When the debate was adjourned, I was pointing out the injustice of this stamp duty as it affects the sale of land. I was endeavouring to convince the Minister that the transfer of land from one citizen to another is not a vice similar to drinking or smoking and is not of a nature which should be discouraged or suppressed by taxation. It should rather be encouraged, particularly from the point of view of the development of agriculture. Some farms are of uneconomic size because they are either too large or too small. It ought to be the function of the Government to encourage citizens to sell and purchase land so as to bring about a better distribution. If a farmer in my constituency in Wicklow, where much of the land is of a light and inferior nature, has a very big holding which he finds it difficult to make pay because of the present cost of working land and the cost of labour, he should be encouraged to sell portion of his land, if he so desires, so as to provide an economic holding for somebody else who might be willing to purchase it. This stamp duty penalises those who wish to do that. I do not know whether the duty will be paid by the purchaser or the vendor. That question was disputed yesterday in respect of the sale of houses and sites for houses. Whoever pays it, it is certainly a penalty upon those who want to carry out exchange or redistribution of land. I think that it is an outrageous thing to have a penalty imposed either upon those who acquire sites, or who build houses for sale to those who wish to purchase them. In the present shortage of housing, it will be the purchaser who will pay the stamp duty, because, with the limited supply of houses and with the excessive demand, the unfortunate person who is looking for accommodation will have no option but to pay the duty. Why should these additional taxes be imposed upon people who are simply looking for housing accommodation? From no point of view—I am thinking particularly of agriculture and housing—can this stamp duty be justified and the additional impost on sales between citizens should be withdrawn.
Financial Resolutions—Report (Resumed). - Resolution No. 11—Stamp Duties.
I would like to appeal to the Minister to reconsider this decision. So far as our own nationals are concerned there is no justification whatever for it. It is grossly unfair to put this charge on a normal business transaction. If we have any appreciation of the difficulties of financing the purchase of land and property here, so far as many of our people are concerned, we surely cannot defend this proposal. If you consider the question of land in this country and the policy that should be pursued so far as the ownership of land and the most desirable type of individual on the land are concerned I think it will be agreed that the people who have their roots on the land, who live on the land and who have an interest in the land are the people who ought to be encouraged to remain on the land. If a farmer is anxious that his eldest son should settle down he may find it extremely difficult to procure the capital to buy a holding for his son. On top of that difficulty the Government is now imposing a charge of 5 per cent. on the expenditure. I think it is an outrageous proposition. It may be suggested by the Minister that it is the vendor who pays this penalty. I do not think that that is so. Again, take the case of a young man anxious to get married and settle down in life. He may be, say, a white-collar worker who has to buy a house. He cannot find a residence any other way except by purchasing a house. He has to save up for years for the purchase of that house. On top of that now comes this charge of 5 per cent. I have not heard the Minister defend this proposal. I feel there is no defence for a proposal of this sort. The Minister may argue that there is a certain traffic in property and that some speculation is going on at the present time. That may be so, but surely this is not the method of stopping speculation in property. It is a real hardship on the legitmate purchaser who requires property, who is anxious to secure either a house or land in the country. The examples I have given to the Minister, Sir, are certainly considerations that ought not be overlooked on a proposal of this sort. It is an outrageous imposition which cannot be justified. The expenditure occurs in the case of the man who is anxious to settle down in life, to get married, to have a house of his own, to rear a family, at a time when his financial commitments are very heavy and at a time when he finds it pretty difficult to meet his commitments. There appears to be no consideration for individuals of that sort. —no consideration for the farmer who wants to settle his eldest son, a man reared on the land, with his roots on the land, the ideal man from a national point of view, so far as the utilisation of the land in this country is concerned. The Government and the Minister have completely ignored these considerations. They are putting a penalty on the right man in a case of that sort merely for revenue purposes. The Minister and the Government have not considered the effect of the repercussions this is going to have, so far as the occupation and the utilisation of the land in the country are concerned. I do not oppose the other portion of the Resolution in connection with increasing the duty in the case of the purchaser of land from outside purchasing with sterling which, to my mind, has a lower purchasing value than Irish currency at the present time. It appears to me that it is an attempt, at all events, by the Minister to assess the difference in value which exists between British currency and our own currency not-withstanding the fact that we are associated with the sterling unit. I am particularly opposed to the proposal of penalising our own nationals by this imposition.
What is this tax for? Is it a deflationary tax or is it a tax to raise revenue? If its purpose is deflationary does this House want to deflate the purchasing power of a newly married couple who buy a house through a house-purchase finance company, who have set aside and saved with great difficulty the price of the furniture for the house, and who are now informed that in order to promote deflation in this country the money they had laid by wherewith to buy the furniture is going to be taken in the purchase tax and that they can sit on the floor? Is that the point? Is it a revenue-raising tax? If it is, it will not raise any revenue to begin with and, secondly, there is abundant revenue already in the Exchequer, without any new taxes at all, to finance the subsidies that are proposed. It will not raise revenue because the young couple who contemplate getting married must postpone their decision for the reason that no young man can invite his wife to come into a house without a stick of furniture in it and they will, therefore, have to start saving again.
The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminister recently considered it to be his duty in England, where the Government policy is one of building houses for rent, to come out and say that, in his considered opinion, speaking with all authority, he believed the Government ought to build houses which the prospective occupants would be permitted to buy. Does this 5 per cent. tax make it any easier for a young married couple who contemplate buying a house to buy it? I know of houses in the suburbs of this city for which a sum of £4,000 was paid. Those people had perhaps £200 or £300 laid by wherewith to furnish three or four rooms, intending to furnish the other rooms as income permitted. Well, they may change their plans because the furnishing money is going to go on the stamp and they may start saving again. Do any of us in this House consider that to be a desirable transaction? I do not. I think it is an ignorant piece of flat-footed incompetence. Since when has it become a crime in this country to sell your land? We are all supposed to be the sons and children of tenant-farmers here. They fought to get fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale, the right to sell their holding without paying an excessive tithe, without paying an excessive fine to the landlord when the tenancy passed from one man to another. Are we going to re-establish the rule in this country that if any right in land passes from one farmer to another the landlord's fine is to be reinstated?
I often wonder have Deputies of this House all forgotten what their fathers taught them. I was talking to-day to a man who spent his life fighting for Home Rule for this country and he said to me:—
"When I see some of the things that are done now in the name of the Irish people in their own sovereign Parliament I often wonder were we right to fight for Home Rule."
Quite irrelevant.
Possibly the Ceann Comhairle does not understand what I am saying. With great respect, I submit that what I have said is strictly relevant.
The Ceann Comhairle is the judge of relevancy. Discussion of what anybody thought or said of Home Rule or of this Parliament is not relevant to this Resolution.
Certainly I am entitled to submit to you that what we do here to-day is relevant to the matter we are now discussing and, if we put on the land of this country a landlord's tithe, may we not ask ourselves if we were wise to commit the fate of our people——
The Deputy should learn not to be insolent to the Chair. Insinuating that the Chair does not know what the Deputy is talking about is, I consider, insolence.
Have I not a right to make that submission, Sir? I submit I have. I am entitled to ask this House are they conscious of their duty towards their own people? Do they intend to reinstate the landlord's tithe and, if they do, were those who went before us wise to commit our people into their care? I know why this was done. It was done to provide an alibi for the ignorant, flat-footed gesture about 25 per cent. on any purchases of Irish land by English people. That is the kind of dirty fraud that the Fianna Fáil Party hope to fool our people with. We have not the spunk, we have not the courage, we have not the guts to pass legislation prohibiting them buying the land. We have the power, but we do not want to do that because that might involve retribution, that might involve reprisals, but we want to fool the people down the country that that is in effect what we are doing and, at the same time, in the event of reprisals being threatened, to protest that we have not done anything rough or rude or dirty. We want to play the same dirty, deceitful game of telling one story to the Irish people and quite a different one behind closed doors when we go abroad.
What is the purpose of this tax? Is it to deter English people from buying houses and farms in this country? Is that its purpose? There is a better way of achieving that purpose if that is what we have in mind—an Act containing three sections which we could pass in two days, to prohibit the vesting of land in this country legally or beneficially in any person other than a national of Ireland. But that will not be done because that would be two and two making four and two and two never make four when Fianna Fáil are adding it up. It must make three and seven-eighths, or four and three-sixteenths, but never four.
What will this dirty wangle result in? When we got Home Rule in this country one section of our people deserted the ship, cleared out, ran away, and another group of the old ascendancy remained. They were decent people, people at whose hands my people suffered in generation after generation, but, according to their own lights, many of them were decent people doing what they believed to be right, though it appeared wrong to me.
It seems to be far away from this Resolution, even to the mean understanding of the Chair, Deputy.
These are the people who are going to be hit, Sir. Half of them stayed on.
Yes.
Many of these people tried over the last 25 years to maintain big, awkward houses that were impossible to maintain under modern conditions, because to them they were home.
Will the Deputy come to this matter before the House—the desirability or otherwise of this tax?
I am trying to submit that this tax is going to hit certain people.
Quite, without having a discussion on what happened after Home Rule, as the Deputy calls it, 25 years ago. The Deputy, I submit, is, to put it mildly, too discursive.
I submit, Sir, that I am dealing with the state of the persons who will be subject to the law which we are contemplating and that I am entitled to consider what reactions this law will have upon them and what they deserve of this Parliament. Their only crime was that when others ran away they stood their ground in what they regarded, and rightly regarded, as their homes. Now those houses have become a burden that it is virtually impossible for them to carry and circumstances have so developed that at last an opportunity presents itself of their selling these houses to people who will not pull them down, as Coole was pulled down and sold for scrap. An opportunity presents itself of selling these houses to decent respectable families who, coming from an industrial environment, have an independent income which makes it possible for them to maintain these houses for their amenity value. Scarcely a single one of these potential vendors who are hanging on by their eye-teeth, knowing that very shortly they will have to let go whether they find a purchaser or not, is an unwilling vendor. Every firm of auctioneers and valuers in this country and in Great Britain know that. Therefore, if a purchaser comes forward in Great Britain or here with money and says: "I want no talk about stamps. That property is worth £8,000 to me and I will give you £8,000 for it. Do not be talking to me about a 25 per cent. stamp. If you want to sell, there is your cash," in effect what is going to happen is that the houseowner who knows that he must either sell his house to the man who means to blot it from the horizon and sell it for scrap or to the potential purchaser who means to reside there, sells for the best price he can get and in effect pays the 25 per cent.
Has the quality of magnanimity died altogether since Fianna Fáil came into office? Have we lost all sense of dignity? Have we lost all sense of a realisation of the trusteeship which devolves upon us in respect of those people? Our enemies said that we would deal unjustly with them out of revenge for what they had done to us.
The Resolution deals with sales.
I think the Resolution strikes them too. I think the Chair would be assured by the vast majority of persons who have sold properties in this country recently to people from Great Britain that 90 per cent. of them have been "left-over" residences on small or large estates. Now, there are exceptions, but a great many of these are a landlord or petty landlord or steward's house that was on an estate which, by the early Land Acts, was reduced to a demesne walls have been taken down and 80 per cent. of the demesne land taken away, the house being left with woodlands and perhaps 20 acres, which is a wholly uneconomic unit, suitable for occupation only by somebody with an independent income. It may affect others as well.
I am not, so far as this tax is concerned, primarily concerned about it from the purely economic point of view, but I am ashamed that we should be so incapable of magnanimity as to express our indifference to the harsh injustice that will be done to this most defenceless section of our community. There will not be a vote won, and I may lose many, by choosing to oppose, as I most emphatically oppose, this vicious, contemptible, mean jab at those who are defenceless, those who have no one to speak for them and are too proud to speak for themselves. It is a dirty, contemptible, vicious and disedifying proposal well worthy of the mind of the Minister for Finance who conceived it, and to my way of thinking a disgrace on the House that adopts it: a confession before the world that there can survive here a meanness of spirit that was unknown in this country in the darkest days through which our people had to live.
The more one examines this section the harder it is to understand what exactly the Government are driving at. It was announced that this series of Resolutions was brought forward as a cure for inflation because the Taoiseach and the members of the Government had made up their minds that it was time to put a stop to it. The Taoiseach, in his speech, outlined what he thought was producing inflation. I do not propose to deal with that at the moment, but rather to deal with this Resolution which concerns houses and lands. We have been told that houses which changed hands a few months ago at a certain figure are again changing hands to-day at enhanced prices which represent an increase of 33? per cent. or 50 per cent. I do not think that a stamp duty of 5 per cent. is going to stop that sort of transaction. What the Minister appears to have done is to have aimed a blow at one section of the community and to have hit another. I welcome the Minister's announcement to introduce an amendment to provide that the old rate of stamp duty will continue in the case of a public utility house which is sold to a purchaser without a profit.
It was never my intention to put the extra stamp duty on the sale of a public utility or local authority house on a tenant-purchaser.
I think the Minister will agree that the Resolution, as it stood, could be read the other way. I do not want to make any capital out of it beyond saying that I welcome the Minister's announcement. I do know that quite a number of people were, prior to the Minister's announcement, under the impression that a purchaser through a public utility company would be hit. We can leave that now since the Minister says —and I am very glad to hear it—that he never intended to do that. As I say, there were an awful lot of people under a false impression as to what the situation was, possibly because they did not know the mind of the Minister. He now tells us that he never intended hitting that class of transaction. Will the Minister tell me what is the difference between that class of transaction and one that I am going to mention? We have a number of speculative builders. They are so called, I suppose, because in the past they built houses as a speculation—built them to sell them, if possible. Of course, nowadays there is no speculation like that. But the builder was called a speculative builder and the name stuck to him. The speculative builder who puts up a house may perhaps sell that direct to some black-coated worker or whitecollared individual who is getting married. We must remember that that is the only possible opportunity a person has of acquiring a house. As the Minister is aware, there are no houses to let.
What is the difference between a person who buys a house from a speculative builder and the person who buys from a public utility society? The Minister may argue that such a person has paid more money for it. Possibly he has, but he has not got a free choice. We must remember that the number of houses put up by a public utility society is strictly limited, as is also the number of houses put up by a speculative builder. If this is a temporary measure to stop inflation and not a permanent addition to the legislation of the country, I cannot see why the first transaction in connection with a new house should not be exempt from this penal taxation. The only thing that will bring down the price of houses is the supply of houses—more production.
I should also like to suggest to the Minister that there are various types of building activities which have to proceed side by side; they are not mutually destructive, they are complementary. We can all agree that houses for the working classes are the major need in this country and that these houses ought to have priority as regards materials. As a matter of fact, I think they have priority.
Is that related to this tax?
It is related to the supply of houses some of which are to be subject to this penal tax and some of which are exempt.
The ones we are concerned with here, I presume, are affected by the tax?
Yes. I am arguing as to why certain houses should be affected by the tax. So far as production is concerned, unless you absorb the entire output of the community in labour and materials you will never get a balanced supply. We should remember that a whole lot of people are not free agents. Certain workers are suitable for the erection of——
The Deputy is going into a discussion on housing.
In view of your ruling, I will not go any further, except to say that the houses are of various sorts; that the Minister is singling out one type of house for this penal legislation, and I cannot see how that is in accord with the speech made in introducing this Supplementary Budget. We were told that this Supplementary Budget was to stop inflation which was rampant; that property was changing hands at enhanced values every other day. I think the Government have done very little to stop property changing hands and that in hitting some persons they will only add to the cost of living and to inflation and postpone the supply of houses.
The Minister stated that his chief object in imposing the tax was to put a curb on the inflationary prices being paid for houses. He argued also that, in the main, it would be the vendor who would pay this 5 per cent. I do not think that will work out in practice. The Minister knows as well as everybody else that the human element enters into all these matters and upsets all calculations. Let us take, for example, two young married couples who are bidding for the same house. In their anxiety to get a house, one couple will bid against the other. When the auctioneer knocks down that house to one couple at £1,250, they know they will have to pay some costs to the solicitor. They think they are finished at that, but they get a gentle reminder, possibly from the solicitor, that there is such a thing as stamp duty which amounts to the modest sum of £70 or £80 or £100. I can imagine the man saying: "What is that? When did that come into operation? I did not know about that." But he has to pay it. That is where the human element enters into it.
So far as the exemptions are concerned, I am very suspicious of this differentiation and I do not like this exemption of houses built by public utility societies and urban councils. We may have something to say to that again. With regard to the 25 per cent. tax, I do not know what is the idea behind that, except possibly that they are kowtowing to the agitation in Dublin recently about foreigners coming in here and buying property and, by way of keeping them out, they put on this 25 per cent. on any property these people may buy. I am speaking as one of these old-fashioned type of people. When I was at school, I learned a certain question and answer. The question was, "Who is your neighbour," and the answer was, "All mankind." It did not say Irish, English, Scottish or anything else. I want to know why a man who comes from Great Britain to buy property here should be charged 25 per cent. stamp duty. I would not be pleased if I went across to England and bought property and had to pay 25 per cent. stamp duty.
Whilst I am on that subject, I wonder has it occurred to the Minister or his officials what the position will be of an Irishman who, say, emigrated 30 years ago to Great Britain or America, reared a family there, and who, at the end of his days, thinks, as many Irishmen think, that he would like to end his days in the old country, where he will buy a farm and a house with the few thousand pounds he has saved. Am I to understand that that man is to be put in the same category as the real foreigner? In other words, is he to be charged the 25 per cent.? Further, what is that man's position in the matter of his Irish citizenship and where will he stand in that regard?
Broadly speaking, I am against this differentiation, although I know it may be a bit unpopular to say so. People will say that I want to see racketeers coming in here, people who have made money in foreign countries. I am speaking of the average Englishman or American who comes bona fide into this country and I cannot see why there should be any differentiation, good, bad or indifferent. If I decided to go to another country, I should like to be made welcome there, in the same way as I should like the stranger who comes in here to be made welcome, so long as he complies with the laws of the country. There is too much tendency here to differentiate between classes of citizens. The world was made for everybody, I hold.
This 5 per cent. tax will not achieve the object the Minister, honestly, I suppose, has in view and, secondly, I do not believe in this 25 per cent. tax for the reasons I have given. There is an old saying: Do unto others that which you would like done unto thineself, and I should not like to be ranked as a foreigner if I went to another country and was able to invest money which I had saved in property and similarly in the case of people who come here. As has been pointed out, there are many people who will have to pay this 25 per cent., people who were looking forward to being able to dispose of their property at a price which would give them some little return, and in the case of a £6,000 or £8,000 property, they are going to lose possibly a couple of thousand pounds.
When these properties come up for sale, the person who buys will take into consideration the 25 per cent., and even in County Louth I know where people sold farms who, if this 25 per cent. tax had been in operation, would have got £1,500 to £2,000 less. Would Deputy Allen, as an auctioneer, like that? I do not think he would. I do not think he would like to see the buyer having to pay 25 per cent. Wise man that he is, he would take that into consideration. No matter what the popular cry may be at the moment, I feel that it is unwise to make this differentiation as between 5 per cent. and 25 per cent., especially in the case of some of our own people who may have resided in England or in the United States for the past 30 or 35 years and who may decide to come back here and buy a property. What will their position be? I should like the Minister to tell the House whether the 25 per cent. will operate in regard to purchases made by such people.
Deputies cannot have this argument both ways. Deputy Coburn cannot have it both ways, even though he comes from County Louth. If the farmer down in County Louth who sold a farm would have got £1,500 less, these Resolutions being law, how can the purchaser pay more? There is only one tax to be paid and it cannot be paid by both the vendor and the purchaser. I was prepared to take Deputy Coburn up on his first allegation that these newly married couples were going to pay this tax, but seeing that he replied to his own argument by saying that it was the vendor who will pay, I think we can cancel his arguments out.
I never said it was the vendor who will pay.
The Deputy said, and everybody heard him say, that, if this provision had been in operation for the past year, a certain farmer in County Louth would have got £1,500 to £2,000 less.
Yes, because a big price was involved—£10,000.
It is the vendor who would have paid.
Possibly.
The Deputy said that he would have paid. Which does he want? I am prepared to debate it, but I want to know what line of country I am to face.
Remember that the 25 per cent. refers to non-nationals.
If it had been 20 per cent., it would represent one-fifth of £1,500, or £300, which he would have lost.
If the Minister proposes to go into figures, we will need some more time.
20 per cent. of £1,500 is £300. Would he have lost £300?
This farm went for £10,000.
I do not care what the the price was. Let us stick to one argument which I will answer and then the Deputy can go on to another argument and I will answer that.
What is 20 per cent. of £10,000?
20 per cent. of the £1,500 which the Deputy said he would have lost. Therefore, it would have been the vendor who would have lost.
Possibly, yes.
The Deputy said it was the vendor. All I want to point out is that every Deputy, with the exception of Deputy Hughes, said the same thing as Deputy Coburn. They started off by speaking about the poor married couple who had scraped together a few pounds and who proposed to borrow another amount and who would have to pay this extra tax.
I said it.
Deputy Hughes said that, and that only. He did not say that the vendor would have to pay, but Deputy Cogan and Deputy Dillon said that the vendor would have to pay and that the purchaser would have to pay. There is only one tax to be paid, so that both cannot pay it. That seems a simple enough proposition. Nevertheless, both Deputy Cogan and Deputy Dillon said that the two would pay, and they were followed by Deputy Coburn, who said that both the vendor and the purchaser would pay. We will leave it at that.
The Minister cannot say with any assurance which of them will pay.
I can; the vendor will pay.
I think I qualified my statement in that regard by saying that the human element enters into it.
The vendor will pay.
I should like to have a bet on that.
What fixes the price of a house at the moment, the price of the house sold yesterday for £2,000?
Supply and demand.
The fact that there was nobody knocking around with £2,100 to pay for it. Otherwise, it would have been £2,100.
It depends on the competition.
I am taking account of that. A house was sold yesterday for £2,000 because there was no competitor with £2,100 who was prepared to pay that amount for it. The house, which yesterday realised £2,000 in the City of Dublin, if it were bought pre-war, changed hands for about £600. If the vendor held it all these years, he made a profit of £1,400, and what I am proposing to do in this measure is to take 5 per cent. of that profit. I did not say in the Budget statement, or at any time since or before, that this was going to have the effect of reducing the price of houses. What I did say—and I shall quote it again for the benefit of Deputies who are interested—was:—
"By taxing non-essentials, by imposing extra stamp duties on inflated capital values and by using portion of the money being spent in these directions to subsidise the increased prices being given for essentials, we aim at curtailing expenditure on non-essentials and at increasing the production of essentials whilst keeping their price to consumers as far as possible in line with existing wage and salary levels."
We were going by this particular tax to capture some of the increment of value accruing to the vendor. It will do that; nothing more is claimed for it.
Who will pay? The purchaser pays.
That was not what I said. I shall leave that to Deputy Hughes to thrash it out with Deputy Cogan, Deputy Dillon and Deputy Coburn.
Would the Minister permit me to put this point? The Minister has noticed that in the purchase of property, particularly of lands, sometimes the charges on that property are not taken into account to the extent to which they should be. For instance, land generally carries an annuity charge, but very often purchasers do not take that charge into account at all. That is a fair analogy.
The same thing applies to ground rent.
Deputy Coburn cannot say that, because he says that the vendor would be getting £1,500 less.
He might.
He said he would be.
It is quite possible.
Does the Minister not agree that in the majority of cases in the past, the charges on land have not been taken into account in the majority of cases?
There may have been some foolish purchases I agree, but the fact is that 99 per cent. of people who take ordinary care, when they look up the terms of sale, try to discover what are the charges on the property and what is the poor law valuation. They will try to find out, if the poor law valuation is say, £10, what are the rates——
That is the first thing they should do.
That is the first thing they do.
They do not.
We are talking about people who are outside lunatic asylums and not about people who should be in them. The first thing they do, if there is a holding of land or a house for sale, is to ascertain the length of the lease, and the poor law valuation. The next thing they have to look up is to see whether it is over the border in County Dublin or County Meath and what are the annual rates they are likely to pay. The average normal person in this country, particularly if he is in the state about which Deputy Coburn speaks and cannot get another few pounds, will want to see exactly the amount of the capital charges he will have to pay, and the annual charges he will have to pay by way of rent, rates, etc.
I want to tell the House that before I made this proposition to the Government, the Minister for Local Government had made a proposition that the grants for the building of houses, where a person is building a house for himself or is building it through a public utility society, should be increased. Within the next week or two the Minister for Local Government will bring forward a Bill under which the grants for those two classes of persons, and grants for certain other things such as reconstruction by farmers, will be substantially increased. The Bill will give big State grants for that type of building. The Bill will not provide for an increased grant for the speculative builder about whom Deputy Dockrell spoke, simply because the speculative builder is doing very well at the moment. Everyone knows that. As Deputy Dockrell says, there is no speculation in speculative building at the moment. There is no danger of loss. No matter how a speculative builder builds a house at the moment, no matter how much he pays for materials, land, and all the other requisites for building, he can get all these costs back plus a very big profit indeed, as everybody knows, including Deputies like Deputy Dockrell who does know something about building. Now that materials have become available, the Government are going to make one further big push to support people who want to build and own their own houses. Increased grants will be given and Deputies will see how big they are very shortly.
Apart from the building of houses either directly or through a building society, a man who wants a house has to purchase it on the market. He has to purchase it from a speculative builder, if it is a new house, or he has to purchase it from somebody who owned the house for a number of years. The price of that house to him is determined by the number of competitors who want that house and who have practically the same amount of money to pay for it. It does not matter to the people who have that limited amount of money how it is going to be spent. They cannot raise any more whether 5 per cent. or 1 per cent. of it is going to the State and the other 99 per cent. or 95 per cent. to the vendor. All they have to spend, all that they can raise for purchasing the house is, say, £2,000. The competitive position, therefore, is not being altered. If there were two purchasers competing for a house last month and they ran the price up to £2,000 when the stamp duty was 1 per cent. and if that house was withdrawn and is put up for sale next year, all that they will have to spend will still be £2,000. They will probably run it up to £2,000 again and to no more because they cannot get it.
That is questionable.
They have not the money to do it.
I suggest to the Minister that that is a typical Civil Service argument.
The Deputy said that we were doing some wrong to the person who had £2,000 and could not get any more, that this tax was taking £80 out of his pocket. If he cannot get any more, he cannot get it.
He will get it by hook or by crook.
I am taking it that he got it by hook or by crook.
The Minister's attitude is to take the last bob or the last penny out of his pocket.
I do not want to take the last bob or the last penny out of his pocket; I merely want to take 5 per cent. out of the pocket of the vendor.
You have admitted you want the last penny from him; you said you will leave him without anything.
If the Deputy took it out of his pocket beforehand, I could not get it.
You will make sure he has very little left.
Heretofore the £2,000 was divided between the vendor and the State, 99 to one, and now it will be divided between the vendor and the State, 95 to five.
That is a typical Civil Service argument.
When the Deputy cannot make a case, he makes some vague allegation. Let him discuss this man to man and leave the Civil Service out of it. Deputy Dillon had the argument two ways, as usual. I do not want to follow him. When I hear his "dirty fraud,""dirty deceitful game,""dirty wangle" and all the rest of it, I sometimes feel like replying in kind, but I think the people know Deputy Dillon pretty well and that when he comes out at all he will come out with all these adjectives, without the slightest foundation and with the smallest possible or no excuse.
He set himself up to defend a certain section of the community, the people who are selling land to persons coming from England. I think it will be admitted that the competition between the English and ourselves for houses and lands will be altered by this Resolution in favour of the Irishman, seeing that the Englishman will have to pay a 25 per cent. stamp duty—the Englishman or any other foreigner— and the Irishman 5 per cent. At least the competitive position of the Irishman will be enhanced.
We could introduce a law prohibiting all foreigners from buying real estate here. Such a law exists in many countries. We have not such a law and the Government are not proposing to introduce it to the Dáil. I proposed to the Government, and the Government approved, that in the present state of housing shortage, preference in the purchase of houses should be given to Irishmen or to people resident here and that that preference should be given by making the foreigner pay 20 per cent. more than an Irishman for the stamp.
I think it is a reasonable proposition that we are entitled to give our own people, when houses are short, a preference in the purchase of houses. That is what this stamp duty will do. The argument put forward by Fine Gael for a long number of years was that, by not detaching ourselves from the British £, we were giving the Englishman a preference in the purchase of land. They cannot have the argument two ways.
We did not attempt it.
The Deputy was not here last night when Deputy Costello and Deputy McGilligan were talking. The trend of the argument was—all the speakers argued in the same speech— that both the vendor and the purchaser would pay this tax. I think I have dealt with all the real points that were raised. There is no use in replying to the type of speech Deputy Dillon made—he comes out with that all the time. This particular Resolution imposing these alterations in the stamp duty was designed to take from the vendor part of the inflated price that is being given for houses and lands at the moment and to devote that money to other purposes which were put before the Dáil in the Supplementary Budget.
The second point was to improve the competitive position of our own people and the people resident here—to enhance their competitive position as against the foreigner. I believe the Resolution will do that and that it will not hurt the purchasers of houses who are competing with a limited personal supply of money for a very small number of houses. It has not been suggested that it will in any way decrease the price of houses or build more houses. That is another day's work and I have already indicated that the Minister for Local Government will very shortly be introducing proposals which will give large increases to people who want to build houses for themselves, and to farmers to reconstruct their houses, or to get a public utility society to build houses for them.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Colley, Harry.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Everett, James.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Furlong, Walter.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lydon, Michael F.
- Lynch, James B.
- McAuliffe, Patrick.
- McCann, John.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Connor, John S.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Pattison, James P.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
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Níl
- Beirne, John.
- Bennett, George C.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Coburn, James.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Costello, John A.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry M.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Hughes, James.
- Keating, John.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Sheldon, William A. W.