I move amendment No. 3:—
In subsection (1), page 4, line 47, after "dwelling" to add: "and to business premises let on the passing of this Act other than premises referred to in section 3, subsection (2) (e) of the Act of 1946, until they are vacated by the tenant who occupied them at the date of the passing of this Act."—Declan Costello.
In regard to this amendment, which I am moving on behalf of Deputy Declan Costello, it seeks to give effect to a principle which we have tried to maintain in regard to this Bill as a whole. The plain fact is that once a community gets involved in the whole complex of rent restrictions, a whole series of inequities build up over the years. We have had rent restriction in this country in one form or another for over 40 years. We all know perfectly well there are many deserving landlords here whose premises are set at uneconomic rents and whose circumstances demand sympathetic consideration. On the other hand, we all know that as a survival of the whole system of rent restriction you have many families living in controlled houses and if there were any serious increase in their rent, their economic survival would become virtually impossible. The ideal condition is that there should be enough houses for everybody, and perhaps a modest surplus, so that rent agreements between tenants and landlords would be fair and equitable agreements between willing vendors and willing purchasers. But so long as the shortage of housing accommodation continues there remains this residual problem of hardship on landlords and hardship on tenants.
Our approach to this Bill has been that we sought to divide these cases into three broad categories—the circumstances of the sitting tenant, the circumstances of the vacated premises and the circumstances of the premises that have never been subject to rent control at all, those subsequent to 1941. We have felt that the post-1941 premises are reasonably provided for and that, in the case of premises constructed prior to that vital date, on their being vacated it was reasonable to allow landlords to have some equitable adjustment of the rent receivable in respect of these premises.
In that connection it is right to recall to the Deputies on all sides of the House that the word "landlord" in this country has become so associated in the minds of our people with ancient historic events connected with the Land War and so forth, that people are liable to forget that a considerable number of the landlords affected by these Rent Restriction Bills are in fact people in very modest circumstances who have been left small properties out of which to get their living. You frequently discover on investigation of who a landlord is that you are dealing with an elderly widow or elderly people in straitened circumstances who have a very exiguous income from rents receivable in respect of small parcels of property commonly bequeathed to them. That should not close our minds to the other fact, and that is when you have had rent restriction operating over a period of 40 years a large body of enterprising speculators have bought houses subject to rent control, and the purchase price they paid for those houses was calculated in the knowledge that the premises they were purchasing were subject to rent control.
Those are merely two complications of this extremely complex and difficult subject. Then you come to the premises that are occupied by people in very modest circumstances and who, maybe for 20 or 25 years, have been paying what everybody is prepared to concede today is, in their present circumstances, an uneconomic rent. You have got to weigh the equity to see that substantial justice is done. pending the realisation of ideal justice. But you cannot have on the road to reform a social revolution every morning. If sitting tenants are to be made subject to pretty stiff rent increases, what seems to be a trivial matter to Members of this House may be a very severe burden on people in modest circumstances.
Half-a-crown may not be much to any of us sitting here but it may be a very grave burden on people living on small premises many of which fall within the category of occupied premises under existing rent restriction law. Nor should we forget that into this category of sitting tenants, as I understand it, will fall a considerable number of small shopkeepers who are transacting business on a minimal scale, who may find an increase in rent to be the last straw that breaks the camel's back. I refer to people who do a little trading in vegetables or sweets or in businesses of that kind, which scarcely qualify for the description of a shop and yet is the sole means of survival for a little family trying to maintain its independence and is succeeding in doing so.
We feel that in trying to unravel this 40-years-old tangle of rent restriction and control we ought to accept the principle that for the present a sitting tenant should not be subjected to the arbitrary increase in their rent. There is provision in existing legislation, as I understand it, that where a landlord carries out a certain type of repair he may have recourse to the appropriate authorities to have an adjustment in the rent fixed which bears a relation to the capital cost of the repairs he has carried out. But this is a proposal for a general, all-round increase in rents on sitting tenants. I do not deny that you will find cases in which it is a very hard thing—much harder on the proprietor—to deny him the right to this flat increase than it would be for the sitting tenant to pay, but hard cases make bad law and taking the general picture, we feel that there should not be an arbitrary right to increase rents in respect of sitting tenants.
This is not the last Bill that will ever be passed in regard to rent control; it is by no means the first and the general tendency has been towards the relaxation of control and, as our supply of houses and accommodation approximates more closely to the total demand, the need for rent control will steadily decline. We feel, in existing circumstances, the balance of equity and of good social progress demands that there should be that concession in respect of sitting tenants.
Some Deputies may say that there are cases of the most acute difficulty in which the rent paid by the tenant bears no relation to the economic value of the house and that the landlord urgently requires relief. Such cases may exist—I have no doubt some would come to light if a detailed investigation were made—but there are two prospective avenues open to the landlord in those circumstances. One is the effluxion of time which means that ordinarily the tenant will move out leaving the premises vacant and the landlord greater freedom to adjust the rent in respect of an incoming tenant. The other is, if the landlord urgently wishes to get control of the premises and is in a position to do so and is able to afford it, it is usually possible to offer some monetary inducement to the sitting tenant to secure a vacant premises when the landlord can make adjustments in accordance with the provisions in this Bill.
Even with those two reliefs present to our minds, we must not close our eyes to the fact that there may remain certain hard cases and in respect of that, all I can say is that one has to balance one evil against another. I suggest that we would be gravely mitigating the inconvenience or hardship which would arise from a proposal to increase rent on all sitting tenants in the country if we abandon that proposal and accept the proposition that these arbitrary increases will not be allowed in respect of sitting tenants whereas in respect of vacant premises or post-1941 premises there will either be a degree of freedom or total freedom to settle the rent as between tenant and landlord.
I want to emphasise that it is not present to our mind—and it should not be present to the mind of any fair-minded Deputy—to represent all landlords as being wealthy proprietors as opposed to tenants who are universally impoverished or in straitened circumstances. Nor would it be honest to make the alternative case that all landlords are people who own these premises and have seen their incomes depreciating over the years, because that is not true. A great many of these premises were acquired subject to rent control and therefore any arbitrary increase in rent is a purely uncovenanted benefit for the person who bought the house 10 or 15 years ago and who paid a price for it that had regard to the existence of rent restrictions. We should not dismiss from our minds that even though we accept the principle that there should be no increase on sitting tenants that does not create a rigid, unalterable situation between proprietor and tenant because there still remains open the remedy provided by the effluxion of time on the one hand, which may result in the tenant voluntarily moving away or the possibility of the landlord on the other hand making some deal with the tenant to relinquish his tenancy for some modest capital sum.
I am not seeking to suggest that this proposal is founded on any basic ethical principle; I am simply trying to commend to the House a remedy for an existing situation, in which we cannot escape, no matter how we approach it in legislation, from a residue of hardship somewhere. Our aim is to produce the minimum hardship and to effect the maximum reform, and I think the Government would be wise to accept the principle which the amendment seeks to affirm. If the terms of this amendment do not conveniently produce it, it would be very easy on Report Stage to find a suitable form of words to do so.
