There was a danger— it still exists—that our society would be organised in such a way that you would have a super-structure above the ground without adequate foundations and an artificial growth with insufficient roots. Any structure of that kind, whether it be contrived by man or whether it be the product of man's application to nature, will tend to be overthrown, tend to fall over in times of stress and in times of storm. We are very lucky in that the principal development in our society in recent times has been the manner in which the roots have been extended and the way in which our society has taken on greater security by the growth of tenant and residents' organisations because the roots of our society have now gone down and our society can, therefore, be better nourished, better governed and more secure than it would be if we merely had a bureaucratic growth imposed upon it. To treat such organisations as arrogant, as selfish, as pressure groups without merit, which is what the Minister has done, is to do a grave disservice to our society. I would urge the Minister to listen and, having listened, to consider the merits of the representations and to endeavour to achieve a rent scheme which will be more acceptable than that which at present operates.
We know that much of the disincentive to working overtime, one of the disincentives to the increase in productivity in industry, is the immense taxation which is taken off earnings, partly by income tax and partly by differential rent schemes. The knowledge that up to one-third of one's income will be taken off in tax and a further one-sixth in differential rent is a serious disincentive to people endeavouring to increase their earnings. What is particularly unfair in relation to the assessment of overtime earnings is the fact that quite frequently in our industrial society overtime is but a temporary experience. The differential rent scheme is such that a person's rent is more often than not assessed in arrear and a person is, therefore, called upon to pay a higher rent at a time when his income is reduced. If overtime is seasonal the increased rent is not paid during the time of increased earnings and, in the pattern of our society, in which savings are not engaged in to the extent to which they should perhaps, there are very few people who have sufficient put aside to meet the increased differential rent which is assessed at the time when overtime is discontinued.
Quite often the reason for the cessation of overtime may be due to domestic circumstances, not to the fact that overtime is not available but because the ill-health of the earner, of the worker, prevents him working overtime or because the ill-health or the domestic circumstances of some particular member of the family may make the earning of overtime impossible. At such times, when the income is reduced and there are extra burdens upon the family fortunes, we have the unfair practice of charging a higher rent than that which obtains when the income is greater. These are samples of the kind of elements within our existing system which give rise to dissatisfaction and it seems to me only appropriate that the Minister should endeavour to have such changes made in the system as would obviate these difficulties. We know that there are certain allowances deducted from earnings before income is assessed for rent purposes. It is very proper, I think, that we should now consider the adequacy of the allowances. The current allowances were fixed five years ago after a delay of 17 years from the time the previous allowances were fixed and, when they were fixed five years ago, they were totally inadequate. Whatever inadequacy they had then has been multiplied in the passing years.
One of the greatest failings of the differential rent scheme is the fact that it does not give adequate allowances in respect of necessary family expenses. We know in the Dublin area, for instance, that 82 to 84 per cent of the people are not entitled to the medical card and are, therefore, deprived of free medical services for ordinary home medical expenses, but such expenses are not taken into consideration in the calculation of a family's means and there are many cases in which serious hardship occurs, in which weekly health bills can be from £2 to £5, and more, per week. No consideration is given to that aspect in the assessment of means for differential rent purposes even though such necessary payments are made from the family income. This seems to me to be a very serious difficulty. Mark you, people who are fortunate enough to have sufficient to pay income tax are allowed, but only in recent years, health expenses.
We listened for many years to Fianna Fáil Ministers saying it would be impossible to have a scheme under which health allowances against tax could be given in respect of necessary medical expenses but, in the long run, the simplicity of the proposal and the fairness of it won out and such allowances are now permitted for income tax purposes. I would urge the Minister to amend the differential rent scheme so that necessary medical expenses, which are not covered by the local authority through the medical card system, or otherwise, are allowable before the assessment of income for the purpose of calculating differential rent. As has already been mentioned, hardship occurs quite frequently because of delays on the part of the local authority in the assessment of a person's means with the result that even thrifty tenants who discharge all their obligations under the scheme of notification of income to the local authority find that considerable debits are charged against them in bulk with instant demands for prompt payment and with embarrassing and expensive legal proceedings if prompt payment is not forthcoming.
To argue this way is not to criticise the unfortunate officials who are called upon to operate the differential rent scheme. It is, of course, where people have small incomes, a reasonable scheme because it allows them to pay a much smaller rent than is economic and than they would otherwise have to bear but it can be a very harsh scheme because it is so inflexible, because it does not adjust itself rapidly enough to family fortunes and because bureaucracy, being what it is, inevitably delays occur with consequential injustices and big debts being imposed upon unfortunate families.
We concerned ourselves a great deal last year, here and elsewhere, with the social problems that arise out of money lending. Although the matter was inquired into we are not all happy that the full truth is yet known or that our society is sufficiently protected against the danger of money lending. But, let it be said here, that quite often one of the causes for people going to money lenders, licensed and unlicensed, and paying to them tremendous rates of interest is these debits that are applied against them under the differential rents scheme. Where such people are faced with the alternatives of eviction or paying their rents they must, in most cases, go cap-in-hand to the money lenders in order to get their money. Great praise is due to the credit union movement for coming to the rescue of many people who find themselves, through no fault of their own, faced with considerable debits under the differential rents scheme but, as is only human, people look with suspicion upon tenants in any sector, whether public or private, who have considerable rent arrears to pay and it is not always possible to get advances from the credit unions to pay differential rents.
So, here we have this evil, this cause of dissatisfaction arising out of the operation of differential rent schemes. To identify these things as we are doing is not to say that in principle the scheme is wrong but it is to remind the Minister that there are matters which deserve immediate examination and that there are possibly several remedies or better schemes which could be introduced. Our request, sincerely made, is that the Minister would endeavour to adopt a scheme which would meet some of these particular problems.
Ultimately, responsibility for every differential rent scheme lies with the Minister for Local Government. One of the great drawbacks of the so-called system of local government that operates here is that it is in most cases little more than a distribution of responsibility or blame or an instrument for confusing the people as to whole is ultimately to blame for any act of any local authority or public authority. But no differential rent scheme may be applied by any local authority which does not conform with the requirements of the Minister for Local Government, his general requirements in the first instance and his particular permission in the final analysis. Therefore, each of the differential rent schemes in operation in Dublin or elsewhere, A, B or C, or the scheme in operation since 1st November, 1970, for houses let since then, has the nihil obstat, the imprimatur and approval and blessing of the Minister and therefore whatever variations local authorities may suggest to the Minister, he cannot escape from the fact that any scheme is his scheme and that he is totally responsible for it, and if the scheme does not meet with his approval it is open to him to decline to give his consent to it.
I ask the Minister to deal with one particular aspect in regard to housing rents of local authorities and that is how he can justify making a change of, say, £5 per week under a differential rent scheme for a house which was built 30 or 35 years ago at a cost of £500. Applying a rent of such dimensions to such a property means the local authority can recover within two years the capital cost of a property which was built 30 or 35 years ago. The theory, of course, is that the cost of replacing such a property today has to be related to present-day or potential cost and not to the cost at the time of building. This is a matter which causes grave dissatisfaction to tenants and before the Minister blithely assumes that everybody is content and that nobody is unhappy he should apply his mind to these things which certainly are a cause of unease and upset.
Dublin is a vast and growing area and one of the principal causes of complaint on the part of tenants is that they have to travel so far at such great inconvenience and often at such cost in order to have their appropriate rents assessed by an official in the corporation office in Jervis Street. I ask the Minister to urge Dublin Corporation. to open at various convenient places throughout the city local rent offices so that assessments could be made without requiring the breadwinner as happens in many cases to give up a half day's employment or more and then on presenting himself at the differential rent office having to join a long queue of people before his particular problem is dealt with. This is not fair. This imposes a burden of inconvenience on tenants which we must endeavour to discourage so that tenants will be treated as they are entitled to be treated: with all the respect which is theirs as citizens of no mean city, tenants who are good breadwinners, good family people, good members of society and who have genuine grievances and are not looking for the earth, not expecting the Minister or the corporation to give them free accommodation. They are not looking for gifts. All they are asking is that their reasonable complaints receive sympathetic consideration, and their experience in the past shows that they have not been receiving that consideration.
I should like to return briefly to the question of the allowances that are to be given. Any working man in one of the large corporation estates who uses the bus to go to and from his place of employment and works a five-day week will pay not less than 14s 2d and in many cases up to 18s for making one journey to his work and one journey home per day. That is on the basis of present-day bus fares and I am talking about the minimum payable from places like Ballyfermot, Finglas and Ballymun and, as the Minister knows, the new housing estates are being built more and more remote from the city centre. In many cases, because of the unsatisfactory pattern of building, people who work on the south side of the city, perhaps on the outskirts of the south side, at Tallaght or Clondalkin, are being housed in Coolock and Ballymun. On that account their bus fares can go up to £1 10s or £2 per week. What is such a person allowed as a necessary deduction before calculation of means for the purpose of determining the differential rent he should pay? £1 is the figure although even at the time this was fixed bus fares were about 50 per cent of what they are today. This clearly indicates that these basic deductions must be substantially increased.
Strangely enough, the principal income earner is allowed a deduction of only £1 but other earners of income in the house are allowed deductions of £3 a week. I would urge on the Minister that the allowance of the principal earner should not be less than £3. That will not be enough to pay his bus fares or his other necessary personal expenses which are vital and over which he has no control.
