There is a great deal to be said for what Deputy Dillon has said. He speaks from experience of rural Ireland and what he has said can be equally relevant as far as urban Ireland is concerned. The fact that they have not to travel long distances does not overcome the lack of understanding of elderly people affected by the edicts of local authorities. I am certain from my knowledge both as a public representative and in my professional activities that many hundreds of people were evicted from unfit houses in this city within the past few years who could have obtained compensation in the courts or elsewhere, if they had known their rights, but the local authority was concerned only with wielding whatever legislative powers it had, or believed it had, and in consequence, the rights of the people were trampled upon. Now many people are really destitute and without adequate shelter because we failed to allow the public authority to communicate to the people the rights which they had.
The glib answer of course is that every person should consult his or her lawyer when in difficulty, but people have as much reluctance about going to a lawyer as they have about going to a dentist or a doctor. Even if they did, they might find that the processes of law open to them were costly and long and not one an impecunious person could undertake. If we are ...giving powers to local authorities to evict people from property, or to oblige people to do so, we have an equal right to concern ourselves with the rights of individual tenants.
I notice that subsection (17) says that notwithstanding safeguards which Oireachtas Éireann has given to the small people of this country under the Landlord and Tenants Acts, 1931 and 1958, and the Rent Restrictions Act, 1960, those safeguards will have no application where local authorities seek to enforce section 66 of this Bill. I suppose the answer I will get is that this does not deny to a person the remedies for compensation or otherwise which may be available in those Acts. I say that that does not go far enough. I speak with some little experience. I am convinced that the effect of this will be that we will force many people to suffer hardship which at the moment the remainder of our law prevents them from suffering. I am also convinced that the effect of this section and of this subsection will be that many property owners will deliberately allow their property to run down and become unfit because by so doing they can hope to avoid obligations under the Landlord and Tenant Acts and the Rent Restrictions Acts. In future, if you are anxious to get hold of your own property without danger, the thing to do will be to remove the roof, or part of the roof, and it will then become unfit. No simpler remedy could be made available to unscrupulous landlords under this section and under the Second Schedule.
On that account, I would plead with the Minister to try to tighten up this section. There are between 1,700 and 2,000 words in this section alone. I shudder to think how long it would take our superior courts to interpret this section but I do not think it would take any unscrupulous property owner very long to realise that the section gives him freedom to take advantage of an unfortunate tenant by allowing the property to run down so that it will become unfit and a demolition order will be made. The result of all this will be that our second stage will be very much worse than the first. Section 66 requires that a housing authority shall declare properties to be unfit if they so find them. I am not certain whether the same obligation exists in present legislation, but I am satisfied that there are unfit dwellings in this city at present which are not being so declared because the authority do not wish to have more people on the public conscience than they already have.
For years we avoided the problem created by dangerous buildings by deliberately not condemning the buildings as dangerous. The result was the appalling calamities we had and the appalling situation which we have suffered from for some years past. We are going to create a similar position in regard to unfit dwellings. Unless we resume the lead we previously had and maintain the same rigid standards, we will not know how many we need to replace. On that account, while I am saying it is necessary to deal with the problem of unfit dwellings, to declare them unfit when you find them, and to deal with them, we should, while trying to achieve that particular goal, not give an instrument to unscrupulous property owners to take advantage of legislation to eject from their premises tenants who under other legislation would have a right to remain there.