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Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 7 Jul 1992

Vol. 133 No. 14

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 1992: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to bring before the Seanad this Bill which represents another important milestone in the advance of housing legislation in this country. It provides the legislative framework and authority for the housing policies that were spelled out in the Plan for Social Housing which was published last year.

The Social Housing Plan restates the long established objective of Government housing policy of ensuring that every household has a dwelling suitable to its needs, located in an acceptable environment, and at a price or rent that household can afford. The strategy to achieve this broad objective includes: promoting owner-occupation as the form of tenure preferred by most Irish people; developing and implementing a range of measures designed to address the wide and changing range of social housing needs; and mitigating, as far as possible, the extent and effect of social segregation in housing.

The thrust of the plan was agreed with the social partners in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. The plan, therefore, forms part of the agreed national strategy for economic and social development in the nineties.

The plan brings new thinking to bear on the ways we as a community respond to social housing needs. In this we must be conscious of the changing nature of housing needs and of the necessity to get the best value for money. Also, we must seek to help people to help themselves, to foster self-reliance instead of dependency and create greater choice in housing. Above all, we must learn from the lessons of the past. The range of innovative measures included in the plan is designed to provide a broader, more diverse response to social housing needs, to ease the path to home ownership for households of modest means and to improve the position of tenants in both the local authority and private rented sectors.

I want to reiterate at this point that there is a commitment in the plan and in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress to maintain the traditional local authority house building programme at an appropriate level having due regard to resources and to the impact of the alternative measures. The new measures in the plan are inteneded to complement that programme in a significant way.

It is not the Government's intention to return to local authority house building on the scale that obtained at times in the past or to the policy of building large schemes of public housing on greenfield sites. There are many compelling reasons we have to consider a more diverse approach. There are social reasons relating to the need to limit housing segregation and develop more socially mixed communities. There is a need to encourage people towards self-help and co-operative effort by making available appropriate subsidy schemes, to give them a choice about the kind of housing they want.

The high costs of the traditional approach to the public purse cannot be overlooked either. Here, I refer not just to the initial cost of providing the houses but, perhaps more significantly, to the ongoing cost burden which maintenance and management of local authority estates places on the taxpayer. It is salutary to reflect that the average new local authority house provided this year will be subsidised to the tune of £85 per week by the taxpayer.

The new social housing measures that could be operated in advance of legislation are already being implemented by the local authorities on the basis of interim arrangements devised by my Department. Initial doubts about the praticality of these interim arrangements, especially in relation to shared ownership, have proved to be unfounded.

While, generally, there has this year been a considerable pick-up in activity under the various new measures, I am still concerned at the uneven nature of the activity. Some local authorities have shown good progress and excellent initiative in availing of the measures and resources to really tackle the housing needs of their areas. However, others appear to have considerable difficulty in coming to grips with the plan and exploiting it to best effect and are not making the kind of progress I want to see.

To ensure that no authority is left behind, my Department will be arranging to meet as soon as possible with managers and other senior staff of those housing authorities who are having difficulties, to discuss with them what obstacles are hindering progress, to see how these obstacles can be overcome and to consider what further assistance can be given. In the meantime, my Department have requested authorities to carry out a mid-year review of their progress in implementing the new measures and to review progress on their housing programmes.

This year, as the plan measures show significant results, we can expect a substantial increase in the social housing provision. If the local authorities made full use of the various measures and resources at their disposal, we could cater for up to 7,000 households in 1992 — substantially more than last year. These global figures include local authority lettings and voluntary housing as well as the new measures. The enactment of the Bill, by providing proper statutory authority for these measures, should boost progress on the schemes already in operation by extending the ways in which they can work including the involvement of the private sector in crucial areas, such as shared ownership. It will, of course, also enable us to give effect to the other measures that it has not been possible to implement for legal reasons.

With the enactment of this Bill, the full corpus of primary housing legislation will be found in four housing Acts, namely, those of 1966, 1979,1988 and 1992. The Housing Act, 1966, is the foundation stone of modern housing legislation and provided the legal framework for our modern housing system.

The 1988 Act, for the first time in Irish housing legislation, made statutory provision to address the housing needs of homeless persons. It gave local authorities extensive and flexibile powers to deal with homelessness and it revised the law in relation to the planning, provision and allocation of local authority housing. It provided for full assessment of housing needs in a way that ensures that the needs of the homeless, travellers and other disadvantaged groups are taken into account. The fact that, in this Bill, we now have another major measure relatively soon after the important 1988 Act, shows that housing is an area of public policy that receives continuing attention; and that is as it should be.

I now want to make some comments to the House on the principal things this Bill seeks to do. I will start with shared ownership, which is a radical new concept in housing in this country. Following detailed consideration of the best means of giving effect to the concept of shared ownership, the system involving the granting by local authorities of a special type of lease, called a shared ownership lease, was introduced in the social housing plan. Specific legislative provision is needed for it as there has been a general prohibition on the granting of new leases for houses since the 1978 Landlord and Tenant Act, which prevented the creation of new ground rents. The Bill not alone provides a statutory authority for the granting of shared ownership by local authorities but also opens up the possibility of this form of tenure being offered by bodies other than housing authorities.

The need to find at the outset 100 per cent of the purchase price, by way of a loan and a substantial deposit, reduces, or even rules out altogether, the prospect of home ownership for many on lower incomes who would see it as their preferred form of tenure. By having to wait until they can afford conventional house purchase, such persons may not be able to go ahead until a stage when the cost might be much greater, or they may find that the opportunity to purchase continues to elude them. This is where shared ownership provides a solution.

The Bill will make the acquisition of a home of their own, through the shared ownership system a viable proposition for households who would otherwise have much less chance of realising their ambition. Shared ownership will give them the opportunity of selecting a house of their choice and going into occupation of it with a minimal deposit and with regular outgoings that are significantly less than under a conventional mortgage.

Section 2 contains the general power to grant shared ownership leases. It allows such a lease to be granted by any person and this would include a housing authority, a financial institution or a developer. It stipulates that the lease period must be between 20 and 100 years and that a payment of between 25 per cent and 75 per cent of the value of the house is made by the lessee for the lease. The lease must also confer on the lessee the right to purchase the lessor's interest in the house on terms determined in accordance with the lease itself.

The basic parameters, both in relation to the term of the lease and the proportion of the equity initially purchased, have been designed to ensure that the exemption from the ban on new leases is not used to facilitate the introduction of new ground rents. Only bona fide shared ownership transactions can avail of the exemption. The initial equity state of between 25 per cent and 75 per cent recognises that shared ownership is not a realistic option for a purchaser who is unable to raise at least one-quarter of the purchase price at the outset. Conversely, anyone who can put up over 75 per cent of the cost should be able to acquire a house in the ordinary way and should not need to go the shared ownership route.

Within these broad parameters, the details in individual cases, where the local authority is not the person granting the lease, will be worked out between the parties involved in accordance with their respective requirements.

Section 3 governs the granting of shared ownership leases by housing authorities. The detailed provisions of such leases, eligibility, etc., will be spelt out in regulations to be made by the Minister under this section. Senators will be familiar with the shared ownership system being operated by housing authorities under the interim arrangements already in force. Section 3 provides considerable flexibility for any changes in the terms of that system that might be considered desirable in the future.

Section 4 provides broad powers for the payment of subsidy towards rent payments by lower income households in shared ownership. Payment of rent is a feature of the system since the occupier under a shared ownership lease has only paid a portion of the value and is not the full owner. Therefore, it is open to the lessor — be it a local authority or other body — to charge a rent for occupation until the buy-out of the lease has been completed. The purpose of the subsidy is to bring access to shared ownership within the capacity of households on low incomes and also to provide a cushion for those in shared ownership who may suffer a drop in earnings. Under the current system, a shared owner with an income of under £10,000 is eligible for a graduated subsidy.

Up to 31 March last, local authorities had received a total of over 1,700 applications for shared ownership. Of these almost 600 had received approval in principle with the transactions having been completed in some 70 cases. While returns for the second quarter are not yet to hand the indications are that further solid progress in approving applications and completing transactions was achieved in that period.

Shared ownership is new to this country but it has worked successfully elsewhere. I believe it can also have an important role in our housing system. There is a commitment to review the operation of the current shared ownership system after we have had some initial experience of it.

As I have said, the essence of the social housing plan is to broaden the range of possible responses to different social housing needs. In the past, there tended to be the opposite approach, a basic reliance on one solution — the provision of new local authority housing — to meet all needs. This often involved moving people away from areas where they had crucial family support and ties. We are all aware of the social problems caused by the concentration of the most disadvantaged in particular locations.

As many as 45 per cent of approved applicants for local authority housing are from households living in unfit, unsuitable or overcrowded dwellings. Up to now, the option of upgrading or extending some of those dwellings as a socially desirable and cost effective alternative to providing local authority housing has not been available. Section 5 changes that and should, in future, enable some housing applicants to obtain decent accommodation in their existing environment, possibly a lot sooner than if they were to wait to be rehoused.

It is expressly provided that works to provide houses under this section may only be carried out if they result either in a housing applicant being removed from the waiting list or the surrender of an existing tenanted or tenant purchase house to the housing authority. This latter provision will help to overcome the often cited problem of elderly people occupying family type local authority houses that have become too big for them and who would go to live with their families if there were room for them. In return for giving up their local authority house they will now be entitled to ask the authority to build an extension or granny flat on to the house they are moving to. This could also work in reverse so that, for example, sons or daughters on a waiting list or willing to give up a local authority house could have an aged parent's house enlarged to enable them to look after the elderly person.

Up to 31 March last, housing authorities had identified some 400 houses as being suited to the improvements scheme and work has already been completed in a number of these. The take up rate on this scheme to date has been slower than might have been anticipated but the provisions in the Bill should help streamline the legal procedures which have been a source of delay to some housing authorities.

The voluntary housing movement makes a substantial contribution to social housing output catering for people who would otherwise be dependent on public housing or institutional care. Voluntary housing activity has increased very significantly in recent years. All the indications are that, with the appropriate support from public funds, the voluntary sector can play a greater part in the provision of social housing in the future.

Under the social housing plan, the levels of assistance to approved voluntary bodies providing residential accommodation with the aid of the existing capital assistance scheme have already been increased. This scheme has been particularly successful in securing housing for special categories, such as the elderly and the homeless and I expect that completions of dwellings aided under it will be about 550 this year.

In order to promote the expansion of voluntary activity into family housing, the plan announced the introduction of the new rental subsidy scheme. This scheme allows approved voluntary and non-profit housing organisations to obtain 100 per cent capital loan finance from local authorities for the provision of social housing. A subsidy is then payable to the body providing the accommodation to make up the deficit between the affordable rent payable by the tenant and the loan charges, with an allowance being made for maintenance and management costs.

Section 7 contains the provisions relating to the rental subsidy scheme. These leave the details of the scheme to be set out in regulations which may, of course, be changed from time to time. The subsidy has been introduced on an interim basis, being payable to voluntary bodies in respect of tenants on annual incomes of less than £8,000, and the response has been encouraging. One project is already completed, four projects containing 65 dwellings are in progress and some 24 more proposals around the country, worth over £15 million and representing an additional 450 units, are in planning. Some voluntary groups have suggested certain revisions to the terms of the pilot scheme and it has been indicated to them that these will be reviewed towards the end of the year in the light of experience.

Section 6 will permit the Minister to devolve to relevant housing authorities his function in relation to the approval of voluntary housing bodies. This would make it possible for new projects to be dealt with from conception to execution at local level — simplifying the whole process for individual organisations. In addition, the voluntary sector's expanding role is being acknowledged by the new facility in section 26 for the transfer of local authority houses to suitable voluntary bodies. This section could prove to be attractive, for example, to residents in elderly persons accommodation where the voluntary sector has an especially good track record of care and service.

The other side of non-profit housing is the co-operative movement — individuals coming together as a group to provide housing for themselves. Co-operative housing was reasonably successful up to the mid-1970s when about 500 houses were being produced annually but has since declined considerably. However, I believe that the various measures in the social housing plan have the potential, especially if used in a coordinated way, to revitalise the sector.

Section 11 provides for the provision by local authorities of block loans to co-operatives as opposed to loans to each individual member which will enable the co-operative to borrow up-front, for instance, to buy sites or to acquire existing buildings for conversion to housing. Local authorities are already free to dispose of sites to co-operatives at low or nominal cost, subject to certain conditions. The National Building Agency have also been given a brief to assist in the promotion of this form of housing.

Housing authorities have a long history of providing loan finance to persons of modest means. Under existing legislation they are confined to advancing loans to individuals and lack a desirable degree of flexibility.

With the primary objective of giving housing authorities broader, more flexible powers in making and administering housing loans, section 11 restates, in an improved and expanded form, the existing provisions. Their lending powers are being widened to include shared ownership, the acquisition of land or sites, the purchase or conversion into housing of a building, the provision of hostel accommodation and even the payment of deposits for the purchase of property for housing. The detailed conditions of loan schemes will continue to be set out in regulations made by the Minister for the Environment, with the consent of the Minister for Finance.

Under section 11, the conveyancing Acts will apply to housing authorities in the same manner as other mortgagees. Householders with local authority loans will, as a result, be able to borrow from other lenders, for instance, for house improvements, on the security of a second mortgage. This is an important development for many existing holders of local authority loans whose incomes would now prevent them getting local authority house improvement loans. In addition, the section will remove any doubt about an authority's power to respond flexibility to borrowers in difficulty by capitalising arrears or extending the repayment period.

It is time for a reassessment of our approach to the management of public housing. The remedial works scheme has shown the benefits that can be gained from increased consultation and dialogue by local authorities with their tenants during the various stages of the planning of projects. Tenant participation is the surest way to break down the old "them and us" view and to foster a common interest in the maintenance and wellbeing of estates and the local environment generally.

Section 9 introduces the means for a new and more progressive style of management and maintenance of local authority housing. Written statements of their policies in relation to the management of their rented dwellings will have to be drawn up by housing authorities. The Minister will have the right to specify matters which those policies will have to address. Each authority will, therefore, be required to review their own performance, set out their targets and plans for future action and have them agreed by the elected members. This must be done within one year of the commencement of the section but local authorities have already been asked by my Department to begin work on these policies.

Section 9 also takes the major step of allowing authorities to delegate to tenants' representatives bodies functions such as maintenance works, environmental improvements and collection of rents. Heretofore, responsibility for these functions was vested solely in the authorities themselves. There is also power to allow all or part of the rental income from the houses involved to be assigned to bodies undertaking these responsibilities.

I want to make it clear that section 9 does not aim to impose a single system either for management or delegation for all circumstances. Rather the intention is to provide a statutory basis to enable authorities to devise the arrangements that are best suited to individual local needs but which take full cognisance of the need to involve their tenants in a meaningful way.

The principal objective of the Bill is to imtigate as far as possible the extent and effect of social segregation in housing. The Bill as a whole, by diversifying the overall approach to social housing, will create a significant move away from one-class housing, which has traditionally been the main feature of public intervention in the housing area. It also contains, in section 28 a means for the first time, of systematically moving away from excessive concentrations of local authority housing which lack a suitable degree of social mix and integration. Housing authorities will be required to draw up and adopt a written policy to achieve this new emphasis. Authorities have already been requested to put the development of these policy statements in train. In particular, they have been asked to consider at all times the purchase of existing or new houses as an alternative to building themselves and to aim for a good social mix. Guidelines have been issued in relation to the size of local authority estates and local authorities have been requested to put surplus land in their ownership at the disposal of individuals, voluntary bodies and co-operatives for housing.

The statutory provisions relating to the sale of local authority dwellings are comprehensively restated in section 26. The general terms of tenant purchase schemes will be set out in regulations. It will be a function of the elected members of each housing authority to adopt a purchase scheme in accordance with the regulations under which rented dwellings may then be purchased by the tenants. The procedure of requiring each sale to be approved by council resolution will no longer apply to individual sales to tenants. However, the sale of any unoccupied dwellings will be subject to such resolution. In the interests of flexible housing management, there is also power for a housing authority to sell or lease tenanted dwellings to another authority or, with the consent of the tenants, to an approved housing body.

In the past, tenant-purchase schemes have tended to apply for a specific period of time and I am aware of the view that there should be a permanent scheme. I want to make it clear that the provisions of section 26 do not prejudice this issue one way or the other. It will be open to the Minister of the day to decide whether to introduce a permanent scheme or a time-limited one, as appropriate in the circumstances.

Local authority dwellings are sold on an" as is" basis and all subsequent maintenance then becomes a matter for the purchaser. Accordingly, the opportunity is taken in this section to clarify the fact that once a sale has taken place the purchaser assumes responsibility for the dwelling and no warranty as to its condition or habitability if given by the housing authority.

Section 26 should eliminate the difficulties relating to the treatment of common elements that have arisen in connection with the sale of flats and which were brought to the Department's attention some months ago. These provisions should enable authorities to proceed with the sale of flats under the 1989 scheme without further delay.

The private rented sector represents some 10 per cent of the national housing stock. It is an important element in our housing system and, as such, it needs to operate within a balanced legislative framework. This balance must be between the need to encourage investment in the provision and maintenance of accommodation on the one hand and, on the other, the need to ensure that tenants are treated in a fair and equitable manner. An in-depth review of the sector was carried out by my Department during 1990 in consultation with the various interests involved. The social housing plan stated that the review had shown some additional safeguards for private sector tenants to be desirable. These are provided for in the Bill.

The first measure affecting the private rented sector — section 16 — deals with notices to quit which are not to be regulated by statute for the first time. At present, a landlord wishing to withdraw accommodation from a weekly tenant can generally do so at one week's notice. This can leave tenants in a vulnerable position without sufficient time to secure and move into alternative accommodation before the notice expires, particularly at certain times of peak demand. A tenant giving similar notice to a landlord may also leave the landlord in an equally unsatisfactory position with vacant accommodation and possible heavy repayments to meet.

Section 16 means that, in future, all notices to quit must be served in writing at least four weeks in advance. Notice by either the landlord or tenant for a lesser period, or which is not in writing, will not be legally enforceable once this section is in force. This will apply to existing as well as new tenancies. Contracts already requiring written notice of longer than four weeks will not, of course, be affected.

Section 17 empowers the Minister to make regulations obliging landlords to provide rent books for private rented dwellings generally or for particular classes of such dwellings. Rent books will contain documentary evidence of deposit and rent payments, the date of the letting and the terms of the tenancy, including the rental period and the notice required to terminate the tenancy. This will have advantages for both landlord and tenant and should help avoid disputes. Effectively, the rent book will serve many of the purposes of a written letting agreement. It will also facilitate tenants claiming supplementary welfare allowance and tenants aged over 55 years claiming tax relief on rent paid.

At present, regulations made under section 26 of the Housing (Private Rented Dwellings) Act, 1982, prescribe minimum standards for formerly rent controlled dwellings on a national basis. In addition, many local authorities have made by-laws under section 70 of the Housing Act, 1966, laying down standards for private rented dwellings in their areas. However, these by-laws are not uniform and they are generally lower than the standards applicable to the formerly controlled sector.

It is evident, therefore, that the position in relation to the control of standards is unsatisfactory. Accordingly, it is proposed to replace the existing provisions with section 18 which allows for the introduction, by way of regulations, of a new uniform set of minimum standards for private rented dwellings. Local authorities will have the full powers of enforcement of the statutory standards that they have under existing legislation.

Distress is an ancient common law remedy which entitles a landlord of rented property, without recourse to the courts, to seize the goods of a tenant to enforce payment of rent. This type of procedure has no place in a modern legal code relating to rented dwellings. Accordingly, section 19 prohibits the use of distress in the case of residential lettings. This section will have no effect in relation to commercial lettings.

Section 20 will make it possible by regulation to require the registration of rented dwellings generally or particular classes of such dwellings.

Taken together, sections 16 to 20 will constitute an important charter of rights for private tenants. There is sufficient flexibility to direct attention at particular areas avoiding an overly regulated approach that would not serve either landlord or tenant interests.

The provisions in the Bill relating to the introduction of rent books, standards and registration will replace sections 25, 26 and 24, respectively, of the Housing (Private Rented Dwellings) Act, 1982, which have only been brought into effect in the formerly rent controlled sector. There would be practical difficulties in seeking to regulate the private rented sector as a whole under those sections since they make no provision to exempt, for example, mobile homes or other temporary letting arrangements which clearly should not be subject to them. The corresponding provisions in the Bill will overcome these shortcomings and contain other improvements to make them more effective in the overall.

When these provisions are brought into force, my Department will prepare and circulate a handbook which will act as a layman's guide to the landlord and tenant code as it affects residential lettings. This should ensure that tenants are well informed of their rights and obligations.

The major emphasis in the overall programme for the accommodation of travelling people has, in recent times, been on the provision of additional residential caravan sites. However, progress in the provision of sites has often been poor, frequently because of opposition from the settled community to the location of sites. A factor in this has been the tendency for some travellers to continue to remain parked on the roadside in proximity to serviced sites that have been provided for them. In an effort to deal with the problem, section 10 provides that where a caravan is parked within five miles of an official halting site the local authority may serve notice on the owner of the caravan requiring him to move it in to the site, if there is a suitable space for it. Failure to comply with this notice will constitute an offence and allow the authority to take direct action themselves to relocate the caravan in to the site. If they are prevented from doing so, they may take it to a place of storage from where it may later be reclaimed by the owner.

I think that this is a reasonable power designed to assist local authorities in overcoming local opposition to the provision of badly needed halting sites. By no stretch of the imagination can it be regarded as draconian: it is a power that can only be invoked in clearly defined circumstances.

I should point out that the provision of caravan sites by approved voluntary bodies is now among the activities that can be assisted by housing authorities and the Department under section 6 of the Bill. This is the same mechanism under which the successful voluntary housing schemes operates.

The Building Societies Act, 1989, gives the Minister power to regulate the securitisation by building societies of residential mortgages, that is, the transfer of the mortgage to another party. The primary concern would be to ensure that the borrowers' interests are protected. Section 13 of this Bill will extend this power to regulate securitisation of residential mortagages held by all mortgage lenders. The need for the consent of the borrower is central to this provision. Section 14 relates specifically to the disposal of public sector mortgages.

Section 15 provides a means of transferring the debt of local authorities on foot of past housing loans from the Exchequer to the Housing Finance Agency, thus bringing it into line with current practice under which all new borrowing by local authorities for housing loan purposes is funded by the HFA. In this way, local authority debt on housing loans could be rationalised and centralised.

I should emphasise that no proposals to dispose of publicly funded housing mortgages or to transfer local authority debt exist at present. Section 14 and 15 are merely enabling provisions that remove existing legal obstacles and make it possible for these options to be considered in the future.

Documentation in connection with assistance given by my Department or local authorities in the form of loans or grants, etc., usually contains a clause disclaiming any liability in respect of the fitness for habitation of the houses concerned. However, there is a legal view that, without statutory backing, these clauses may not fully protect local authorities. In addition, a number of the new measures in the Bill, for instance, shared ownership and the rental subsidy, will introduce new forms of assistance where it would not be appropriate that public authorities should carry a liability. Accordingly, under section 22 the granting of assistance in respect of a house shall imply no warranty on the part of the Minister or the housing authority as to the fitness of the house. This does not, of course, affect any liability that may be held to arise out of negligence.

Section 23 assigns all the various housing functions, including the new functions under this Bill, to local authorities in accordance with current practice. This means that county councils and county borough corporations will discharge all the housing functions in their own areas. In addition to these functions, county councils will perform a range of functions in respect of urban areas within their boundaries, such as preparation of estimates of housing requirements and the operation of the voluntary housing and shared ownership schemes. As in the case of the Local Government Act, 1991, this section also enables the Minister, in the future, to transfer functions between housing authorities where he considers that they could be performed more effectively as a result.

Section 29 expands the powers of the Housing Finance Agency by enabling it to lend to housing authorities and the National Building Agency Limited for any of their housing functions. At present, the HFA may only lend to housing authorities for the purposes of loans or grants for the provision or improvement of houses. It will now play a more comprehensive funding role, particularly in relation to new measures contained in the Bill such as shared ownership. The HFA's borrowing limit is being increased from £1 million to £1.5 billion. The HFA's power to advance loans directly to the public is being discontinued as it has not engaged in this type of lending since 1986.

The Bill recognises that the delivery of housing services is essentially a local responsibility consonant with the Government's general policy of devolving as much power as possible to local authorities. Housing authorities are being give responsibility for the operation of all the new schemes of assistance being provided for in the Bill. With its enactment, authorities will have at their disposal an extensive range of options for tackling social housing needs. This in turn implies significant changes in the traditional housing role of local authorities. They must no longer see themselves merely as direct providers of housing for rent — they must actively promote and facilitate the provision of social housing in all its forms. It is essential that the elected members, management and staff of local authorities appreciate and adapt quickly to this change of role.

To conclude, this is a Bill that breaks significant new ground in housing legislation. It sets out to provide a general framework for action rather than an overly prescriptive approach. Flexibility is an important hallmark of the Bill — the flexibility to change and adapt schemes as required by changing circumstances and experience. A number of valuable improvements were made to the Bill in the Dáil, I am happy that the Bill now before the Seanad is a good Bill that is well designed to meet its goals.

I commend the Bill to the House.

I welcome the Minister to the House but I do not welcome this flawed Bill which has been introduced in such a way as will deflect attention from the appalling national housing situation. Shortcomings in housing provision are not the fault of the local authorities who did an excellent housing job when they were getting the funding to do so. Local authorities have been starved for funding for the past four years and I suggest to the Minister and his Department that local authorities, if properly funded, would get on with the work they have been doing for centuries trying to provide for the accommodation needs of the community.

In this Bill I note the transfer of power away from local authorities to voluntary organisations who, by and large, are answerable to nobody. That is a dangerous step and every Member of this House must oppose it. I am not calling on Senators to reject this Bill when it is put to a vote, but I remind them of their moral obligation to persuade the Minister to accept amendments that will reverse what I see as the transfer of power from the local authorities to non-elected voluntary organisations.

I will give the Minister one example of this trend from my own county. As chairman of the county council I sought a meeting between the Minister and my council colleagues to resolve the following situation. There are in excess of 200 people on the Roscommon County Council housing list. We received funding this year for 15 houses which means that a person going on the housing list today could wait 12 years to get a local authority house in Roscommon. Lo and behold, Ballaghadereen received funding for 20 houses. I am not critical of Ballaghadereen's action; I compliment them for getting in fast on the act. The housing requirement as deemed by Roscommon County Council for the local area of Ballaghadereen is 16. In a unique and unprecedented situation 20 houses will be erected in Ballaghadereen, one small area of the county, and the rest of the county will receive funding for 15 houses.

South of Roscommon town to Shan-nonbridge there is a 30 mile stretch of countryside where one house only will be provided. Several families are waiting for housing; some of them have been on the housing list for three or four years. Other couples getting married are in need of housing and the county councils has no answer to their problem. If all that money for State housing provision was given to the local authority, it would be allocated fairly throughout the county and people would then stand a chance of having their housing needs met. At present 20 houses are proposed for an area where only 16 applicants can be identified.

Allocation of resources to organisations other than local authorities is a major flow in this Bill. There are others and here I would refer to the last paragraph of the Minister's speech where he says: "This in turn implies significant changes in the traditional housing role of local authorities". I respectfully suggest to the Minister that this Bill effectively removes all direct control from the local authority over the allocation of local authority housing. While it may be possible in certain areas to get voluntary groups up and running, it is not practical throughout rural Ireland where there are serious problems of emigration and unemployment. The necessary structure is not there and this Bill does nothing to resolve that situation.

If the Minister and his Government gave the same level of funding as his predecessors did to the local authorities we would not be in a housing crisis today. Last year, I understand we built approximately 1,000 local authority houses, while three or four years ago we were building 7,000 per annum. In Roscommon we will build 15 this year. For the four years of the 1983 to 1987 Government we built 85 houses per annum. That is a significant difference and these facts are on record.

This Bill was published in 1991. I do not know nor do I now believe it to be an effective way to deal with the major housing problem. On the subject of shared ownership, who in his sane mind would get involved in such a scheme where there is no indication as to when a family would be rid of the mortgage? That scheme is not practicable in this country. People have fought for their right to own their own properties. The Minister may check the records and he will find that every time a purchase scheme was announced by the Department for the sale of local authority houses a huge take-up ensued because people want to own their own houses.

By and large, this scheme makes it impossible for people to own a home. I checked with my own local authority today to see how many applications had been received for the scheme and the number is one which the county council believe will not be taken up. That is an indication of how people in rural Ireland view this shared ownership scheme. I do not know whose idea it was but it is a hare brained scheme unsuitable to either urban or rural Ireland and one the Minister might look at again. It will not make up the present housing deficit. We need to address that deficit and before this Bill leaves this House we should try to ensure that it will work and that people will be enthusiastic about availing of its provisions. This shared ownership scheme is dead from the word "go".

Other schemes covered by this Bill include those which allow a local authority where rent is being paid to give a rent subsidy. I cannot see the difference between that and direct State provision of a local authority house. On one hand a 100 per cent loan is available. If people cannot meet the repayments on that they are entitled to a rent subsidy and either way the taxpayer pays. The former system served this country well until the Government failed to provide adequate funding, causing a huge backlog on the housing list.

Section 5 of the Bill refers to works by housing authorities to private houses. That section is one of the more pleasant aspects of the Bill and has much to recommend it. There are major difficulties, however, with its implementation because of title. This is one aspect of the Bill that will have to examined to make it workable.

I understand that where works involve costs in excess of £10,000, departmental approval must be sought. There is a delay at present in the Department in issuing those approvals to local authorities and I ask the Minister to undertake to examine the question of title and to have the backlog cleared. There are many houses throughout rural Ireland that could be improved and this provision might avoid the purchase or the building of a new house.

A group in Ennis has succeded in having families transferred from Dublin to rural areas where houses were lying vacant. What assistance is available for that group under this new Bill because they informed me in discussions I had with them that one of their greatest difficulties when they acquire a house is that the house may require £5,000 to £8,000 worth of repair work before it reaches an adequate standard. They find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get funds for such work. I would like to know if this group will be assisted. Most of the houses so acquired are former Land Commission houses or houses where owners have died or gone away or a farm has been taken over by another farmer leaving a house vacant without, perhaps, doors, windows, toilet or bathroom.

This group are playing an important role in helping to stabilise population in the west and there are several families in cities, not just in Ireland but in Manchester, London and elsewhere who would love to come back if they were offered housing. Unfortunately, local authorities are not able to provide housing for emigrants since they are not on the housing lists. This group has done a tremendous amount of work in rehousing people and I ask the Minister how they might be facilitated under this Bill.

It would be remiss of me to speak on this Bill without drawing the Minister's attention to a disastrous decision by Deputy Flynn when he was Minister for the Environment to withdraw house improvement grants. Those grants were of tremendous assistance in bringing houses back into the housing stock. It would not be possible to carry out the improvements required on many houses without the aid of housing grants. It was a way to encourage people to spend their own money on house improvements and in the process it created much valuable employment. That grant scheme was abolished and as a result many houses that could be done up and brought back into the housing stock cannot be restored. It was a retrograde step to abolish those grants.

We might say, a Chathaoirligh, whether we like it or not, that new house grants are a thing of the past because of the clause stipulating that a main contractor must carry out £15,000 worth of work. This means that anybody building a house by direct labour will no longer qualify for a new house grant; only persons who employ a contractor will qualify. The non-availability of new house grants will cause further difficulties to persons trying to house themselves.

The new house grant was worth approximately 20 to 25 per cent of the cost of the house some 20 years ago; today it is worth £2,000 when the cost of building a house is about £40,000 making it of negligible assistance. It does not cover the VAT paid on materials. It is time that both those schemes were reviewed and if they were reviewed and re-introduced, I have no doubt that demand for local authority housing would drop substantially.

With present grant structures and the abolition of the house improvement grant many people have been obliged to go on the local authority housing list and cannot possibly house themselves. The total drying up of funds for local authority houses has caused a huge backlog on the housing list.

I hope I quote the Minister accurately when I refer to his statement that this Bill would give every household an opportunity to have their own dwelling. I do not share that view because it is based on a principle of shared ownership which will not work in this country. As time goes on, the Minister will find that people will not avail of those schemes because they will see when they read the fine print that the repayments are never ending and that they would never own their own house.

On the subject of private rented accommodation, it is uneconomic for developers to provide private rented accommodation at the level of rent paid for housing. That proposal is a non-starter and the Minister must recognise that ultimately the taxpayer will have to provide the money to meet all local authority housing requirements.

I do not think the funds of any other Department have been as severely cut back during the last four years as those of the Department of the Environment, and particularly in the provision of public housing. The Minister and his Department will have to come to grips with this issue and I do not believe that this Bill has the capacity to do so. I would love to see adequate funding being made available to local authorities. Their record on housing if they have adequate funding is excellent. They build good standard type houses and at reasonable prices. They have tried as best they can to collect housing rents and now find themselves, under this Bill, practically without any role other than a supervisory one. This is a retrograde step and the Minister should accept amendments on Committee Stage to improve the Bill.

If the new house grants scheme was reintroduced, many people would be happy to obtain a fixed interest SDA loan from a local authority. I deplore the Government's decesion to withdraw total funding for SDA loans, except in the event of a refusal by the banks and by the building societies necessitating two letters of refusal before an application can be considered for an SDA loan. Many people currently on a housing list might avail of an SDA loan at a fixed interest rate allowing them to budget payments over a number of years and this, together with a new house grant, would undoubtedly reduce considerably the number of people on our housing lists.

As Senator Foley knows, the Rural Housing Organisation, better known as Fr. Bohan's Housing Organisation, did a tremendous amount of work in the west of Ireland building housing estates backed by and in co-operation with the local authorities. The Minister might be able to inform me if it is envisaged that that organisation would be able to participate in housing schemes and what section of the Bill would cover it.

The Minister referred to house purchase schemes. Every house purchase scheme that was introduced to enable local authority tenants to buy their houses was successful in attracting a large number of applicants. At present there is no purchase scheme in operation and I would like to know when it is intended to introduce another tenant purchase scheme. People who want to buy their houses cannot now but them because there is no scheme in place. I want to know from the Minister when he and the Government intend to introduced such a scheme.

The Minister referred to a problem which has haunted many communities, that of travelling people, which was raised by Senator O'Keeffe today on the Order of Business. Much progress has been made in the past ten years in assisting travelling people to become housed or obtain hard stop sites. The policy of the Department has been to encourage travelling people into conventional housing, but that is not necessarily what they want. I have met those people on numerous occasions and in some cases they have begged me to get them a caravan. It has been the policy of our council not to do that; we try to get them into conventional housing, but many of them would prefer to have the freedom to travel. That has been their lifestyle and their rights must be respected. Local authorities should have the freedom to provide temporary accommodation for them, whether by way of mobile homes or otherwise. Those people should have an opportunity to live the type of life they wish to live and they should not be forced to accept what we regard as acceptable conditions.

We must all be concerned about some aspects of this Bill. I have referred to the shared ownership and leasing of houses by local authorities and to the subsidy schemes referred to in section 4, which will cost a substantial amount of money. Section 6 deals with the assistance by housing authorities of certain bodies, which matter should be examined in greater detail. What type of assistance is involved and who, at the end of the day, is going to fund it? What is the major difference between the present position and what will happen in the future? Where is there a saving to the Irish taxpayer under that section of the Bill? I do not see it. I hope the Minister in his reply will be able to inform me where the major saving for the taxpayer would arise.

This Bill is introduced to try to deflect attention from what is a major housing problem. I do not believe there is one thing in this Bill which is any better than the provisions of the Bills under which we have been operating for the past 20 years, if funding was provided to the local authorities. The local authorities have been denied the necessary funding for housing and the house improvement grant scheme and HFA loans have been abolished. That is the record of this Government for the past four years. That is why we have the huge housing problem today throughout Ireland.

The only reason the housing problem is not as great in certain parts of rural Ireland as in other areas is the curse of emigration. The numbers of people who have emigrated have saved the Government embarrassment about the length of the waiting list for housing because they are on the waiting lists of London, Birmingham or New York. Unless the Government are prepared to put adequate funding into the local authority housing programme, anything we say here today is a waste of time. This legislation will not solve the problem; it will be solved by money.

I regret the major role played by the local authorities in the past in providing housing and sites and in developing housing estates has not been recognised in this Bill. In fact, from now on, they will merely have an advisory role and that is regrettable. One rural town who were first in on the act has got funding for far more housing that it requires, while in the rest of the county there is a major housing problem and no funding.

My colleagues and I will be putting down a number of amendments to this Bill and I sincerely hope the Minister will take them on board. My advice to him, however, is to bring back this Bill and amend it to meet the needs of the people.

I welcome the Minister to the House after a busy few weeks dealing with the Electoral Bill. Now he is here with the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 1992, as he has special responsibility for housing.

I will differ slightly from what my friend Senator Naughten has said. I welcome this legislation which, in effect, is implementing the social housing scheme of 1991. The scheme has much to recommend it. It is most attractive and covers a wide range of possibilities, from shared ownership and rental subsidy to improvements to private houses, voluntary housing schemes for the elderly, block loans to co-operatives, provision of sites and repairs to existing dwellings. It is in line with the thinking of officials and elected members. Everyone will agree it is long past time for a real look at the housing programmes for a number of reasons but mainly because it has become much more difficult for a person to build his own home if he is on a low income. Shared ownership is an opportunity for a low wage earner to secure a home of his own. It will give many persons in the lower income bracket an opportunity of eventually owing their own homes.

The Plan for Social Housing was announced just over a year ago. It was the most important policy statement affecting housing for many years. It set out to change the situation where there was only one answer to every housing problem. That answer has always been to build more and more local authority housing. It was a simply solution that suited simpler times but nowadays we recognise that large-scale greenfield, class 1 housing does not work from a social or economic viewpoint.

Some people have criticised the Social Housing Plan. It is very easy to be critical but none of the critics have come up with any answers themselves. I find it ironic that the very people who are loudest in calling for local authority house building to be resumed on a grand scale also have a high profile when it comes to criticising the serious problems of the very estates they hold up as the only way forward for the future.

I am delighted to see a new approach to social housing, and one that will give people real choice. It will give them the chance to get the kind of home they want and remove them from the sad position they are in of having no option other than the local authority waiting list. At the same time, I am glad to know of the Minister's assurance that a more appropriate scale local authority housing programme will still be there to look after those who cannot be housed under the new scheme. The fact that there will be more completions of local authority housing this year than in the past four years is proff positive that the Government are fully committed to get everyone into decent housing.

The new strategy is a good one. People who, with a certain amount of help, can house themselves will get that help. Voluntary bodies looking after disadvantaged groups will also be encouraged. Those who have to rely on publicly funded housing can be sure there is also a clear commitment to look after them.

One of the measures in the Bill that I think is very worthwhile is the shared ownership system which I have referred to already. There is a great desire in most Irish people to own their own home and this is shown in our high home ownership rate. The response to tenant purchase schemes is further proof of this desire. I am delighted that under this Bill those who could not afford to purchase a house with a mortagage will now also have a chance to achieve their goal through the shared ownership system.

In a conventional mortgage, the repayments remain fairly constant throughout the loan period. They are much the same after 20 years as they were at the beginning. However, as a proportion of income, they are usually much greater at the start than later on. The fact that the repayment burden is at its heaviest compared with income in the earlier years, coupled with all the other expenses of buying a house, simply puts home ownership out of reach of many people on low incomes. Most people buy houses when they have a long working life in front of them and can expect their income to rise gradually as the years go on. A house is also a long lasting asset. There is, therefore, a good case for spreading the purchase burden more evenly as a proportion of income over the mortagage term. The ordinary mortgage does not do this since the repayment burden is too high for many people in the early years. People have been denied the opportunity of becoming home owners because they simply could not hope to meet the repayments at the outset. They had no choice but to rely on the local authority for housing.

Under previous arrangements apart from the repayment problem, there were other difficulties facing the prospective house buyer. Generally, a commercial lending agency will not give more than a 90 per cent loan, in some cases 95 per cent. For many on low income, finding the difference between that 90 per cent and the purchase price, and possibly stamp duty on an existing house, was an impossible task.

On the other hand, shared ownership offers a mechanism which increases the capacity of people on lower incomes to buy a house. It does not reduce the cost of becoming a home owner but it spreads the burden in a more affordable way. Independent commentators have welcomed the system and have demonstrated that in the early years shared ownership keeps outgoings at much lower level than in a conventional mortgage. This reduction in the early years must, of course, be made good as time goes on and the option of a longer repayment term associated with shared ownership facilitates the process. The shared ownership system caters for many people who would otherwise need to be housed in local authority accommodation. If for no other reason then giving this choice to low income households, I believe we should welcome the Bill.

In my local authority of Kerry County Council we have many housing problems. As a local authority, we have a very serious financial problem with regard to the essential repairs scheme and the disabled person's grant scheme. Both schemes have been withdrawn by Kerry County Council at the moment. An appeal has been made to the Minister during his recent visit to Kerry to make extra essential funding available forthwith. The discontinuation of both schemes is an undesirable development which saves a very small amount of money. Both schemes played a major role in retaining the fabric of houses in good condition and allowed an aged or disabled person to remain in the family home.

We have a serious housing crisis in Kerry. Here I must associate myself with Senator Naughten; we do have a housing crisis and we cannot get away from that. At the moment there are 590 applicants listed for rehousing of which approximately 360 are acute cases. We have 40 applicants listed for demountable units. Our building programme consists of 70 houses brought forward from 1991, plus 36 starts to date in 1992. We would need a further 50 to 100 starts on houses during the current year to make an impact on the housing list.

Kerry County Council have 2,098 rented houses, plus 1,527 on tenant purchase schemes. The average rent is £10 per week and many tenants are on the minimum rent. The Plan for Social Housing is reasonably successful in County Kerry. Shared ownership schemes and the scheme of grants to voluntary bodies for units for elderly persons have proved very attractive. The officials of Kerry County Council find that the £10,000 house improvement loan scheme is difficult to sell. One of the problems lies in the technical conditions which must apply when the job is completed.

Following a recent meeting of Kerry County Council, it was decided to make a submission to the Minister for the Environment with regard to the reintroduction of the house reconstruction grants scheme, but with very definite controls regarding qualifications. I hope the Minister will respond in a very short time. Unfortunately, the reconstruction grants scheme which Senator Naughten referred to cost a lot of money but if certain conditions were laid down possibily that would no longer be the case. When the Government come to office approximately £200 million was due and the Government are still paying that off. If that money was available now there would be sufficient funding for housing.

Many local authority tenants are looking forward to the reintroduction of the tenant purchase scheme. Many tenants over the past few years have responded to appeals from the local authority by carrying out repairs. For this reason it is essential that a new purchase scheme be introduced as quickly as possible.

Tralee and Listowel urban authorities also have serious housing problems. Tralee UDC has a total of 169 applicants waiting to be rehoused, made up as follows: family housing, 95; one bedroomed bungalows, 35; apartments, 28; two bedroomed bungalows, 11. They also have in hand a total of 149 new applicants since the last revision took place. The building programme consists of 14 houses under construction at the moment and a further ten new starts which I hope will take place shortly. Listowel Urban Council have 31 on the housing list with a further 40 new applicants to be reinvestigated. A building programme consisting of seven houses is in progress. I appeal to the Minister to give serious considerations to the submissions by Kerry County Council on behalf of the local authority and the urban authorities.

I am fed up listening to what the Opposition parties say they would do to provide houses for everyone if only they were in power. It is very easy for some of them. They never have or never will have to face up to their promises. Others who have been in Government would like to convince us that the awful Fine Gael-Labour Coalition Government of which they were a part never existed, that they were not responsible for those disastrous years. One can understand why they now prefer to talk about the future, about what might be if only they were in power. They like to forget about what they failed to achieve in every single aspect of Government, about the legacy of national mismanagement they left, which almost wrecked the economy. They refuse to recognise the real truth where housing achievements are concerned, that Fianna Fáil have done more to provide decent housing for the ordinary people than all the rest put together. A seven year decline in housing output in the mid-eighties has been turned around by the Government and we are now back to building 20,000 houses a year compared with only 15,700 in 1988.

The major Opposition parties would have us believe they have solutions to all our housing problems. I do not deny that problems exist. When the 1989 national assessment of housing needs, carried out under Fianna Fáil's 1988 Housing Act showed that waiting lists were again starting to grow, immediate action was taken. The local authority housing programme was accelerated. Starts of new houses were increased in 1990 and there will be even greater expansion this year when new start numbers will be further increased.

There is a different Government now, an effective Government and, thankfully, the downward spiral which produced fewer houses each year has been firmly reversed. New house completions have made a recovery in the past couple of years. We are back in a growth phase. Fianna Fáil's record on housing down the years is there for all to see.

It certainly is.

We have succeeded in raising general standards in this country and can compare with the best in the world. We are not resting on our laurels. We recognise there are still housing problems, problems that need to be solved, and we are going to solve them.

The Plan for Social Housing is without doubt the biggest step forward we have ever seen in giving everyone a real chance and choice of a decent home. The plan is a dramatic move away from the previous situation where there were really only two options: one could either buy a house or apply to one's local authority and wait until they provided one with whatever became available. These narrow limits are not acceptable anymore.

The Plan for Social Housing is full of new thinking. It contains radical new schemes that will open up access to good quality housing to everyone. These new schemes that will open up access to good quality housing to everyone. These new schemes include the system of shared ownership to which I have referred. Housing co-operatives, where a group of households want to get together to buy their own houses, will also be encouraged. Under this legislation they will be able to get block loans to buy sites and pay builders. The local authority will also be able to provide sites and technical back-up for them at reduced costs. Local authority tenants wishing to acquire private housing will also be given special help. Their mortgages will be reduced for the first five years through the mortgage allowance scheme.

Many of us know of the voluntary housing groups who have built houses for the elderly. This sector provides up to 500 housing units each year with the assistance of generous grants from the Department of the Environment. The voluntary housing concept is now being extended to family-type accommodation with special new grants and subsidies that will cover up to 100 per cent of the cost of building the houses. The elderly, needless to say, have not been forgotten and, along with homeless, they will continue to be a special focus of Government policy.

There will also be a better deal for tenants in both the local authority and private rented sectors. Private landlords will now be obliged by law to provide their tenants with rent books which will greatly improve security of tenure. A further safeguard will be the introduction of a minimum notice to quit of four weeks. The accommodation would also have to meet standards which local authorities will enforce under this legislation.

Council tenants too can look forward to a greater say in how their estates are run. The housing Bill will allow them to be given responsibility and resources by local authorities to take over the management of their estates and to decide on their priorities.

Maximum progress is being maintained under the remedial works scheme to upgrade substandard local authority houses. This year a special sub-programme to speed up the installation of bathroom and toilet facilities is being introduced. I understand that nationally up to 11,000 houses are being refurbished and the environment of local authority estates is being greatly improved.

The local authorities will, of course, continue to have a major role in housing the less well off and we will continue to fund local authority housing to whatever level is justified to meet demand. As a party and Government, Fianna Fáil have shown their commitment to this sector by raising spending on local authority housing again this year. However, under the Plan for Social Housing, from now on, there will be other options, which will suit many people better, which will reduce the social divide caused by the present system, and give everyone a better chance to have a decent home at a reasonable cost.

These are the policies Fianna Fáil have developed. They provide attractive and sound solutions compared to the timeworn uninspired so-called policies of the other parties. They never gave with what they wanted or what was best for the country. That sort of thinking belongs to the past. Fianna Fáil recognise the changing and diverse housing needs of society today and we have proved that we have the imagination, vision and ability to come up with measures to respond to those needs. The Plan for Social Housing is the response. It is a landmark in housing policy which provides a way forward and a basis for further real progress in housing all our people.

I welcome the Bill. If it is used properly, it will improve greatly the position of many people who seek local authority assistance in the provision of housing.

Fáiltím roimh an Aire, Teachta Dála de mo chuid féin atá ann. In recent years, Governments have got very good at packaging information. In the Department of Social Welfare an expenditure of £2 million, or perhaps .001 of 1 per cent of its total budget, becomes the material that can be used every week to get a Minister a headline as he opens something or does something. That reduces the impression that Governments are not spending money on important social issues. If you give the Minister a slush fund of a few million pounds, wonderful things can be done and a wonderful impression given. The tragedy is that in this legislation, for example, many of the initiatives are good in themselves, but are spoiled by the cynicism behind them.

Let us look at the statistics. The number of houses built in 1980 were 27,785; in 1986, 22,680; in 1987, 18,450; in 1988, 15,654 and in 1991, 19,652. The total number of houses built in 1991 compared with 1980 were about 8,000 less. Notwithstanding the best efforts of Senator Foley, that is not much of an achievement. The tragedy is that within those statistics lies the clear and deliberate loading of housing policy in favour of the moderately well off at the expense of the poor and the disadvantaged.

While it is good to develop new imaginative ways of using public funding in the best possible way to provide the maximum number of people with decent accommodation, that presumes a reasonable level of resources. The number of houses being built is decreasing and is still a lot lower than it was 11 years ago. Far more dramatically, the number of local authority houses being completed is decreasiing: 5,984 in 1980; 6,523 in 1985; 5,517 in 1986 and 3,074 in 1987; 1,450 in 1988; 768 in 1989; 1,003 in 1990 and 1,180 in 1991. The impression is given that the money is going elsewhere, that we are ending the construction of large anonymous local authority housing estates, and doing wonderful things. There is a magnificent rhetorical flourish in the Bill saying that the local authority must, within a certain date of the bringing into force of this Bill, say what it is going to do to avoid social segregation. I will have something more to say later about a particularly blatant example of social segregation in the Bill.

Although the Department's statistics have been fiddled — or at least rewritten — to suit new definitions, we cannot get away from the fact that in 1987 they spent £371 million of public capital expenditure on housing and in 1991 they spent £123.6 million. According to my quick check on a calculator, the saving in public capital investment on housing from 1987 to 1991 is £905 million. You can have all the rhetorical flourishes, wonderful policies and imaginative ideas you want, but if you take almost £1 billion out of public expenditure on housing, you leave many people worse off. No amount of playing around with statistics can get away from that.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Plan for Social Housing was published last year, the Department of the Environment discovered that they have been spending money on social housing since 1987 because they rewrote the statistics. I do not have the earlier annual housing reports, but the statistics show a separate category of local authority housing. Social housing has now been discovered and the figures reorganised so that we do not know from the figures how much is being spent on local authority housing per se. The 1987 figure for private housing grants has been reduced and another figure has been added to local authority and social housing, giving the impression that more money was spent in certain areas than was the case. Apparently we are rewriting history to suit whatever is the view of the day, as they did in eastern Europe.

There is no getting away from the fact that there was a saving in public capital expenditure on housing of almost £1 billion for 1987 to 1991 at the expense of the poor. The Minister present, until recently a member of a local authority, knows, better than most that housing waiting lists are increasing. Without looking at individual cases the assessment of housing needs recorded in the 1990 report shows that 88 households with six or more children are living in unfit or materially unsuitable accommodation, while five families with six or more children are categorised as homeless. The statistics show that the housing crisis is deepening. If properly funded, these new ideas mark the way forward but the fundamental fact is there is no money available. This amounts to an attempt to deceive the public.

We need to look again at the question of public expenditure. I was glad the former leader of Fine Gael, Dr. Garret FitzGerald wrote in The Irish Times about three weeks ago that he has now abandoned the low tax crusade that characterised the eighties and he accepts that one cannot fund a modern welfare State other than by way of moderately high levels of taxation. I hasten to add — I am sure Senator Raftery will correct me if I do not — that he said that he still thinks people are excessively taxed in Ireland. That however is characteristic of us all; all of us think we pay too much tax and that everybody else can afford to pay more.

The reason we do not have the resources to provide housing for our people is that over the past five years we have provided subsidies for the rich. The top rate of income tax was reduced from 65 per cent to 48 per cent in a matter of four or five years, allegedly to promote enterprise but not a scrap ever became evident. This turned out to be a glorious subsidy for a splurge by the well off in this society on imports, foreign holidays and various goodies and it contributed nothing of significance to the development of society. It is because we gave that money away in the form of ridiculously low top rates of taxation that we do not have the money we should have to provide for all the imaginative schemes contained in this legislation.

This is a very good Bill; it is imaginative and worthwhile. It is the kind of Bill we could have done with 20 years ago. It presents us with many possibilities but these are constrained due to one big word, money, and no amount of juggling and conjuring will get us away from the fact that the money is not available.

I would like to comment on a number of specific provisions in the Bill. The Minister in his speech specifically mentioned section 26 which deals with the power of housing authorities to sell certain dwellings provided under the Principal Act. He stated that a house cannot be sold if a person is living in it, without the consent of the tenant if it is to be sold to a voluntary housing organisation. I think that is a peculiar understanding of section 26. Section 26 states the Minister may make regulations under the section which inter alia may provide for “the obtaining of the tenant's consent”. This provision, which will enable the Minister to make regulations which may provide for obtaining the consent of the tenant, does not confer a right to veto the sale of a house to a voluntary organisation rather it confers on the Minister the right to consider whether a person should be granted that right. That is an entirely different matter.

I am sure nobody at present has any great enthusiasm for a confrontation with tenants who wish to sell local authority houses to voluntary housing organisations or to other approved bodies but it is not true to say that the legislation confers a categorical right to withhold consent. Section 26 (1) does not contain the words "subject to the consent of the tenant"; rather it makes reference to certain categories of sales. Subsection (7) states:

regulations under this section may, in particular, but without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1) of this section, make provision in relation to all or any one or more of the following ... (k) in case of a sale of a dwelling under paragraph (a) (iii) ... the obtaining of the tenant's consent to the sale",

That is if the Minister wants to but he does not have to do so. Otherwise, he should have included the word "shall". It would be a simple matter to table an amendment to have that word included.

I am not going to get involved in the ritual of discussing amendments as I know full well, given the Order of Business in the other House, that none can be accepted but if it is the intention to give an explicit right to tenants to ensure their local authority house cannot be sold without their consent, then that should be stated explicitly and not in a round about way so as to leave the matter, ultimately, in the hands of the Minister.

To return to the issue of social segregation, the Minister in his speech stated, in relation to section 10:

The major emphasis in the overall programme for the accommodation of travelling people has, in recent times, been on the provision of additional residential caravan sites. However, progress in the provision of sites has often been poor.

That is not particularly extraordinary having regard to the fact that that section confers draconian powers. The Minister said that he does not consider them to be draconian but I cannot imagine how they could be more draconian. The section which is nearly a Bill in itself given that it is almost three pages long states that where, without lawful authority, a person erects within a distance of five miles from any site provided, managed or controlled by a housing authority a temporary dwelling and the local authority are of the opinion that that temporary dwelling could be appropriately accommodated on that site they can ask him to move on. They must, however, give him not less than the very generous period of 24 hours notice. Therefore, if somebody parks a caravan at a particular location the local authority will be able to serve notice as short as 24 hours requiring him to move it onto a site which they deem to be appropriate. However it must be a site provided, managed or controlled by the local authority.

Let us think this matter through. Local authorities in some areas, this city in particular, are not known to be model managers of sites. I have visited the St. Oliver site in Clondalkin which is run by Dublin Corporation and it is a disgrace to civilisation. Indeed, I visited that site on my return from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the first thing it reminded me of was a Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank. It was a disgrace. As I said, it is managed by Dublin Corporation.

The explanatory memorandum to this Bill makes reference to a distance of two miles but somewhere along the line, between its introduction and arrival in Seanad Éireann, two miles became five miles. On my calculations, there is very little of Dublin city that is not within a five mile radius of the city centre. Because of the way the area of a circle is affected by its radius, the amount of land covered is six times greater. Therefore if a traveller stops anywhere near a halting site in Dublin he can be effectively given 24 hours notice, if he is on public property, and asked to moved on. The section does not state that the site should be suitable, have free spaces, running water or be near the school; it simply states: "in the opinion of the authority". In other words, if they think it is appropriate, they can move people on.

I appreciate that the vast majority of Members probably think that this is a great idea and would love to move them on a lot further but what it could mean essentially is that people will be able to gang up on a travelling family very quickly and have them moved to halting sites. This is an extreme form of social segregation. Every traveller who comes anywhere near Dublin will be immediately hounded to whichever site Dublin Corporation deem to be most appropriate. If that constitutes an enlightened provision for travelling people then we are moving fast in the opposite direction, but given the rhetoric this country is beginning to be subjected to I am not surprised.

Like most Members I regularly receive letters from people who have a prejudice. I received one recently about travellers and it reads as follows:

The majority of those illegally camped ... are not deprived families, but members of a group who have discovered a way to exploit the system to the fullest extent. On the one hand they are not responsible for observing the laws of the land in every sense, but when it comes to the social welfare system they are well capable of registering their rights. The vast majority are scrap dealers/antique dealers, and have other occupations ... They enjoy complete freedom from taxation of any kind, and from the disciplines of the rules and regulations imposed on legitimate business ... Something is radically wrong with the system — when their children reach "working" age they go straight onto the social welfare system. Perhaps a way of addressing the illegal camping is to restrict social welfare payments to travellers camped only at approved sites, for a certain minimum period.

They might as well suggest that they should wear a star on the side of their coat if they want to stigmatise them further. That was not an anonymous letter; it was sent by the Cork Chamber of Commerce. It is a disgrace to that organisation and to business in Cork and does not reflect any attempt to achieve social enlightenment. It clearly constitutes a prime facie breach of the incitement to hatred legislation and it is a disgrace that it was sent by a business organisation.

I know people have problems but it is a disgrace that every single one of society's prejudices about travelling people were expressed in one letter which was circulated widely in and around Cork city and county. I am curious to know the reason this sort of letter has been circulated and this legislation which confers the power to move people on has been presented.

The pretence is that this section deals with travellers with caravans but let us examine the definition. According to the Bill "a temporary dwelling means any tent, caravan, mobile home, vehicle or other structure or thing (whether on wheels or not) which is capable of being moved from one place to another". If we wanted to deal with the temporary dwellings used by certain members of the travelling community, a reference to a caravan or mobile home would do fine but somebody felt it was necessary to include a reference to "vehicle or other structure or thing (whether on wheels or not) which is capable of being moved from one place to another."

Does that not include the misfortunate wretch living in a cardboard box on the side of the street? Is his cardboard box not clearly a thing which is "capable of being moved from one place to another, and is or was used for human habitation"? Does it not therefore amount to an invitation to the local authorities to use this power to clear the streets so as to prevent the threat of a cardboard city of the kind visible all over Europe? Does this not amount to a draconian power to sweep everybody off the streets on the grounds that people can be dumped into what is meant to be a travellers' halting site, either deliberately or by way of a shamefully sloppy piece of drafting which goes way beyond the stated objectives? The stated objective of that section is to deal with people who park caravans on public property and it covers anybody who as much as puts a cardboard box over themselves.

Every power the local authorities have been given has been used from time to time not in a positive way but rather in a negative way particularly when they deal with travelling people and various other groups. If they have an anti-traveller prejudice could they at least define it in terms of the travelling community and not extend it to cover every misfortunate wretch who happens to sleep in a cardboard box? It should be remembered that senior officials in Bord Fáilte have talked about beggars on the streets while others have gone on the rampage about other things. Section 10 is a licence for every prejudiced local authority to move anybody living on the streets whom they do not like into what effectively will become concentration camps because they cannot move anywhere else. The Minister, the Department and the Government should be ashamed of themselves.

It is a pity that this Bill does not deal with some of the problems connected with homelessness. I am not going to deal with this matter in detail as it would not be appropriate to do so. The annual housing statistics bulletin for 1991 contains an assessment of homelessness for March of that year. In relation to the assessment of homelessness for the Borough of Dún Laoghaire which has a population of about 150,000 people, the Borough of Dún Laoghaire concluded it had two homeless people. Who believes that other than the official in the Borough of Dun Laoghaire who compiled these figures? Cork, by contrast, admitted that it had 303 homeless people; Dublin city, 1,350; Galway, 97; Limerick, 80; and Waterford 75. Yet, Dún Laoghaire decided it had only two homeless people.

For a long time people working with the homeless have been suggesting that the Department should have a clear view of the methodology to be employed in determining how many people are homeless. They are extremely reluctant to publish the methodology used. They apparently do not want to talk about the matter with anybody. Given the simple statistics I have quoted, if the second largest urban area in the city can say there are only two homeless people in the borough under any of the categories listed in that sample, I suggest something stinks about the methodology used. The Department badly need to reach an agreement with the local authorities on the methodology to be used to ensure they do not come up with that nonsense.

One can have all the fine policies one wishes — and they are worthwhile — and one can show imagination but when the objective appears to be to cover up the fact that the money is not there, then we will all be led astray. There is a need for proper funding for a variety of imaginative public housing schemes. With proper funding, many of the ideas contained in this legislation would be worthwhile. Indeed, if we had proper funding for halting sites for travelling people and if there was a political will to do so we could get rid of section 10 which is abnoxious and which incites people to persecute the travelling community.

Creidim gurb é seo ceann de na Billí is fearr dar tháinig os ár gcomhair le fada an lá, mar baineann sé le gnáthshaol na ndaoine, leis an rud is bunasaí i saol chuile dhuine, is é sin an díon a bheidh os a gcionn chuile oíche agus chuile lá. Mar sin, cuirim míle fáilte roimh an reachtaíocht seo a bhfuil forálacha tábhachtacha agus bunúsach inti. Is é an trua dáiríre é nár tugadh isteach Bille mar seo ag deireadh na gcaogaidí nó ag tús na seascaidí.

I warmly welcome this legislation. It is a pity that some of the principles contained in the Bill were not implemented 20 or 30 years ago. Many of the social problems we face today would not exist if the principles enshrined in this Bill had been implemented at that time. A major difference I have noticed between urban and rural living is the problem of social segregation in urban areas. Housing people in huge local authority estates away from the sections of the city which are populated primarily by middle class or upper class people is an iniquitous form of apartheid. This leads to social problems within communities given the lack of a variety of skills, different backgrounds education, etc. On the other hand, this is not a problem in rural communities where one tends to have a social mix. Furthermore, there is the problem of attitude which arises from social segregation. This is totally unacceptable. This leads to segregated schooling.

The principle in this Bill of minimising the effects of social segregation in relation to housing is fundamental. We need to redefine our aims to ensure that we do not just put people into houses but that we create communities, living balanced societies, around which all aspects of community life revolve.

The idea of owner-occupation is also given prominence in the Bill. In the sixties people believed that because high rise flats were a success on continental Europe, they would solve all our housing problems. However, two fundamental facts were ignored: first our social history and traditions and second, our climate. In countries with a hot climate and good weather, housing has a slightly different role than in countries with temperate climates and a high rainfall because in the latter countries people tend to spend more time indoors. The move towards providing houses rather than high rise flats should be welcomed as a progressive step forward.

Housing standards have improved over the last 20 to 30 years and we should all be grateful for this. The standards laid down in both legislation and regulations in relation to house building have led to a dramatic improvement compared to houses built in the 1950s or 1960s. Relative to people's incomes, house costs have increased dramatically with the result that many people on moderate incomes cannot purchase a house. I am referring here to people in employment who could provide funds towards the cost of a house.

Until the introduction of shared ownership scheme there was no way these people could own a house, and make a reasonable contribution towards the cost. I welcome the concept of shared ownership; this scheme has taken off in County Galway. There have been administrative snags and I will address them later, but the concept of people meeting part of the cost of purchasing a house, relative to their means, makes a lot of sense.

Senator Ryan referred to the amount of money being spent on housing, I would like to see an even greater amount spend on housing. Every Senator who is also a member of a local authority realises the problems confronting most local authorities when it comes to funds for housing. It is not only a question of providing money; we must get the greatest return in terms of the number, quality and type of houses for the money spent. Under the shared ownership scheme people who would otherwise be forced onto the local authority housing lists will contribute a proportion of the cost initially so that eventually they will own their own houses.

Another major problem in rural areas is that over time houses have fallen into disrepair. Houses built 50 years ago are uninhabitable because elderly people do not have the wherewithal to maintain them. In County Galway, there is a large number of what are termed demountable dwellings. They have a timber frame and are in my view socially unacceptable as a place to live. Unfortunately, in many cases the people who moved into these dwellings were living in substandard houses but if the scheme now introduced had existed at that time they could have been provided with a better standard of housing for the same amount of money. This scheme will perform an important social function in rural areas. It will ensure that dwellings that would otherwise fall into disrepair will be maintained and we will not have to rely on temporary dwellings, such as demountable dwellings, except in exceptional cases. This is something I would welcome as a county councillor and Senator because I think it is one of the greatest social housing problems we face. I will refer later to the small print which has been a feature of the scheme to date and ask the Minister to look at it.

While I am on the subject of the principle of repairing houses, there is a slight problem with the definition, that is, a person has to be on, or eligible to be on, the housing list. There has been some debate as to what exactly this means. For example, will a person on social welfare living in a house which is habitable but not in good repair and who does not have the means to maintain it be eligible under this scheme? This needs to be clarified. Some people believe there should be a clear housing need, that the house would have to be uninhabitable, but others say that once the income requirements are met, if the house is in bad repair, that case comes within the ambit of the scheme. That is something I hope could be clarified.

As I am addressing myself to the repairs in lieu scheme, as it is called in short, I also ask the Minister again to look at the plethora of schemes that exist for repairing houses. I have drawn attention many times, as a member of Galway County Council, to this problem. At present Galway County Council operates an essential repairs grant scheme out of its own fund. There is some funding from the Department of the Environment for this also. We have the repairs in lieu of social housing and then we have the scheme for housing aid for the elderly operated by the health boards. I understand the third scheme I mentioned was brought in originally as a task force scheme in an emergency situation. What has happened over the years is that it is just now another ordinary scheme and people say if they cannot get the essential repairs grants scheme they will try the housing aid for the elderly. In my view this causes confusion and duplication and I understand there has to be constant liaison between the health boards and the local authorities to ensure that there are not double applications.

My view is in line with what is proposed in the Bill: that all housing functions should be under one authority and that that should be the local authority. There should be comprehensive schemes for the repair of houses for people on low income and for the repair of houses for people who would otherwise come on the housing list.

An bhféadfainn a rá leis an Aire go bhfuil na deontais Ghaeltachta do thithe i gceist anseo. Tuigim nach faoi a roinnse atá siad. Ach arís, tá ceist éigin ann, dar liomsa, sa Ghaeltacht a chaithfear a réiteach maidir leis na deontais seo agus an gaol atá acu leis na scéimeanna nua atá sa Bhille, mar, de réir a chéile, tá laghdú is laghdú ag teacht, ó thaobh na Gaeltachta de, maidir leis na scéimeanna tithíochta atá á reachtáil sa Ghaeltacht. I gcás mhuintir na Gaeltachta anois táthar ag caint go bunúsach ar thrí áisíneacht ag plé le cúrsaí tithíochta, ceithre cinn má thógann tú an Roinn Comhshaoil, ó thaobh an deontais comhshaoil de: an Roinn féin, an t-údarás áitiúil, an Bord Sláinte agus Roinn na Gaeltachta. San am go bhfuilimid ag caint ar one-stop-shop creidim go mba cheart dúinn, b'fhéidir, díriú ar an gceist seo agus laghdú a dhéanamh ar líon na n-áisíneachtaí atá ag plé le tithíocht in aon cheantar amháin.

The provision for voluntary houses in the Bill is one of which I have had a fair bit of indirect experience and is one I certainly think has a lot of potential, particularly in the housing of the elderly. I have had direct involvement with a small voluntary housing scheme that has been proposed for Clonbur, a neighbouring village to where I live. The idea is that adjacent to the church and the health centre six houses will be built which will be primarily let to older people. This provides us as a community with a means of housing our elderly in a sensitive way, brings them into ready access to all fundamental services and still maintains people within their community.

There is another advantage with this scheme and that is that in that type of small cluster housing scheme it will be possible for old people to be provided with better back-up services, thus ensuring that they will be able to live longer within their communities rather than having to be taken into full-time care in institutions. This obviously has attractions. I favour very much the idea of providing care for our old people for as long as is practicable in their own homes, but this is only going to be possible where there is good housing and where those houses can be easily serviced. Whereas I favour the bringing into villages the old people who are not resident on farms and are in very bad housing, particularly in the demountables, I would have to say that personally I do not favour the same thing in family situations.

I have often remarked that if we have anything approaching social deprivation, or social segregation, in areas like Connemara, it is in the small housing estates in the towns. In my view, most people opt for rural housing as opposed to scheme housing in towns. I see huge social advantages in providing that. If you denude the countryside of people you actually increase the costs of servicing the residual populations, you run down the schools, the shops and every service you have and you also leave the residual population living in isolation without the natural community relationships that exist.

Therefore, our housing policy has to take into account the whole social implication of housing and the idea of keeping as many people as possible living where they want to live; keeping communities vibrant for the future and not running them down and pushing people in together. Any small saving in unit costs that might be achieved that way is in my view more than offset by the increased cost of social problems that arise out of that type of policy.

The Bill is comprehensive. There are sections on private rented dwellings. There are radical and important proposals here to ensure that regulations will be brought into this area. As somebody who often deals with people, particularly in city areas, who come up against this problem, I welcome the provisions in this Bill regarding private rented dwellings and the rights enshrined therein.

I would like to refer again to the shared ownership option. This is a very good scheme and, as proposed in the Bill, I cannot find any fault with the legislative proposals there. However, as the scheme has operated up to now, there are some problems that have come to light. The provision for the rent, plus the addition of the consumer price index, is causing confusion. In my view, the idea of having a slightly higher rent and not having that provision would be more attractive, because the uncertainty that has arisen is offputting for people who are proposing to get involved in the scheme.

Many people remember with a certain worry what happened to people who took out the original Housing Finance Agency loans, which were linked to the consumer price index. They fear something similar might happen and that when they would go to buy out their share of the house it would have gone up considerably. At the moment, if you take the inflation rate of 3 per cent, you find that the cost without subsidy of the shared part is 8 per cent per annum. Of course, this is very attractive if you take the lowest house loan at about 11 per cent or 12 per cent, but there is a question mark about what happens if inflation increases. I know we hope that this will not happen, but there is certainly that doubt in people's mind. I would hate to think that people would not avail of this scheme because of that doubt.

The saving that this provision makes could be more than offset by people not availing of this scheme and going on the local authority housing list instead because of the fear of this clause. There is also the expectation, rightly or wrongly, in many people's minds, if they get a local authority house, that at some time in the future, without any index linking and with recognition of rent paid, they might get ownership of that local authority house. This is such a good concept that I would not like small print conditions to inhibit anybody.

There are other operational problems relating to that scheme that will have to be overcome in regard to getting the loan and the licence to build. I understand that in our local authority these problems are now being overcome and that in the last week we are ready to start building the first house. I had a connection with it in that I had made strong representations and helped the people who forms, etc. This scheme is particularly attractive in rural areas for people who want to build on their own site, where they can get the building costs down to a reasonable amount. In many cases in these areas you would also have some savings, which means the cost of housing is very reasonable.

The second problem I have come up against is the income limit. I accept that at £12,000 the income limit as at present operated is reasonable if you are talking of a one income household, but for a couple who intend to get married, both on an income of £7,000, that is not a very high income. I would ask that recognition be given for that type of circumstance, because obviously these people will have a great interest in availing of the shared ownership option. Where you are talking about two incomes rather than one, the income ceiling should be higher than when you are talking about one income. In the two income case, particularly people who are getting married or who are newly married, they may not always have the second income. They might eventually have only one income, either through redundancy or voluntarily leaving the workforce. The social welfare implications of that in the long term are obvious.

As regards the lower income limit, I accept it as being totally practical in ordinary cases. Under £8,000, the shared ownership option is not really an option except in exceptional circumstances. I have come across some circumstances where people might have been left money or a farm by a relative or they might have money saved or have been given money by parents. Such people could avail of this scheme even though they had a very low nominal income because by putting cash up front on a good proportion of the non-shared part, they could realistically meet the repayments required under this scheme. To exclude people in this situation from this scheme would be a pity.

Under the repairs in lieu scheme the kind of problems that have arisen would be as follows. First would be the need to allow legal expenses to people who have not got the land in their own names as an allowable expense in repairing a house. It happened in the case of many of the applicants I have seen to date that when they have been approved for the repairs in lieu scheme, it is then found that the land is still in a father's or a grandfather's name — in one case dating back to 1927. The scheme provides that until the mortgage can be executed, and title established, it will not be possible to go ahead with the scheme. The cost of getting title in these cases can be high; you could be looking at in excess of £1,000.

I am suggesting that there would be power to allow for these costs to be included in the cost of repair under the repairs in lieu scheme. Furthermore, in cases of title difficulties, where there might be a delay, where ownership is clearly de facto but is not there in law, where there are going to be long delays in establishing title because of big families, perhaps having to go back generations, etc., I am suggesting that letters of undertaking would be sufficient to allow the work to go ahead — in other words, a letter of undertaking from a solicitor to lodge the deeds and to execute the mortgage once title is established, and, in that event, the money being put in by the local authority would be protected. Furthermore, I understand that the main reason for the mortgage is to stop the person selling out immediately the work is completed. If there was a letter of undertaking that would be impossible without the common contract debt being made good to the county council.

I would like to refer to a hobby horse of mine that is addressed in the social housing policy, that is, the need to ensure that bathrooms are provided in every house in this country. A provision was made to local authorities in 1991; but I would like to see it a stated, clear objective that no house or dwelling in this State within, say, five years would be without a bathroom and a toilet. This is a basic facility. It is a once-off problem that we should address now. No new dwelling will be built without a bathroom. Therefore, when we have provided bathrooms in all existing dwellings, we will have sorted out what is totally unacceptable situation in 1992. I welcome the fact that this issue was addressed in the Plan for Social Housing. I hope that this programme is accelerated not only in public or local authority housing but also in private housing. The repairs in lieu scheme would have an important role to play in the elimination of this problem.

One small technical issue has been brought to my attention relating to vested houses. We have vested houses in the west and they are in neither one category nor the other; they are not county council property and, I was told the residents are not entitled to apply under the repairs in lieu of social housing scheme. Some vested houses do not have bathrooms, and this poses huge problems when these people are totally dependent on social welfare.

The question of travellers was raised. Senator B. Ryan addressed this matter at some length. Galway is a county that has done a reasonable amount to deal with this problem, but more needs to be done. This is a serious problem to which there is no easy answer. The provision of halting sites, etc., is a step in the right direction. One of the biggest complaints I get is that areas of local authority housing, which in their own right have already housed large numbers of travellers and which, because of high unemployment rates, would have many social problems, tend also to be the areas where halting sites are located. People feel, with a certain amount of justification, that they are carrying an unfair portion of the burden and that already vulnerable communities are often landed with this problem and with the solution of this problem. One area in Galway has one in ten houses occupied by travellers. They are happy to accept this but they also have 60 to 100 caravans in an encampment across the road. This is an impossible and unfair burden on a community who are already vulnerable.

I accept totally that the travellers have rights and that they have to be housed or provided with adequate halting sites; but we cannot just dump them on the most vulnerable sections of society and hope the problem will go away. Every area, every section and every county will have to be forced to take their fair share of this burden; it cannot always be the local authority or poorer areas that have to take the total brunt of this problem. There has to be an equal spread and it has to be dealt with expeditiously.

We also have to ensure that due recognition is given to those counties that have done their bit and that counties that have not done their share in providing halting sites and houses for travellers are made to take their share of the burden. There is a danger that a county by providing a large number of places for travellers to live, whether it is halting sites or houses, will find they are only attracting more and more of the problem to themselves and that other counties are getting rid of the problem quietly by doing nothing. This is totally unacceptable. It is something I feel very strongly about and it is something that has to be addressed, particularly in Galway.

D'ordaigh mé ceist na n-oileán mara leis an Aire Stáit cheana. Tá na costais tógála go hard ansin, amuigh ar an gcósta. Baineann fadhbanna faoi leith le bloic stroighne agus nithe mar sin a thabhairt go dtí na hoileáin. Iarraim go speisialta air, i gcás na n-oileán mara nach bhfuil droichead go dtí an mhórthír iontu, go dtabharfaí cead £14,000 a chaitheamh faoin scéim housing repairs in lieu, in ionad an £10,000 atá i gceist sa chuid eile den tír. Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil a leithéid de sholáthar ann cheana féin ach to gcaithfear cead a iarraidh ar an Aire nó ar an Roinn chuile uair a fheidhmítear é.

Ba cheart cead lárnach a thabhairt do na hoileáin mhara faoin scéim áirithe sin, 40 faoin gcéad níos mó a chaitheamh ar na hoileáin mhara faoin scéim sin gan cead na Roinne a fháil, mar nílimid ach ag cur leis an maorlathas, mar caithfear cead a fháil i gcás go bhfuil sé soiléir go bhfuil na costais tógála i bhfad níos airde, agus ní bheimis ag caint ar mhórán deisithe. Is ar éigean go mbeifí ag caint ar deich gcinn ar a mhéad. Ba cheart díriú ar an rud beag sin a chur ina cheart do mhuintir na n-oileán le cothrom na Féinne a thabhairt dóibh.

In the Bill and in the housing programme there is talk about the giving of powers to the local authorities. The operation of all housing schemes should be at local authority level. I have always felt that the £2,000 house grant should be operated at local housing authority level; in other words, that the rules should be made centrally but the application of the scheme should be at local authority level. There seems to me to be something fundamentally strange with having an applicant apply to the county council for a shared ownership option — and many of the people availing of the £2,000 house grant will be shared ownership applicants or will be applying for local authority loans — and to have them inspected by an engineer for the local authority and inspected again by an engineer from the Department of the Environment. The capacity and ability is there at local authority level to administer that scheme on a day-to-day level. It is one thing that certainly would enable people to operate on a one-stop-shop basis if that scheme could be transferred and if all the schemes could be operated at local level.

Having had experience of the voluntary housing scheme, I particularly welcome the provision to give powers to local authorities to deal directly and sanction voluntary housing schemes in certain cases rather than having to go with each scheme to the Department of the Environment. In my view, this is unnecessary duplication and I welcome the new proposal. I would like to see it move faster, because I think it is only devolving power, on the principle of subsidiarity, to the most efficient level, avoiding duplication and cost and also making it user friendly for the person looking for help under that scheme.

Mar a dúirt mé ag an tús, tá an t-uafás le moladh sa Bhille seo, Bille atá anchuimsitheach. Déarfainn go mbeidh díospóireacht an-spéisiúil ann faoi nuair a bheidh an Coiste á phlé. Athraíonn sé go bunúsach an treo a bhfuilimid ag dul i gcúrsaí tithíochta agus ba mhaith liom focal molta faoi leith a thabhairt don Aire Flynn a bhí mar Aire Comhshaoil sa Rialtas nuair a ceapadh an polasaí seo an chéad uair; agus freisin don Aire Stáit atá anseo anois agus atá ag treorú an Bhille trí Thithe an Oireachtais. Creidim go gcuirfidh an Bille seo athrú, ní amháin ar chúrsaí tithíochta ach ar chúrsaí bunúsacha sóisialta freisin, mar, i ndeireadh an lae, níl i dtithe ach bunús an phobail agus maireann chuile dhuine againn i bpobail.

In my view Fianna Fáil have never been very helpful to those seeking an opportunity to own or rent a decent house. They have always cut back on corporation and council house building. The inevitable result of that, of course, is a slump, not only in the supply of houses but a slump in the building trade. When you have a slump in the building trade tens of thousands of construction workers are affected and thousands of families are affected by a lack of housing. If you have a good housing you have a good employment, with a spin-off in materials, etc.

This Bill appears to offer a lot. In fact, it is not offering very much at all. At the moment local authority housing is virtually at a standstill, particularly in our major cities. For example, in Dublin there have been 4,000 families on the waiting list from as far back as 1989 and they built six houses in that year. In 1990, there was 35 houses built and in 1991 we saw the gap widening again. All the time the number of local authority houses being built is dropping very considerably. In Dublin county there were 1,000 families on the waiting list. There were 33 houses built in 1989 and 45 in 1990 and, again, a drop in 1991. On the other hand, when the Labour Party were in Government in 1984, 684 houses in Dublin city and 1,717 in County Dublin were built.

At present, in Cork there are about 1,000 on the housing list there. In 1984, when the Labour Party were in Government, 235 houses were built, but by 1989 under Fianna Fáil and, latterly under Fianna Fáil and their partners, one house built in 1989. There were 14 houses built in 1990 and the same in 1991. In Waterford there were 400 people on the housing list. Not a single house was built in 1989 and 16 were built in 1990. In Galway 126 houses were built in 1986, in 1988 there were two houses built and 20 houses were built in 1989. This is at a time when we had 300 families on the waiting list. In Limerick there were 250 people on the waiting list in 1989 and five houses were built and in 1990, 29 houses were built. This compares with 202 houses built in 1986. Therefore, the argument about Fianna Fáil having a poor record in local authority housing over the years and not being very helpful is vindicated by those figures.

Sitting suspended at 5.30 p.m. and resumed at 6.30 p.m.

Before the break I gave figures which demonstrated that we have a housing crisis. There are over 8,000 families at the moment in five major cities who are in need of housing but the response from this Coalition Government was to cut back on the number of houses built. We must recognise that there is more to the provision of housing than mere administration and bureaucratic responses. If we do not take the situation seriously and look on it as a crisis, people will wonder what we are thinking about. The figures can be checked and they clearly indicate that there is a housing crisis.

Some Minister told us there was no jobs crisis. We were told by another Minister there was no housing crisis. What is the position when so many people who are in need of housing cannot get one? The schemes which have been introduced to date have not alleviated that situation. One wonders why the public are not entitled to call it a housing crisis when that is what we are faced with.

There has been a sharp deterioration in housing stock, particularly since 1967. This is a very serious reflection on any Government. I do not want to keep quoting what was done in the past but facts are facts. When Labour were in Government, taking the same five cities, in 1984 there were 1,055 local authority houses built; in 1985 there were 1,007 and in 1986 there were 1,065 local authority houses built. If one compares those figures with what the Fianna Fáil Administration and later the Coalition Administration have done through the years, one will see there is a serious situation to be dealt with. There is no use telling people that there is no crisis. The argument will probably be made that the social housing plan will alleviate the problem but before this debate is over, people will have arguments against that as well.

Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats are right when they say there is no housing crisis because they probably mean there is no crisis at the top end of the housing market. The policy they follow sees to that. There is an ever-increasing supply of very expensive houses to meet every demand. There is no crisis at the top of the housing market. This is what they probably mean and I would like them to explain if that is the case before the debate is over.

If one has the money, every taste, demand, need and indulgence can be satisfied but a large number of people do not have money. They must be housed by the local authorities. There is a housing crisis as far as many young people are concerned, most of whom cannot afford a home. There is also a crisis for elderly people living alone in totally unfit accommodation arising from the fact that no maintenance is carried out. One of the reasons for bad maintenance, apart from cutbacks, is that Fianna Fáil have a policy of building low cost housing and such houses deteriorate more rapidly and need more maintenance than other houses. That aggravates the economic problems that local authorities must face.

Thousands of people depend on local authorities to provide them with houses. The shortage of houses is acute and people despair of ever getting off the housing list.

My concern is that the Bill will not address the crisis that exist. I do not think that the human issues involved in the housing crisis are acknowledged. Many citizens who require basic shelter will not be catered for by the Government. There is much more to housing than just providing bricks and mortar. It is a social issue and many Governments have failed when it came to the question of providing local authority housing.

The Bill which we are debating, despite its length and complexity, is one that many will look on as minor legislation. What it tries to do is underpin the social housing plan published over a year ago. The Minister said the plan signals a reduction in the historical degree of dependence on local authority housing. We can only presume that he was referring to the mid-seventies and eighties because if the number of local authority houses built over the last five years were reduced, none would be built. I am puzzled when people say there is no housing crisis.

The Progressive Democrats and the Fianna Fáil Party in Government seem to work on systematically cutting back the local authority house building programme to an all time low; it is deliberate policy. At the same time, the price of private houses has increased. One needs an annual income of around £22,000 to be in a position to afford an average house; in Dublin, one would need an income of £26,000 or £27,000 per annum. That could be described as the affordability trap.

There are other ways to deal with the housing crisis. For example, is there any reason for not buying more secondhand houses which would be a lot cheaper than building houses? There are between 20,000 and 30,000 families on the official housing list. Only one-fifth of the number of houses necessary to meet that demand has been built in the last few years. Thousands of houses need to be built to meet requirements.

Many people do not understand how the system works. Occasionally some documentation is distributed but it is not always easy to understand. Fianna Fáil have always deprived those in the greatest need of the chance to own or rent a decent house. It is disturbing that when other parties were in Government the housing situation was dealt with. On one occasion, urban councils were given the right to build houses, a right they did not have for about 90 years. If the will is there, nothing is impossible.

On the question of maintenance, 7,000 council houses do not have bathrooms or indoor toilets. Looking at that, one could say that local authorities are bad landlords but why are they bad landlords? Are they not given enough money by central Government? Some of the problems can be attributed to the policy of low cost housing. Dún Laoghaire, Dublin and Cork, as far as the Labour Party can gather, are the three worst areas; in urban council areas, we think Tralee, Bray and Dungarvan have the worst landlords because maintenance is poor and people are still living in local authority housing without bathrooms.

A case in Dublin was highlighted in the newspaper. If you lived on the third storey of a particular block of flats and somebody on the first or second floor turned the water on no water would flow upstairs. You would have to wait until the people downstairs were finished. Hundreds of people came to my clinic with maintenance problems and I had to make a personal appearance at maintenance depots. All sorts of promises were made but the officials would say that there was a list and they were tied to a certain way of proceeding but unless one knew somebody on the inside there was very little chance of getting any maintenance done.

It is not just a question of building houses, we seem to be saying we are no longer interested in building local authority houses and that this social plan will serve all our needs. I do not think it will, I think we will be talking about this problem in two years time unless the situation changes drastically.

As regards the sale of such houses, at one time the argument was made that if too many of these houses were sold, the housing stock would decrease. That has happened, but that is not the only reason. Most of the schemes are practically private schemes. Very few tenants were among those who purchased houses. The question was not whether it was right or wrong to sell the local government housing or the conditions under which they were sold, but the fact that there was not a farsighted housing policy.

We live in an age of rapid change where there is no such thing as secure employment. People search for reasonable rented accommodation because they cannot get on the housing lists, and those on the housing lists cannot get a house. People looking for this type of accommodation are usually the most deprived in society. There is very little hope for them. They have no hope of purchasing a house given their difficulties in getting a mortgage taking into account their age, income, etc. If three or four members of a family are unemployed, there is no way one can talk about purchasing a house, their only hope is to be on the local authority housing list.

While we would not quibble with some provisions in the Bill, in our view it is not designed to alleviate the housing crisis. I hope the Minister, unlike other Ministers will not disagree when we call it a crisis. He might disagree with the way we are handling the matter or criticising the Government, but some Ministers said there was no jobs crisis. What level of unemployment do we have to reach before there is one? There are 300,000 people unemployed out of a population of 3.5 million. At one time, Guinness provided employment for 17,000 or 18,000 people, if we take into account downstream activities. Now they employ only about 1,500 people.

Acting Chairman

We are dealing with the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.

I am making a passing reference to the fact that the Government claim there is no crisis and I am trying to demonstrate that they also claimed there was no crisis in unemployment. I have good news for the Acting Chairman, I will sit down in a minute.

Acting Chairman

It is not my intention to limit the Senator's contribution.

I do not mean it in that sense; I have nearly finished my contribution. It is not easy for me to stand up and be critical although some people find it easy to do so. This Bill will not solve the problem. I feel I will be dealing with unfortunate people in two years time who will be still on the housing list. I will still be dealing with people who have over-dosed on two or three occasions and are in dire straits as a result of not being housed. Overall, I do not think the Bill serves the purpose for which it was introduced. I accept there are some provisions I would not object to.

I welcome the Bill. It provides an opportunity for the Government and the Department of the Environment to look afresh at the housing problem. I accept that some of the comments made by Senator Harte are valid. We have difficulty in some areas of the country with housing. I hope Senator Harte will stay in the House for a couple of minutes to hear my thoughts on how the problem originated.

I have been a member of a local authority for a long time. I am concerned about the difficulty we have at present in providing houses for people. Senator Harte said in 1985 when the Labour Party were in Government they built and repaired houses. Yes they did, but unfortunately the present Government and previous Governments have had to pay for the serious mistakes that were made. The provision made for housing by the Government in which the Labour Party was a partner devastated the finances of this country. At that time, one could buy a house and get £12,000 to renovate and improve a house. There was no limit on the number of houses one could buy and there was no means test. It transpired that speculators and those who could get money bought the properties. The value of the properties was increased and speculators made financial gains.

I believe the intentions of the average Member of the Labour Party are as good as the intentions of Members on the Government side. The Labour Party went along with a housing programme in 1985 that we have been paying for ever since and this has resulted in a housing crisis. I have no difficulty in admitting there is a housing crisis in Donegal and there are housing problems in other parts of the country, also.

The Government were right not to give a blank cheque to local authorities to build what they liked. Local authorities acquired land and built colonies of houses. There were 100 or more houses built on some sites and these big estates brought all kinds of social problems. The Government and the Department of the Environment were right to say this is not the way to proceed. Many agencies made representations to the Minister and to the Department asking for a different approach. The acquisition of land and the building of housing schemes on the outskirts of towns did not augur well for the overall development of areas.

I welcome many aspects of the Bill and the Minister's introductory speech will certainly help, provided members of local authorities and the Government harmonise their approach to the provision of housing. The Government cannot always implement legislation especially when another agency is involved. The provision of money and the different schemes under various headings is an attempt by the Government to reach the needy in different areas.

The shared ownership scheme is excellent. It is not a new scheme. I have details of how the scheme has been working very satisfactorily in the UK. Recently I received corresponsence from the Bedfordshire local authority after I listened to a programme which highlighted their difficulties and they are similar to ours. They have the problem of an ever-increasing demand for housing and, at the same time, the rent received will never repay the investment made in the house, plus maintenance and repairs.

The Minister gave a figure of £85 per week which is an astonishing one. How many local authority house dwellers realise that the taxpayer subsidises each house to the tune of £85? This was brought home to me very forcibly recently when somebody who got a local authority house came to see me. They had a problem with drainage and I went out to the new local authority house. The man took me to the rear of the house and said the soak-away drain from the septic tank was not working satisfactorily. I explained that we had a serious housing problem in County Donegal and that to send out an engineer to inspect the drain and men to do the work would cost perhaps £1,000, while the tenant could take off his coat and do the very small job himself. I told him the local authority provided him with a good new house and that he was paying a very small rent as it is subsidised. I also said I would be doing a disservice to those who are on the housing list in County Donegal if I acted otherwise.

We must look at this honestly and say no Government will be in a position to build houses and repair them as the demand arises. We must first tackle the question of housing maintenance staff at local authority level. Tenants must be advised that neither local authority nor Government are going to be responsible for house maintenance and repair. It is misleading to the tenant to be given the impression that there is a possibility of their house being repaired by the local authority. When somebody gets a council house, if they are in reasonably to repair and maintain their own home. We must get rid of the perception that the local authority is responsible at all times for the house after it has been provided. The Minister today has highlighted the need to do that by revealing that house maintenance costs are £85 a week. This is not sensational news to me but many local authority dwellers will find it difficult to believe.

Any member of a local authority might admit that he meets tenants every day who do not want to pay for house maintenance. Donegal County Council experiences difficulty in this area and it is sad when people are put out of their house and the house repossessed by the authority. In one case a family was drawing unemployment assistance and perhaps doing a bit of work on the side. The family occupied a subsidised local authority house and was drawing supplementary benefit or receiving a contribution towards the mortgage rate from the health board. The health board was paying but the money never went to the local authority. I was shocked to discover that this could happen. The Government, the local authority and the health boards have got to get together and realise that they will never meet housing needs if they adopt that sloppy approach. This Bill is an attempt to resolve some of the difficulties in providing public housing.

It is misleading for speakers who want to make political capital out of this crisis to say that if we had Labour and Fine Gael back in government we would not have a problem and that they were expert at providing funding for local authority housing. At the end of the day it is the hardpressed taxpayer who pays the subsidy and provides the housing and intelligent people know that there is no easy solution to the housing situation. Public housing must be provided on an organised basis and those who get houses must be made aware of where the finance comes from and must make a contribution towards it. It will solve part of the problem if there is a clear understanding of the Government's responsibility in the matter.

I strongly encourage the Minister to introduce a new tenant purchase programme for selling houses and to say to tenants that they are obliged to pay a rent based on family income which may be increased if family income increases. The house should also be offered to the tenant at an attractive sale price. It is not helpful to offer the house at a give away price. Four years ago or so, a purchase scheme made houses built less than eight years before available at £8,000. Given the development and purchase costs of a site, the legal costs involved and the cost of building a house and ancillary services, to offer it at £8,000 was a gift. In the light of the knowledge and information provided by the Minister, it was still a good deal for Government to sell the house at £8,000, which was less than a third of its value and I would encourage the Minister and the Department of the Environment to sell as many local authority houses as possible by introducing a new purchase scheme and to base it on fairly realistic house values to give people a chance of home ownership at a reasonable price. This would help clear some of the problems, especially the major problem of house maintenance which absorbs money that should be going towards the provision of new houses. Some funds would come from sales and could then be used to build new houses.

The new house grant should be increased. Today £2,000 for a house grant is not enough and, given that money is in short supply for local authority housing, there is no better way of getting people to house themselves than by providing a financial incentive.

Donegal County Council built 12 houses recently and about 60 people there are in need of housing. We supplied those 12 houses to the most needy, to people who would never be able to pay for a house. The total sum of money involved in the building of the 12 houses could have been better spent by making it available in the form of grants so that people might find a site, whether from a family friend or somewhere else. It would have been wiser and more prudent to give people an incentive to build their own house. We will never solve the housing problem until we make it more attractive for people to provide their own houses. Grants are a once-off, not an ongoing payment and in my practical experience of many years would provide an answer. I ask the Minister to look at this suggestion.

I welcome the provisions for the public housing programme where the Red Cross will receive up to 90 per cent funding to build houses for the elderly. There are many such schemes in progress in my county, but there is a problem here in that some of the voluntary organisations providing this type of housing have not got the necessary expertise in land acquisition and after the house has been provided they find themselves faced by the same maintenance problems as local authorities regarding who will cut the grass, repair the roads and maintain the lighting. They wonder if the ESB will take it over or will the local authority take it over. Maintenance is a major problem and any public representative who claims to have a simple solution is being dishonest. I have looked at every conceivable possibility as to how we might help house people and my conclusion is to increase the incentive to people to help themselves. No matter what business one is in, it is unhealthy to remove incentives and in the provision of housing it is important to look at that possibility.

I believe in selling off housing stock together with the provision of incentives to build one's own house. We need to adopt an aggressive approach to getting rid of old houses that are in need of repair. In many cases tenants of those houses will raise a loan to repair, alter or extend their house and that is the right approach.

I ask the Minister to work as hard as he can to provide a new house grant in keeping with today's house costs. We will be half way to solving the problem if that can be achieved. I know that we are in mid-term between budgets and such provision would have to be planned in advance. I support the Minister's statements which indicated he is aware of the problem and I encourage him to look at the provision of incentives for new house acquisition or selling off existing stock. We could go on talking but we must come down to bedrock here. I hope the Minister will take my suggestions on board.

The Minister mentioned one item I am particularly interested in largely because the problem differs from area to area. In his speech he said that "to ensure that no authority is left behind, my Department will be arranging to meet as soon as possible with county managers and other senior staff". Could I ask that elected representatives be included at those meetings such as the chairpersons of councils and one or two members. Otherwise, there will always be a suspicion that the manager and officials went to Dublin and were sold a bad deal and local representatives elected to the local authority will have an opportunity to say that if they had been included in negotiations with the Department the result might have been better. The county council means those elected to the council; the manager and officials are employed by the council. It is wrong to exclude elected councillors from negotiations.

I would like to make one other proposal which may bring difficulties. Some areas have greater housing problems than others and I ask the Minister to allow local authorities with serious housing problems to get funding from the European Bank. I make this suggestion on the basis of the problem in Donegal. A housing problem there has arisen over a period of 25 years, not because of any Government policy but because for part of that 25 years the Donegal County Manager would not allow houses to be built. He was appointed at a time of housing surplus. The surplus embarrassed him; he put travelling families into houses to ensure occupation and problems resulted. Thereafter, he decided that where 50 houses were needed he would build ten at a time when money was available to build houses. We accumulated a housing demand in County Donegal to a point where we now need about 1,500 houses and I would like the council there to be able to tackle that problem.

I know we are constrained by the Exchequer and the Minister for Finance. The Minister cannot provide the necessary money to solve County Donegal's housing problems. Ours was the second highest allocation, nearly £2 million, and it is not enough. The problem is aggravated further by changes of county managers. This year a manager may decide that since the allocation is £2 million he will embark on a certain housing programme, and that he will pay part of the 1991 bills out of the 1992 allocation. He may start some houses early in the year and some later and have a nice balanced house building programme. If a new manager comes in he may decide to do it differently by waiting for the allocation before commencing building. An alteration of the first situation may create problems. I hope the Minister will look at my suggestion.

Where the Department of the Environment and the Minister are convinced beyond doubt that there is a substantial housing problem he should look seriously at the possibility of those areas being allowed to borrow a repayable loan from the European Bank. That is a reasonable approach when you look at all the different schemes for which European money can be borrowed. I referred last week to the Waterford harbour authority borrowing £14 million for infrastructure and harbour development. I see no less merit in a local authority with a major housing problem being allowed to borrow from the EC bank.

With those few suggestions I welcome the Bill which attempts to look at the problem afresh and and go forward on the various headings. The Minister is right to discontinue encampment and incipient colonies of houses at the edge of towns. Such encampments bring educational and social problems, and the new approach to housing under a number of headings is commendable. I urge the Minister when legislating for the housing needs, to build in an incentive to help those prepared to do a little for themselves.

There is no doubt that there is a current national housing crisis and each county has its own problems. We need an urgent housing construction programme to alleviate the problem. In County Limerick 400 people are on the housing list, creating many difficulties for those concerned. Many social difficulties arise as a result. Married people are obliged to live with in-laws. I know of a family with one child living in a house where there are 13 people and four generations. There is no possibility of their acquiring public accommodation because this year the number of houses being built, which is around 30, will not go anywhere near solving the problem, bearing in mind that there are 400 families awaiting housing. One group badly affected by the housing problem is single parent families who require housing. It is frustrating for a public representative to be approached by single parents when the representative knows that if houses become available the number of two parent families with several children on the housing list will practically eliminate single parents from consideration. They have virtually no hope of getting housing under present circumstances in County Limerick.

I strongly feel that a certain type of house should be built for one parent families. I know of at least four people, two single mothers and two separated wives, affected by this situation. Each of those four people has two children and they are constantly asking about the possibilities of obtaining housing. I have to be honest with them and say that if houses become available it is unlikely they will be successful because there are people in caravans and mobile homes with several children who will be considered before them.

I know of one house available for letting at the moment and over 40 families have applied to be considered for it. Single parents have unique social problems, often trying to rear a young child with teenagers in the same house. Family life has moved to teenage level and if a young child appears in the house, much distress may be caused for the mother and for the child before integration takes place.

The Minister should take a special look at this problem. I do not advocate an old person type dwelling but some solution that suits single parents. Single parent families are increasing in number; 20 or 30 years ago their number was much smaller but in my experience it is a live problem in many areas at present. We must acknowledge it and try to deal with it.

I want to refer to the social housing scheme which proposes to give £10,000 in a low interest loan for refurbishing houses. In my experience, this does not work although, when I saw the proposals over 12 months ago, I thought they were very attractive. There was an opportunity to install bathrooms and toilets or to put on an extra room thereby giving people some extra comfort in older type houses. Many of the houses in question were old, rural cottages consisting of two rooms and maybe a kitchen.

I have found that it costs more than £10,000 to bring those houses up to a standard acceptable to the Department of the Environment for the making of that loan. This is a pity because many families have inherited old type houses some of which are local authority houses and that loan was an opportunity to bring these up to an acceptable standard. I know of one family of ten in one of those old type houses, two bedrooms and a kitchen, who asked for a bathroom and another bedroom and would have been satisfied with that. Because of the type of house and its age, it was not possible to bring it to the level that the Department required for an expenditure of £10,000.

In County Limerick with 400 on the waiting list, there is no hope that in such circumstances the people will obtain local authority dwellings in the next four or five years because of the number of people with large families on the waiting list at the moment living in mobile homes and caravans. It is a pity that this scheme has not worked as we had hoped but our engineers inform us that, by the rules of the Department, when the £10,000 has been spent the house must almost reach the standard of a new house. I hope this answer is not correct and I invite the Minister's comments.

Another matter which was already referred to and which I have raised on numerous occasions at health board and at county council level is the issue of houses without toilets and bathrooms. It is a disgrace that all houses in Ireland do not have a toilet and shower or bathroom. A survey carried out by the Environmental Research Unit in 1990 in County Limerick indicated that there are approximately 800 dwellings without bathroom facilities in the county. The council's legal authority to act is confined under the Plan for Social Housing to the houses of persons accepted to be in need of local authority housing, and many of these people would not require or may not apply for local authority housing as they may be living on small farms. It would not be feasible to construct a rural cottage because many of these people are elderly and the consultants on our health board have informed us on several occasions that they have delayed releasing people from hospital because the dwelling to which they were returning, a rural based dwelling without a bathroom or toilet facility, was totally unsuitable for a person leaving hospital. Special provision should be made through the social housing scheme to provide bathrooms and toilets for every house in the country.

The Minister should seriously look at reintroducing the home improvement grant where houses over 40 years were eligible for a £5,000 improvement grant. Regularly I come across people on low incomes living in a house which they are anxious to improve. These people cannot afford a new house. This scheme worked successfully and I appreciate that the grants at the time cost quite a bit but the housing stock was improved. The Minister should consider reintroducing this scheme for houses built more than 40 years ago.

Because house improvement grants have been removed, the essential repair grants system has come under severe pressure and Limerick County Council has overspent the allocation for 1992 because of demand. The council is trying to obtain extra funds but with present pressures on all areas of the council, it is difficult to extend funding to that area. Our council agreed to write to the Minister to request some special funding for the essential repairs grant.

The disabled person's grant allocation has been spent for 1992 and funds for further applicants this year will not be available until well into 1993. I know of one case where a person had a serious accident and needs to install a lift in the house. He has applied for a disabled persons grant, which he will be entitled to, but the funding has all been taken up for this year so it will be 1993 before he has any hope of obtaining funding under the Limerick County Council scheme.

I am particularly intersted in section 10 in regard to temporary dwellings, caravans, etc., being parked in public places within two miles of a housing authority halting site in which the dwelling could appropriately be accommodated. The authority may require the owner to remove the dwelling to the site.

We lack a proper national policy to cater for the itinerant problem. Every county should be requested to do its share. I have very direct experience in this, representing Rathkeale, where over 25 per cent of the population are itinerants. We have a lot of difficulties from time to time but they are very contained and both sides of the community are quite tolerant of each other, even though they have two separate cultures with two separate value systems. There is a lot of social stress in the town as a result, but it is at present contained. We always compliment the people on both sides of the community in Rathkeale for their level of tolerance. They are a headline to other areas. However, we feel they are not being recognised. Because of the difficulties, a special study was commissioned three years ago and proposals made in a report known as the Mulcahy report. We are disappointed that the Department of the Environment and some other agencies have not shown the interest we feel this report deserves. Limerick County Council hold meetings at least once every two months on the implementation of the proposals. On each occasion representatives of the Department of the Environment who attended the earlier meetings are invited but we do not get any response from the Department.

I was amazed to learn, at a meeting yesterday, that our request for a training centre for itinerants in Rathkeale, where there is the largest population of itinerants for any area of its size, is unlikely to be granted. There is a training centre in Newcastlewest and one in Abbeyfeale. We were informed that it is likely that in order to save money there will be rationalisation of those two and they will be reduced to one. We should not be trying to spare money while we still have to sort out problems and integrate the itinerant community into the community. In Rathkeale the travellers, because they regard it as home, are not inclined to travel out to any other town for training or schooling. They have indicated quite strongly to the council's social workers that they will attend training classes in Rathkeale.

I would ask the Minister to have a close look at our request to have a travelling training centre in Rathkeale to cater for the itinerants there with a view to giving them skills which, hopefully, at some stage, will result in their obtaining employment. I think it is going to take generations for them to move towards a level of integration with the community. We have many other proposals to improve the situation in Rathkeale, which will cost money which should be granted. Many of the people in Rathkeale would say this is needed to contain the situation, but I would prefer to say it will improve the situation. More spaces need to be made available for caravans at the back of people's houses. Some of the people in Rathkeale purchase houses but will not live in them. They live in caravans in front of them. If those caravans were put at the back and there was easy access it would help the situation. In another town they would say they should be marched out of the place. What we say is that if we could put them at the back of the houses they would create less difficulties for traffic. It would be a linear type of halting site, not be a roadway, at the back of the houses they will not occupy. It would not involve a high cost factor.

I specifically came in today to make those points with regard to the level of the housing crisis in County Limerick, the need for the provision of bathrooms and toilets — an issue I have been raising for almost three years at whatever level I could — and the need to provide a special type of house for single parents, many of whom are separated, while other are unmarried.

Finally, would the Department and the Minister for the Environment please interest themselves in the unique problems of Rathkeale where 25 per cent of the population are itinerants? Unique stresses are present in Rathkeale between the settled community, who feel under threat from a growing itinerant population, and the itinerant population whose problems are increasing as they increase in numbers. In ten years' time it could come to a crisis. The will is in Rathkeale and in Limerick County Council, who have done a lot of work in this area. We want the Department to assist us in the matter.

This Bill is very welcome. It comes at a time when it could be said that there is a housing crisis, but what has happened is that there has been a change in the profile of those who are looking for houses in recent years. At a recent housing allocation meeting at Kilkenny County Council we had 14 houses up for allocation and we had 262 applicants. The applicants did not have a traditional profile in terms of housing needs because 48 per cent of them form a growing section of society — deserted wives, deserted husbands, and single parent families. Unless the Department of the Environment and society in Ireland indicate a willingness to address the growing problem of housing single parent families, the needs are going to grow. The day of building big housing estates with three to four bedroomed houses is gone, as is recognised in this Bill in which there are changes in the method by which the Department and the Minister will look at the actual needs.

As I said, in Kilkenny there are 262 applicants and only 14 new houses available. There are also ten houses which are being refurbished at present and a number of locations have become available due to shared ownership, which is part of the Bill. Some casual vacancies are occurring because people have left through emigration or whatever. Under the Bill voluntary housing agencies can play a major role. In Kilkenny city at present a group called Respond, which is working very hard in the special housing area, has plans for 35 houses. It could be suggested that of the 262 applicants 140 or 150 would be genuine. By the time houses have been allocated that figure will be lower. About 70 houses will be available in Kilkenny in the next couple of months, but the problem of the unsuccessful applicants will remain.

This Bill attempts for the first time to provide a balance between public and private housing. Building major housing schemes and then selling them off can create in certain areas the type of ghetto we are trying to get away from. The tenants purchase scheme has been brilliantly worked throughout the years in some areas, in the bigger conurbations people are not prepared to buy their houses. This has created not only social housing problems but also other major social problems.

The shared ownership scheme is an excellent idea. It has not been put across strongly enough that under this scheme if somebody has an income of less than £10,000 he or she can get a repayment subsidy. The only problem about rent subsidies is that in general they are paid for by the health boards. If we are going to have a genuine health service, rent subsidy should be paid for by the Department of the Environment out of its budget. I would ask the Minister to seek that change. In certain areas the beneficiaries of rent subsidies are the landlords, not the tenants, because as rent subsidies increase the provision of flats or subsidiary housing by landlords increases.

Under the Bill, where elderly people move from a local authority house to a son or a daughter's house, the son or daughter will be able to get help to increase the size of their house to provide a granny flat. It is an excellent idea because it facilitates the extended family relationships that existed in the country in the old days. It is essential that young people realise that they must have a responsible attitude towards elderly people and not leave it to the State at all times to help out as a social provider when people get old. Families have a responsibility to provide for elderly people. This Bill therefore represents a social advance which can have a dual purpose in the sense that if a couple want to move into their parents' local authority house, or indeed a non-local authority house, moneys can be provided to help them to build the extension needed.

The repair of old houses is not only socially beneficial to the family but also to the country. In too many areas, in villages, towns and cities, houses have fallen into disrepair and beautiful old streetscapes are disappearing because of lack of refurbishment. The refurbishment of older houses is necessary and is one of the strategies which in the future will create very desirable renewed urban fabric.

The Minister for Finance must provide a five year plan for the money to be spent on housing, and that plan must be adhered to, because it is not reasonable to expect any county manager, county council or borough council to deal with housing problems without a reasonably long term financial plan before them. One of the major problems we have in all aspects of local government is that it is virtually impossible to deal with financial matters because one has to wait, sometimes until the middle of the year, to find out what will be the provision from the Exchequer to pay for the building or refurbishment of houses.

The refurbishment of older houses in country or city areas is absolutely necessary. They must be brought back into the housing stock, because otherwise urban centres will be killed by the building of new big housing estates on green field sites.

The question of the refurbishment of houses and the lack of bathrooms and basic facilities in houses has been tackled quite well over recent years. In various local authority areas houses which were built in the forties without inside facilities are now being refurbished. I am glad to see that, for instance, in Kilkenny the older local authority housing areas are now being brought up to an acceptable modern standard. This is not without cost. The cost is quite high, but it has to be done. In the next few years, even if we have to cut back on certain expenditure in the provision of new houses, every house that was built by a local authority or with government finance should be brought up to an acceptable standard, which means having the facility of a bathroom and a toilet in the houses. There has been an overall improvement throughout the country in the housing stock and anybody who says otherwise is departing from reality.

We have certain problems in Kilkenny as in various other places in that people are very selective about where they want to live. They want to live beside members of their family and they will turn down houses allocated to them because they would be 150 yards away from their brother or their mother. Under the social housing scheme it might be possible to add on a bedroom to a house so they could live with their mother but if they were offered that option they would say no, they want a new house. People have to be educated that if the State is providing a house for them they have to accept the house, within reason, where it is available. Quite a number of applicants in Kilkenny will not accept a house unless it is in a specific street or area. In the private housing area you can not just pick and choose. Different areas will have different prices and there will be the mix of availability. It boils down to how much you can pay. If the council as happens, is going to subsidise houses to the extent of £85 per week, people should accept the house and, if necessary, arrange a swap with someone else. Those looking for houses will have to be flexible as well as the housing authorities.

Section 10 refers to the question of travelling people or itinerants. It is very hard to cateogrise some of these people. Senator Neville was talking about the people in Rathkeale. I would say that 99 per cent of them are quite wealthy in their own right. They travel the country, they know the law, they are extremely difficult to deal with and are better off than 90 per cent of the people who are looking for housing. There is a core of travelling people who are badly off and they must be looked after, but the local authorities must have the power to shift the travelling community who are wealthy dealers. The law has not been very helpful and they use the law to defy the local authority, the Garda and everybody. Section 10 is extremely necessary but it must be operated so as to differentiate between those who are in the travelling business community and the indigenous travellers, some of whom would take a house or go into halting sites. We have to differentiate between the real travellers and the dealers.

The area of maintenance and mangement of local authorities housing schemes has always been a bone of contention. If someone breaks a lock on his own door he should replace it himself. I do not think he should go to the local authority and expect the local authority to do it.

This Bill, which brings the plan for social housing into legal effect, is an advance that is long overdue and I commend the Minister for bringing it to the House. In the long term it will do a better job than was done in the past, by providing reasonable housing for as many of our people as possible. We cannot finish our debate this evening without saying that a higher percentage of our population has received housing under Government provision than any other country in Europe. Ireland is one of the best housed countries in Europe, and, by definition, one of the best housed countries in the world.

Given the number of speakers wishing to speak in this debate, I propose, with the agreement of the House, that we continue until 9 p.m.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is that agreed?

No. I could not agree to that because a number of speakers are very interested in this very important Bill. Earlier this evening I gave an undertaking that I would be here to speak on the Bill. I checked who else wished to speak and those who were prepared to speak this evening so indicated to me. I have given an undertaking to those who had intended to speak for a considerable length of time that I would speak until 8 p.m. Many Senators are very interested in this Bill. There is a great Fianna Fáil interest in having the Bill concluded tonight but I would have to oppose any conclusion of Second Stage tonight. It was not part of the Order of Business.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is the House agreeable to the proposal by the Leader?

I only offered the House an extra hour.

We will vote on it.

I withdraw my suggestion.

Does that mean the question on Second Stage is being put tonight?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

We will conclude at 8 p.m.

This is probably the most important Bill coming before the House as far as many thousands of housing applicants are concerned. I am familiar with many of them in the Dublin area and I know only too well how anxious they are to see the Bill amended to make the provision of accommodation easier so that they may, as some of them said to me, get accommodation in their lifetime. We are now approaching a major housing crisis despite the remarks we heard from the other side of the House earlier this evening. There are thousands of housing applicants who are anxiously awaiting decent housing accommodation.

When I first became a public representative in the mid-1960s I found that housing was the greatest problem facing the people in my part of the city and county. It was the greatest problem I had to deal with in those years. Then, despite what Senator McGowan said earlier this evening, under the Labour-Fine Gael Coalition Government the housing lists dwindled to the extent that we were offering houses to people who were not yet ready to occupy them. That happened in my area in County Dublin. Now we have upwards of 2,000 housing applicants in Dublin county alone.

There was an attempt made here to bring this debate to a close, which is a fair indication of how embarrassed the Fianna Fáil Party and the present Government are regarding the housing situation.

I am surprised at Senator McMahon.

Of course many Senators on both sides of the House are interested in the debate.

Debate adjourned.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

May I ask the Leaders of the House when it is proposed to sit again?

At 10.30 a.m. tomorrow.

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