More recently I extended the scheme to allow for the 100 per cent recoupment to local authorities of expenditure incurred in the provision of premises for use as industrial and vocational training centres.

What is it?

A Senator

He can sue him.

Mr. Connaughton

The Senator is becoming very court-minded.

Mr. J. O'Leary

Senator Kilbride referred to the cost of transfer of sites for loans. No matter what the loan is, the cost of the transfer will be much the same, and usually the higher the loan is the higher the legal fees are.

Senator Kilbride raised also the interesting question about the provision of more employment at home for young people. It is the Government's policy to decentralise and we are moving in that direction. He also raised the question of old council houses falling into disrepair and he mentioned houses which were unoccupied. The housing authorities have full power to recover these vacant council houses that are falling into disrepair, to repair and to reallocate them to deserving tenants. It is their duty to do so.

Senator McDonald raised the matter of ribbon building and ribbon development, particularly along national primary roads. This is a matter for the members of the local council themselves under the planning law. The members of the council prepare their own development plan and they can insert the relevant provisions to suit local needs.

I will not detain the House any longer. I am very grateful for Senators' contributions to this wide-ranging debate on this Bill.

Seanad Éireann debate - Wednesday, 18 Jul 1979

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1979: Second Stage.

A Senator

Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 18 Jul 1979