Housing Bill, 1988: Committee Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That section 4 stand part of the Bill."
I commented on the last occasion on the peculiar irony of our legislating for something that had been abolished, and I do not want to be in the least repetitious. We have quite enough business to deal with in this Bill without repeating anything. I do not think an alternative to grants is to sell off houses; in the words of a newspaper headline, giving a bonanza to local authority tenants, with the implication that people were going to get enormous benefits from selling off local authority houses at what the newspapers interpreted as being very low prices. Perhaps the Minister will explain. I think there is an in-between somewhere where perhaps we encourage people who want to own their own houses.
I do not believe in the perpetual running down of publicly owned housing stock which when we have money will necessitate the construction of more and more new houses while what we have now — which, unfortunately, in spite of efforts of this House and the other House, the Minister has as yet not chosen to talk about — is the imminent housing crisis the Government's policies are going to land upon us in a relatively short time. In my own city the housing officers are already talking about the fact that supply and demand are coming much more into equilibrium than they would have been six months ago.
As the admittedly exceptional quantity and quality of local authority house building that has characterised our State for the last six or seven years/comes to an end, one wonders whether it is wise to be selling off the existing local authority stock. That is why there is an interesting argument about the balance between the £5,000 grant, which encourages people to move out of local authority housing, and alternative forms of tenant purchase which encourage people to stay in local authority housing and which obviously reduce both the quality and quantity of local authority housing that is available for prospective new tenants. Since apparently we will be building very few, if any, new houses in the coming years, perhaps there is an argument for some sort of incentive to be given to those who wish to move out of local authority housing.
I would like the Chair's guidance. I understand that section 4 deals with a different concept from that addressed by Senator Ryan. This is a very important concept and one on which I wanted to speak, but I have a feeling it is more relevant to section 17. This section, as I understand it, deals with the scheme which has been abolished by the Government, that is the £5,000 grant to local authority tenants if they surrendered their houses and bought other houses elsewhere, either a local authority vested house or a private house. This section is legislating for a scheme which has been abolished.
Will the Chair say if we are in a position to deal with the new tenant purchase scheme, announced by the Minister, and the valuations which have been announced by local authorities? I want to address some problems that have arisen. I intended putting down an amendment, but I was advised that under Standing Orders my amendment would not be allowed as it would involve a potential charge on either the Exchequer or on local authorities, and I was going to request that the Minister consider putting down an amendment on Report Stage. Are we in a position to deal with the tenant purchase scheme as announced by the Minister under this section, or is it under section 17?
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator is correct. Has the Minister any view on it?
My view is that it should not be dealt with now and it certainly should not be dealt with under section 17. I would recommend section 23.
The Minister replied to this section on the last occasion. I think he indicated the £5,000 grant scheme was a disaster — if I remember his words correctly. I could not agree with him. It was a very successful scheme. We live in a free society, and it is only right that if people who live in local authority housing want to better themselves, they should be given the opportunity of vacating a local authority house to buy a house in an area of their choice. Many people availed of that scheme and it was very successful but it has served its purpose. I asked Ministers in the last Government and the present Minister about people who live in flats, and I never got an answer. A special case can be made for flat dwellers. There are people living in flats who want to live in private houses in areas of their choice, but who do not have sufficient points on the letting scheme to get a house. The £5,000 scheme as it operated in the past should be made available to people who live in flats to give them the opportunity to buy a house. That is a reasonable request to make. If a number of one and two bedroomed flats were available they could be occupied by smaller families. It would be of real benefit to the Government if they proceeded with that type of policy.
In my experience, the £5,000 grant scheme was very good for the conscientious tenant who had respect for the local authority property. The biggest problem I found in my area was that it totally destabilised the community. The people who wanted to get on and who made things happen got out while those left behind were not as progressive with the result that the community became one-sided or lop-sided. The great thing about the new scheme is that it stabilises society. I would not be surprised if 40 per cent or more local authority tenants in my area avail of this very generous gesture and terrific opportunity to own their own houses. When we look at the rest of Europe and see that many people never have an opportunity of owning their own homes, we realise this is a terrific step forward. This is progressive legislation. I ask the Minister to take into account Senator Doyle's recommendation in relation to flat dwellers. He has a very valid point and there may be a lot of validity in having a good close look at it.
My observations are similar to Senator Cassidy's. The £5,000 grant scheme may have succeeded to a certain extent in getting people to vacate local authority houses and to build their own houses, but in my experience the best people — those involved in local community work, who were prepared to develop their housing estate and make it a better place to live — availed of it. Very often they left behind a community who were not as progressive or who were not as prepared to put as much into developing the local amenities and the local communities as the people who availed of the £5,000 grant.
I agree with Senator Doyle that there may be a problem as regards people living in flats. This is one area that I am not competent to speak on but if there is a problem in that area and something could be done by way of a grant, such as the £5,000 grant scheme that is now being terminated, the Minister could look at it and see if anything could be done to eliminate the problem.
I will deal with the point made by Senator Doyle because it is worthy of a response from the Minister. I recognise Senator Doyle as being an expert in this area because he represents people living in this kind of accommodation. These people could be assisted by a scheme such as the one the Government have abolished. The Minister has given his reason for abolishing the scheme and we can debate it backwards and forwards but our interpretation will always differ.
I respect the Minister's view and I hope he respects mine. I speak from experience of how the scheme operated, the kind of people who benefited, and the fact that it put houses back into the local authority housing stock to meet the waiting list demands, which are still there. There are still local authority housing waiting lists which have not been reduced, will not be reduced by the Government's allocations this year and which will eventually lead to the crisis in housing Senator Ryan referred to. That is the situation on the ground, but I do not know if that is how it is perceived in the Department.
However, the Minister has given his reasons for abolishing the scheme, and this section brings the scheme into operation. The point made by Senator Doyle deserves some comment from the Minister and perhaps he will look at the problem outlined at some date in the future. The view has been expressed on the Government side of the House that there is, possibly, a case to be answered. We would like to hear from the Minister.
I raised another question which the Minister felt should not be raised on section 4. I suggested another section, the section on mortgages might be appropriate and the Minister suggested section 23 which deals with applications received on or before 31 December 1987. I respect the Minister's view. I will deal with it under whatever section the Minister feels is the right one. It deals with people who had applied before 31 December and even some who had effected the legal transfer on 31 December 1987. The new scheme has now put them into the anomalous situation. The value of their houses is so different from the new values announced as to make their position almost untenable. They find themselves paying larger amounts of money than their neighbours who bought identical houses in the same scheme. There is an anomaly there. I suggested that an amendment should be made to this Bill on Report Stage to equalise the position of people who had, in good faith, entered into an agreement to purchase their houses.
I want to commend the new scheme. There is widespread support for it and I have advocated that people who want to benefit from it should opt for it — but some people are faced with the dilemma of having to pay very different mortgages. Perhaps the Minister might consider a Report Stage amendment to insert equalisation. Perhaps the period of mortgage repayments could be shortened to compensate those people in some way for the position they now find themselves in. I am in your hands, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, as to the relevant section. I will attempt to raise this question again on section 17 and perhaps the Minister might be coaxed to respond. I would welcome a response to Senator Doyle's comment on this section.
I am very thankful to the Senators who have supported my point of view. There is also another very important matter under the sale scheme for houses which I did not mention but which I will come to at a later stage. While the Minister has eliminated senior citizen accommodation from that sale scheme, no local authority that I know of have yet prepared a scheme for the sale of flats. The Minister should consider giving the £5,000 grant to flat-dwellers.
My recollection is that on the last occasion I stated that I did not propose reintroducing the £5,000 grant, and I reiterate that now. I said that there were people who had considered this matter. I was not in a position on the last occasion to give the reference, but I am now. I would like to put it on the record, for what it is worth. It is from A Study of the £5,000 Surrender Grant in the Dublin Housing Area carried out by Threshold, an organisation not unknown to many of the Senators who have an interest in housing. I quote from page 8 of their summary, sub-paragraph 4:
4. The grant undoubtedly enabled people who might not otherwise have been able to do so to purchase a house in the private sector. Their exodus, however, had serious consequences in these areas of high take-up of the grant....
5. The effects were found in the study to be as follows: Communities where unemployment was already high suffered the loss of many of those people who had jobs. Income levels dropped and services in the areas deteriorated. Many of the vacant houses were vandalised. The community was substantially deprived of its leaders as they were the ones to move out with the grant. The large number of vacancies enabled the waiting list for Dublin Corporation housing to be reduced. But an already fragmented community now had to encompass the addition of other marginalised groups, such as single homeless people, single-parent families — many of whom were also unemployed — which the Corporation now found it possible to house. The community spirit essential if such problems are to be combated had taken demoralising punishment. Stigma, particularly in relation to job opportunities, provided a strong motive to change address. The overall effect gave further impetus to those who could do so to move. As the level of unemployed in the community consequently rose further, the circle was completed.
As a back-up to that report from Threshold I would like to take a little piece from Focus on Homelessness edited by John Blackwell and Stanislaus Kennedy and published quite recently. It deals as well with the period during which the £5,000 grant operated to local authority tenants who could buy a house in the private sector. The effects had been strongly felt in west Tallaght. It states at page 712 that this particular policy, designed to have a positive effect on the building industry, has had a devastating effect on the new unsettled communities of west Tallaght; that the unemployed and the impoverished are increasingly being ghettoised.
When I considered this matter last year I did not have the benefit of those two items from independent bodies who did their own assessment of it but they certainly reinforced my view that what I had done was right. It is not my intention to reintroduce that scheme. It was a bad scheme.
In so far as the tenant purchase scheme is concerned I suggest that perhaps there are various sections under the legislation whereby it might be considered but I recommended section 23 as it has to do with an element of the scheme, that the scheme cannot be concluded until that section is cleared by this House. Perhaps that might make it appropriate.
Just by way of explanation to Senator Doyle on the question of the flats, the situation is that under the legislation for the tenant purchase scheme it is possible to buy out the flat but it requires a different set of guidelines. We have a special group working on that and when they come up with their recommendations in the matter I will be more than happy to include them in that scheme also.
The Minister has quoted from studies carried out by Threshold and also from a report entitled Focus on Homelessness. I am not going to challenge their view but I have to ask the Minister a very pertinent question: where would the people described in the Focus report, the unemployed and single people who got houses that were vacated by people who availed of the £5,000 grant, be housed? They would not be housed: they would still be on the waiting list of Dublin Corporation and other local authorities. That is what is happening now, as Senator Ryan has mentioned. The housing stock is drying up and we will have a problem. The £5,000 grant created a number of vacancies which enabled the corporation to house the unemployed and single parents. Is there anything wrong with that? They were on the local authority waiting list waiting to be rehoused and this scheme, while it gave people an opportunity to buy houses in the private sector or areas of their own choice, also enabled people who were unemployed and single parent families to be rehoused. That is very important. We have to put that on the record as well. We cannot have a one-sided view on this; we must have a balanced view of what the £5,000 grant did for us.
I am glad to hear the Minister say that he is reviewing the scheme for the sale of flats. I would like him to tell us when that scheme will be prepared. If it is not prepared in the very near future will he then extend the special scheme for the sale of houses, which ends on 31 December, into next year for the sale of flats?
I will leave my comments about this new tenant purchase scheme to the relevant section as suggested by the Minister but I want to take issue with his philosophy on the abolition of this scheme. I accept that Professor Blackwell is a competent lecturer in housing and the consequences of housing.
For ten years or more I was a member of a health board with Sister Stanislaus. I am aware of her work in the area of combating poverty and I respect the agency's views but it is my considered opinion that the homeless, the unemployed, unmarried mothers and others also deserve to be housed. The fact that this scheme enabled them to be housed must in itself commend the scheme. Let us not blame the people who availed of the scheme to better themselves for the fact that many of the unemployed suddently found themselves in the position of being able to get houses. It has always been considered by everybody in Opposition as the responsibility of Government to deal with the problem of unemployment. Therefore, let us not wash our hands of the problem of unemployment or other social problems or link them with housing and the fact that people try to better themselves.
That is not the issue. If the Minister wants to talk about unemployment and about what the Government have failed to do — to address the problem of unemployment — we will debate that but let us not condemn people who have used this scheme to better themselves which, under our Constitution, they are entitled to do and do not say that because the unfortunates, who did not have a house or a job, suddenly found themselves with at least a house a problem was created which was to be laid at the threshold of those who tried to better themselves under the other scheme. That is not the case. The Minister can write whatever thesis he likes and listen to whatever views he likes. I do not dispute what happened but let us not wash our hands of the responsibility to look after those who suddenly needed housing and were accommodated. Now that this scheme has been abolished housing lists will get longer and we will not address this problem. These people will find themselves lower down on the list of people to be housed, given that there will be families with four and five children who will have a higher number of points in the stakes to qualify. That is my view and I would like to put it on the record along with the views of the Minister, Professor Blackwell and my very good friend, Sister Stanislaus.
I always find statements from authoritative people worthy of considerable respect but there is only one person I am expected to regard as having infallibility under very limited circumstances and even those very limited circumstances I have great difficulty in believing in. Whether they be the views of John Blackwell, Sister Stanislaus or of Threshold they are extremely interesting and should be given considerable weight but they are not infallible. It needs to be said — if it is a nasty point, let it be a nasty point — that none of the authors of these reports will ever or would ever have had to live in west Tallaght. Therefore, it is a bit much to presume that you know what is good for those who have to live in those places.
Of course, if the Minister abolished the £5,000 grant in order to invest in infrastructure in those areas I would have said that perhaps it was a very good idea. Give all the community leaders something to do. Give them community centres and facilities for their young people. Why did all those people who apparently were the leaders in their communities leave those places? They left because they felt there were no opportunities there for their children, that there were no decent facilities there, that the stigma of an address in such places would guarantee their children having considerable difficulty in getting a job later on, as people can still tell you, and for many other reasons. They did not leave because a £5,000 grant was made available, they left because they wanted to leave and the £5,000 grant made it possible to do so. The second point that needs to be made is that people who live in local authority estates can never get the right side of the stick. When people, like the people who left with the £5,000 grant, were living in local authority estates they were forever being criticised by other people for living in State subsidised housing and asked why would they not get up off their backsides and build houses for themselves like everybody else. That was the usual jibe against them. People regularly quoted to me figures about the average subsidy on local authority houses and told me of the families they knew who had three cars and four incomes and who would not move. That argument was used ad nauseam, particularly by right wing economists about the whole concept of public housing. Now when the tenants are given an incentive to move out they are somehow blamed and we are told that it is not good that they have moved out because the communities have lost their leaders.
I agree with Senator Ferris, and I do not care who says it, that the notion that moving in more of the unemployed and single mothers is unacceptable and reflects badly on the people who wrote those reports. People, particularly those with their record, should be extremely careful about the language they use and should be extremely careful to avoid imposing further stigma on those who are already heavily stigmatised.
Having said all of that, a balance needs to be struck in regard to public expenditure in the area of housing and one of my arguments is that perhaps making available a £5,000 grant, the mortgage interest subsidy and a number of others, is not the most efficient way to use the limited State resources available to provide housing. The figures that were presented in the Dáil last April and more recently showed that since the State has effectively stopped construction of new houses in most of the major urban areas, the idea that we are somehow reallocating resources from one area of public housing to another is a bit of a joke. These grants were stopped, not because of sociological issues or because of any damage to communities, but because the Government decided to cut back on this area of public expenditure and post hoc justifications on the basis of research that conveniently comes to hand can not get away from that fact.
The truth is that these grants did give people a choice and Gustavo Guitierrez, one of the great philosophers of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, said in a very inspiring address which he gave in Galway that poverty is the absence of choice. Depriving people of choice and forcing them to live where they do not wish to live is not necessarily the way to build a community. I have difficulty in believing that people could be persuaded to move out of the community that they were allegedly the natural leaders of and major participants in because a £5,000 grant was made available to them. These are people who were supposed to be the backbone of their communities and committed to their communities and I find it difficult to believe that when a once-off £5,000 grant is made available, which will still leave them with a considerable mortgage to pay back for the rest of their lives, they would suddenly up and leave their communities. Like a lot of what passes for left-wing analyses in this country, it is a little simplistic in the sense that it amounts to some people attempting to organise the lives of others. I happen to believe that the best way to build socialism is to let ordinary people organise their own lives and to determine their own priorities with the State responding to those priorities in the most creative way possible.
The £5,000 grant represented the aspirations of many people. The people who left wanted to leave and we do not have any right to force people to live where they do not want to live, particularly since none of us would dream of living in the housing conditions that most of these people are expected to live in. Most of us at the first chance we got moved out of that type of housing into much more acceptable housing but, apparently, we believe that it is good for other people not to have that choice. I do not believe in that sort of two-tiered society, where we leave certain people to be the opinion formers and leaders in communities that the rest of us choose not to participate in.
I would like to see a study carried out into why people availed of the £5,000 grant, as I am sure it would bear out much of what Senator Ryan has said. When the £5,000 grant was made available houses became vacant and were reoccupied, as we have learned now from the reports produced by Threshold and Focus, by the unemployed and by single people. Recently when I visited the housing section of the local authority of which I am a member, I inquired about the position in regard to housing because I like to keep on eye on the position and see how many houses are becoming available. On Second Stage I requested the Minister to make funds available for inner city housing but I could not in good conscience make an appeal to the Minister to make funds available for housing in the areas we are talking about now, the areas which Threshold and Focus deal with in their reports. I say this because there are more houses available now than we have tenants for. I asked the officials the reason for the number of vacancies and they told me that keys were being handed in on a regular basis.
Of course the reason for it is that people are emigrating and leaving their houses to the local authority, as happened in 1956-57. Will the Minister come back to this House in a year's time and quote to us from Threshold and Focus reports on the effects emigration has had on Tallaght, Blanchardstown and other areas in the outer city? The economic policy being followed by the Government has the undesired effect that the numbers of unemployed are increasing, as we saw from the figures last Friday. Houses are becoming available to local authorities in urban areas on account of emigration. The Minister might like to think about that and see what Threshold and Focus have to say about it in a year's time.
I have just one final comment. I will be glad to convey some of the sentiments expressed by some Senators to the people named as the compilers of this little document. I leaked them before to the said Senators. I would just like to ask Senator Ryan — I do not know whether he is referring to those who might or might not be living in West Tallaght — whether some of the people involved in the editing of this particular document had any real knowledge of that. I would like to clear up that matter. The reference I gave from Focus on Homelessness by the two people involved was, in fact, not written by either John Blackwell or Stanislaus Kennedy, but by the West Tallaght Resource Centre. I am sure they would be reasonably close to the situation that exists there. It is also interesting to note from that same document that the West Tallaght Resource Centre, speaking for themselves, said that quite a number of the families availing of the £5,000 grant exercised their choice, remained in the Tallaght area and just moved up the road.
They were not lost to the community.
The point is taken. Senator Ryan's contention is that no choice was available to certain individuals. The choices were there and were availed of by individuals as they saw fit. However, I suggest that what we are talking about in section 4 is somewhat removed from this.
Question put and agreed to.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Before we move on to section 5, could the Minister reply to my request for a scheme for the sale of flats. If such a scheme is not ready in the near future, would he extend it into the new year?
I want to be as helpful as possible, but until I see what comes back from the study group I cannot answer that now.
We have no reason to believe that the scheme would be different from the existing scheme. All Senator Doyle is worried about is the date.
Of course, it will be different in so far as that there are different sets of circumstances attached to the services etc., attached to blocks of apartments and how they might be bought under a tenant purchase scheme as distinct from individual houses. So far as I am concerned, the scheme I announced to be applicable from 1 January 1988 will terminate on the last day of this year.
If a scheme is available for the sale of flats, will the Minister extend that date to allow these people to buy the flats? That is the question I am asking the Minister.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator will have an opportunity of raising that question on Report Stage. I had indicated that we were moving on to section 5.
SECTION 5.
I move amendment No. 8:
In page 7, between lines 2 and 3 to insert the following subsection:
"(2) For the purposes of this section ‘management' shall be taken to include, where appropriate, caretaking, maintenance, and suitable social support services.".
This is simply a matter of clarification. The section deals with assistance by housing authorities of certain bodies. Section 5 (1) says that the assistance may be for the erection, purchase, improvement, or conversion, or management by the authority or body of housing accommodation. My amendment simply attempts to make it clear what I believe to be the Minister's intention: that management is not simply the management of the resource, but is also support for the people involved and, that therefore, management shall be taken to include, where appropriate, caretaking, maintenance and suitable social support services. This relates, in particular, for one reason, to the provisions of section 10 to do with the powers that are being given to housing authorities to deal with homeless people and the arrangements they can make with other organisations. If these arrangements are to work, the organisations have to be seen as organisations which do more than manage property. They have to be seen for what they are: social support organisations. It is important, therefore, that the word "management" in this context should be seen to mean what I believe and hope it is intended to mean, to involve not just the management of the resource but also, as my amendment says, where appropriate, caretaking, maintenance and suitable social support services. I would ask the Minister to either accept the amendment or to make it clear that the regulations emanating from this Bill would make it clear that that word "management" implies what I think it implies.
It is important that it should be in regulations rather than in guidelines because regulations have the force of law, but guidelines do not. The Minister can send all the guidelines he wishes to a housing authority but if the legal advice available to a housing authority says that the Minister is wrong, there is no obligation on the housing authority to accept those guidelines. That is why I would be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say on this amendment.
I do not think that this amendment is either necessary or desirable for the following reason: the concept of what is involved in housing management is constantly developing and it is desirable that legislation should allow this to happen without attempting any definitions. That is my basic point. The management of housing and the expression used in this section has always been seen in the past in the broadest possible terms. It certainly is taken — this is the point that Senator Ryan might be concerned about — to mean and to include caretaking, maintenance and all the other necessary support services that one might find desirable, including the social ones. Section 58 of the 1966 Act, under which local authorities look after all aspects of the operation of their housing estates, used the word ‘management' to embrace the various items mentioned in Senator Ryan's amendment, including, for example, warden support for elderly persons. Similarly, section 13 of the present Bill speaks of the management of residential caravan sites for travellers, the power given there is designed to include such facilities as caretaking, maintenance and other support services, including social workers whose salaries are recouped under section 6. What is being attempted here is in the widest possible sense and anything restrictive so far as I am concerned would not serve the purpose we have in mind.
We do not at present have any scheme for helping voluntary bodies with the day to day costs of running their housing. Under section 10 of the Bill, there is power to pay voluntary bodies, where they accommodate homeless persons, and such payments could allow for the costs arising from the services mentioned by Senator Ryan. That could take place if it was deemed necessary, but in the circumstances we look on the word "management" as understood in the 1966 Act as being the widest possible, and to include all the things the Senator mentioned in his amendment. Consequently, we are of the opinion that it is not necessary to have the amendment.
Since there is no doubt that the sort of things which are in the amendment are already the accepted interpretation of "management", there would obviously be no point in pursuing the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 9:
In page 7, between lines 46 and 47, to insert the following subsection:
"(7) This section would specifically include a bona fide voluntary association or non-profit co-operative or voluntary housing association.".
The Minister, in his final reply to Senator Ryan, referred briefly to the actual concept of what is included in our amendment. This section deals with assistance by local authorities of certain bodies and our amendment seeks to specifically include a bona fide voluntary association or non-profit co-operative or voluntary housing association. By positively including them we want to ensure that we will be capable of assisting them. Perhaps the Minister is of the view that this point is covered. I want to put it on record that we want to ensure that associations involved in voluntary work receive grants, loans or other disbursements from local authorities to help them with their work.
The amendment, as well as being unnecessary, is inappropriate in the circumstances. Section 5 applies in very broad terms to anybody approved by the Minister for the purpose of the section and while all of the organisations already approved under section 12 of the 1966 Act would, arguably, come within the broad descriptions contained in the amendment, I do not consider it desirable to move from the general provision towards providing in the Bill descriptions of bodies which may or may not be approved. I would not like to go in that direction. This type of description I consider to be much more appropriate to circular letters and guidelines.
As the amendment is drafted it is structurally meaningless. I do not know whether it was intended to convey a message to the Minister that he might approve of any type of body mentioned but it did not say so. However, my objection to the amendment is not specifically to its drafting but rather an objection in principle to what would be a potentially limiting effect. It might not seem that way now but I am not prepared to take the risk that it might be limiting in its effect in years to come. Consequently, the 1966 Act does exactly what is required in these circumstances and the amendment should be withdrawn.
We will not have an argument about the drafting because the Minister has all sorts of facilities available to him that I do not have available to me. His argument has not really convinced me. I am of the view that if we are specific he does not like it, that he wants the widest possible interpretation so that he can write any circular or letter he likes to the housing authority defining those he considers to be the proper group to be included. We are trying to ensure that they are not excluded in the future. The Minister says that that is not a good way to legislate, that he wants this left as open as possible so that he would decide who should be helped and receive a circular. Is that what the Minister is saying? If so this amendment would be valid. From the Minister's attitude I am not sure whether any bona fide voluntary organisations who might be designated by housing authorities would be approved by him.
We are trying to improve the legislation. We put down an amendment for discussion and it was wiped away. The Minister has recommended that we withdraw it but it is not a matter for the Minister to suggest that we withdraw it, it is a matter for the Chair and the Member who moves it. The Minister can only respond to amendments. He does not have a vote in the House, unlike the other House. Let us be honest with one another, we are trying to improve the legislation by ensuring that there is the widest possible interpretation, as in the past. We want to ensure that such associations are not excluded in the future. To our knowledge they have done a lot of excellent work in the past, and I hope they will continue their work. I hope they will continue to be assisted by the Government who sometimes are incapable of housing certain categories of people. It is because these associations have done a lot in the past that we are showing concern for them.
The Senator has it wrong. The bodies he referred to in his amendment are bodies who are being approved right now. If he is saying that the bodies, as indicated in section 12 of the 1966 Act, are somehow defective, or if he has problems with that provision, why does he not say so? Is he saying that it should be left to the Minister to define the type of body mentioned. That would not be the right way to deal with this and would be contrary to what he has suggested in the rest of his submission. As far as I am concerned it is meaningless in so far as that is already the position. Why alter something that has worked well in another section since 1966, unless Senator Ferris can tell me that he is unhappy with that?
A lot of things have changed, including the Minister. His policies in this whole area have changed. His party's attitude since they published their manifesto in the last local elections has changed in this area. The Minister is not incapable of change, he has made a few U-turns also. I want to ensure that in future the groups outlined by us in the amendment will be treated in the same way that they have been in the past. The Minister is suggesting that these matters should not be written in this way, that they should be dealt with by way of circulars, letters and so on. I have it on the record that the Minister is going to treat this group of people by circular or letter in the same way as they were addressed in the past.
What has the manifesto got to do with how I understand section 12?
Does the Minister wish me to read the manifesto? I will not bore the House because his party have changed so much in their attitude that people would not believe it ever appeared.
What has that got to do with the 1966 Act?
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Chair would be obliged if Senators remembered that the Chair is still here.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That section 5 stand part of the Bill."
For my benefit, will the Minister explain why he finds it necessary to repeal section 12 of the 1966 Act? I presume section 5 is, effectively, replacing it. In the list of repeals there are a number of very intriguing repeals stuck in at the end of the Bill to sections of the 1966 Act, some of which, to say the least, are quite disturbing. The only one that arises at this stage is the repeal of section 12. Section 12 is similarly worded. I would like the Minister to explain to me how he sees section 5 as being an improvement on or a change from section 12. It is more elaborate than section 12 of the 1966 Act. Why did the Minister find it necessary to be more elaborate and how, if at all, does the section differ in principle from section 12 of the 1966 Act?
In only one aspect. It is being repealed but only, effectively, in one aspect. The 1966 Act dealt with the question of loans to voluntary bodies whereas I am introducing grants now. The change is to cover that.
I should like to thank the Minister.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 6 and 7 agreed to.
SECTION 8.
I move amendment No. 10:
In page 8, line 29, after "Minister" to insert "and not less frequently than every three years".
This section refers to the duty of a housing authority to, within one year of the commencement of this section, make an estimate of the existing housing requirements and the prospective housing requirements over such period as the Minister may direct or, in the absence of such direction, as the authority sees fit. It is the essence of good planning that there should be some attempt at an assessment of existing and future housing requirements. It is rather peculiar, however that the estimate of housing requirements under section 9 shall be within one year of the commencement and thereafter not less frequently than every three years.
Section 8 provides that the estimate of housing requirements should be made once within one year and then at no particularly well-defined regular interval thereafter other than at the behest of the Minister. It appears that there is a perfectly logical case for having estimates of housing requirements made with the same frequency as assessments of the need for housing. The two matters intertwine. It appears that it would be somewhat ludicrous to attempt to make an assessment of the need for the provision by the authority of adequate and suitable accommodation for persons, as listed in section 9, at least every three years but to have no obligation to make an estimate of housing requirements with a similar frequency. It appears to be logical to ensure that the requirements and the obligations under section 8 are also carried out every three years. It is hardly controversial or difficult to accept.
I would be very interested in hearing the Minister's comments on this. Perhaps I am being optimistic in assuming that he will accept this obviously very reasonable amendment but, if for some reason he does not accept it, I would be interested in hearing it. It seems entirely logical that two matters which are so closely related ought to be carried out with the same frequency. Otherwise one or other, if not both, could be entirely meaningless.
Perhaps the Senator does not fully appreciate what is involved under section 8. What is involved is a major assessment of housing requirements, local authority and private. Section 53 of the Housing Act, 1966, provided that the assessment should be carried out every five years. Even that five year timetable was not strictly adhered to in the past for various reasons, mainly the scale of the undertaking which is colossal. Obviously it is essential that all housing authorities should carry out their estimates or assessments at the same time, using, as far as possible, consistent assumptions. The results of these local authority estimates provide the key element in estimating overall national housing requirements. However, the demographic, economic and housing stock data underlying the calculation of housing requirements do not change very significantly in a short number of years. An estimate of overall housing requirements every three years would be wasteful and unnecessary for the reasons which I have outlined. We do not think it is necessary to concede this amendment. I ask the Senator to try to bear in mind what is involved in the exercise, with all private and public housing. It would be an enormous task. It does not happen often and there is no need for it to happen often. I am not prepared to concede the amendment on those grounds.
There are two ways of having a discussion. You can argue about the detail or you can argue about the principle. I am not prepared to argue about the three years if the Minister accepts the principle. The Minister said there was an obligation on the housing authority, admittedly unenforced but that is due to the failure of our systems. Section 53 of the Housing Act, 1966, states: "It shall be the duty of the housing authority, within such period after the commencement of this section as may be specified by the Minister and thereafter either at least once in every five years or at such intervals, being less than five years, as the Minister may direct from time to time, to inspect the houses in their functional area and to ascertain ..." I appreciate precisely what is involved in this but it appears that an attempt is being made to lessen that responsibility.
As I said earlier, there are a number of interesting repealing sections at the tail end of this Bill which raise interesting questions about the whole policy basis that underlines the areas of this Bill that have nothing to do with the homeless. The Minister was at pains to elaborate that this is not specifically a homeless persons Bill but covers many other matters. What we are being told now is that on one occasion within a year of the commencement of this section a major assessment will have to be carried out, and God knows when it will be carried out again. Under the previous Act it had to be carried out at least every five years. It is interesting that the drafters of the Principal Act envisaged these assessments as being needed to be carried out with a frequency of less than five years. I am at a loss to believe that the Oireachtas was so wrong as regards the 1966 Act when it envisaged these sorts of assessments being carried out with a greater frequency than once every five years, because that is what is possible under the Act. What is obligatory is every five years but what is possible is less than every five years — while now we are giving carte blanche to the Minister to do so whenever he sees fit.
If one believes, as I and I think a number of Senators on this side of the House do, that we are going to have a major housing crisis within five years, most local authorities would not be wildly enthusiastic about producing masses of statistics which would underline the possible decline in the general housing stock, due to the lack of finance for maintenance, and so on, which is now being talked about by those members of local authorities who so often lecture me about my lack of experience in this area. If the Minister argues with me about three years, on the next Stage I will accept five years but the Minister is not arguing about that. He is arguing about the principle of obliging, by law, regular assessments of housing stock.
I find it astonishing that the Minister who is responsible for housing could somehow argue that there is no need to ensure, and insist in law, that there should be a regular updating of the quality of information available to housing authorities about the housing stock. It appears that underlying that is a certain desire to fudge the data which may become increasingly unpleasant in the next five or ten years. I do not think there is any case for leaving out a time limit which was envisaged in 1966 and which is probably even more necessary now because of the demand for local authority housing and because of the apparent conspiracy between the two major political parties in this State to perpetuate mass unemployment. There will be a large-scale demand for public housing and a deliberate decision will be made not to make funds available to provide it. Because of that, it appears that there is an even greater need to have good up-to-date data.
Some very authoritative studies on Irish decision-making structures and processes have identified the faults in this country not as having anything to do with our racial characteristics, which some people try to pretend, nor with the political process and politicians per se— our politicians are every bit as good as those in any other country in Europe and I include the present Government in that — but with our systems.
Senator Ryan, are you still on amendment No. 10?
I am on amendment No. 10 which is an attempt——
You should confine your remarks to the amendment.
I rarely take issue with you, a Chathaoirligh, but the question of how a decision is made or how information is gathered on the quality of our housing stock is a necessary part of developing any policy on how to improve, upgrade or modify our housing stock. I was simply using that as an attempt to illustrate a broad principle which is that our systems of information gathering and decision making are the biggest weaknesses in our whole political process. It appears that to fudge the issue of a necessary upgrading in the quality of data available to housing authorities is another example of our unwillingness to develop systems that are precise, specific and able to identify problems in time before everything becomes a crisis. Effectively the Minister said that it is too big a job. I will not argue with the Minister about three years, five years or six years but can he tell me now why it should somehow become an issue for the Minister to decide how frequently Cork Corporation, Mayo County Council or Kerry County Council must carry out a housing assessment? What sort of infallibility or fund of information is available in the Custom House that is not available elsewhere? Why should it become a function of the Minister to tell local housing authorities when they should do these things? The correct thing to do is to identify a reasonable interval and say that is the interval that ought to be observed. I do not care if it is three or five years. Three years is not an unreasonable period and housing authorities ought to be doing much more information gathering.
There are those who would argue for instance that, instead of a housing programme, we have had for far too long a house building programme, which is a quite different thing. Instead of identifying areas where useful efficient expenditure could be spent to upgrade existing housing and poor quality housing, we have spent an enormous amount of money on building more and more houses, which was not necessarily the proper response. One of the reasons for that is the poor quality information which is available about the existing housing stock. Putting on the long finger how frequently the sort of assessment the Minister mentioned, and which I am concerned about, should be done is nothing more than fudging the issue. If it is not specified it will not be done. The Minister said that when the assessments were specified to be done every five years they were not done. If they could not be done when it was the law that they should be done fairly frequently, why should we believe that they will be done now when there is no obligation on local authorities to do them at regular intervals? I cannot accept the Minister's arguments.
I want to comment on Senator Ryan's remarks. He gets annoyed from time to time with local authority members for appearing to lecture him but the point we appear to be missing here is that local authorities do their own assessments on a regular basis. I came to this House on a number of occasions to meet various Ministers for the Environment and Ministers for Local Government and at all times I was armed with my assessment of the needs in different areas of County Cork, which I represent. The Minister is not saying that housing authorities may not, should not, or do not carry out their own assessments. They do and this can be compiled relatively easily. When a local authority decide to make representations and submissions to a Minister at any given time, it is obvious that they will come armed with some form, and quite often this is very comprehensive, of assessment as it relates to their area. The Minister has not said at any stage that a housing authority should not, within the intervening period of five years, carry out their own assessment. I am quite sure that every local authority carry out assessments.
In his first reply the Minister said that because this was a major task he did not want to put a time limit on it in future. If we are honest we all must recognise that a job has to be done in this area. The section which Senator Ryan is trying to strengthen already puts a time limit of one year within which the initial assessment by the housing authority has to be made. It is only the continuation of that reporting procedure that Senator Ryan is trying to address in his amendment and I think this is a very reasonable request.
As a member of a local authority I know that this is an ongoing process in local authorities. If we legislate for this and leave no obligation on anybody except the Minister to decide when the next assessment is to be done, how can any Minister carry out a policy of rehousing or allocation of national funds for housing if he is not aware of the needs in any local authority area? I am surprised that the Minister, who is a progressive Minister would allow a situation to develop whereby he would not have the information which he would need to carry out his programme available to him. The Minister can express his exasperation and I am expressing mine at the way in which he responds to the comments from this side of the House.
With regard to local authorities, this section requires that the report will be prepared and adopted by the authority. It is necessary that any housing authority programme should be discussed publicly and sent to the Minister when it is adopted as part of their requirement for an allocation. The Minister is saying that this has to be done within the first 12 months of this Bill being enacted and thereafter whenever he so decides. Those of us who are involved in local authorities would like a time factor to be involved in this. When the bad news becomes available after the first 12 months I do not think that we should shy away from our responsibilities as members of local authorities.
As the Minister responsible for meeting the requirements of local authorities the Minister should not insert a provision in the Bill which ensures that local authorities can disregard their responsibility to provide the Minister with the fullest information so that he can advise the Government on how they should respond to the information. I am afraid that because of the present allocation for new houses we could have a housing crisis four or five years down the road. It is important that local authorities should discuss their plans publicly so that everyone knows where the buck stops. When it comes to the allocation of capital funding the buck stops with the Minister and the Government. They have to respond to the needs of local authorities and they should not let members of local authorities off the hook in responding positively to them. The fact that the five year period was not included before substantiates Senator Ryan's reason for putting in a time factor here. I will not argue about the time limit but there should be some period within which there is an obligation on all local authorities to tell the Minister what is needed in their areas.
There seems to be an adequate amount of houses in the towns in my county and perhaps this can be attributed to good public representation from county councillors to TDs and Ministers. All Governments have neglected rural villages, especially those in County Longford. It appears that the trend was to concentrate more on urban areas.
Does Senator Doherty know the wording of the amendment we are addressing?
Yes, I was just going to refer to housing for the elderly. The aged population in the rural parts of the country have not been very helpful in moving into urbanised areas. I ask the Minister to provide adequate grants to local authorities for small sewerage and water schemes.
Senator Doherty, I will have to stop you because the amendment before us says nothing about sewerage and water schemes either in County Longford or anywhere else.
All I am saying is that these schemes would lead to the provision of housing in those areas. We have no hope of getting housing schemes until we have those facilities. If those schemes were in operation fewer people would have to be hospitalised in a lot of our institutions.
Senator Doherty, we have to get back to the amendment.
The Minister is a very able man — I never had any doubt about that — but he can be disingenuous sometimes. One would get the impression that we were undertaking of a detailed engineering survey of every house in a housing authority area. Let me remind the House that section 8 (2) says:
In making an estimate of housing requirements in accordance with subsection (1), a housing authority shall have regard to—
(a) information (derived from any survey of all or a sample of the housing in the area or otherwise as the authority see fit) ...
The first point to be made is that they can use a sample if they are stuck. I might not agree with that but that is what is written there. The subsection continues:
... in relation to the housing conditions in the area, including the number of houses which are in any respect unfit or unsuitable for human habitation, are over-crowded, are shared involuntarily or are expected ... to be lost ...
Those are three critical phrases —"unsuitable for human habitation", "are over-crowded", "are shared involuntarily". They are extremely important indices which should be reflected in such an assessment. When one considers that in 1984 local authorities completed 7,000 houses, that according to the Dáil Official Report of 25 November 1987, they expected to complete less than a quarter of that number in 1988, then questions of over-crowding will arise much more frequently than every three years, that even the five years stipulated in the 1966 Act would have been excessively long, that a three year stipulation is being generous. With those sorts of levels of housing completions by housing authorities over a number of years, the incidence of involuntary sharing or overcrowding will become more and more frequent and intense. I have to assume that what the Minister is saying is that, since five years and three years were too short, the period of time he has in mind will be somewhat longer. If we assume we will have one assessment carried out in the next 12 months before the crisis becomes too acute the next one is to be undertaken in five or six years time — and we are going to have a nice breathing space in between — and perhaps we will not have one even then because there is no guarantee. Within that time local authorities will not have to undertake the types of surveys required in this section with regard to overcrowding, involuntary sharing and so on.
In that context the more one reads the section the more it becomes clear that the obligation should be clearly written down. It is an interesting question as to why nobody, myself included, ever got around to trying to get housing authorities to do the things they are obliged to do by law. It is an interesting question, perhaps related to other obligations the Minister is unwilling to place on housing authorities. Perhaps we never get used to the need to get housing authorities to do anything they are obliged to do. Perhaps that is a good reason the Minister does not want to place other obligations on them, to which we will come later. The fact is that an important issue here — the degree of over-crowding and involuntary sharing — must be assessed in the estimate of housing requirements. That will not have to be done at any given regular frequency. Additionally that will allow considerable deterioration in the quality of housing available to many people to go unnoticed for a long period of time.
There is no point in the Minister referring me to section 9. That is a different section whose provisions I do not want to anticipate. Section 8 is there with a specific purpose; that purpose is as important as are the objectives of section 9. If there is an obligation to carry out those surveys under the provisions of section 8 they should be undertaken sufficiently frequently and efficiently to be of some use to people who are trying to plan for future housing needs. If they are done on a haphazard basis or not at all, important information will be withheld from us. This is happening in other countries as well where many of the indices of deprivation are no longer being measured. In the case of Governments who like to pretend to those who are already reasonably well off that things are going well, the last thing they want is information on those who are doing badly. Therefore they begin to fudge the edges. That is what is going on here. The Minister has not given any substantive reason for not insisting on a time limit.
Senator Brendan Ryan mentioned three discriptions of housing conditions and spoke about two of them — overcrowding and involuntary sharing. He did not speak about the first description —"unfit or unsuitable for human habitation". We have gone a long way in our housing programmes and there is now a limit to that category. While that latter description may have been apt seven or eight years ago any local authority now assessing their housing stock will find such conditions almost eliminated. However it would be wrong to leave this provision open-ended. There should be a time factor involved in this section. A local authority should as was stated in the 1966 Act, at least every five years carry out an assessment of the housing requirements in their area. That is a reasonable request in which I support Senator Ryan and Ferris.
I do not want to labour this point. It is obvious that some people who are addressing this subject do not have to go before local authorities for election because we appear to be suggesting that they do not discharge their functions in any area. As a local authority member of 15 years standing I can assure the House that we address the subject of housing on a monthly basis and, in some counties on a weekly basis. It is not true to say that this assessment requirement will be ignored because the Minister does not direct county councils to so do. We do it on a monthly basis anyway. I am sure the Minister, at the press of a button can obtain information from any local authority in relation to the difficulties they may be encountering on a daily basis let alone on a five-yearly basis. Let us not suggest — as appears to be suggested — that local authority members are deficient in the discharge of their functions in relation to housing. I would like to think we do not ignore any of these important functions. We appear to be suggesting here that if the Minister does not direct us to do it, we do not do it. This is one of the things about which we constantly cry in local authorities — that the hand of Big Daddy is in evidence once again. As housing authorities we are discharging our democratic responsibilities anyway. If the Minister finds local authorities are not doing so he will be very quick to point it out to them.
Before I call the Minister, there are two things I want to bring to the notice of the House. First, we are having a lot of repetition. Second, Senators speaking on the amendments as I read them — and I am not the greatest expert on the reading of amendments but I have been here long enough to try to half understand them — should stick to them and repetition should stop.
Let me say, first, that nothing is being fudged in so far as the Minister's attitude is concerned here. To suggest that there is fudging going on is ungenerous on the part of Senator Brendan Ryan. I would invite some Senators to pay closer attention to the text of the section. Had they done so the amount of talk already devoted to this section might not have been necessary.
Let us be clear as to what will happen. Within one year of the passage of this legislation there will be a major assessment, not just of local authority housing requirements but of all housing requirements, local authority and private. That is a huge study. A major strategic study of that kind does not need to be undertaken within any specific number of years. It has to be done occasionally. That has been the experience since the passage of the 1966 Act — 22 years ago. That is the reason it has not been deemed necessary to carry out the demands or provisions of the 1966 legislation every five years. These assessments are undertaken following a census of population following the adoption of a development plan, or at some other time regarded as suitable by the agencies involved.
While Senator Ryan would not like to refer to section 9 at this stage and we should not do so, it is important to understand — because Senator Ferris might have misunderstood that point is so far as local authority housing is concerned — that such an assessment or estimate of local authority housing needs will be undertaken under the provisions of section 9 every three years. That will be indicated in the relevant Statute.
If you pay close attention to the wording of section 8 you will see that, after the one year assessment has been carried out, local authorities or housing authorities will not await Ministerial direction or demand for the next. As is said in section 8 (1), it can be carried out "thereafter at any time that appears to them expedient", "them" being the local authority members. If local authority members feel that in their area there is a need to have this assessment carried out twice a year, there is nothing to stop them authorising it under this legislation. They do so, in practice, on many occasions when they are considering changes in their development plans and at Estimates times and many other times as well. Those who are members of local authorities would appreciate that point. Senator Callaghan is quite right in his understanding of it. If the Minister, in some other set of circumstances, deems it necessary and expedient to have such an estimate carried out at any other time, he may do so under this legislation.
Over the past 22 years our experience has been that it is not necessary to carry out this assessment in a rigid framework of years. The fact that the five yearly estimate requirement of the 1966 Act was not carried out on a regular basis was not to suggest that the members were shying away from it but that members in considering what was required of them did not think it was justified. It has to be recognised that information relevant to the need for housing is constantly coming before us and before local authority members in so far as the census report is concerned, in so far as development plans are concerned, and so on. Where that information indicates, either to a Minister or to local authority members, that it is then a suitable time to have such an assessment carried out, they are at liberty under this legislation to do so.
Finally, in so far as local authority needs are concerned, it is stated specifically in section 9 that it will be every three years for a particular reason in so far as it concerns itself with local authority needs as distinct from the general needs of the whole community, private and public. That is the reading of the section. I invite Senators to scrutinise closely the wording and they will find that it is more than adequate to allay the fears that they have expressed.
Is amendment No. 10 withdrawn?
It is not. I am sorry if there has been some repetition. I have endeavoured not to be repetitious. What I am trying to do is to follow the Minister as he hops around a little. He cannot, on the one hand, tell us that it is an enormous undertaking and then tell us that local authorities will do it every six months if they wish. There are a number of things that need to be addressed. One is the considerable reduction in staff in local authorities all over the country because of the voluntary redundancy package. I should not be the one talking about this. There are people here, members of local authorities, who are far more experienced than I am. There has been a considerable reduction in staff and it would be interesting to know whether staff would be available now to carry out this work. If the problem is as extensive as the Minister says, how can cash-strapped local authorities do the assessment if the scale of the assessment is so great?
On the other hand, I cannot accept the Minister's interpretation because the Bill specifically states: "derived from any survey of all or a sample of the housing in the area". So it is not a survey of all the housing that must be done, but a survey of a sample of the housing. Maybe it is not just the Members who are not reading the section as carefully as possible. A sample of the housing is a matter that the housing authority can define. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot, on the one hand, say that many housing authorities failed to do it and on the other hand say that we should leave it up to them to do it. If they failed to do it when they were obliged to, how in Heaven's name could anybody expect them to do it when they have no obligation to do it on a regular basis? There is a lack of logic in this. The Minister may feel that I am being less than generous, but there is a certain blurring of the edges here.
We are anticipating a housing crisis in the nineties. I am being a little less critical, but there will be a rapid increase in the level of overcrowding in the next few years. There will be a rapid increase in the level of involuntary sharing. Let there be no doubt about it, emigration is not going to continue indefinitely. People of marriageable age are going to keep on getting married. Already officials of housing authorities to whom I have spoken have said that the ease of allocation of local authority houses that existed even six months ago is no longer there. We have not really felt the pinch of the cutbacks in local authority housing. I have no intention of withdrawing the amendment because I have heard no good reason to do so.
Let me respond to that. I do not want to let that go because making statements such as that it is expected that there will be a rapid increase in over-crowding is speculative and there is no basis being put forward by the Senator in support of his point of view. So I must reject it as being unsupported and not in the tradition of Senator Ryan in the case he makes. I am saying to Senator Ryan that section 8 of this legislation allows this assessment to be done within one year of the legislation being passed. It allows it to be done at any time local authority members feel it is justified. It allows it to be done when the Minister feels that it is justified. As far as I am concerned, that is quite a big advance and it certainly makes a nonsense of the situation that existed under the 1966 Act when the five year rule was not being implemented, anyway. This is much more reasonable and the Senator knows well that the way an assessment is done internationally is by way of sample survey. That is the way it is being applied in this jurisdiction also.
Is amendment No. 10 withdrawn?
I am not sure what sort of evidence the Ministers want me to produce about the future. By definition, the future is all about speculation. We do not know any other way. So the Minister is being a little harsh in saying that when I attempt to say what is going to happen in five years' time I am speculating. If the Minister has a better way of knowing what is going to happen in 1994 than I do, he can tell me about it.
I have to wait for it to happen.
If the Minister wants to be flippant about housing he can be, but the rest of us are not. The estimate in the Official Report for the completion of local authority housing in 1988 is 1,600 local authority houses. That is half of what were estimated to be completed in 1987. As reported in the Official Report the funds available as of 27 April 1988 for new house starts for Cork Corporation are nil, for Dublin Corporation nil, for Galway Corporation nil, for Limerick Corporation nil and for Waterford Corporation nil. That is considerable evidence that we are not going to have nearly enough local authority houses available to house those who will need them. If they do not live in local authority houses, they are either going to live on the side of the road, or in private rented accommodation, or they are going to share.
In the early seventies the figures shows that about 40 per cent to 50 per cent of local authority houses in Dublin, before the extraordinary achievement of the housing programmes of the past 15 years, were occupied by more than one family. That is the evidence from the past when we did not build enough houses. The evidence now is that we are not building enough local authority houses. It is perfectly reasonable and logical to forecast that four or five years' time we will have the problem I mentioned. It is based on the best of evidence and I will not wait and see. That is not the way to run a country.
Is amendment No. 10 withdrawn?
Amendment put.
The question is, "That the amendment be made". On that question a division has been challenged. Will those Senators calling for a division please rise in their places?
Senators B. Ryan, Ferris, J. O'Toole and O'Shea stood.
As fewer than five Senators rose, I declare the question lost.
Amendment declared lost.
The names of the Senators who rose in their places will be recorded in the Journal of Proceedings of the Seanad.
I move amendment No. 11:
In page 8, line 29, after "make" to insert "and publish".
Amendment No. 11 relates to the proper functioning of a democracy. If we oblige housing authorities or any other public body to assemble information, it is important that that sort of information should be widely available. Since there are extraordinary provisions under the Official Secrets Act about what can be published or the position under which things can be published, it is extremely important that we make it clear in any legislation to deal with information that the body which assembles that information is both authorised and obliged to make it public.
The simple import of my amendment is to ensure that everything that a housing authority assemble by way of information under section 8 is made available, not just to members of a housing authority or a particular housing committee of the local authority, but to the public at large, so that the public, anybody interested in the issue and researchers in particular — people who are interested in the whole issue of housing — would have access to the best and most authoritative information available. There is, presumably, a route by which this information can become public via the fact that information will become available to the members of local authorities. It is a proper representation of the way democracy functions that such information ought to be available, as of right, to the public. The precise details of how that information should be published could well be dealt with by ministerial circulars which are so plentiful about legislation like this. It would be quite simple to issue a ministerial circular explaining that publication could be by way of the right of inspection by any interested parties and that there is no need for them to publish large books or anything like that.
We heard enough about the need to leave legislation flexible to allow for changing circumstances earlier on in the debate on this Bill not to be too worried now about possible semantics regarding the meaning of the word "published". It simply is an attempt on my part to ensure that the upgraded information that will be available — if these surveys are carried out more than once — and, if they are carried out with any regularity, will be available on the widest possible basis.
The estimates for housing requirements under section 8 of this Bill will be reported to elected members of local authorities and they will be adopted by the councils. That will ensure that the adequacy of the estimates will be fully debated by the elected local representatives. These estimates will, of course, be published and become public knowledge in this way. In addition, there is no requirement in section 53 of the 1966 Housing Act, which is being replaced by this section 8, to publish the reports on housing requirements. I do not see any merit in introducing such a requirement which could be quite expensive for the smaller housing authorities. If local authorities want to do it, then it is a matter for themselves. I will certainly not demand it of them and put them to further expense where local authority members in debating these matters usually have the debates sufficiently well covered.
Is amendment No. 11 withdrawn?
No. We now have the position where the Minister says on the one hand it is published and on the other hand that it is not. He referred to section 53 of the 1966 Act as not requiring them to be published. I want to make sure that this information is in the hands of the public. Is there anything in general legislation about official secrets or otherwise to preclude or prevent any member of a housing authority from making such information public? In other words, if a member of a local authority makes such information public, is he liable not to receive further information because he is in breach of confidence? Perhaps those Senators who are members of housing authorities can perhaps explain this to me. There does not seem to me to be any problem.
"Publish" is a word which can have a breadth of meanings. It seems that a scheme of priorities for lettings of dwellings must be open to inspection by the public under a later section of this Bill because everybody accepts that that should be accessible to the public who are presumably going to be the beneficiaries of that scheme of priorities. In a similar way the assessments made of housing requirements under this legislation ought to be accessible to the public as of right and not by some backdoor route. I cannot understand what the Minister is saying. If the position is that this material is public knowledge, let us say so. As I have said on previous sections, we need not argue about the precise wording. We could simply elaborate on the scheme of lettings and say that assessments under sections 8 and 9 ought to be available for public study. It would be quite simple. If such estimates are made and approved by housing authorities will I be able to walk into Cork Corporation and see them as a citizen and not as a Member of the Oireachtas? The answer must be either "yes" or "no".
I want to say to Senator Ryan that a housing list is prepared and brought up to date by every local authority. As Senator Ryan is not a member of a local authority I can understand that he is at sixes and sevens about what happens within the administration of a local authority. I want to say clearly to Senator Ryan that every iota and every channel is X-rayed and the personnel of every county are examined in depth — the homeless, people living on their own and people in all types of housing conditions. That information is readily available to the public. It is readily available on a housing list in every local authority throughout this country and is reviewed from time to time.
I have no problem with this section because I know from my years of experience as a member of a local authority that Mayo County Council and adjoining county councils compare notes on housing. Throughout the country staff officers and high ranking housing administrators from time to time do surveys on other counties. They survey the requirements in other regions and the progress made by a local authority. Arising out of that our high tech staff discuss it with the departmental officials who give an overall opinion to the Minister. Indeed, the Minister here this evening has spent many years on local authorities and I am sure it is boring for him to have to listen to this in an effort to elicit technical data when it is already available at any information centre in any local authority in connection with the housing list. I do not think there should be any question or doubt in the mind of Senator Ryan or any other Senator. No member of a local authority will question the availability of that information. It is there and it can be seen and it is reviewed from time to time.
In fairness to Senator Ryan he is trying to ensure that the information is not kept secret. That is basically what he is saying. Give me a chance to explain what he is trying to do. I want to interpret what the Minister has said as well.
Senator Ryan wants to know if this information is available, if it is secret information or if it is open to him as a member of the public, not as an elected Member of the Oireachtas, to walk in and get the information. To my knowledge this information should be and is available. It is a matter of public concern that this information should be available. That is the subject of his amendment. The Minister interprets that as putting an onus on the local authority who might not be in a position financially to publish it formally in a written report. He said there is no need to require the local authority to publish it formally in a report which would be circulated and which would cost money to print.
The Minister is saying correctly that this information is available, comes before members of local authorities, is discussed, adopted, rejected or approved by them and in the process of debate it becomes public knowledge and, if the media think it worth while to publish it, they will publish it. It is available to the public if the media print it. It is not confidential on the basis that it is discussed at a publicly convened meeting where the press are present. That is what I understand the Minister to be saying. A requirement to publish puts an additional legal requirement that they should go into print and publish a booklet or a report which is probably unnecessary. In individual cases there is always an element of confidentiality. There has to be because there are many social and medical problems surrounding the process of approving people in need of rehousing. Of course that is confidential. It is even confidential to us unless the applicant is with us when we are making representations. For that reason there must be confidentiality about the applicant and the background to the application and the authority's decision on their estimate of what the requirements are. Overall I am satisfied that there is no element of secrecy attached to this and that this section is probably strong enough without putting in a requirement to publish. If I interpreted him correctly, the Minister has assured us that this general overall requirement will become public knowledge. That is really what Senator Ryan is trying to achieve.
Is the amendment withdrawn?
No, as many questions have yet to be answered. I am not sure what Senator O'Toole is getting worried about. I have a fairly good understanding of what goes on and some of it is not perhaps as clear as it ought to be. For instance, why is it necessary in section 11, which deals with schemes of priorities for lettings, to insert a specific provision under paragraph 12 that a housing authority shall, upon request, permit a scheme made by them, under this section to be inspected during office hours by any person. If everything that is approved under sections 8 and 9 is public knowledge — and presumably the scheme under section 11 will also be approved if it is public knowledge — why is it necessary to put in a specific proviso that the scheme of lettings shall be open to inspection during office hours if it is not necessary under sections 8 and 9?
I am not particularly worried about the ins and outs and workings of a local authority. Local authority members are well able to do this. My function is to ensure that the legislation which passes through this Oireachtas in workable, consistent and intelligent. It seems that either the provision in section 11 ought not to be there because it is de facto public knowledge, or else it should be in section 8 and 9. May I say, incidentally, that public representatives having access to information is not the same as the public having access to information? There is and has been a tendency among our public representatives at all levels as evidenced by the refusal of the contemplated Freedom of Information Bill, to hold on to their monopoly of information. My experience at this stage is that the resistance to freedom of information is more on the political side of our society than on the administrative or Civil Service side.
Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that the local authority members here believe this information is available — they could all answer for me — can anybody tell me how many dwellings in County Mayo, County Tipperary or anywhere are unfit for human habitation, shared involuntarily or overcrowded? Is that information somewhere written down in the archives of the various local authorities so that somebody ringing up can get it? If a newspaper rings up will it be made available to a newspaper? Is that information available like that or is it not? If it is, then there is no problem. Legislation ought to be consistent and if section 11 provides specifically that the scheme shall be available for public inspection, why is it not said about either the estimates of housing requirements or the housing assessment later on? If somebody can answer that I can decide whether I want to withdraw the amendment.
What is involved here is very simple indeed. Matters are brought before local authorities by way of report. The reports are then considered by the local authority members in public. It is important to stress "in public" in so far as there is a public arena where members of the public can come and sit and listen to the debate and, more specifically, there are media representatives who choose to report on the happenings, workings and discussions that take place at these local authority meetings. Then if the media think there is sufficient demand by the general public to know about these deliberations they publish certain aspects of the debate. That is not to say that in the first instance the whole thing is published. It is public. If a local authority choose for any reason best known to themselves to publish any information or any report that comes before them, then they are at liberty to do so, but I am not going to oblige them to do it. I am not going to make it part of legislation that they must do it. I remind Senators also that when the matter was being considered in the Dáil I took on board an amendment there to add in line 34, page 8, section 8 after "to be prepared", "and adopted" and I regarded that as an important aspect. It was not just a question of having the matter in the report prepared and brought before the members; the members had to be sufficiently concerned that they were going to adopt the report. I think that is sufficient and adequate in regard to making public any matters that come before the local authority. I suggest to Senator Ryan that local authority members are well able to bring these matters to the notice of the public and the media always report on such items as this by way of right. I think the Senator is being unduly cautious in this matter and for that reason he should withdraw the amendment.
Is amendment No. 11 withdrawn?
Amendment put and declared lost.
I move amendment No. 12:
In page 8, subsection (2), after line 46, to insert the following:
"(b) the extent to which there is unused residential accommodation above commercial and/or retail space in buildings,".
This amendment is to add a new subsection providing a requirement that in carrying out this estimate of requirement the local authority in addition to their own functional area would assess the needs and the housing in the private sector. In this amendment I want just to specify that there is a great deal of unused residential accommodation privately owned — we are aware of this in urban areas — which possibly could be made available by way of negotiation with the local authority or otherwise for renting, even in the short term, to overcome some of the problems of homelessness. It is really to broaden the remit of the housing authority in making this assessment of the needs. They should be conscious of unused residential accommodation over commercial and retail space. We would like them at least to look at it and report to the Minister on it. It may not be available. We understand that the rights of private ownership are still enshrined in the Constitution, but at least if it is available the Minister should be aware of it and then perhaps negotiations on its availability should become a process in which we would address some of the problems in this area.
I suggest to the House that we take amendments Nos. 12 and 13 together because they are related.
Is the House agreed to take amendments Nos. 12 and 13 together? Agreed.
With regard to what Senator Ferris said, I suggest when local authorities are assessing housing stock in their area they consider taking into account residential and rental accommodation. In the past, at least when I was very young, most private property was rented. We have moved away from that to where people own their own houses, but there has been a tendency back to rented accommodation. This is good in many areas because it helps to improve housing stocks. Rather than renting flats people rent private houses in the inner city and they take a greater interest in such accommodation. That kind of rental accommodation should be taken into account by the local authority when they are assessing the housing needs in their functional area.
These two amendments relate to something I spoke about briefly and I do not want to elaborate too much on them now. We have been accused by people who have done research into the way our housing policy has developed of confusing a building policy with a housing policy. Both these amendments relate to endeavours to fulfil housing needs by using existing stock, by identifying existing possible routes to accommodation. Since the Minister obviously approves of Threshold — as I do — perhaps he ought to accede to their greatest request for legislation to deal with regulation of the private rented sector which they identify as one of the greatest causes of human suffering in their area of competence. Perhaps he should listen to them on that because obviously he approves enormously of them. There is a delicate balance to be drawn but it can be done. Perhaps we could even get so far as making sure that the existing law on private rented accommodation is enforced. Both these amendments are simply extensions of the nature of a housing assessment and are intended to ensure that options are not overlooked. The former City Manager in Cork was particularly interested in empty space over commercial properties in or around the city centre in Cork. The obstacles, whether they be problems of title, access, security, tax structure or whatever to the utilisation of such property for housing ought to be identified and dealt with.
As I have said frequently on many issues in this House, the real start of solving a problem is to have all the data on the problem and leaving gaps in the data is the best guarantee that the solution that will be prescribed will be the solution to the wrong problem because the problem will not be identified properly. That is why amendments Nos. 12 and 13 deserve to be considered and debated and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on them.
In regard to what Senator Ryan has said, the Government themselves have taken a step in this direction by giving incentives to rented accommodation in designated areas in the inner cities. Bearing that in mind, I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
I take the point that unused residential accommodation is potentially an important factor in the calculation of overall housing requirements. However, the type of accommodation referred to specifically is only one example of vacant or under-used accommodation and, indeed, it is peculiar to urban areas. Under subsection (2) (a) housing authorities are required to have regard to information on the housing conditions of the area which obviously would include the amount of vacant accommodation, both in the housing authority's own stock and in the private housing stock. Subsection (2) (f) provides that a housing authority shall have regard to such other matters as the Minister may from time to time direct and this provision can, of course, be used to draw the specific attention of housing authorities to the need to have regard to vacant housing accommodation in the estimates of housing requirements.
In effect, I do not want to restrict it to possible accommodation that might be available over commercial shops. That is covered in subsection (2) (e) which states, "such other information as the authority consider relevant". That is the kind of section that enables a local authority to utilise information about any type of housing accommodation vacant over shops, or whatever, and I am not interested in restricting it to one particular kind in the legislation.
The wording the parliamentary draftsman used in subsection (2) (e), "such other information as the authority consider relevant" is very wide-ranging. It could mean anything. I am glad the Minister has drawn our attention to the fact that it could mean what we are talking about.
The Minister considered requesting the authority to have regard to other disused accommodation, whether it be over commercial shops, in rural isolated cottages that are locked up because people have gone away, or other non-used housing stock. It is possible, under this subsection, to request the local authority to get that information and the Minister obviously has the power to do so, but the subsection is worded in such a way that if we had not put down this amendment and elicited the information from him, nobody would have known it could be used for that purpose.
I do not understand the Minister's approach to a number of these issues. If we were to go on the logic he uses in phrases like "such other information as the authority consider relevant" and "such other matters as the Minister may, from time to time, direct" we should delete most of section 8 and substitute "whatever the local authority look for and whatever the Minister wishes to direct". First, should the Oireachtas not address itself to attempting to specify important areas of concern? The evidence seems to suggest that we have often been omitted in previous surveys. People in this House who have experience in housing authorities would not put down amendments like this if there was no reason to believe that such surveys have not been done with any great enthusiasm or in any great detail in the past. Secondly, it is bad law to leave issues that are identified as being important to the good will of a Minister. I do not like centralised Government. We should have the maximum amount of decentralised Government which involves the maximum of definition of responsibility and of duty. Thirdly, it is a fact that all large organisations, however efficiently run, have an inertia all their own. Since it appears from what people have said that most housing authorities have not been particularly enthusiastic about doing the two things referred to in these amendments, it is quite clear that these provisions are necessary.
There is a policy question involved here — the need to direct our thinking about how to meet housing requirements away from simply building more houses into making the maximum, optimum use of existing housing stock. If there are constitutional requirements why people can leave potentially usable housing accommodation empty or derelict, we should address those matters also but that is a matter for a later discussion. There is no reason why specific issues should not be addressed. I do not believe — and I do not believe the Minister does either — that the Minister has a monopoly on wisdom and that the issues he identifies and puts into his Bill are the only ones that need to be addressed. Why is it necessary to take information about, for example, the people who are homeless and not about the existence of possible cheap, low-cost solutions to their problems? It is a narrow and limited perspective to presume that the solution to the problems of people who are without housing must lie in the provision of local authority housing. There are potentially other solutions and we ought to be directing housing authorities to look at them. It is not enough to leave it to a busy Minister or an equally busy city manager who are already swamped with too much work, to identify possible new areas of work, particularly at a time when housing authorities are desperately short of staff, as most of them appear to be now.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 13 not moved.
I move amendment No. 14:
In page 9, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following subsection:
"(3) It shall be the function of a housing authority within six months of the commencement of this Act, and thereafter at least once in every five years, or at such intervals, being less than five years, as the Minister may direct from time to time, to inspect the houses in their functional area and to ascertain—
(a) to what extent there exist in the area houses which are in any respect unfit or unsuitable for human habitation,
(b) any overcrowding existing in the area, and
(c) such other matters as the Minister may specify from time to time,
and shall publish or cause to have published the results of the inspection.".
I do not want to pursue this amendment. It effectively overlaps a lot of what we discussed on section 8 and, with the agreement of the House, I withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That section 8 stand part of the Bill."
This is the first of the later sections of the Bill which refer to the homeless. This Bill encapsulates the inadequacy of official thinking about the problems of the homeless, in that a survey can be done once one year after the commencement of this Bill, and then at some indeterminate point in the future, to identify the number of homeless people — whether they are homeless or living in temporary moveable accommodation. It shows a total lack of comprehension of the nature of the population who are homeless in our society, and presumes a rigidly fixed homeless population who are not in a permanent state of flux, who are not affected by economic circumstances, by changes in the housing market and so on. It presumes that we can identify the numbers of people who are above a certain age, or the numbers of people who are in psychiatric institutions, and that we can see the homeless as an identifiable category. I do not think there is anything malicious in this, it is simply a total lack of comprehension to presume that an occasional survey carried out as frequently, or as infrequently, as a housing authority or the Minister responsible sees fit, can give anything other than a farcical estimate of the numbers of the homeless. That is the sort of total lack of official comprehension of the nature of the problems of homeless people that makes legislation of the kind we should have almost impossible to get through the Oireachtas.
The Minister ought not to try to lead us to section 9 because the possibilities of doing what is needed under section 9, if what is provided under section 8 is not done properly, are severely inhibited. If he refers to a sporadic, uneven and every-so-often survey of the extent to which there are people homeless in a local authority area, it ought to be done in a realistic way which relates to the problems of those who are being surveyed. This sort of haphazard attempt to assess housing requirements could not possibly work in dealing with the homeless because of the fluctuating nature of that population.
This section is a good example of decentralised government and it sets down simply the estimate of housing requirements — when it will be done, how it will be done and the type of information that will be sought by that estimate. That is all it is asked to do. I think Senator Ryan is ignoring section 9 which is directed at local authority housing needs. He is confusing the two things and trying to bunch them together and lead me on to deal with section 9 when we are talking about section 8. I am not impressed at that technique.
The Minister is showing certain signs of irascibility and that would be most regrettable. There is absolutely no need for it. I am still in a very good humour.
The Senator is acting the rascal himself.
I am in extremely good humour and I expect to be so for the next three or four hours at least. There is no need for the Minister to get cross with me because I will not get cross with him.
With regard to subsection (2) what significance does the Minister think should be attached to the sort of figures that are done on a once off basis by Dublin Corporation about the numbers of homeless people in Dublin? What significance will it have if it is done within the next 12 months from the commencement of this section and is not done again? The Minister says five years was too frequent and that three years was too frequent. What significance is that sort of a number going to have?
Great use will be served. I am in good humour, and irrespective of how the good Senator seeks to change that attitude of mine he will fail because I am not susceptible to changing my demeanour in these matters. He can rest assured that he will have no problem at all in dealing with the matter.
When we get to section 10 we will talk about that.
In so far as the first assessment is concerned, it is very important. It is going to be done. The legislation states that. Therefore we will know what the state of play is right then. When one considers it, housing authorities are constantly in touch with the ongoing housing problems in their own areas and they will not ignore aspects of the problem just to accommodate me or anybody else when those problems come to their attention. As Senator Doyle said on a few occasions, they will address the problems, and without fear or favour they will have reports issued on them and I take it that the media will give the usual coverage to their deliberations on such reports. It is very useful and I would not minimise what is being attempted here at all. To suggest otherwise is to do a major injustice to the local authorities and to the members who serve on them. They are very conscious of their duties, of the needs of their constituents. This is just a formal assessment we are talking about in section 8. The assessment will be done; the Estimate will be made available, it will be brought before local authority members; it will be adopted by them; they may publish it if they so wish. One way or the other it will be public knowledge. If and when circumstances change they can have another assessment done. I really think Senator Ryan has pursued this too far.
I keep addressing the Chair. Can anybody explain to me the logic of doing a once off survey in one year's time of the extent to which there are people living in accommodation which, by definition is temporary or moveable and then not do so again for an indefinite period but to rely on those figures? The Minister refuses point blank to have these things updated on a regular obligatory basis. Yet those kinds of figures will be meaningless within one or two years. Either of the provisions of paragraph (b) ought to be a separate section with different rules governing how it is operated. Otherwise it ought to be done on a yearly or at best a three yearly basis, neither of which is guaranteed in this Bill.
I am not disputing, as I said at the beginning, the bona fides of those who inserted this into the Bill. Indeed I am not disputing the bona fides of the Minister on this issue. What I am simply saying is that to insert a provision like that shows, to my mind an utter lack of comprehension about the nature of the population who are homeless in our society and the fact that it is a fluctuating population, not a static group of X thousand people who will be there next year, the year after and the year after. They move around, they move in and out of private rented accommodation, in and out of night shelters and hostels; they are not a fixed group of people one can count on O'Connell Bridge on a particular day and who will be there until we do something for them.
They are a fluctuating population and to suggest that one can do once in 12 months time an assessment of the extent to which there are people living in moveable accommodation, and presume they will not move that accommodation, and use that in any way to build up a statistical data base seems to me to be something close to nonsense. I am not being the least bit unreasonable. I would simply like to know what significance such data will have if there is not a constant obligation on housing authorities to update it. We have removed the five yearly obligation; we have refused to insert another obligation. It, therefore, makes absolutely no sense to have it there, that is all I have to say about it.
All I want to say about it is that the Senator is being repetitious in this matter and I do not think——
That is a matter for the Chair.
I do not think the Senator wants me to repeat what I have been saying.
That is a matter for the Chair, not the Minister, with respect.
The thing about it is that in some way it is being implied that local authority members are deficient in the way they address themselves to the housing needs of their constituents. I do not accept that. I do not want any Senator — I address this through you, Mr. Chairman, to Senator Ryan — to ignore the value of the base line data that will come from that assessment which will be carried out within a year of this legislation being passed. Other matters will come to the knowledge of local authorities, whether it is the census returns for their areas or development plan reviews which will prod them on or suggest to them that they should consider further their estimates for the requirements of housing, be it local authority or in the private sector. That is most adequately catered for here. I really feel this matter could be dealt with now.
I am quite happy to have the matter dealt with but I really object to the Minister trying to decide on the affairs of this House. It is a matter for you, Chairman.
He is not doing that. He is replying to your continued questions, in my view. If you wish to have the Chair's ruling on it——
I do not need the Chair's ruling on it. I was about to finish, but I do not think the Minister should tell us how to do our business.
Acting Chairman
He is not doing that. I think the Minister is trying to explain to you.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 9.
I move amendment No. 15:
In page 9, line 30, after "make" to insert "and publish".
We have discussed this question at length before and I am still at a loss to understand why there is such resistance to it. The suggestion that there would be some cost in publishing a document which has been presumably printed in order to be circulated to members of local authorities, as the Minister has suggested, seems to me to be utterly ludicrous. If the Minister believes it is a good thing to have public access to these documents, he could simply introduce a provision similar to the one in section 11 which guarantees that under paragraph 12 a housing authority shall, upon request, permit a scheme made by them under this section to be inspected during office hours. It would be quite feasible to introduce a similar provision to guarantee that any of the information gathered under section 8 or section 9 would be available to the public. That would simply mean that a copy of what was circulated to local authority members would be available for inspection.
I defy the Minister to explain to me how that could cost any money. It is really beyond my comprehension, unless there is something involved in all this that I do not know about. It seems that if it is deemed necessary that public access ought to be guaranteed, there is no reason not to guarantee similar access to information assembled under section 9 without any cost to a housing authority. I do not understand the resistance to it other than the obvious fact that the Minister does not want to be responsible for the Dáil coming back and that is not a particularly convincing one. Obviously we all accept that the Minister is not going to accept any amendments since the Bill is being debated after the Dáil has risen, which is a regrettable fact. The Minister might give us a reason anyway.
The housing assessments which would have to be carried out within one year of the implementation of section 9 and at least every three years thereafter is a new departure for housing authorities. This is the first time this kind of provision has been installed in legislation. Section 9 would apply to all housing authorities, including the small urban authorities and town commissioners. There is no provision in section 53 of the Housing Act, 1966, requiring housing authorities to publish reports on their five yearly assessments of housing needs. I do not consider it appropriate to introduce such a requirement for this new and more frequent exercise on local authority housing needs which, as I have indicated, must be carried out by even the smallest housing authority. It could also be quite expensive for those small authorities to publish such reports.
Like Senators I expect that the results of these assessments will be made available to elected members. That has always been the case. I do not want to put a statutory requirement on small authorities and towns commissioners to publish a report on the assessments as it is not necessary to do so. The previous legislation was not found wanting as regards the making available of information to local authorities, elected members and the public in general. That is generally accepted across the board as having been an adequate way to deal with requests for information.
There is a difference between the Minister telling us what he thinks and telling us why he has come to that conclusion. There is no point in quoting section 53 of the 1966 Act. The point I am trying to make is that an important part of a local authority's attempt to make housing provision, a scheme of lettings, is the making available of information to the public. If the Minister is quibbling about the use of the word "publish," which he should not do, we can always insert a similar word in section 11. That is not the issue. I invite the Minister to explain to me how a requirement to allow inspection of these reports by members of the public could cost money and, if it does not cost money, what has he got against it?
There are interesting questions on the difference between sections 8 and 9 but we can come to them when we deal with the section. I do not want to delay the House on a fine summer's evening but I would like to know the Minister's reasons for not accepting this. I do not want to know that he thinks it is not a good idea. I want to know why he thinks it is not a good idea and it would be very helpful to me and to the House if he told us why he thinks it is not a good idea. As I have said, I would like to know why it would cost money for the public to have access to a copy of these reports in the offices of the local authority during normal office hours. That does not appear to be something that would place an impossible burden on even the smallest authority. It is important information and the public are entitled to know what is contained in those reports and I fail to see why they should not be made available. I would like the Minister to explain why it would cost so much money to do what is already provided for under section 11.
In an effort to be helpful, perhaps we should try to be a bit more selective in our choice of words. If Senator Ryan is suggesting that the information should be made available — it is not for me to speak on behalf of the Minister — as far as I am aware all that information is readily available to any member of the public. As to whether or not there should be a requirement to publish reports, why should we publish only this particular list? Why not all the other lists? Any local authority member can see the monster we spawned in relation to the requirements under the Planning Act. All the documentation has to be made available to the public at every courthouse and every county council office. They must even place notices on billboards on public streets at this stage.
That is the law of the land.
Agreed, but we have to draw the line somewhere. For example, the agenda that goes out to every member of the local authority of which I am member is also issued to the local newspapers who are invited to attend. They do not have to do so but they do. It is not entirely fair to suggest that the information is not being made available and we must be careful to ensure that we are not striking at the very fundamental purpose for which we elect local authorities. Why elect local authorities at all if every bit of information has to be publicised and circularised to every citizen in the county? It should suffice to establish that the information is available to any member of the public who requires it from the county manager or the county secretary.
I agree with what Senator O'Callaghan has said. As a member of a local authority, I am aware that when housing officials come to us with their plans and proposals for the future, the press always take up the issues concerned. I have no doubt that when this statutory requirement to publish or to bring forward a list comes into effect, the press will follow it up. I do not think it is necessary to insert a requirement into the Bill that a list should be published because it will be published in any event. Where does Senator Brendan Ryan want it published? It will be published in the newspapers and surely that should suffice.
People are forever telling me that, because they are members of local authorities, they know this, that and the other. In reply to Senator Haughey's question the truth is that this is not a matter that I would worry too much about. It is a matter of interpretation. The Minister explained to me earlier that I could leave in his safe hands the precise interpretation of terms, particularly the definition of "homeless", which could be contained in an explanatory memorandum, circular or guidelines and I would simply say that, on the question on publishing this sort of information, similar guidelines would be quite satisfactory to me.
The Minister said that, if a local authority were to choose not to publish this data, there would be nothing to force them to do so and if Dublin Corporation were to decide in two years time that they did not want to have this data published for one reason or another they could not be forced to do so. I would regard that as undemocratic, improper and an insult to the participation of the citizen in democracy. What democracy is ultimately about is the full participation of each citizen in the process of Government. We can come back to the interesting differences between sections 8 and 9 when we deal with the amendment but I do not want the local authorities to make available or to circularise documents. I never said any such thing. I have kept on emphasising that what is contained in section 11 is the right of a member of the public to inspect the scheme of lettings for local authority houses.
I cannot understand how we can tell people that they have that right while not being able to tell them that they have a similar right with regard to the information assembled under sections 8 and 9. That astonishes me. It suggests a profound fear of the ordinary citizen which people who are elected by ordinary citizens have least reason to have because they know they have the trust of ordinary people. I fail to understand why this cannot be accepted in principle, if not in detail. There is no argument about the detail. We should guarantee that important information is made available to the electorate, to people involved in research, to prospective participants in local elections and to Members of the Oireachtas who are not members of local authorities who may wish to know what is going on in their own areas. My own view is that Members of the Oireachtas should not be members of local authorities as it causes confusion in our democracy. I have had a motion to that effect on the Order Paper for some time. I am sure it was brought to the Minister's attention at some stage or another. There should be a proper separation of powers between central Government, the Oireachtas and local authority membership. I have long held that belief and I still hold it.
That is neither here or there on this issue. Perhaps the Minister will explain to me why he thinks it is so important that the public should have a guarantee on a right to access to information on the scheme of lettings while not having a similar guarantee on a right to access to important information on which those scheme of lettings will be based.
I am at a loss to know now what we are really discussing because under section 9 the housing authorities make an assessment of their own housing needs from the housing lists. They then prepare a scheme of lettings which is published and handed out to the public. In Dublin Corporation everyone knows exactly the number of points that are allocated for inadequate living accommodation, or lack of a bedroom, bathroom or whatever. It is all documented and equated on a points scheme. We encourage the public to avail of this information so that they can understand the scheme and work out for themselves what points they are entitled to. From time to time local councils amend that scheme. In the early eighties we found that there was a large amount of unfit housing stock, but at that stage people in unfit accommodation only got bonus points, which were not sufficient to get them rehoused. I remember at one of the meetings I moved rather cleverly because a number of people in my own area were affected — that the bonus points should be changed into a priority. The council agreed and it became a priority, so everyone in unfit accommodation was put at the top of the list and was housed as a priority. The document stating that is available and always was available to the public.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Acting Chairman
Amendment No. 16 has already been discussed with amendment No. 2. Is the amendment being pressed?
Amendment No. 16 not moved.
I move amendment No. 17:
In page 10, subsection (2), between lines 5 and 6, to insert the following:
"(i) are single,".
One of the categories of extreme need that has been identified in the past number of years for housing are people who are single. There are a variety of reasons for believing that they do not do well on local authority housing letting schemes, understandable reasons, because of priority of letting, but I believe very strongly that we have failed in many areas of policy formulation in this country because of the inadequate information base that has been used to formulate that policy. We ought to know the numbers of persons who are single in a particular area.
I do not want to make a big thing out of this, I simply suggest that in terms of people who are homeless that the existence of the single homeless as a specific category within the group who are homeless is an important consideration which ought to affect, in particular, the nature of provision for people who are single. We do not need large local authority houses for people who are single and who are in need of accommodation. We need small units which are comfortable and private. Neither do we need hostels for people who are single. We need decent basic accommodation. It can be low cost accommodation and it need not necessarily always be local authority accommodation. That is why it is important to identify the numbers who are single and who may well be able to be accommodated without the necessity of getting tangled up in large-scale house building projects. That is why I think the question of the numbers who are single ought to be referred to this survey.
I suggest that this amendment is both ambiguous and unnecessary. Persons who are in need of housing and unable to provide it from their own resources are eligible for inclusion in an assessment under section 9, whatever their marital status or whether they comprise simply one person households. It would be wrong to identify single persons as a particular category of housing need over and above the relevant criteria of housing need such as being homeless, living in overcrowded conditions or otherwise in need of housing. I remind Senators that local authorities do house single people who are not elderly. I would say also that single means that you are not married, it does not mean that you are homeless, and for that reason I do not want to include this particular definition in the list as set out in section 9.
I am a member of two housing authorities and it has alarmed me somewhat in recent times the number of single people from their late thirties onwards who are now applying for local authority housing. In the past they did not apply because they felt that they would not be housed anyway but in recent times they have been applying in larger numbers. I take the Minister's point that this category is covered in the other sections of the Bill. I feel that this group could do with a little boost to morale in terms of it being specifically stated that they may apply.
The other point I want to make is that we are not building sufficient numbers of small houses to cater for this group. Whereas the Minister may feel this is unnecessary. I submit that this group have not until quite recently been applying to local authorities and if there were identified as a specific group it would, as I have stated, given them a morale boost. They would have some better hope of housing than the vague entitlement which they have under other sections.
They are included under any of the categories as listed here and, consequently, it is not necessary to have them isolated as a particular group. I do not think they would thank us for doing that.
Their need heretofore has not been specifically identified. The categories mentioned were families and elderly people. Local authorities have been working them in but they are not specifically mentioned or named. I believe that a statement from the Minister, aside from this Act altogether, that these people may apply and are welcome to apply would go a long way to meeting the problem we are highlighting here this evening.
I will state that for you and I think I stated it in my original reply to it. If that is all that is required here as far as the single people are concerned I would be happy to oblige. In fact, single people are being and have been accommodated and there has been no difficulty with it. It has not been found contrary to any existing legislation or any thoughts or interpretation on any particular legislation. I am happy to say that local authorities have taken that on board without any difficulty whatsoever and they do not require it to be put in a separate way here that we isolate single people in a particular way. I take your point. I recognise that local authorities are doing the right thing in the matter.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 18:
In page 10, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following subsections:
"(7) Each housing authority shall furnish to the Minister an annual report on its activities under this Act giving details of its existing housing requirements, its prospective housing requirements, the number of persons provided with housing in the course of the year, the number of applicants refused, the number of persons provided with housing who did not formally make an application, information available in relation to housing conditions in its area, the number of houses unfit or unsuitable for human habitation, overcrowded, shared involuntarily, or which are expected to be lost; information on the numbers of people homeless or living in temporary or moveable accommodation; expected changes in the size and structure of the population in the area; the number of people elderly, disabled or handicapped, who are not reasonably able to meet their accommodation needs themselves, and any other information which the housing authority thinks fit to include.
(8) The Minister shall present to each House of the Oireachtas an annual report compiled from and containing all the material contained in the reports furnished to him by housing authorities and any other information he thinks fit to include.".
What this amendment endeavours to do is to pursue the logic of what I have been trying to do with sections 8 and 9, and that is to make sure that information is made available, organised and published so that we know what is happening to our housing provision. If the local authorities are as good as the members of local authorities here tell me they are about dealing with housing problems then all relevant information ought to be on record, every piece of it. They are the criteria used to make housing available. If the information is on record it ought not to be a difficult job to make it available to the Minister. If it is made available to the Minister on a regular basis it is not impossible to make that information known.
It is extremely important, as I keep saying, that if the problem of housing is to be dealt with other than in the classical way of simply building more and more houses, which may not be what people need or want at all, a good data base of information about the structure and the nature of the problem ought to be put together. The amendment endeavours to ensure that good quality information is assembled, collated and published so that the public, the politicians and the researchers can know what they are talking about and that people, like those the Minister quoted with such approval earlier, can have access to good, hard solid and up-to-date information. The most likely source of such information ought to be, and one trusts that it is, the housing authorities and in that case the simple and sensible thing to do is to make that information available to the central authority and have the central authority publish it.
Information on the operation of any provision of this Bill and, indeed, on any part of the housing code, may be obtained from housing authorities without recourse to statutory provisions as is suggested and proposed here. The amendments suggested by the Senator are unnecessary and could be potentially harmful to the extent that they could weaken the Minister's position in obtaining information which was not specifically referred to in the subsection or which, for example, the housing authority did not think fit to include in their annual report to the Minister. I used the wording suggested in the proposed amendment.
Furthermore, the bulk of the information sought by my Department from housing authorities is on a quarterly rather than an annual basis. A substantial amount of information on the programmes and activities of housing authorities is already published in the quarterly and annual bulletins of housing statistics and in my Department's annual report. The publication of additional information on particular aspects of local authority housing programmes can be considered as necessary or as appropriate. An enormous amount of information already exists and comes to the Department not on an annual basis but on a quarterly basis, and often more frequently if the Minister so requires it.
I do not want any extra, more elaborate or restrictive reporting arrangement. The amendment suggests a more restrictive arrangement than that which is currently available to the Minister. We have enough information in so far as housing statistics are concerned. I do not regard it as being necessary to have this extra information furnished to the Minister. I am speaking on behalf of the Minister for the Environment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 19:
In page 10, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following subsection:
"(9) In so far as this section applies to persons to whom section 13 applies, an assessment under this section shall include an assessment of the need to provide sites for caravans for such persons.".
Section 9 refers to the obligation on a housing authority to make an assessment of the need for the provision by the authority of adequate and suitable housing accommodation for certain persons. That is fine and nobody would quibble with the intent but subsection (2) then states:
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), a housing authority in making an assessment under this section shall have regard to the need for housing of people who — (a) are homeless, (b) are persons to whom section 13 applies.
Section 13 refers to the travelling community. It has echoes of "Lawrence of Arabia" but it actually refers to the travelling community, to persons belonging to the class of persons who traditionally pursue or have pursued a nomadic way of life. I can understand the difficulties there in regard to definition and I will not argue with the Minister on that.
It is an inadequate response to the needs of travelling people to talk about them in terms of housing accommodation. Many people, including the Minister in the light of section 13, recognise that many members of the travelling community would prefer good quality sites. It seems to me, therefore, that if we are going to have a housing assessment in the proper way and have regard to the needs of the travelling community, a realistic part of that assessment would be an assessment of the need to make provision for sites. That is what the amendment attempts to do by stating that in so far as this section applies to persons to whom section 13 applies, an assessment under this section shall include an assessment of the need to provide sites for caravans for such persons. It seems to me that it would be quite difficult to expect local authorities to do what is expected of them under section 13 if they do not get a good incentive and do not have an obligation to find out and identify the potential numbers of such sites that require to be provided. That is why, under section 9, it ought to be necessary, as well as all the other matters, to identify the number of sites that might be needed.
A small clarification might help to settle the matter as far as the Senator's problem is concerned. Subsection (2) (b) applies to persons to whom section 13 applies, such as travellers. They are already specifically identified as a category of need to whom the housing authority must have regard in their housing assessment. Section 13 deals with the provision by the housing authority of residential halting sites for travellers. It is acknowledged that the provision of residential halting sites is the most suitable response to the accommodation needs of many, not all, travelling families. If necessary I am prepared to make it clear in the guidelines that I will be sending out to housing authorities what I expect when they are undertaking a housing assessment under section 9. That should help to clarify the position for the Senator.
My concentration lapsed for a second. I have not eaten since this morning. That is probably the reason and I do not anticipate eating for a while yet. Did the Minister say that in the guidelines he was going to tell people that under section 9 he expected them to assess the need for the provision of residential halting sites?
That is fine except that the evidence of the last 15 years is that while some authorities did a great job, other authorities did not. Limerick Corporation has not exactly set the world on fire in its provision of residential halting sites, for instance.
That is the first time the Minister said that about anything I said in the three days we debated this Bill. Therefore, I do not believe a ministerial interpretation will shift Limerick Corporation from their resolute refusal. I hope, perhaps, Mr. Justice Costello may have shifted them but I do not believe a ministerial interpretation will shift them from their position of recalcitrance to a more reasonable response. Therefore, it does appear to me that while perhaps the Minister and I are in agreement that the assessment of the need for the provision of sites ought to be a part of this it will not become a part of it unless they are made to do it, in other words, they are obliged to do it. The Minister will have to agree that circulars, interpretations and guidelines are all very fine but they have no force in law. If the Minister was to tell me he will ensure that the regulations implemented under this Bill are to have specific provision I would listen to him because that would be an obligation on housing authorities to do something. Guidelines are very useful and I am sure most local authorities welcome them, but they are no guarantee of action. I am sure the Minister has a large file of circulars sent to local authorities about the problems of the travelling community all of which have been responded to excellently in some areas and all of which have been ignored with equal resolution by other housing authorities. That seems to be the evidence of the record. Why should on more circular, or one more guideline, make any difference where housing authorities are either unwilling or unable — mostly unwilling — to do what the Minister and many Members of the Oireachtas want them to do? It seems to me that the only way is to make it obligatory either by legislation or by regulation. If the Minister gives me an assurance that he will do that by regulation I will withdrawn the amendment but, if he does not, I will have to pursue the matter.
All I can say in response is that the provision of halting sites, serviced or otherwise by local authorities for travellers, is a distinct and different matter from the question of the assessment of the need for such a provision.
No amount of eloquent nods from the Minister in my direction will persuade me to withdraw my amendment. What I want to know is, will he tell local authorities by regulation that they have to do an assessment. If they have not to do an assessment how, in God's name, are they going to make adequate provision?
As I have already stated to the Senator when he had his lapse of concentration because of lack of food, the guidelines would point out to them that they would have to consider that matter in so far as the assessment is concerned. That would be made quite clear to them. As the Senator has admitted, in the vast majority of cases what is expected in that regard is quite clearly understood. If it is necessary to reiterate it again in further guidelines, when I am dealing with the matter on the next occasion I will be happy to do so.
Is the amendment withdrawn?
The Acting Chairman is doing a great job in trying to get me to withdraw this amendment.
Acting Chairman
I am doing the job I was asked to do Senator, and I do not like your reference to me trying to rush things through. I hope I am giving you a fair crack of the whip.
Maybe this would persuade the Senator to withdraw the amendment. Once I made that guideline under the legislation, the local authorities shall have regard to the direction so given. That is catered for in subsection (3) and I would ask the Senator to address himself to that subsection.
The Minister seems to have covered a section which he could not tell me about a minute ago.
In making these assessments, the guidelines will ensure that the local authorities comply with the point made by the Senator.
Is the Minister telling me that he will give a direction that they must make an assessment of the need for halting sites?
I am glad the Minister is giving me yes and no answers. I sought an number of them earlier and he seemed to be remarkably reluctant to do so. We may have made some progress.
I was hoping that it might speed up the process.
Nothing will speed up the process as much as goodwill.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That section 9 stand part of the Bill."
The Minister emphasised that section 8, in regard to the estimate of housing requirements, requires that the housing authority shall cause a report thereon to be prepared and adopted by the authority. Section 9 does not impose any such obligation. Can the Minister explain the difference?
Section 8 and section 9 deal with two different matters, as the Senator knows. Section 9 deals with the local authority's housing assessment. It is an administrative function. All that information will be available to the local authority members. Without seeking to provoke the Senator in any way, it occurs to me that it is an acceptable face of democracy, and the Senator referred to that. One of the acceptable faces of democracy so far as I am concerned is that people elect local representatives to carry out their business on their behalf at local authority level. When local representatives consider reports and assessments made and put before them by the Administration, they act on behalf of the electorate and that is adequate.
Nobody could argue with what the Minister had said. It would be helpful if the Minister would explain, if he puts such emphasis on the obligation to have the report under section 8 adopted, what is the status of the provisions under section 9? It does not appear that it has to be adopted by the authority. If that is the case why does it have to be discussed by the authority? Is it an internal matter to be dealt with by the manager and the officials? There is no obligation that the assessments made under section 9 have to be adopted by the authority.
By and large the provisions under section 9 are administrative and that is recognised by the Senator's previous amendment, amendment No. 18, in which he sought that certain information would be furnished to me as Minister. As I have stated, all that information is already readily available. It is that information from the assessments that determines housing allocations. In so far as section 9, regarding assessments of local authority needs, is concerned, it is an administrative provision and that is adequately catered for. Section 8 deals with the whole housing arrangement, whether public or private, and that is of a different nature, as I think the Senator will concede.
Maybe the local authority members here will explain to me why they should not have to be told about the assessment made by their own housing authority.
It is their own assessment.
Why should the local authority members not be told about it?
I wish to say, as a member of a local authority, that very few people on this island clearly understand the reason for this. I am surprised that an eminent Senator in the House can project a lack of knowledge. In my understanding, every local authority in Ireland have very extensive lists which they submit in support of claims for financial assistance for housing. That list is revised every month. What local authority do not have a housing meeting every month? The minutes are presented at the council meeting and controversial matters are discussed with the various political parties. The information is made public in the press and is available in any library and from the Government Information Service. Information is available to people as to how many people are on a housing list, the categories, the income bracket and how long they are on the housing list. It also includes information on their families. That information is available on computer at present. As a member of a local authority, I am not a qualified person if I do not have that information. Every member of a local authority should have that knowledge.
I intended to put down an amendment to this section but I am sure it is covered by the word "medical". Section 9 (2) (f) states: "are in need of accommodation for medical or compassionate reasons". For some time past people who leave psychiatric hospitals and homes have been housed by local authorities. The local authority of which I am a member have provided sheltered accommodation for six or eight people to enable them to regain their feet in society. I would encourage the Minister to request other local authorities to do likewise and help people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses to find accommodation in local authority housing. This is a very sensitive issue. This practice has succeeded in many areas in which it has been applied in Dublin. There are cases where it has not succeeded but by and large people are willing to accept people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses and they help them in society.
The Minister did not improve this Bill in the other House as well as I would have liked him to but I must compliment him on paragraph (f) and the reference to young people leaving institutional care or without family accommodation. That is a useful improvement to the Bill and I compliment the Minister on it.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 10.
I move amendment No. 20:
In page 10, subsection (1) between lines 44 and 45 to insert the following:
"(d) take such other steps, as they may consider appropriate, to ensure the availability of suitable accommodation for such persons.".
There are many things wrong with this section. It is an appalling section, totally inadequate, almost useless and fails entirely to address the problem it sets out to solve. Unfortunately, because of the Standing Orders of this House it is impossible to introduce amendments to deal with the substance of my objections to it. We can only deal with the problems when we are dealing with the section itself. The nature of the process is not something about which I have any right to complain. If I ever get into Government I will take a different view on those matters but for the time being I cannot do anything about the fundamental inadequacy of section 10. All one can do at this stage is, as is the aim of my amendments, try to make something useful out of a very poor section.
The first of my amendments adds another power to the powers which the housing authority may use. It simply states that they may "take such other steps, as they may consider appropriate, to ensure the availability of suitable accommodation for such persons". I would hate housing authorities to be prevented from doing things they might wish to do, in cases where they are well disposed, simply because the provisions under subsection (1) are too limited. Therefore, I suggest to the Minister that an additional subsection ought to be added on to the section which would enlarge their powers. Because the Minister apparently differs from me in his belief of how local authorities will implement or operate this section, he ought to be open to the prospect of extending their flexibility, since they are, in his view, going to be remarkably responsive under this section, and they ought to be allowed to do a range of things, if they so wish, other than those specifically referred to in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c).
It is not quite clear exactly what the amendment seeks to achieve. If it is intended to imply a statutory obligation to house homeless persons, I have already indicated that an approach which puts an obligation on local authorities to house one category of persons above all others is not appropriate. The Government's basic approach is a combination of providing extra resources to voluntary bodies and new powers to housing authorities as provided for in section 10. These new powers provide housing authorities with a whole range of alternatives to deal with individual cases of homelessness. They are, of course, additional to the use by the authority of their own housing accommodation to meet the needs of individual homeless persons. Housing authorities, particularly the larger urban authorities, have an amount of accommodation which has become vacant and which is available for homeless persons and emergency cases.
I would also foresee that local authorities would enter into arrangments with voluntary bodies to provide accommodation for the homeless with grants persons. This is precisely why the Government are assisting in the development of voluntary housing accommodation for the homeless with grants of up to 95 per cent of costs. Apart from arranging accommodation with a voluntary organisation, housing authorities will be able to assist the homeless persons financially and otherwise and will also be able to arrange private rented accommodation where this is appropriate. I do not think that the amendment would add anything meaningful to the powers that have already been set out in section 10 which are far reaching and adequate to deal with the situation as I find it now.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 not moved.
Acting Chairman
Amendments Nos. 23 and 24 are alternatives and may be discussed together.
I move amendment No. 23:
In page 12, subsection (11), between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following:
"(e) minimum standards of accommodation, having regard to such matters as floor area, bed space, washing, toilet and bathing facilities, heating arrangements and personal privacy in the event of the housing authority making arrangements under subsection (1);".
A member of a local authority whom I met recently told me that the manager had said to him that all he would have to do under this is provide a few units of Dickensian accommodation and he would meet his obligations under section 10. That is how that member of a local authority told me the executive authority in that housing authority interpreted the implementation of the power under section 10 — a couple of units of Dickensian accommodation. Whatever the Minister's experience of people dealing with this matter, no voluntary organisation who deal with the homeless and who are less than enlightened in their views should be allowed to provide, for people who have suffered quite a lot, an inadequate standard of accommodation.
While I prefer my own amendment and I would not quibble with Senator Doyle's amendment either, I think the Minister ought to take unto himself the power to ensure that whatever accommodation is made available meets adequate minimum standards. We have had the appalling spectacle in Britain of people getting rich out of the problem of the homeless, crowding large numbers of people into appalling accommodation, into substandard accommodation, and being able to enforce that overcrowding by the use of heavy-handed security methods. The proper way to minimise the risk of such occurrences, to ensure that people are not dumped into second grade, poor quality accommodation and to ensure that there are minimum standards of accommodation with regard to obvious things such as floor area, bed space, washing, toilet and bathing facilities, heating arrangements, personal privacy, etc., is for the Minister to take unto himself the power to specify such standards by regulation. I would prefer — and if Senator Doyle does not push his amendment I will push mine — that the minimum standards ought to be specified in detail.
There is no point in taking people off the streets by putting them into poor quality accommodation. I will not argue with the Minister's specifications of minimum standards but it ought to be made clear that minimum standards are going to be insisted upon and they must be insisted upon in a way which is enforceable and in which they can be assessed and measured. Amendment No. 23 proposes that, in the regulations to deal with the implementation of the powers conferred on local authorities under this section and the unfortunately limited responsibility they will have, whatever they do be up to a reasonable standard.
Like Senator Ryan I believe it is appropriate, if at all possible, that we set down some minimum standards of accommodation, as specified either in this amendment or the amendment in the name of Senator Joe Doyle. We go a bit further in our amendment and specify what we consider to be the minimum standards. I was appalled to hear the comments of an executive of a housing authority, whether it is county manager or otherwise, who interpreted the section in that way. If that is the impression given to managers who have overall responsibility for housing, then Senator Ryan is correct to be concerned about how local authorities respond to this problem. I do not think a manager would interpret the section that way but I accept what Senator Ryan has said as being a valid criticism of somebody's point of view. I suppose this cannot be verified, but it does lend weight to our desire to specify certain standards. Floor area, bed space, washing and bathroom facilities are minimum requirements for any local authority nowadays. Hopefully all the accommodation local authorities provide meet with these standards, with the possible exception of emergency accommodation such as caravans or mobile homes. This accommodation would not necessarily meet with these criteria but they would be considered to be emergency or interim arrangements and local authorities would normally house these people when a house becomes available. People who live in substandard accommodation such as caravans and mobile homes are considered to be eligible for rehousing on the basis that caravans or mobile homes are not a satisfactory answer to the problem: They would be an emergency answer but not a satisfactory one. I do not think there is anything wrong with trying to set down standards and I am anxious to hear the Minister's response to this reasonable amendment.
In my amendment I have asked that minimum standards be set for accommodation. Senators Ryan, Ferris, O'Shea and Harte have put flesh on my amendment and I will withdraw my amendment in favour of theirs. Senator Ryan was right in saying that there have been terrible happenings in Britain in relation to the housing of people in private accommodation. One incident which comes to mind was a fire in Blackpool where a number of people who were living in very poor quality accommodation lost their lives. I would certainly support their amendment in relation to the minimum standards of accommodation which would put pressure on local authorities to provide proper accommodation. I am fearful of how local authorities might interpret the provisions. I would be surprised if they interpreted it as did the manager who spoke to Senator Ryan. I hope that would not happen. The Minister must write in some safeguards to ensure it does not happen.
The question of prescribed minimum standards for voluntary housing accommodation or other accommodation provided for homeless persons was raised in my discussions with representatives of the Simon Community in June, 1987. We spent a long time talking about it. I am not going to single out any one organisation except to say that they reflected the view that might very well have been held on this matter by a lot of similar types of bodies.
At the meeting I indicated my very strong reservations regarding any attempt to lay down minimum standards applicable to accommodation for homeless persons only arranged by housing authorities. The Department have issued standards for the provision of voluntary housing accommodation, including hostel type accommodation, under the voluntary housing scheme. Housing authorities should have regard to these standards when arranging accommodation for a homeless person. Because of the definition of "homeless", as set out in section 2, the provision of accommodation in a night shelter or similar institution would not be appropriate.
With regard to private rented accommodation, virtually all relevant housing authorities have made by-laws in this matter relating to minimum standards under section 70 of the 1966 Act. I have been pursuing it here; its provisions are quite extensive. In addition, regulations have been made under the Housing (Private Rented Dwellings) Act, 1982, governing the standards of former rent-controlled dwellings. I consider it more appropriate, therefore, that existing standards should be used and enforced rather than attempting to devise another layer of standards applicable only to accommodation occupied by homeless persons. I am not anxious to separate a particular category of person and say that a minimum standard will apply to him or her type and his or her types only. The matter is covered in legislation already. If the provision is properly applied it makes these amendments unnecessary.
With due respect, it is not always applied; that is the problem. The private rented sector is a good example. Local authorities can devise whatever regulations they like, and they have, but they are certainly not enforced. You only have to look around places like Rathmines, areas close by to where I live, to see the poor type accommodation available for letting in the private sector. The Minister says that the regulations are enforced but, unfortunately I would have to say they are not enforced.
I suggest to the Senator that that is not really our problem here. I am saying that legislation exists already in so far as minimum standards are concerned generally in relation to both local authority and private lettings. If the job is not being done, it is not really for consideration here. It is not necessary to write it in here specifically in so far as one particular category is concerned. I am not seeking to isolate them from the other categories already catered for in legislation.
Surely the other categories that the Minister speaks of are dealt with already in other legislation. The Department have published a set of standards to which local authorities adhere. Certainly the provisions of this Bill address some of the problems of the homeless. I see nothing wrong with writing in at least an aspiration that some minimum standard should be adhered to. We are not specifying the actual measurements of the room, the bed space or anything like that. All we are saying is that they should apply some minimum standards. It is a matter for the Minister and his Department by way of order or whatever other way they may want to communicate these standards. Regard has to be had to minimum standards. I would prefer if the legislation indicated that they wanted to ensure a minimum set of standards. I will abide by whatever is decided but let us specifically state the intention. It is important to state it, so that somebody will have to have regard to a minimum set of standards. Otherwise there might be no regard whatsoever paid to such standards.
The Minister may assure me that other legislation will ensure that they will have to have regard to other regulations laid down by the Minister or his Department but I am not convinced. It is not unreasonable that the provisions of this Bill should include some reference to what the Minister would consider to be minimum requirements. What Senator Doyle has said is quite true. In the private sector some accommodation being offered to people is substandard. Local authorities are faced with the dilemma of housing people from such substandard accommodation which is unfit and considered to be so. People in desperate circumstances are charged exorbitant rents for such accommodation. Despite the fact that we tell them they should not relet such properties they do so because there is a need. People, be they battered wives or whatever, desperately seek accommodation. They are at the mercy of others who have substandard accommodation available and who are prepared to and who have exploited people in such unfortunate circumstances.
It is appropriate that the Minister, as the responsible Minister should lay down some criteria and that they should be specifically stated. We will not be seeking a minimum or maximum floor area but there should be some regard to the amount of accommodation for living, sleeping and washing, and basic purposes. I see nothing wrong with legislation that would relect that view.
I claim that there are already strict standards in existence. I would oppose any further restrictions being imposed on local authorities. My fear would be that that would lead to a complete jungle of compliance. At present there are the planning authority, the fire authority and the local authority involving a whole maze of compliant regulations even down to the colour of slates to be used on roofs. I do not known how you could impose stricter compliance with the regulations. In fact, that would be disservice. In my county at present — and I am sure this is the case elsewhere — not only are there the standards I have described but also a request by developers for bonds over and above the planning fee. The bond is demanded by a local authority and withheld until the accommodation meets the required standard. The imposition of any more restrictions by way of legislation would defeat the purpose of the amendment.
The case was made by Senator McGowan. All I can add, to put Senator Ferris's mind at rest, is that the existing standards will not be swept away by this legislation. Any accommodation provided under this legislation will have to be in accordance with those standards already in existence and there in statute form. The vast majority of local authorities have the by-laws already in place in so far as these laws are concerned. If it puts the Senator's mind at rest where the question of these assessments and what has to be done in so far as the housing of homeless people is concerned, I will draw it to their attention that the existing standards as laid down in Statute at present should be applied to the housing of homeless people. Anything above and beyond that would be superfluous to the requirement. I will be happy to do that.
That would meet some of our reservations in this area. I accept that if it is conveyed directly to them by the Minister in the form of an expression of the view of this House that the existing standards should be followed, that is fair enough.
In the application of standards as far as homeless people are accommodated.
Exactly. That would meet our argument. We are at the moment afraid that they may not necessarily apply. We would be quite happy if they did. The Minister is accepting that right under other legislation.
The Minister's commitment now is to encourage local authorities to see that the by-law regulations are adhered to.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments Nos. 24 and 25 not moved.
Section 10 agreed to.
SECTION 11.
Amendment No. 26 not moved.
In fairness to Senator Ryan, I intend to move amendment No. 27 in his absence.
Acting Chairman
Were you authorised by Senator Ryan to move the amendment?
Yes, he indicated it was appropriate that it be moved. Now that he has returned to the Chamber, I will hand over to Senator Ryan to move amendment No. 27.
What happened to section 10? If the House has slipped through section 10 in my absence, I am extremely distressed and very much regret the matter.
The Minister gave an assurance.
Acting Chairman
There was a comprehensive discussion on all the amendments to section 10.
I am disappointed with the House. I think the Minister and the House would be aware of my interest in that section. I was not aware of the fact that section 10 was going to be——
Acting Chairman
We are now on amendment No. 27 to section 11. Do you wish to move amendment No. 27?
On a point of order, perhaps Senator Ryan could be reassured of the ministerial assurance we got on section 10.
Acting Chairman
The ministerial assurance will appear on the record of the House.
I learn by my mistakes, by my mistake of absenting myself for five minutes on the presumption that Senator Ferris would call a division and he did not do so. Because of that the Minister has managed to evade some questions on section 10. I presume my amendment No. 25 was not moved in my absence.
Acting Chairman
I would like to thank the Members of the House for their assistance. It is something that has not happened to me in a considerable period of time. Amendment No. 27 to section 11——
It was intended to be moved in the Senator's absence by me.
I meant the previous one. The Minister is off the hook now so we cannot do anything about it.
That is true. Some similar amendments will have to arise on Report Stage.
Acting Chairman
I would ask Senator Ryan to address himself to amendment No. 27.
I am gathering my thoughts. Something like this has never before happened in my experience in the House. I have always found this House extremely indulgent with Members when they are absent. It usually allows time for people to return. That has been my experience consistently and it would be my way of doing things. I regret that the House has chosen not to do so. It makes no difference; we can come back to it on Report Stage. I give notice, therefore, that I wish to introduce amendments on Report Stage. I am sorry I was somewhat disorderly.
I move amendment No. 27:
In page 12, subsection (2) (b), to delete lines 28 to 34 and substitute the following:
"that he has deliberately and knowingly done or failed to do something (other than an act or omission in good faith) with a view to take unfair advantage of the Act in consequence of which the accommodation he is so occupying is less suitable for his adequate housing than other accommodation which it would have been or would be reasonable for him to occupy; and".
It is simply an attempt to get away from what I regard as the excessively punitive nature of the wording in section 11 and to substitute what I regard as a more fair wording.
The provision which this amendment proposes to delete was contained in the 1985 Bill in identical terms and I do not see any reason to revise the wording now. I do not know how a housing authority could establish that someone had done or failed to do something with a view to taking unfair advantage of the Act. A housing authority could establish that a particular action had a particular result. How an authority could establish effectively what was in a person's mind at the time of the carrying out of the action, I do not know. The proposed amendment would be unworkable in practice and consequently I cannot concede it.
What is unworkable seems to fluctuate with the mood of the moment. On the one hand, we can have extreme latitude in interpretation and, on the other hand, we can have extremely legalistic writing down of precise details. We have had words that we were assured meant what the Minister meant because he would ensure that they meant that. We now have an insistence by the Minister that something will not mean that something which is reasonable to a reasonable person cannot be put into legislation because it is unreasonable. It cannot be suggested that a local authority cannot have reason to believe that somebody is doing something with a view to taking unfair advantage of the Act.
I know people in housing authorities who are already aware of — and keep assuring me of — the way people take advantage of other areas of legislation by the abuse, as they tell me, of medical evidence when people are looking for local authority housing. That is seen as taking an unfair advantage of other legislation. Officials, apparently, are able to take steps to ensure that that sort of thing does not enable people to jump queues too unfairly.
It seems that in many areas of life people can be identified who are trying to take unfair advantage of legislation and something should be done about it. The problem is that the Minister wants to leave housing authorities with a carte blanche to interpret these things. The objective, allegedly, is to make sure people do not use any provisions of legislation like this to jump a queue. In practice, it means that local authorities can make personal judgments about people's previous behaviour in terms of assessing whether the accommodation they have is their fault or not. It is not really a question of behaviour; it is a question of culpability. I will read the subsection:
provide that the housing authority, in applying its terms to a person, may disregard the accommodation that person is occupying where the authority have reason to believe that he has deliberately or without good and sufficient reason done or failed to do anything ... in consequence of which the accommodation he is so occupying is less suitable for his adequate housing than other accommodation which it would have been, or would be, reasonable for him to occupy;
There is a judgmental philosophy throughout, not based on any attempt to get around the law but simply based on people's behaviour. It could be used because a woman gets herself pregnant, for instance, which could perhaps result in her losing the level of housing accommodation that she had. It could happen that a couple, with no children in a good flat who were told by a landlord that no children are allowed, who have a baby and they have to leave. That could be where they do something deliberately or without good and sufficient reason. Is it good and sufficient reason when tenants are told by a landlord — perhaps it is written into the conditions of a letting — that there are no children allowed and then they have a baby? We will again be back to these mysterious circulars.
I find it a little extraordinary that the Minister can tell me that, on the one hand, he can interpret complex words like "management" to ensure that they mean what they say, or he can interpret things like "reasonable grounds for not being in accommodation" in the definition of a homeless person and can, at the same time, tell me now that this is an attempt to give a local authority power to ensure that people will be adjudicated on, not on the basis of their behaviour but on the basis of their attempts to get around the intent of legislation. I do not think that the Minister has an adequate case to put forward. What is there is completely loaded against the applicant.
Is this the section where people worsen their local authority housing conditions to improve their position on the housing list? Is that the section that this refers to?
Acting Chairman
That refers to section 12 (2) (b). This is an amendment to substitute a new subsection.
I can add nothing further.
Acting Chairman
Is the amendment withdrawn?
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand".
The Committee divided: Tá, 20; Níl, 5.
Tá
- Bohan, Edward Joseph.
- Byrne, Seán.
- Cassidy, Donie.
- Cullimore, Seamus.
- Doherty, Michael.
- Eogan, George.
- Farrell, Willie.
- Haughey, Seán F.
- Hillery, Brian.
- Hussey, Thomas.
- Kiely, Rory.
- Lanigan, Mick.
- Lydon, Donal.
- McGowan, Patrick.
- Mooney, Paschal.
- Mullooly, Brian.
- O'Callaghan, Vivian.
- Ó Conchubhair, Nioclás.
- O'Toole, Martin J.
- Wallace, Mary.
Níl
- Ferris, Michael.
- O'Shea, Brian.
- O'Toole, Joe.
- Ross, Shane P.N.
- Ryan, Brendan.
Tellers: Tá, Senators S. Haughey and M. O'Toole; Níl, Senators B. Ryan and O'Shea.
Question declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
Amendments Nos. 28 and 29 are alternatives and may be discussed together.
I move amendment No. 28:
In page 13, subsection (7) line 4 after "Minister" to insert ", and no such scheme or amendment to any such scheme shall be approved by the Minister unless he is satisfied that the appropriate needs of the categories of persons set out in section 9 have been provided for".
In the comment in the media subsequent to the publication of this Bill some months ago, the Minister laid great stress on the fact that under the provisions of section 11 he would have considerable powers to ensure that housing authorities did a lot of the things that I and many Members of this House and I am sure the Minister, wish them to do with regard to a number of disadvantaged groups. Section 9 lists a number of the groups or the sort of people who must be considered when the local authority are carrying out an assessment of housing needs and refers in particular to people who are homeless, to travellers, to people who are living in accommodation that is unfit for human habitation and so on. To be logical and consistent, therefore, the Minister ought to give himself power to ensure that housing authorities do that which he wants them to do, which is to make provision for all those groups in their scheme of priorities for letting dwellings, and that is what amendment No. 28 proposes to do. It proposes to ensure that no such scheme of priorities for letting dwellings or, indeed, amendment to any such scheme shall be approved by the Minister unless he is satisfied that the appropriate needs of the categories of persons set out in section 9 have been provided for.
It would be inconsistent of the Minister not to ensure that this is done but it is also important that not just the good will of this Minister but the position of future Ministers is made perfectly clear. In making that perfectly clear I am asking the Minister to do what he has on a few occasions assured us he intends to do. The difficulty is — and this also arises from section 10, which we did not have much time to discuss — that no Minister has ever in the history of the State, as far as I know, refused approval to a scheme of priorities for letting local authority dwellings. My amendment is limited in the sense that it only applies to local authority dwellings and in that regard will not be an adequate response to the needs of homeless people. Nevertheless, it would ensure that at least the intent that the Minister has expressed and the intent contained in section 9 are translated into the housing policy of housing authorities.
Amendment No. 29 is a little more specific in that it refers to the housing needs as specified in section 9 (2) which deals with the homeless. They are identified there and our amendment which I feel should meet the concerns of Senator Brendan Ryan seeks that the Minister would not approve a scheme unless he is satisfied that the housing needs, as specified in the previous section, would receive due priority under this scheme. I believe that if the Minister would concede our amendment as being the appropriate one, Senator Ryan would accept that as going some way towards addressing the needs of the homeless which he felt were not covered sufficiently in section 10 but which we believe are covered in section 9 (2) as specified. The Minister should not approve any scheme which does not meet with the requirements laid down.
In relation to Senator Ryan's amendment, it is important when the Minister is examining the letting schemes which are sent to him for approval that he ensures that they are drawn up in such a way as to comply with section 9. I am not happy with Senator Ferris's amendment because he singles out the homeless. I understand that under the Bill they have a priority but so have many other categories. The Minister must insist that local authorities in drawing up their letting schemes give the priority that these specified cases are entitled to. The Minister should take that power unto himself to make sure that local authorities draw up schemes in such a way as to meet the very principle, the very tone that underlies this Bill, namely, housing the homeless and the other categories mentioned.
On a point Senator Doyle made, whereas our amendment deals specifically with the homeless it deals also with all other categories specified in section 9 (2).
I have considered all the amendments and I find them quite unnecessary for the following reason that can be stated very quickly. Senators will notice that under section 11 (1) a housing authority are obliged in law to have regard to the housing needs of persons included in their most recent assessment which is carried out under section 9 and those who have been accepted for inclusion in the next assessment subsequent to that. I think it would be wrong to provide this requirement in section 11 (1) and, having done that and having it agreed, subsequently to provide by implication that housing authorities are somehow not going to abide by that regulation or that requirement of section 11 (1) unless they are forced to do so by the Minister. I do not see the rationale behind the Senator's concern in this regard, considering what is stated in section 11 (1). If that is complied with, why does it have to require the Minister to force them to carry out the requirements as indicated under that section? It does not make sense to me.
Is amendment No. 28 withdrawn?
No. I would not withdraw it at this stage anyway. I think it extremely important that the interpretation of how a local authority do what the Minister say they have to do should rest with the Minister, not with the local authority. It should be clear that if a housing authority do not give adequate priority to the people or groups or do not adequately meet all the needs of all the people listed under section 9, on that basis alone the Minister can refuse. If it is so clear that they have to do all these things, why do they need ministerial approval for them? If the Minister is so sure everything they need to do is specified and spelt out in section 11, why does he then insist they get approval of the Minister for it? Is it simply that the Minister does not trust the legal advice available to the housing authorities? If it is all clear and spelt out in the detail as the Minister assures us it is and is adequate, there ought to be no need for them to get the Minister's approval. It ought to be simply adequate that they must do what they are told to do and must do it in accordance with the law. I think housing authorities have sufficiently well qualified staff in their numbers not to need the Minister's approval for something if it is as clear as the Minister says. On the other hand, if it is not as clear as that and needs ministerial approval for good reason, quite clearly it is reasonable to expect that the Minister would ensure that the conditions specified as being met would be met. You cannot have it both ways. Either the matter is very clear and they should not need ministerial approval or it is not clear, in which case it is perfectly reasonable to put in either or both of these amendments.
I think local authorities are competent in this. Letting of houses is a very mundane operation so far as local authorities are concerned. I refute Senator Ryan's allegation that local authority staff are not qualified.
That is absolute nonsense.
I take exception to that inference on behalf of the staff of local authorities because they are, and I speak from experience, highly qualified, not only to interpret the regulations but to interpret the abuses. I am sad to learn that some of the abuses are not understood by the Senators who put forward amendments here. For instance, a person who might find difficulty in qualifying for a house rents an old caravan, parks it along the road and lives there during the day when the housing inspector is likely to call. Such abuses are well known to local authorities and their staff who are implementing the letting regulations. Local authority staff throughout the country have had a great deal of experience of implementing the regulations and I would not welcome the Minister drawing up further restrictions that would defeat what Senator Ryan intends to implement to make sure that the right people qualify. We have very simple regulations to make sure that the right people qualify. We have very simple regulations which are easy to understand. We have a points system for overcrowding. Such factors are the condition of the house, the number in family and whether anyone in the house is ill are considered. All these matters are as easy to understand as it is to loose your boots. I am surprised to find we are going through this with a fine comb here. We are dealing with ordinary, simple legislation.
On a point of information, Senator McGowan need not have made that long speech because I did not say what he thought I said. I said I believe they had plenty of people who were perfectly well qualified to do all these things. I am a member of the engineering profession. I have considerable respect for the many people who are of a similar profession to my own in the local authorities and for the other skilled people there. One only have to look at the qualify of the development of the city I live in to appreciate the skills and qualities of members of the staff of local authorities. Many people in Dublin would do well to imitate what has been done in my adopted city in terms of urban development.
That is a change of professional approach.
I have a very clear professional commitment to the subordination of the car to the person which could well be copied elsewhere. I have nothing but respect for the technical expertise of members of the staff of local authorities. I have never said otherwise.
Let me try to get to the kernal of the concerns here. Basically I agree with Senator McGowan. In the local authorities I am aware of I have every confidence that the staff would adhere not alone to the letter but to the spirit of this legislation, but suppose a local authority do not adhere to the spirit or letter of section 10 or section 11, what powers has the Minister to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities in relation to the homeless?
Let me assure Senator McGowan that we are dealing with new legislation which is not the 1966 Act but takes account of it. Section 9 (2) to which this amendment refers goes into much detail to spell out for local authorities the categories of people concerned. It provides: "Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), a housing authority in making an assessment under this section shall have regard to the need for housing of persons who — (a) are homeless,"——
Senator Ferris, why are you going back to section 9? I am at section 11.
Section 9 (2) is referred to in my amendment and I am trying to ensure that the Minister retains the power unto himself. My amendment provides that the Minister shall not approve a scheme submitted to him unless it complies with the regulations as we have set down in a previous section. Apparently there is no objection from Senator McGowan to laying down the criteria in a previous section, simply because the Minister did it. Here we are in this section requiring local authorities to have regard to the Minister's powers. In our amendment we are asking that the Minister would not approve any scheme unless he were satisfied that it met the criteria set down in the previous section. That is all we are doing. It is not that it comes from this side of the House and therefore is an attempt to usurp the position of the Minister or the local authority. He was the Minister laying down certain criteria in the Bill, and here is another amendment requiring that the Minister should have the power to review the scheme submitted to him by any local authority or any agency.
We are saying in our amendment that if the local authorities do not comply with the criteria laid down in the previous sections, the Minister should not give his approval. That is just respecting the Minister's authority, and asking him to exert his authority in the areas about which we are concerned. We are going into a new area in this Bill, an area we all welcome, and we want to ensure that the spirit and the letter of the law are carried out. We do not want anybody to be under any illusion of our desire for this criteria to be met. That is all we are trying to do. It is perfectly reasonable. A previous section prepared by the draftsman setting down criteria was approved by us. Now, because we are asking the Minister to live up to the criteria set down in our amendment, some people say that is wrong. I do not understand the logic of the argument.
I see nothing in this section that alters substantially the system that has prevailed and I have already outlined the areas where local authority staff examine and make submissions. The health board officials are involved in the examination of tenants' applications for local authority houses, and the county manager makes the letting on the recommendation of the health board official. After the county manager makes a recommendation, local authority members are advised seven days ahead of the actual letting being made. That is public knowledge. The members of that local authority have an opportunity to object if they consider any miscarriage of justice is intended in the letting, or if there is departure from the regulations governing the letting of houses. To ask that the Minister be more involved would tie things up to such an extent that this measure would not be workable.
We are asking that the Minister would not approve a scheme or an amendment to a scheme, unless the criteria outlined in section 9 are met. We are only asking him for a guarantee that local authorities will implement section 9. It is a very simple matter. I am sure most local authorities will comply with the regulations, but we are trying to cover any loophole that might exist if a local authority did not want to help the homeless. That is a possibility. We are asking the Minister for a guarantee that he would not approve any scheme of letting, or allow any amendment to a scheme of letting, that would not provide for the categories specified.
I agree with Senator McGowan. I have been a member of a local authority since 1963 and I have full confidence in the staff of local authorities — how they allocate houses and scrutinise applicants for local authority housing. Public representatives may disagree with them at times, because we all have our own favourite applicants we would like to see housed, but very often these applicants do not succeed in getting houses because information made available to the investigating officers showed that somebody else was more entitled to a house. The county manager, on the recommendation of the county medical officer, always gives priority to the type of people listed in section 9 of this Bill — the homeless, people living in overcrowded conditions, people who are ill, single mothers and so on. I have full confidence in the people allocating local authority houses. If we give the Minister the power this amendment asks for, there is no guarantee that somebody who feels he is entitled to a house will get it. I am quite satisfied with the legislation as it is.
We are not dealing with the allocation of houses as such. What we are dealing with is a reserve function, the drawing up of a priority scheme of letting for housing, not individual houses. I do not wish to repeat myself, but that is the point we want to guarantee in this amendment. It is a reasonable amendment.
There is a matter of importance to be considered here, a matter of considerable importance to the Minister for the Environment. Everything that is required in substance, as understood by these amendments, is already covered in section 11 (1) (b). We should be clear about that from the start. What exactly are we talking about in this section? We are talking about letting schemes. I am seeing to it that letting schemes are made by local authorities. They are submitted to the Minister, and he can decide that they are in conformity with the Act and if they are not he can suggest that they amend it and tell them where to do that.
To suggest, as implied in these amendments, that the Minister might approve something that was not in accordance with the Act is going too far. It suggests that the Minister's motives might in some way be suspect, or that in some way he might seek to have a letting scheme approved that was not in accordance with the legislation. That I have to reject. It is not possible for me in any circircumstances to accept the bona fides of that, because the Senators are challenging the bona fides of the Minister for the Environment for the time being.
Everything required is already in section 11 (1) (b) and the authority of the Minister is adequately stated in subsections (7) and (8) in so far as approvals, amendments, additions and subtractions to any letting schemes are concerned.
The Minister's colleagues will be disappointed to know that all existing schemes of letting priorities are already submitted to him for his approval, because they think they are not——
We are satisfied with the system as it operates.
The only reason we have this Bill is that the Housing Act, 1966, has not responded to the needs ——
That is why we have this Bill and why we are trying to ensure the Minister's powers are protected. That is all we want to ensure.
I hate going back on this, but in his amendment Senator Ferris referred to section 9 (2) and it sets down various categories. Is anybody suggesting that a Minister of the day would accept and approve a letting scheme not in conformity with what he already put through in legislation? That is what is implied in the amendment and there is a challenge to the bona fides of the Minister. I cannot accept that under any circumstances.
It is unfortunate that the Minister has taken that interpretation of our amendment but that was not what we meant. We put down the amendment to make it clear to local authorities that they had to prepare a scheme in accordance with this Bill, and that the Minister would not approve it unless they certified the criteria laid down. I want to say that loudly and clearly to local authorities. We did not interpret it the way the Minister did, but I will withdraw the amendment if that is the view held by the Minister.
On every occasion there is the letting of a scheme of houses, if any member of a local authority suggests that they depart from the regulations set down, the county manager points out that, because there are subsidies involved, he cannot depart from the regulations, and it is clear that there is nothing more watertight than the letting of houses. On every single occasion there is a big number of people who are disappointed. It has to be seen to be right.
Further to that, what Senator Doyle refers to is covered adequately in subsections (7) and (8) and that is his guarantee.
Does that apply to section 10 regarding lettings in the private area for homeless people?
What we are talking about here is letting schemes of local authorities.
If a local authority are not living up to their commitments, can the Minister force them to do so under sections 10 and 11?
If the local authority make a letting scheme that is not in accordance with the criteria laid down in section 9 (2), the Minister would be obliged under this section to seek the amendment of that letting scheme. That is the whole guarantee of continuity of purpose as laid out in the Bill. Senator McGowan is right in that area because the local authority make the scheme, it is cleared by them, it comes up for approval and it has to be in accordance with the legislation of the Oireachtas. Senator Doyle knows what I am getting at.
Is amendment No. 28 withdrawn?
My name is on amendment No. 28 as well as Senator Doyle's.
I get very impatient when Ministers stand on their dignity because they have quite a number of other resources at their disposal which are much more tangible than their dignity. Nobody is getting involved in personal imputations about anybody in this. What we are involved in here is attempting to identify in law what we understand to be the priorities that are contained in the intent of those who drafted this legislation and which most members of the Oireachtas share, that is, that there are certain categories which have been identified as being in particular need. I am prepared to withdraw the amendment because, when the Minister chooses to be reasonable and explain and talk in reasonable terms about the legislation as distinct from standing on his dignity and imputing motives to other people, he can be quite persuasive. I would advise him that, for the rest of the discussion on this Bill, he should concentrate more on his capacities of persuasion than on his sensitivities and delicacies, because he is very persuasive when he is like that. He has been quite persuasive and I am quite prepared to withdraw the amendment.
Finally, by way of response to that, the Minister never stands on his dignity and takes nothing in a personal way. All matters concerned with legislation that I am involved in are taken on behalf of the Office and the Minister must protect first of all his Office and must protect the legislation that comes through his hands and becomes the law of the land. If it is implied in any amendment that in some way the holder of this Office I have could in any way be judged as seeking to do something that was not in accordance with the law of the land then I must stand on my dignity; it is the dignity of the Office I am referring to.
We will not press the amendment, not because we feel that the Minister's dignity was offended, but because he has assured us that he will ensure that the criteria laid down will be followed through by everybody and that if it is not followed the powers of the various sections will be brought into play. We are satisfied. We were trying to protect the Minister's powers. There is nothing wrong with that. I accept the Minister's assurance. The putting down of these amendments is justified by the debate we have had.
I think the atmosphere is very nice now, and as you see, you would not be moving No. 29 anyway in the light of the outcome of No. 28.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 29 not moved.
I move amendment No. 30:
In page 13, between lines 14 and 15, to insert the following subsection:
"(10) A scheme under this section shall include such provisions, regarding the financial circumstances of the person applying for accommodation or of any other person who normally resides with him or who might reasonably be expected to reside with him, in determining eligibility for inclusion in the order of priority as the housing authority consider appropriate or as the Minister may from time to time direct.".
I move this amendment because I have known of abuses in the letting of local authority houses, such as abuses by people who have received a local authority house but have sold a private house of their own beforehand, and other problems of that nature. They are rare, but they do occur. Dublin Corporation have introduced a financial limit above which people are not considered. Senator McGowan also said that in Donegal they have such a financial threshold. I moved this amendment so as to remove any anomalies that may occur where people try to get local authority houses they are not entitled to or where they would not be entitled due to their financial circumstances.
A somewhat similar provision was included in the 1985 Bill in the context of a housing authority deciding whether a person was able to provide accommodation from his own resources. It was decided to drop the provision from the present Bill, since it was perfectly clear that in reaching a decision on the matter a local authority had, necessarily, to investigate and have regard to the financial position of the person seeking the housing. The section as it stands clearly allows a local authority to make any provision they wish in a scheme of letting priorities in regard to the financial circumstances of persons seeking houses. They could, as some local authorities do at present, impose an income limit to qualify for local authority housing.
The section also gives powers to the Minister to direct local authorities to amend the scheme the authority propose to make or have already made. The Minister's approval is also required to every single scheme. It is important to state that. The existing provisions more than adequately cover any situation which might be dealt with under the proposed amendment. I think the Senator will be satisfied, from his own experience, that in the circumstances of financial consideration, due notice is always taken by the housing authorities.
Before I withdraw the amendment, I just want to ask the Minister if he could indicate how many local authorities have these income limits. Is it the Minister's view that local authorities should have an income limit in their scheme of lettings?
Not generally, but as I understand it, the major authorities do, for very practical reasons and having regard to the numbers of people concerned. In the ordinary circumstances I do not think it is always necessary particularly in the smaller authorities where a lot of that evidence is well known to the investigating officers.
Maybe it is an appropriate time to say that local authorities take this obligation very seriously. I have had nothing but praise of their level of concern and compassion and care in making recommendations in so far as lettings are concerned and they are always backed up, as Senator McGowan has so rightly said, by ample medical evidence and social worker evidence as well. I am generally very happy with the way these matters are attended to by the local authorities.
I can only concur with what the Minister has said because it is my experience that where people have to leave private accommodation, not because they are evicted but by agreement and are compensated, the housing officers do not hold that against them; it is a small income that they can invest for the future and it is not held against them. There are other types, unfortunately, who do take advantage of local authorities and can sometimes hoodwink local authorities into giving them local authority houses which they are not entitled to because they can out of their own resources provide for their own housing. I am glad to hear the Minister say that he is aware of the situation and I will certainly withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That section 11 stand part of the Bill."
We are not in that much of a hurry at all.
I beg your pardon, a Chathaoirligh. I was addressing the House through you, which is the proper fashion. I have been reading this Bill carefully and my understanding would be that section 11 is a replacement for section 60 of the 1966 Act. That is the first point. Can the Minister confirm that for me? Section 60 of the 1966 Act — duty of housing authority to make schemes of priorities for letting housing accommodation, is being repealed. Could it be confirmed for me that this is so?
It is. Section 60 is being repealed and substituted by this new section.
Subsection (7), of section 60 of the 1966 Act at paragraph (b) states:
Whenever a scheme under this section comes into force the following shall apply: (b) lettings by the housing authority of dwellings to which the scheme relates shall be in accordance with the provisions of the scheme.
In other words, the housing authority have to operate according to the scheme of priorities that they have drawn up under section 60 of the 1966 Act. I have read section 11 of this Bill extremely carefully and I cannot find any provision which states that they will have to operate according to the scheme of priorities that they will draw up under section 11. Perhaps the Minister could explain to me why an obligation to operate in accordance with the scheme of priorities is not contained in section 11?
I have been advised that I should refer the Senator to subsection (10) which states specifically that it will relate to the scheme.
There is one issue I would like to raise and I do not know whether I should raise it now or when we come to deal with the matter of repeals later on and, that is, the question of the repeal of section 55 of the 1966 Act. Section 55 of the 1966 Act makes specific reference to building programmes and an obligation is put on a housing authority to bring forward building programmes. It is one of the sections being repealed under the Schedule to the Bill. I can raise it at that stage if you wish but section 55 states that it shall be the duty of a housing authority, to prepare and adopt a programme, in this Act referred to as a building programme.
If you like, Senator, we can deal with it later on.
The reason I raise this issue now is that there must be a relationship between building programmes and the letting of houses. We can come back to it later on but I cannot see how we can have local authority housing without building programmes.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 12.
Question proposed: "That section 12 stand part of the Bill."
This section states that the Minister may on application by a housing authority and subject to subsection (2) determine that a group of houses provided by the authority shall be houses to which this section applies, in other words the reconstruction or improvement of certain groups of houses. At the outset I congratulate the Minister for announcing that the repairs of low cost houses, which has taken place throughout the country to good effect, will continue. The Minister is continuing a pilot project initiated by a previous Government. I am quite pleased about this because I think it is a good investment to continue to repair these low cost houses up to the standard now being achieved.
I do have one concern and it relates to the recently announced purchase scheme. Houses are being offered to those tenants living in reconstructed houses. The remainder are either not being offered a house at all or they are being offered a substandard house at valuation. It is my opinion and the opinion of the local authority of which I am a member that the Minister should make an exception is the scheme that he announced on 1 January, to be completed by 31 December, in the case of low cost houses as these will not be reconstructed by 31 December.
Because of the standard of workmanship many tenants will now opt to buy these reconstructed houses but it would amount to bad planning to allow the existing tenants in low cost houses to purchase them in their present condition because they would be unable to bring them up to the standard which the local authorities would achieve if they were to carry out reconstruction, which, under this section, grants will be made available. I ask the Minister to consider making an exception in the case of this special category of houses as it is in all our interests, including those of the Minister, the Department and the local authority that the housing stock should be brought up to the standard being achieved under the pilot project and that all tenants should be given the same facilities as their next door neighbour who is fortunate enough to be living in a house reconstructed under the pilot project. I am raising this issue on this section because it is the only section on which I can deal with the anomaly that has arisen.
I am strongly opposed to that proposal on the grounds that the tenant purchase scheme is one of the best schemes ever announced. The response of local authority tenants to that scheme has been tremendous. However well intended the Senator's amendment may be, I believe it would result in delays in the implementation of the scheme and it would lead to delays in the purchase of houses because an assessment would have to be carried out on the extent of repairs needed and it would be necessary to fund the cost of repairs, which in some cases, would be substantial. The houses that were recently offered to local authority tenants were offered at the same price as the cost of a site. There has been a tremendous response on the ground to this scheme. I would strongly oppose the Minister accepting this amendment as there has been a magnificent response to the tenant purchase scheme. Under the scheme a vast number of people will have an opportunity to buy their own houses and to extend, repair or alter that house at a price below the cost of a site, a serviced site in many cases. If Senator Ferris realised the extent of the response on the ground he would not have made such a proposal here. However, one would like to see extra funds being made available for the repair of houses, a very useful proposal. To assess the extent of repairs needed would take years, with the value of the house changing before the tenant purchase scheme could be implemented. That certainly would not be acceptable. I welcome the tenant purchase scheme as I believe it is the best scheme that has ever been announced in all of the time I have served as a member of a county council.
I suggest that Senator McGowan did not listen to what I said.
I did listen. I am here to listen.
Then I suggest he has completely misunderstood or misrepresented what I said. First of all, I commended the Minister for making funds available to repair low cost houses and I commend the Minister for deciding to continue on a pilot project to bring substandard low cost houses up to a standard that all local authorities felt they should be brought up to. It is an excellent scheme and the Minister has made available substantial funding. I do not know or even purport to know whether there is low cost housing in Senator McGowan's constituency but I do know that there is low cost housing in several locations in my constituency.
The pilot project has been started and completed to the Minister's satisfaction. The Minister has agreed to commit further capital funds this year for numbers of houses in various towns in County Tipperary. I have commended the Minister publicly for that at urban council and at county council level. Under the recently announced tenant purchase scheme the houses that were fortunate enough to be included and repaired under the pilot project are being offered to tenants at a price at which they are able to purchase them. I have recommended the scheme and recommended that the tenants should purchase them. Because the remaining houses will not be repaired before 31 December, the same facility which is being offered to those who are fortunate to be in repaired houses, should be applied to the other tenants in that group.
I have not got an amendment down but I suggest that in this section which is relevant to what we are discussing, the Minister would consider an amendment to the scheme specifically for these people in these houses so that all tenants in low cost housing schemes are treated equally. Otherwise the Minister will be offering the non-repaired houses at very low prices to people who would be unable to carry out renovation and repairs. From a planning point of view they would never achieve the standard and quality that the Department have achieved in the pilot project and in the houses the Minister is now proceeding with. I hope Senator McGowan will accept my bona fides in the matter and I hope that in his reply the Minister will confirm the case I have been making in his defence.
I could not be on the same wavelength as Senator McGowan.
I appreciate the Senator's words of commendation about the remedial works scheme. I am not going to go into it here this evening except to summarise my point of view on it. A certain amount of money was made available for the renovation and the reconstruction of certain low cost houses. I have increased that amount of money and whatever resources are available to me I intend to continue that practice, because it is only when one does an assessment of the total needs in so far as remedial works are concerned you begin to get some idea about some of the bad decisions that were made in the past in starting off with low cost housing of various types throughout the country. Now it is coming home to roost and it is costing enormous sums of money and the regrettable part about it is that unless I push extra money into that area now, it will be out of control in a number of years.
For that reason I take the House's support in the matter of doing something in the remedial area. It is bringing back a new kind of stability and community spirit to many of the areas where that remedial money is being spent. There are a lot of claims on the scheme not just in some of the provincial centres but in the city as well, where there is still quite an amount of accommodation without what I regard as the basic facility being available. I would like to think that we could do something about that.
In so far as the tenant purchase scheme is concerned, Senator McGowan is right. This is a glorious opportunity and it is accepted by all sides that it is and it is being recommended across the board as well. I recognised the difficulty that might arise in some of the matters referred to by Senator Ferris. But I thought it was adequately catered for in the scheme in so far as the cost was based on the market value, so that if a property requires remedial work to be carried out, the cost value of that remedial work is subtracted from the total cost of the house by way of market value and they are given the benefit of that, as distinct from the property that has had the remedial works already carried out and which will be at a higher cost. To enable the difference to be made up, it is always possible for the new purchaser to get other accommodation by way of loan facility to carry out the works that were not included in the original purchase price, so they are getting the best of both worlds. Those who had the works carried out previously are getting the market value with deductions and those who have not had the remedial works carried out are getting the benefit of the possible cost of those remedial works subtracted from the market value. That is specifically included in the regulations and I hope that the local authorities are applying it in the spirit in which it was intended.
I would like the Minister to carry out a review of the sale of local authority houses along the lines I have suggested. The Minister feels the difficulties are catered for, but the figures do not add up and there is no doubt that the market value of the unrepaired low cost scheme houses does not permit the tenant purchaser to carry out the standard of repair that we would require from a planning point of view. We are altering the walls, extending them outwards, we are changing the roof line, installing chimneys and doing a lot of work that normally a tenant purchaser would be unable to carry out even with a loan, because the maximum reconstruction loan available from the local authority is something like £8,000. Eight thousand pounds will not bring low cost houses up to the standard achieved in the Minister's pilot project. The existing tenant purchasers are lucky to be in a repaired house.
The Minister should address himself to this area. It is not beyond his capabilities to come up with an ingenious scheme that will meet the problems and give the proper incentive to people awaiting repairs to opt to buy their house like their next door neighbour.
I can discuss the matter privately with the Minister but it arises under this section and the Minister will hear a lot more about it from local authorities who are now faced with this dilemma. Otherwise many of the houses they would have liked to sell will not be sold. I know the Minister has a scheme of repairs on line. He has made a commitment over a number of years to it and has increased the allocation to it. In the knowledge that the Minister has been generous, he might allow — not open the floodgates to everybody — an extension of the scheme for people in low cost housing, so that repairs could be carried out and that they could opt to buy their houses.
I thought I had covered that rather cleverly in the framework of this scheme, but perhaps I can look at it again.
It just does not add up. I wish it did.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 13.
I move amendment No. 30a:
In page 14, subsection (2), line 15, after "manage" to insert "(including a caretaker)".
This business of complimenting the Minister from the Labour side seems contagious here tonight. We in the Labour Group put down this amendment because of an experience I had in my constituency. The Minister allocated £170,000 for a travellers' halting site and for that I compliment him. As the local authority — Waterford Corporation — worked towards this we had discussions with the person in charge of the itinerant halts in Dublin County Council who came and discussed the matter with the planning committee of Waterford Corporation. Subsequently the planning committee of Waterford Corporation visited the sites in Cork city in company with officials and some of the members who had taken an interest in this. One thing that came over loud and clear to us in our discussions was that the halts that worked best were the one that had a caretaker, preferably living in a house on the halting site. Waterford Corporation subsequently applied to the Department for a caretaker but they were not able to accede to that.
Waterford Corporation are very serious about this. There has been a very thoughtful approach to it and a lot of research carried out. We have agreed to redraft our plan following suggestions from the Minister's Department. The effectiveness of this substantial investment in a social problem — I accept that the Minister is committed to solving it — is put at risk because of the inability of the local authority to provide a caretaker. I should like to ask the Minister to consider our amendment in which we are seeking that caretakers be provided at halting sites for travellers.
I trust the Minister will accept the amendment in the spirit in which it is intended because he considers the word "manage" as meaning that he is addressing this problem. However, because of staffing problems in local authorities it may be that some of them may not be able to appoint a caretaker to manage a travellers' controlled site. In my constituency any proposals brought forward by the assistant manager, Mr. Mackey — he has since been appointed to Cavan — included a caretaker on site. It was only when that proviso was written into his recommendations that the council accepted them. Indeed, the settled community can only be convinced of our bona fides in this area if we are serious about putting in caretakers. Sites which have caretakers have been quite successful. It is imperative that all itinerant halting sites should have a caretaker resident on site so that there is proper control and management. Unfortunately, otherwise, itinerants will be their own worst enemies, because they tend to be dirty and slovenly about how they treat a site. If there is a caretaker on the site he will ensure that certain standards are achieved and maintained. Usually those standards do not infringe on the rights of the settled community. A lot of lipservice has been paid to this area but very few local authority members, or others, want to address themselves to the problem. We are suggesting this in good faith so that the Minister will understand what we are trying to achieve. Perhaps the Minister's board of management will meet our requirements but we want him to spell out their function so that local authorities will not fail to get approval for the appointment of caretakers when proposals are made to his Department.
I have already indicated when considering amendment No. 8 that the term "management" or "manage" in the context of housing legislation already includes the provision of caretaker and, indeed, other services such as warden services for the elderly. It is often unhelpful in legislation to identify or emphasise one aspect of a term to the potential exclusion of others. In that case I would see the proposed amendment as unnecessary and one that might very well be potentially restrictive. I would rather not accept it for that reason. I take the points made about caretakers in general. I will consider this further and I will talk to my advisers on travellers and also to travellers' representatives. I have discovered that it is always useful in considering this difficulty we have nationally to take advice from those who are actually working with the particular group on the ground. I have been adopting that practice. I have been attending their conferences and I know some of the people concerned. I have been involved in this particular type of activity for over a quarter of a century and I think I know what is required and involved. I will discuss the matter further in the light of what has been said here.
I should like to thank the Minister for responding to our amendment in the spirit in which it was tabled. His undertaking to look further into the matter in order to resolve it is completely acceptable to us and we will withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed: "That section 13 stand part of the Bill."
There is a rush to judgment by the House at this hour of the night. I would like to get some information from the Minister on the issue involved in section 13. Is the Minister satisfied that there has been an improvement? I accept his bona fides; he delivered a magnificent speech to a conference of the National Council of Travelling People in September 1987. I would like him to send me a copy of the script. Even the written form of the speech was magnificently eloquent. However, he said some things during that period about which he seems to have changed his mind such as the rights of homeless people to be housed. I wonder if he has changed his mind about the contents of that speech as well.
On the basis of the Minister's commitment at that time, is he satisfied that there has been any progress on the issues raised and, if so, will he let us have the information he has at his disposal? Are local authorities providing more sites? I appreciate that this is being done in some cases. Does the Minister have any information on the number of people to which section 13 applies? Is the number going up or down? Has it gone up or down since he became Minister? I accept the bona fides of the Minister on this. I am well aware of his concern, his commitment and determination to do something about this. He seems to have identified at least one recalcitrant local authority and I wish him well in his endeavours to deal with that issue. I would like to know if there is any evidence that things are getting better or worse with regard to members of the travelling community and, in particular, with the provision of serviced sites. It is a pity that the Minister's determination to deal with those who work with travellers was not as evident in other provisions of this Bill in that those who deal with the homeless did not get much of a hearing in terms of the provisions of section 10. All the voluntary organisations do not agree with the Minister and he did not listen very well to them.
The Minister was praised for a number of reasons, particularly in relation to the refurbishment schemes that are taking place and in regard to the new tenant purchase scheme. I should also like to praise him and his Department on the work the Department have been doing for travellers over the last two or three years. Our local authority received a circular a year ago from the Department of the Environment informing us in no uncertain terms that we were to do something about the problem of travellers in the city. The local authority involved responded very enthusiastically to the circular, so much so that recently we had a report on travellers in the city to the effect that there would be no problem in relation to travellers in Dublin city within a year, that the problem within the city boundaries will be solved. I would like to pay a special tribute to the Department and to Dublin Corporation for the tremendous work they have done in that regard.
I witnessed an example of that in the north side of the city in Darndale. This time last year the problem there was explosive and I had it discussed in the Seanad. I would like to pay a special tribute to Dublin Corporation for the work they have done since then and on the groundwork they were doing up to the time the crisis developed last July. Essentially, I believe the provision of halting sites, chalets and so forth is very important in that it is the way forward. In Darndale last year a second phase of a chalet scheme was approved for travellers. Again, I should like to thank the Department for funding that. In addition the corporation allocated normal housing to a number of travellers who were in that area and they are quite satisfied with them. They have now put forward proposals to construct a group housing scheme which will entirely solve the problem. Those plans are before the Department and I have no doubt that they will receive approval in the near future. Certainly, that is the expectation. It will solve the problem to the benefit of all parties concerned.
The work which the corporation have been doing, to which I have referred, has been terrific. They undertook to negotiate with many groups — residents' associations, tenants' associations and all the people who tend to get involved in these issues. Their patience is to be commended. They brought all parties together in a calm manner to solve the problem. That is just one example of how the problem has been tackled by one local authority. The impetus given by the Department in the past year has certainly contributed to that. I remember discussing the circular which stated that we should do something about the matter. I am delighted to report that the problem of travellers in the city will be solved within a year. When I refer to the problem of travellers I do not mean the travellers are a problem but rather the whole situation.
While listening to Senator Haughey I thought for a moment that we were members of different local authorities. Housing for travelling people has been a burning question in Dublin Corporation but not in the case of Darndale to which Senator Haughey referred. He did not allude to another area which was the subject of a serious debate and in which his party were not in favour of housing travelling people. I was glad to hear his comments in regard to the future housing of the homeless and I hope he will commit his party to that.
This is not the city council; this is the Seanad.
It is very important that local authorities are committed to the housing of the homeless and are seen to be so.
Progress has been made in regard to the housing of travelling people. Perhaps some councils are doing better work in this area than others. In County Galway considerable progress has been made with regard to the housing of itinerants, or travelling people as they prefer to be called. Halting sites have been provided and it is very important that, where they have been provided, all the necessary back-up services would also be provided.
Mention was made by Senator Ferris of the need for a caretaker. It is also very important that social workers are employed in this area, people who can advise those families on how to run their own homes and take pride in them. That is very important. We must remember that they are not the same as the rest of us. They are coming in from the wilds, as it were. They are not used to having homes of their own and they do not know how to take care of them. It is very important that all the services be provided for them.
In Galway in particular those families are taken care of when houses are being allocated. In all the major housing estates in the county, in Tuam, Ballinasloe and Galway city, a fair share of houses are allocated to those families and that is very important. Sometimes there is an influx of travellers to an area, some of them perhaps from other counties. When their friends are housed in Galway, they seem to think that if they set up home in the area they will also be considered for housing. This has happened on a few occasions, particularly in the Tuam area where houses were allocated to a number of those families. We found that other families came in straightaway in the hope that they, too, would qualify for housing.
Progress is being made in this area. It is a thorny problem and one that we have to tackle very carefully because we have to think of the settled community also. Many people do not like those sites near their homes and, in some cases, with genuine reason. We have to educate the general public in this regard and perhaps that is one thing that is lacking at present. Those people should be shown compassion. People seem to think that it is fine to help them out provided the halting sites or chalets are not near their homes. We have much work to do in educating the public on how to tackle this problem.
I, too, welcome this section. Like Senator Hussey and the Minister, I come from the west of Ireland and have lived in the environment of the traditional itinerants who, as I grew up were known as tinkers, not in any derogatory sense but because of that age-old tradition they followed. Many a rural household in Ireland still has the "ponnies" or "ponjers" they made so excellently. It is sad that that craft has been dying out in recent years because of new technology.
In my own county of Leitrim the local authority, like a number of local authorities in the west, have faced up to this problem as best they could. It is a thorny problem and can be an emotive one. In my own town of Drumshanbo my late father was a great champion of the itinerants and particularly of families who had come into the area some years ago and who had stayed on the side of the road primarily because there was no suitable accommodation for them. Unfortunately, there are still families in those strained economic circumstances. Travelling the highways and by-ways of Ireland, one sees the very large caravans, the glittering household effects through the windows, the colour televisions and the large cars parked outside. In many cases they are not the real traditional itinerant families but are families who have opted to go on the road as merchants and traders. The traditional Irish itinerant families are the original aristocracy of our land. The famous Irish family names — O'Reillys, Wards and Maughans — had at one time substantial tracts of land, particularly in the west. However, they were displaced and their descendants have since roamed mainly in the west. It is only in recent years that this has become an urban problem.
The provisions in this Bill will go a long way towards helping to alleviate, and I hope eventually to eliminate, what is a social blight. For a country that purports to present a Christian image to the world —and in many areas of human endeavour the Irish people are generous to a fault — when it come to helping to solve what is euphemistically described as a problem, when it refers to only a small number of families in the total population, we Christian people find it difficult to stretch out the hand of compassion and Christianity to itinerants and to help and encourage them to come into our settled communities, to provide adequate housing for them, to encourage their children to go to our schools and to become part of our educational system. I would like to think that this section will go some way towards making local authorities, and the people in them, aware of these problems. Officials on their own and legislation on its own cannot change entrenched attitudes.
I hope this section will go some way — it does not go as far as I would like it to go — towards compelling local authorities, in cases where there are real problems, to locate halting sites and to provide proper accommodation for these people. I accept that the Minister has real difficulties. He has come up with a suitable compromise at this time in that local authorities can have some power and, in a sense, can take the high moral ground and say: "We are legislating for these people and let us now start to encourage the provision of suitable sites".
There is another point — and Senator Hussey touched on this — in relation to the difficulty that faces some itinerant families or, as the section puts it, those "who traditionally pursue or have pursued a nomadic way of life". I referred earlier to my home town of Drumshanbo and my late father's efforts in eventually succeeding in getting the local authority to provide three houses there. Although in some cases this was done against local opposition although I must say that the opposition was unrepresentative of the people of the area. The itinerant families have been associated with the area for a large number of years and people were happy to see them settled. I am sorry to report that of those three houses, two of them are boarded up today.
The main reason for this — and Senator Hussey referred to this — is that the families, relatives and friends of those families moved in and created enormous difficulties for the itinerant families who had been originally given the houses. The difficulties became insurmountable and the families had to go back onto the road. However, the offspring of those families are now integrated into the community and I believe that is where the long term solution to the problem of the itinerant population lies. If we can get the next generation — not this generation — into our schools and integrated into our society they will become more used to the way of life of the settled community. Because of the ingrained attitudes and inclination of the itinerant community to wander and lead a nomadic way of life, the difficulty has continued to the present day.
I hope this section will go some way towards encouraging local authorities to provide suitable halting sites and that once the younger generation become used to settling on such sites they will integrate into the community and that the community will welcome them so that our successors in the next generation, will not have to debate the subject of itinerants.
I think local authorities will welcome the encouragement that is given in this section. However, I would change one word in the section. Instead of saying a housing authority "may" provide I would say a housing authority "will" provide. Every local authority are acutely aware of the problem we are discussing. It is a good subject to talk about but it is a difficult one to deal with. I have worked very closely with social workers, all of whom had good intentions and had an answer to the problem, but the problem was always placed on somebody else's doorstep. This problem is not getting any easier.
The provision, management and control of sites might, in theory, in practice and on paper, meet the needs of travelling people but the assessment of the movements of travelling people and the different categories of travelling people is a major task and a major problem. As a local authority member who is actively involved in assisting travelling people I believe that local authorities must never get discouraged or record their failures. They must look forward and I am glad that the Minister is providing encouragement for them in the Bill. The words of encouragement in the legislation are very important. This is a problem which is not going to go away. We cannot legislate for it and hope that it will automatically disappear. It is a major problem and anybody who comes along with simple solutions does not have a grasp of the real problem. It is a problem which has to be tackled jointly by the Minister, his Department, the local authorities and social workers and there has to be an input from the travelling people or itinerant families. It is a broadly based problem and it has to be assessed very carefully. I venture to say that some travelling people project an undesirable image and those traders who camp along the road do not enlist the sympathy of anybody. This makes the problem all that much greater. I am certain that my local authority will not be discouraged if they have failures or if mistakes are made. We have to approach this in the knowledge that it is a major problem and one on which we have to achieve progress.
I welcome this provision and I think it has been welcomed generally by the House. I welcome the sensitivity of the language in which the section is expressed and in particular the use of the word "travellers". It is most important that minority groups are given the right to name themselves and the people who drafted this legislation should be commended on the fact that they have used this sensitive language and also found a very pleasant way of describing people who pursue or have pursued a nomadic way of life. I welcome this sensitivity.
I recognise that this is a difficult problem and I believe this section attempts to address it. I will not blackguard the different areas of the country in which I have lived but I have lived not only in the metropolitan area but also in some rural areas where ten, 15 or 20 years ago this degree of sensitivity was not shown to people, at least some of whom came onto the roads as victims of some of the natural but also political or military disasters of our troubled history. I welcome this section and particularly the sensitivity of the language in which it is expressed.
I already referred to this section and Senator McGowan will be pleased to know that I concur with everything he said with regard to the section. I am aware of the problem that local authorities have had in this area, the efforts they have made and the failures they have had in trying to address the problem. I agree with Senator Norris that referring to travellers in the way they are referred to in the section is helpful.
There are people who like to lead nomadic lives and they appear in our constituencies for short periods. Very few of them apply to us for rehousing: all of them want to camp adjacent to the national primary routes. Many of them stay for a while but they are often their own worst enemies because they leave a lot of litter, dirt and filth after them and this makes the problem we are trying to address that much more difficult. All the people I have discussed this problem with have differentiated between the genuine itinerant nomadic person who moves around and stops in different places for a while and the well-heeled traveller who is involved in a commercial activity and who seems to breeze into different towns with the most expensive caravans with complete and utter disregard for the rights to property of residents in both rural and urban areas.
These people, with complete abandon, seem to literally take over an area, decimate it and then pass on. It is an amazing procedure and members of local authorities or members of the Garda Síochána have very little powers to act on it. We have seen travellers creating traffic hazards, conducting business on national primary routes where people involved in legitimate trading could not get planning permission to carry on any business.
I want to differentiate specifically between the genuine tinker, traveller, nomadic person or however we like to describe them, many well known to local people, tradespeople who come, give a service and move on without creating any offence, people who genuinely want to be settled for a while, who like to send their children to school in certain areas and do so. There is a genuine commitment on the part of members of local authorities to address their problem. Those are the kinds of people the provisions of this section are trying to deal with by way of providing some facilities for them in controlled sites, where they can park their caravans, have access to clean water, hot water and so on.
There is the other problem presented by the merchants, most coming from across the Border with quite an amount of goods and merchandise. It never ceases to amaze me how they can get away with some of the activities in which they engage in rural areas in particular where they purport to provide all sorts of services and so on. One must question our ability to deal with that type of merchant. They do not render any service to society of which I am aware. Rather, they create quite an amount of annoyance for ordinary people who are genuinely concerned about the travellers referred to and dealt with in this section.
I should like to congratulate the Minister on the sensitivity with which this section is written. I should also like to commend him and the work of his Department in this regard so far and on the provision of moneys for sites for itinerants, particularly in my area of Stillorgan. I should like to place on the record of the House a little credit to a man who is not here this evening and who was instrumental in providing a plan for itinerants in the Dublin area. It constituted the follow-up to a Fianna Fáil promise given in the course of a local election: I refer to the Minister for Energy and for Communications, Deputy Ray Burke who was Chairman of Dublin County Council and who did a tremendous amount of work in this regard.
I am surprised to find myself intervening again so rapidly. I am even more surprised to find myself in disagreement with some of what my distinguished colleague, Senator Ferris, has said because so often I find myself in agreement with him. It seemed to me to be unfortunate that he singled out and characterised one element among the travelling people who may cause some degree of inconvenience. I would like to place on the record of the House that precisely the same comments could be made about the settled community. It is unfortunate that these remarks were made. One does not have to look back any further than yesterday to find that a decent resident of this city had most of her back premises flattened by some cowboy operator who moved in with a JCB. Her back garden was exposed to flooding by sewage——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
That hardly arises on section 13.
I believe it arises by virtue of the fact that this is the kind of accusation that was made against travelling people. I am simply pointing out that this is not the exclusive prerogative of the travellers, that equally heinous crimes have been committed by members of the settled community with impunity. If we are talking as——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We are talking about the provisions of section 13. The Chair would be obliged if the Senator would have a look at the section.
I have already read the section, I have already spoken to the point on the section but I am commenting very briefly, if I may with your indulgence, on what Senator Ferris said because he also mentioned, with regard to the specific provision——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
That was just in passing.
I am only making a passing reference as well. In fact, I might say I was a kind of intellectual traveller on this issue, not I hope a fellow-traveller. I would like to point out also, with regard to the other accusations that were made, notably those regarding trading, that pig smugglers and other people who do a great deal of damage to our economy are not, by any means, all travellers. I am sure Senator Ferris will have the grace to withdraw these slurs. I say it because I know that many of the travellers who wish to be settled, and who wish to make application to be settled, find it a particular problem that even in a forum like Seanad Éireann they are continually subjected to what is not intended as abuse but can very easily be translated into abuse. In these regards I believe the travellers are no worse.
I recall some years ago circumstances in which there was a move, in a local county council, to implement precisely the kind of enlightened provisions as are contained in this section and they were resisted. One of the reasons given was that a local park had been infested with travellers. The word used was not "travellers". It was suggested that they were not fit to mix with the local children and the usual accusations made again this evening about dirt, filth and so on were raised. The travellers were driven on and a week later a child of a travelling family perished from the cold in a back road near Bray Head. I will always remember that.
For those reasons I again commend the Minister for these enlightened provisions. With the greatest respect I would have to place on record my regret that Senator Ferris — I am sure without any intention of insensitivity — has appeared to me to lend some weight to accusations which certainly can be made against travellers but which are equally valid against members of the settled community.
The subject matter we are talking about now could well be the subject of a much wider and longer debate.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I hope the Minister will not stray now.
I will not, except to say that I take note of many of the things said. I recognise the genuine concern of many Members in dealing with travellers. They are not a problem. The problem often is how to arrange what is best suited to their requirements. They themselves are no problem. I have paid some attention to this matter over the past 15 or 16 months because of a personal interest. There is now a better arrangement in the Department by way of assessing just what is going on. There are now quarterly reports coming to the Department from all local authorities to show how they are doing. Each report has to be a follow-up to the previous one, not merely restating the previous report in different language.
It is quite an interesting exercise. Some local authorities have done very well, some not so well. An interesting thing about it is that the counties with the biggest difficulties — one is almost tempted to say "problem" every time — and the largest numbers of travellers are those that have performed best, while those counties catering for a small number of travellers have done poorly. That is interesting. It would appear that the provision of sites would be a much more acceptable means of dealing with their circumstances than the provision of houses. This is confirmed by themselves.
While I know that some Members have taken exception to some of the articles written in this little book in discussion previously, suggesting that the authors might not know fully and at all times what they are talking about, I would point out again that it comprises only a collection of papers edited by Blackwell and Stanislaus Kennedy. I would recommend it as prescribed reading for some of the Members in so far as the section devoted to housing policy as it affects travelling people is concerned only because the subject matter of the article is written, or suggested, by four travellers themselves. It is interesting to note the difference in attitude between what they say and what is recorded by another contributor to this collection of works in another chapter dealing with community and environmental services by Dublin Corporation, with special reference to the travelling people.
I will not go into any close analysis of the last contribution. Suffice it to say that there are some very interesting things said and some things written in the book which I wish were not said or written. I take advice on these matters from many people and many offer advice and offer it with a willing heart. I take advice on this question from somebody who has been very closely involved with travelling people for over a quarter of a century — long before it became fashionable to have pre-schools for travellers and long before there were schools available for them at all, or any arrangements for social worker participation with them. I still take much advice from that person as being somebody who knows the situation intimately. I believe that the advice is good and I am going to continue taking it.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I shall not be long. We should not get too tangled up in euphoria. I accept the goodwill of the Minister. I accept fully that the book he has referred to is and should be required reading — not for some Members but for all Members of the Oireachtas. One does not have to agree with everything in it to believe that it should be required reading.
There are books which I believe should be required reading for everybody with which I disagree entirely. There are some speeches made by Ministers which I believe should be required reading even though I might not agree with a word of them. We do not disagree on that, but we must not be carried away with extravagant claims. I remember a Member of a previous Seanad asserting, in fairly heated controversy with me, the number of travellers who had been housed in his local authority area which was a sub-unit of a county. It turned out that the census of travellers, including travellers who have been housed for that county, was a fraction of the number that the local authority member had claimed to have been housed in his urban area.
The important base line is, is the number going up or going down of people who are living in conditions that are unsatisfactory to themselves? In other words, are we providing people with the sort of conditions they wish for themselves? It is important to remember that because travellers live in the open and are visible and because everything they do is done in full sight of the rest of us, it is very easy to presume that they are less given to being hygienic than we are, less given to concern for their children and so on.
People who lived in Cork during the corporation dispute some years ago will remember that the settled citizens of Cork city, when the refuse collection services were taken away from them, were not exactly models of sanitary behaviour or good hygiene either. If people do not have the facilities to have refuse collected and disposed of there is no great distinction that I can see between members of the settled community and others. Refuse piled up in Cork in the most extraordinary places. A main thoroughfare, a dual carriageway that goes past the city dump, was almost closed because of indiscriminate dumping by respectable settled members of the community. The IDA would not take prominent industrialists, who were being brought into the city from the airport, by the shortest route which was the new road because of the sights they would see. These would remind them, in the words of a member of the IDA, of some of the worst manifestations of the Third World so let us not point to the travellers.
The Irish Times some years ago reported the travellers of an unofficial halting site in north County Dublin issuing a plea to the settled community to stop dumping their rubbish on the travellers' site. They were trying to keep it clean and the settled community were using the travellers' halting site as a dump. There has been a succession of such incidents. It is not necessary, every time one talks about a vulnerable group, to apologise for listing their deficiencies. We all have deficiencies. It is not just among travelling families that there are drink problems; it is not just among travelling families that there are neglected children; it is not just among travelling families that you find any particular social problem. There is a number of very positive qualities that the travelling community have, particularly a very intense sense of the extension of the family which, if it existed among the settled community, could mitigate a considerable number of increasingly serious social problems.
There has been a commendable development among most local authorities in terms of trying to provide for travelling people. There has been a decrease in the number of people who are prepared to use hysterical language for political purposes. There has been a considerable increase in maturity. Various agencies, among them the Church, have contributed to that by forcing people into more mature debate. However, that does not get away from the fact that there are still local authorities— and the Minister and I appear to agree that Limerick Corporation is one of them — who have done very little in this area. The Minister might explain how anybody can make an authority like that do something about it. If he can, I will be the first to compliment him on it. I cannot but comment, in the light of something Senator Mooney said, which was quite correct, that the city which has the worst record for housing travellers is the one which is most given to public manifestations of faith once a year in a massive out-pouring of religious fervour under the manifestation of the Confraternity. I find that rather ironic, but maybe nobody else does.
I do not ever find it surprising.
They are models of probity in the county. Another matter on the issue of travelling people that I would commend to the Minister, which is not his responsibility but nevertheless concerns many travellers and would help them greatly, is the elimination of discrimination against people simply because they are travellers. This is a problem, particularly for young people who are members of the travelling community and can be excluded. All the provisions for housing, etc., will not help if that community do not have the right to participate in the services and the various other leisure activities of our society. That is a matter for legislation.
I do not know if this section will make a difference because there is nothing there that was not there already. What may make a difference is the long and well-expressed commitment of the Minister to do something about it. I hope that the encouragement from this House will help him to keep up his resolve. Would the Minister let us know if there are figures available which suggest that what he is intending to do is actually working?
Just a last word to say that the figures are there. I have the best information on record that one could possibly ask for. The question of making these plans and schemes operative is a slightly different matter, but progress is being made slowly and steadily. It is agreed by those on the national council who are concerned with these matters that that progress is being made.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 14.
Question proposed: "That section 14 stand part of the Bill."
Is there not something illogical about the State making money available to pay for building land which has been made valuable simply because the State decided to zone it as building land? This relates back to the question of the price of building land and to a report which the rest of the country may have forgotten, but which Senator Ferris and I will never forget because a long period of our lives is invested in it. Is the Minister proposing to take any action on many of the recommendations therein, to do with the price of building land, so as to reduce the need for subsidies? There are other ways in which the State can get its hands on building land.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
When is it proposed to sit again?
