First of all, I want to thank the Minister for altering the date of commencement for the new limit of 1,249 square feet from 31st August to 31st December, 1970.
Housing Bill, 1970: Fifth Stage.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do now pass".
I intend to introduce an amendment to that effect in the Seanad.
There is one matter on which I should like some clarification. Farmers who are entitled to special grants may now, if they happen to live in or near a town, build their houses in a town and qualify for the special grants. Paragraph 9 of the explanatory memorandum states:
Under the Housing Act, 1966, the Minister may pay grants at a higher rate to farmers and certain other persons providing houses in rural areas. It is proposed to enable these to be paid to farmers providing houses in urban areas. Power will also be given to housing authorities to pay a supplementary grant where the Minister has paid a "further" grant for reconstruction. It is intended that both provisions should have retrospective effects (sections 3, 8 and 12).
Does this new concession apply to farmers only? That is what appears to be stated in the explanatory memorandum. I gathered from the Minister's speech that the concession is being applied to all, farmers and others, covered under section 3. Farm workers, if they happened to be in a position to build their own houses, qualified for these special grants. There should be no curtailment of these grants and, if a special concession is now being given to farmers, it should also be given to the others who were covered previously. I should like the Minister to clarify the position.
I notice section 5 provides for an extension of grants to houses provided for industrial workers. The Minister envisages these houses being provided by the National Building Agency. One takes no objection to that. The only comment I should like to make on that concerns the grants themselves. I regret the Minister did not see fit to advance them. In 1948 their limit was £1,650. Now, in 1970, it is £1,850. This small advance is not keeping pace with the falling value of money and the increase in the cost of building. It is the same grant which presumably would now apply to houses being built for key industrial workers. Failure to advance these grants puts an increasing load upon local authorities.
In the ten year period 1949-50 to 1958-59, covering roughly the period of office of the two inter-Party Governments, 100,000 houses were built of which 50.5 per cent were local authority houses. In the eleven year period 1959-60 to 1969-70, 95,000 houses were built of which 28.6 per cent were local authority houses. I accept that this is Government policy but I suggest we have, perhaps, moved too far and that the decline in local authority housing is doing less than social justice to the less privileged sections of our community. Several minor concessions have been given in the interval to those who provide their own houses but I consider that the key to the fall in the percentage of local authority housing is the failure to advance the subsidy level to local authorities for such housing. The Minister will probably say that the change is due to the increasing affluence of our society. That stereotyped answer is not much good to the person looking for a house who is unable to provide it from his own resources.
I would draw attention to two points under section 7. A county council may now pay urban bodies supplementary grants. This is a good thing because some small urban bodies were not doing so. I do not know whether they have been doing it in recent years but they were not paying supplementary grants for a long period in my own town of Cashel. From now out, supplementary grants will be universal.
The income limit for a supplementary grant is £1,049 and the valuation £60. With that, there is provision for family allowances up to I think £400. That is statutory under the 1966 Act. On the other hand, the income limit for a loan is quite different-£1,200 with a valuation of £50. One would think a person entitled to a supplementary grant would be entitled to a loan and that he would be treated at practically the same income and valuation levels. It seems anomalous to have two different systems here. Furthermore, no family allowance provision is built into the loan: it is fixed by regulation. Would it not be better for the Minister to fix some figure—say £1,500 and a valuation of £60, with family allowances? Surely it would be much more reasonable, administratively, to have the income level for both supplementary grant and loan the same? I fail to understand why they are dissimilar apart altogether from the fact that I consider they are on the low side.
On the Fifth Stage, only what is contained in the Bill may be debated.
I am asking the Minister to consider fixing a higher level, by regulation, for the loan.
That would not be in order on the Fifth Stage.
It is dealt with by regulation. The Minister has changed the system of measurement of houses from the number of rooms to square footage and then, after an interval, there will be a change to the metric system. There is an in between period which will be based upon square footage. Why was it deemed necessary to have that awkward interval? Would it not be more sensible to wait for a direct switch to the metric system? This unnecessary complication will tend to create confusion.
This is a very disappointing Bill from the point of view of getting more houses built. It does not face up to increasing expenses in the provision of houses. The housing grant is now applicable to a smaller type of house and many people will thereby lose the grant. There will also be a loss of stamp duty exemption. Under another Bill before the House, there will be a loss of rates remission, whether it be the one-tenth/nine-tenths remission or the seven year remission.
As reported at column 1325, volume 245, of the Official Report the Minister for Finance said that this will mean a loss of £1,000, roughly, per person. He also stated that, under the present regulations, 82 per cent of the applicants will qualify. This means that about 20 per cent will not qualify, and another 20 per cent will be at a loss of £1,000 per person. This means that 1,500 or 1,600 prospective homemakers, if they still desire to build houses of a certain size, will be penalised individually to the tune of £1,000. This is based on the statement made by the Minister for Finance.
In view of the statement made by Deputy Boland, I think, that a £6,000 limit for grants will be put into operation—and it appears that this can be done under the 1966 Act, presumably by regulation—I should like to ask the Minister if he intends to implement that or if he has already done so.
(Cavan): I will detain the House for a few moments only on this matter. I rise principally to deal with the reduction in the floor area of the houses that are to qualify for grants. This is a retrograde step. The proposal is that the floor area is to be reduced from 1,500 square feet to 1,250 square feet. The effect of that will be to encourage a great number of people to build smaller houses in order to qualify for a State grant and for remission of rates. The really serious aspect of this, as I see it, is that the probability is that the bedrooms of the houses will suffer; that people will build smaller bedrooms. That is probably not in the interests of the health of the community in general. People building houses should be encouraged to have decent sized bedrooms, well ventilated and airy and with a decent floor space. It is not necessary to speak about this at any great length in order to make the point I rise to make.
It is difficult to understand why the Minister decided to reduce the floor area as he has done. I could understand him putting an upper price limit on houses to prevent luxury buildings from qualifying for grants, but I cannot see why he has set out— as this Bill definitely does—to encourage people to reduce substantially the floor area of the house. Fewer useful houses will be built. As I say, there will be a temptation to economise on
(Cavan): bedroom space in order to provide other facilities. I feel strongly about that. It is not in the interests of the health of the community. It is a most retrograde step.
I am glad the Minister has decided to postpone the coming into operation of the Act or some portions of it until the end of the year to give people an opportunity to catch up with the delays caused by the cement strike. I do not think the grants provided are in line with the increased cost of building. For a great number of years there was no increase in the grants for reconstruction of houses. I am sorry the Minister did not avail of the opportunity in this measure to increase these grants which have not been increased for many years. If they were increased, many houses could be brought up to a reasonable standard. I particularly want to protest against the reduction in the floor area.
I should like to apologise to Deputy Hogan because, when the Committee Stage of the Bill came before the House, there was some misunderstanding among the Fine Gael Deputies and I do not think we had the full and useful discussion we might have wished to have. As Deputy Hogan knows, that was mostly his own fault and I do not think he holds it against anybody.
This Bill is a very important measure. I was disappointed, to a certain extent, by the attitude of the Opposition parties in not accepting the Bill wholeheartedly, and at the efforts they made to create the impression that because of the new scheme for house grants, we would be encouraging the building of houses which would be too small. In actual fact, this is not the case. On Second Stage it was set out quite clearly that, through the proposals in the Bill, we are directing the moneys which are available to the State for housing to those who are in the greatest need. Our whole purpose is to ensure that the most help is given where it is most needed and that, by encouraging the provision of reasonable sized houses, the grants system, which affects about two out of every three houses, will ensure that for any given volume of capital the greatest possible unit output of houses of a reasonable standard will be achieved.
I should like to emphasise again that the floor space of the average local authority house is about 800 square feet. We must keep that figure in mind. On average this is the size of house that local authorities have been building in recent years. This is a substantial improvement on the standard of house which was being built up to some years ago. The average size of a house built with the aid of a loan from a local authority is about 1,000 square feet. When we talk about a house with a floor space of 1,000 or 1,100 square feet I think it would be no harm to remind the House that the floor space of the house which was commercially sponsored as the "house of the year" this year, was 1,100 square feet. The floor area proposed for grant aided houses exceeds that figures and goes to 1,249 square feet. It is only reasonable to expect that a person who can afford to build a luxury or semi-luxury type house should do so without State aid. In many of these cases the grant has no great bearing on the building of the house at all and is of little assistance to the person who can afford to build a house of that size.
Generally speaking, the size of house in Ireland is in excess of the average in European countries so our standards in this regard are quite good.
Deputy Hogan referred to grants being paid to farmers who, when this Bill is enacted, will qualify for the higher rate of grant although building the house in an urban area. That concession will apply only to farmers and not to any other classes who would have qualified for the higher grant in rural areas. It applies only to those deriving their livelihood solely or mainly from farming.
The Deputy mentioned increasing the income limit for supplementary grants. I intend introducing an amendment in the Seanad to increase to £1,250 the income limit, which at present stands at £1,045.
Good.
I think this will be a great advance in providing more financial assistance to those most in need of it. Taking into account the additional £400 for dependants—up to four dependants at £100 each—this would mean that a person with four dependants and with an income under £1,650 would qualify for the supplementary grants available from local authorities.
The Deputy referred to the change to the metric system and said that we should have made a direct change from the number of rooms to square metres. I think he will agree that it was necessary to give some time to those involved in house building to adjust themselves to the new measurements. That is why it was done in this fashion. The Deputy seemed to imply that the Bill was disappointing as regards getting more houses built, but it is estimated that the Bill will enable a further 1,000 houses to be built each year. In the quarter just ended more new house grants were allocated by the Department than in any other quarter for which there are statistics.
(Cavan): That is not surprising. There would obviously be a rush now to get in applications.
Grant allocations are running now at an annual rate of about 15,000 for private houses. I also intend introducing another amendment putting back the date on which these new provisions come into operation from 31st August to 31st December, 1970. The House was made aware of that on a previous occasion. I am doing this to facilitate persons who might have had plans made and were unable to proceed because of the cement strike, which has now happily ended. I hope we shall be able to get our house building programme under way as quickly as possible. I have made a special request to local authorities throughout the country asking them to cut corners wherever they can and to ensure that the minimum amount of red tape is involved. These special measures should ensure that the house building programme will get moving as quickly as possible and thus make up whatever ground was lost during the period of the strike.
Question put and agreed to.