andMr. P. Belton asked the Minister for Local Government if he intends to make adjustment in B scale differential rents to meet the serious objections being raised by tenants all over the country who have been obliged to accept this scheme.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Differential Rents.
6.
Proposals for the adjustment of rents are a matter for the local authority who provide and maintain the houses.
In view, however, of the publicity given to B scale rents, I think I should set out some basic facts about them.
B scale rents apply to new lettings of houses or flats provided by Dublin Corporation since 1st January, 1954. They do not apply to lettings made before 28th February, 1966. There is no scheme of the same name applying in any other area of the country.
Under the scheme, the rent for an ordinary local authority house or four-roomed flat ranges from 6s 6d to 85s a week. These rents include rates up to the level reached in 1964-65. If the rates are excluded, the actual figure for rent ranges from a negative sum (since the minimum of the scale is insufficient to cover the rates up to 1964-65) to about 73s a week, on average. Within the range of the scale, the tenant is asked to pay one-sixth of the combined family income, after deductions from the principal income and the income of other earners, allowances for children, certain social welfare payments, etc.
To meet the average cost to the corporation of providing, maintaining and administering a house in the current financial year a rent of approximately £6 a week would be required. The cost of a flat is substantially higher. For example, the cost of a four-roomed flat in Keogh Square, Inchicore, is equivalent to a rent of more than £10 a week. These figures do not include any sum for rates.
Even, therefore, if a person is on the maximum of the B scale, he is not paying what similar accommodation is now costing to provide, or what he would have to pay for a privately rented flat. If he is in a modern house, he is getting a rent subsidy of about £2 7s a week: if he is in a four-roomed flat his rent subsidy is over £6 7s a week, paid by taxpayers and ratepayers. A man with a wife and four children would need to have an income of £28 10s a week before he would pay the maximum of the B scale. With £18 a week, he would pay £2 10s a week including rates up to the level reached in 1964-65.
It is worth comparing this figure with what the man would have to pay if he were to buy a house with the aid of a small dwellings loan from the local authority. The comparison is a real one since, as statistics published by my Department show, about 58 per cent of all persons raising housing loans from the local authority have incomes of £1,050 a year (£21 a week approximately) or less. Assuming the borrower puts down a deposit of £800 and borrows the average amount of a loan in Dublin of £2,850, his outgoings on the house after taking into account this deposit and State and local authority grants, will be over £5 a week, plus ground rent, insurance, maintenance, et cetera, and one-tenth of the rates in the first year, two-tenths in the second year and so on.
The allowances under the B scale for persons with low incomes or with many children are more generous than those under other corporation rent schemes. Many hundreds of persons have, in fact, opted to go on to the B scale since it was introduced some years ago and have got reductions in rent of up to 19s a week. This effect is concealed from the bulk of the tenants who may in this way be misled into acting as pawns for those who should not be in local authority housing at all. Further, if a man's income falls because of unemployment, strikes, illness or on retirement his rent falls immediately, so that the scheme is, in effect, a form of insurance.
The cost of keeping rents of corporation housing low is met by the State from general taxation and by the local authority from rates. In 1964-65 this cost amounted to £1,577,000. In the current financial year, it is now estimated at over £3,500,000. The corporation estimate that their rent income in the same year will be about £2,800,000. In other words, taxpayers and ratepayers are now paying more each year towards provision and maintenance of corporation housing than are the persons living in it. These taxpayers and ratepayers include many thousands of local authority tenants on low incomes in Dublin and elsewhere. There is need for a differential rents scheme which allows persons in need to get decent housing at a rent far below the cost. Without this sort of system many persons now in good housing simply could not have got it and many persons on the local authority waiting lists could never get it. There is need for subsidies to maintain the system. My concern is that these subsidies should not go to persons who do not need them and that they should not absorb money which should be used for building decent houses for the many thousands of people still without them. The £3,500,000 to be spent in subsidising Dublin Corporation housing in 1969-70 could build another 1,200 houses if it were available for that purpose. The £14.5 million paid since 1964-65 in subsidies for Dublin Corporation housing alone, would, allowing for differences in cost, have built another 6,000 houses approximately— or sufficient to provide a house for more than all the persons now on the corporation's approved waiting list for housing. I know that the majority of people now living in the comparatively good accommodation provided for them by the local authority do not object to paying for their accommodation and would not willingly be party to a slowing down through the use of money for subsidies which should be used in the drive to build houses for those who have still not got them, including in many cases their own sons, daughters and relatives who may be living with them and waiting for a house. I know also that many genuine grievances exist—and may be inevitable in an estate of more than 50,000 houses—for example, because of the accumulation of arrears through delays in reviewing incomes for rent purposes, and I have asked the corporation to look into these problems.
Many people in corporation houses who pay rents which vary with income would wish to buy their houses and so convert their varying payments into a fixed sum each week or month for purchase. The corporation are pressing ahead with their scheme to give tenants an opportunity to buy their houses and I understand that over 8,000 tenants have, in fact, expressed an interest in purchase. The corporation are also giving preferential treatment to tenants who wish to buy their own houses with the aid of house-purchase loans and supplementary grants.
Is the Minister not aware that the main objection raised by the tenants is the fact that the deductions in respect of children are not the same as they were in the original differential rents scheme?
A Cheann Comhairle, on a point of order. The Minister has comprehensively over the past two hours dealt with this problem and because Deputies Clinton and Cluskey were not here, they are now holding up the business of the House.
The Deputy may not raise a point of order at this stage.
On a point of order. The administration of this scheme is not a matter for the Minister. It is a matter for Dublin Corporation.
On a point of order.
The Deputy is entitled to ask a supplementary question.
Is it not a fact that this scheme was imposed by the Minister himself and not by Dublin Corporation——
True.
——and is it not a fact that the main objection is that the deductions in respect of children are not the same as they were in the original differential rents scheme? The tenants also consider it most unfair that all overtime is taken into consideration in calculating the rent, irrespective of whether or not it is overtime they must do.
First of all, it is not a fact, as Deputy Clinton and other Deputies in this House know, that this scheme was imposed by me on Dublin Corporation.
That is untrue and the Minister knows it is untrue. That is an untruth.
On the contrary. As Deputy Cluskey knows——
That is untrue and the Minister knows it.
As Deputy Cluskey knows, from his own personal knowledge——
It was never agreed by Dublin City Council. The Minister imposed this plan.
If Deputy Cluskey does not cease interrupting I will ask him to leave the House.
It is a pity you would not ask the Minister to leave.
As Deputy Cluskey knows from his own personal knowledge, so far from this being imposed by me, this was a scheme that was substantially amended by me in favour of the tenants before being sanctioned.
Very substantially amended in favour of the Minister.
Order.
This was a scheme which came to me with the recommendation and approval of the elected members of the Dublin City Council which I, as Minister for Local Government, considered to be too severe on the tenants and which I amended substantially.
A complete and utter falsehood.
I considered it to be too severe on the tenants and I amended it in their favour.
A complete and utter falsehood.
And, as Deputy Cluskey knows——
That the Minister is telling untruths.
——the differential rents scheme is a matter coming within the province of the local authority and a matter with which the Minister has nothing to do beyond the fact that he sanctions it, with or without amendment, when it is submitted to him, as this scheme was by Dublin Corporation.
A complete and utter falsehood.
With regard to Deputy Clinton's second supplementary question, it is true that the deductions in respect of children are not the same as they were in the older forms of differential rents. They are substantially more favourable to the tenants.
1s 9d against 10s.
They provide for much more substantial deductions in the case of children's earnings. With regard to the question of overtime, as I have been explaining to the House, it would be completely unjust to other tenants, particularly to the less well-off tenants, to ignore overtime earnings. This is a recommendation to perpetrate an injustice which I would not sanction but, at the same time, there is probably something to be said for the case that is sometimes made that there is extra expense involved in the earning of overtime and if any local authority, in Dublin or anywhere else, submits a proposal to me for the taking into account of overtime earnings in a different way from that at present in operation in schemes where the maximum rent covers the cost of the house, I am prepared to consider it favourably. This is not a matter really for the Minister for Local Government; it is a matter for the local authority concerned.
Is it not a fact that 2s 6d was deducted from the increase of 7s 6d to the old age pensioners and then the Minister goes around shouting about the increase while he takes 2s 6d off that increase by increasing the rents?
I did not deduct anything from any social welfare payments or anything else. Deputies on the opposite side do not seem to know whether or not they want local government to continue.
Do not come that now.
The operation of renting schemes is vested in local authorities. These are implemented by local authorities and not by the Minister for Local Government.
The Minister is the boss now. He dissolved the local authority.
I have neither hand, act nor part in the control of Dublin Corporation or any other local authority in the country.
Deputy Cluskey.
Is the Minister saying——
I am calling Deputy Cluskey.
——that the only person who has any power is the commissioner?
Would the Minister not agree that the scheme as proposed by the elected representatives was rejected by the Minister on the grounds that, in his view, it was an uneconomic rent that was being asked for and is it not a fact that the Minister, when he failed to get the majority of Dublin City Council to vote in favour of this disgraceful burden being placed on the local authority tenants in this city, then instructed the City Manager to impose the B-scale rents over the heads of the elected representatives?
What Deputy Cluskey has alleged is contrary to the facts. So far from rejecting this scheme proposed by the Dublin Corporation on the basis that the rents charged were not high enough, I amended it in favour of the tenants.
Even the Minister's own fellows will not believe that.
Nobody believes that.
The scheme I amended came to me with the approval and recommendation of the elected members of Dublin City Council, on which there was, of course, a Coalition majority.
Question No. 7.
Is the Minister aware——
I am calling Question No. 7.
On a point of order.
There is no point of order. I am calling Question No. 7.
It is a point of order. The Minister was allowed to spend approximately eight to ten minutes answering the original question. Now one of the Deputies in whose name the question stands is not being allowed to ask a supplementary.
This is a matter for the Chair. I have allowed three supplementaries.