asked the Minister for Justice if he will state the date of the appointment of the Inter-Departmental Committee to inquire into the claims of town tenants; whether he will state the terms of reference to the Committee; whether the Committee has issued its report; and, if so, whether it is the intention to publish the report, and whether he is now in a position to state when proposals for legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Committee will be introduced in the Dáil.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Town Tenants' Claims.
About two years ago it was arranged that officials representative of certain Departments should confer on a number of matters with a view to formulating a considered expression of the Departmental viewpoint for the information of the Government. Amongst the subjects which thus came under consideration was the demand for further legislation limiting, restricting, or controlling rents, whether occupation rents or ground rents, in cities, towns and villages. An agreed report on this portion of the Committee's work was signed in February of the present year. This report was not written for publication, and it is not proposed to publish it, but I think that I may correctly and usefully summarise it by saying that the members of the Committee, after what was obviously a very careful examination of the position, were not satisfied that a sufficient case had been made for legislation on the subject, except on some minor points of procedure. Their feeling was, apparently, that, as a preliminary to further examination of the question, the associations which are pressing for legislation on the subject might reasonably be expected to come together, to put their proposals in a much more definite and detailed form than has been done up to the present, and to give some indication of the manner in which they would propose to meet certain obvious difficulties. As regards ground rents, the Committee pointed out that, apart from the vested interests of private persons, ground rents are a common form of investment by persons acting as trustees for charities and for the surviving dependants of deceased persons, so that any interference with them would have serious consequences. As regards ordinary rents, the report drew attention to the fact that almost all houses built before April, 1919, except those of the most expensive class, are still subject to the provisions of the Rent Restriction Acts, and that as regards houses built after that date, the terms of previous Acts of the Oireachtas amount almost to a guarantee that such houses would not be subjected to rent control.