One would be inclined to embark immediately on a contradiction of the last speaker's rather fanciful figures, but before I do so, there are a number of other things of immediate importance to the city of Dublin and to the country with which I feel I must deal. Deputy Sherwin, in his speech last week, suggested that the most important thing for any member of the Dublin City Council to do was to attend meetings of the Housing Committee — An Coiste Teaghlachais. I shall say, for the benefit of the people of this city and the country generally, that the most useless thing any member of the city council could do is to spend his time attending meetings of the different committees at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
We all know that a man must render an account of every idle word he says, and I cannot think of any more idle way of spending the afternoon than sitting at a committee meeting for three hours or so talking, talking, and patting one's fellow members on the back so that when an awkward situation arises, one can say: "We met weekly and talked". The fact is that these meetings are arranged by a number of professional politicians and by a few fortunate councillors who can get off from their employment at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
It is well known that the average man who minds his business and, by doing so, is not a burden on society, finds it extremely difficult to attend committee meetings of the Dublin City Council at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, convened for the convenience of the full time professional politicians, the more fortunate councillors who can get off from their employment or their professions and the officials who are disinclined to attend meetings of committees at other hours.
For some years past, efforts have been made by some members of the City Council to have the times of committee meetings changed, but so long as there remain on the council a majority of full-time politicians and councillors who can get off from their employment, so long will it be impossible for several members to attend what I call these selective committee meetings.
Within the past few years, we had the appalling instance of a hardworking member of the Dublin City Council being declared bankrupt because he was so devoted to his municipal business that his professional work suffered as a result and he got into difficulties. What some members of the Corporation who speak so loudly here would like to see happening is that several other members would get into similar difficulties. I do not think that is good for local government and I do not make any apologies for the members of the City Council who attend to their day's work and to the clients who consult them rather than spending the afternoon attending committee meetings arranged at awkward hours to suit the professional politicians and the officials, who spend their time talking and clapping each other on the back.
Now that that has been got out of the way, let us look at the results of the alleged hardworking Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation. Since June of this year, that work has mainly been in defending themselves and the officials against the justifiable wrath of the homeless people of this city. To some extent they have been successful in doing that, but let us see whether or not they deserve to be left free from attack.
There are now on the Dublin Corporation's housing lists 10,000 families urgently in need of housing accommodation.Of those 10,000 who are now accepted as being in urgent need of housing accommodation, there are about 1,200 families who have been evicted since June last. Take off the 1,200 you have got out of dangerous buildings in the past few months and you are still left with 8,800 in urgent need of alternative housing accommodation.Even if the wind had not blown in June, even if the rain had not fallen in such unprecedented quantities and force, as we are led to believe, there would still be 8,800 homeless families listed — some 25,000 to 30,000 human beings without decent living accommodation.
So An Coiste Teaghlachais have fallen down on the job of making reasonable accommodation available for those people. We are told a further cause of the burden on housing in Dublin at the present time is the unprecedented flow back of emigrants from abroad. Deputy P.J. Burke, whistling past the Fianna Fáil graveyard, said this was due to the pleasant prosperity of the city over the past three years. Deputy Sherwin said it was not due to that but to the new rent restriction laws in Britain. The fact is that on 30th September of this year I received in response to a query a letter from the principal officer of the Housing Department of Dublin Corporation telling me that the figures for returned emigrants seeking accommodation were not readily available.
Yet the City Manager and the officials of the Corporation, together with the professional politicians of the Housing Committee, have been telling us and the people of this city that the housing problem was due to emigrants returning. We know there has always been a departure and return of people in Dublin and that there has been nothing unusual or particularly significant in it in recent years. It has always been there and the same situation, I should imagine, operates in every county in Ireland. There are always people on the waiting lists who have returned from abroad.
Since October, 1958, we do know, however, that some 549 returned families have been housed by Dublin Corporation.That is a very small percentage of the total number of applicants now accepted by the Dublin Corporation as being in need of rehousing.Housing has been provided for 549 returned emigrants since October, 1958 but during all that time there have been no less than 7,000 families requiring housing accommodation. So that, even returned emigrants form an insignificantly small percentage of the total demand on houses in this city. Notwithstanding all that, Dublin Corporation has failed to provide a sufficient number of houses year in and year out over the past seven years since this Fianna Fáil Government took office.
Now we have the farcical situation of a Minister for Local Government throwing the blame on the Dublin Corporation and a Fianna Fáil Lord Mayor making public and, I think contemptible, apology for the failure of the Corporation over the past six or seven years. What the people of this country are concerned about is that there should be in office a Minister for Local Government who was aware that for the past seven years Dublin Corporation was not providing for its housing requirements, that that Minister failed to impress upon the Dublin Corporation the need to provide adequate housing and that he failed to provide the necessary money.
Here, some months ago, in reply to a question of mine, the Minister for Local Government conceded that in the year 1956/57 over £6 million was made available by the then Government for the housing needs in Dublin and he then admitted that in that year of that £6 million odd the Corporation had spent about £4 million. So that, in the year 1956/57 it was not a question of the Government of the day not providing the money, as Deputy Dolan and others would have us understand; it was a question of the Dublin Corporation, dominated by the Fianna Fáil Party and with the connivance of some members of the Labour Party, deliberately setting about embarrassing the then Government and, the rot in housing having been started by them in the year 1956/57, the rate of decay accelerated year by year after that, because the Fianna Fáil Government made it clear to the Dublin Corporation and every other local authority in the State that they were to cut down on housing.
Deputy Declan Costello very properly quoted from the Economic Programme of 1957. In that paper, the Government stated that there would be a drift away from social investment; there would be a drift away from housing investment. That was their determined policy and they got every county manager and city manager in this country to fall in line and they in turn indoctrinated the councillors to accept that the housing difficulties of this country had been more or less solved and that there was no need to pursue the housing programme with the same urgency and the same deliberation as had been shown by previous Governments, including, indeed, previous Fianna Fáil Governments.
There is on the records of this House—unfortunately I have been unable to trace it, a Cheann Comhairle—a letter from the Department of Local Government to the Cork Corporation. In 1958, in reply to a request from the Cork Corporation for money for housing purposes, the Minister for Local Government at that time directed the Secretary of the Department to write stating that the money would not be made available because the Cork Corporation, amongst other things, had not made allowance for the solution to the housing problem which would be provided by emigration. The Government then accepted emigration as a solution to the housing problem, not the building of new houses, not the provision of money to build new houses. Local authorities were not directed to build houses but, rather, to avail of the safety value of emigration to avoid any embarrassing consequences to the local authority if there was still a demand on the part of people to have new houses built.
I have referred, Sir, to the neglect by Dublin Corporation of this question of dangerous buildings. The Minister for Local Government, following the tragedies of June this year when two old people in Bolton Street and two young children in Fenian Street lost their lives, set up an inquiry—a local inquiry. It is important that this House should appreciate how limited this inquiry was. It was a local inquiry, so local that it concerned itself only with one house in Bolton Street and three houses in Fenian Street, but this inquiry which has been paraded since as an answer to all charges about the neglect by Dublin Corporation and the Department of Local Government was, in fact, limited to only an architectural or engineering examination as to the cause of the collapse of the structures in Bolton Street and Fenian Street. But, if we read this report carefully, in between the lines, we find an appalling situation. It states on page 10 that about three months before the collapse of the houses in Fenian Street the top flat was inspected by two officials from the Health Office of Dublin Corporation and the tenant pointed out the crack as it was then to be seen. At that time this crack had extended to about an inch at the top and was about 18 inches long. He gave evidence that subsequent to this the crack extended in width at the top to about two inches and started to get longer down the wall.
This report goes on to point out that the two inspectors of the Dublin Corporation did not report the crack which then at the top was about an inch wide and descended for 18 inches down the wall; and it then goes on to point out that there was no further examination of this house until it was a mass of rubble lying on top of the bodies of two unfortunate dead children.Does that not indicate that Dublin Corporation had tended to make light of the dangerous buildings in Dublin?
Deputy Sherwin boasted here that he was the only councillor who attended that inquiry. The significant thing is that he was not subjected to any cross-examination. You do not subject a man to cross-examination if you do not treat his evidence seriously and I fear that is the plight of poor Deputy Sherwin. But Deputy Sherwin in the course of his evidence, according to newspaper reports, did say that he had complained about several buildings being dangerous over several years but that nothing had been done about them. I believe he was telling the truth when he said that. I, too, have complained about many houses being in a dangerous condition for several years past but nothing was done about them. But, since June of this year, I know that certainly eleven of the houses that I had complained about several years ago have been condemned, have since been closed up and the people evicted from them. But I was wasting my sweet breath upon the desert air of the Corporation Dangerous Buildings Section and of the Department of Local Government in making complaints about these buildings for several years. I am sure there is not a Dublin Deputy, certainly there is not a Dublin councillor, who has not had similar experience.
Allegations are now being made that the blame for the Dublin housing situation lies not on the Corporation but upon unscrupulous landlords who failed to execute their duty as property owners. The interesting thing is that this is not a new development. The Act which first imposed a statutory obligation upon local authorities to inspect and control dangerous buildings was passed in the nineteenth century, and that statutory obligation has been there on the Dublin Corporation and on other local authorities ever since the nineteenth century.
One would imagine that if the Minister for Local Government were sure that his hands were clean in this matter he would dismiss those officials and, indeed, the council, who clearly failed to discharge their statutory obligation for several years past. The fact that they had failed to discharge their obligation was known to the Department of Local Government. In reply to a question from my colleague, Deputy Declan Costello, on the 5th February of this year, as reported at column 903, volume 199, No. 7 of the Dáil reports, the Minister for Local Government said that the number of houses ordered to be demolished was 3,399, but the number of houses actually demolished was 3,011, leaving 388 houses still standing which were so dangerous that orders had been made for their demolition.
In June this year, when the houses in Bolton Street and Fenian Street collapsed, the number of buildings affected with dangerous buildings notices was 59—only 59. But then, in a matter of three months, over 300 more houses were found to be dangerous and in need of immediate demolition; and then we had, what we have not had here for 100 years, since the battering ram was wielded by a foreign administration, Dublin Corporation evicting thousands of people in the city of Dublin on to the streets with this kind of attitude—if you are old and feeble and have not got a family then you can go to the night shelter, the men on one floor and their womenfolk on the floor below. All the rest got was offers of alternative accommodation which, having regard to the accommodation which they previously had, was certainly far from being fair. Then what attitude did the Dublin Corporation adopt? Was it one of apology? Not at all. It was one of sneering at the people who complained, stating that they had no right to complain, that the Dublin Corporation was protecting them from death or from a worse fate. Was there ever on the part of the Dublin Corporation or on the part of the Department of Local Government any acknowledgment that they had failed for years past to discharge their statutory obligation to condemn and close up those dangerous buildings? Oh no! Why? Because the Minister for Local Government did not want to be presented with the situation in which the housing application lists of Dublin Corporation were swollen. Throughout all these years there have been about 7,000 people looking for houses from the Dublin Corporation. If added to that figure were all the people in dangerous buildings who had not applied, you would have a situation in which there were not fewer, at the best of times, than 10,000 people in need of housing by the Dublin Corporation.
That is the situation from which the Minister cannot escape no matter how he tries to do so. It appears that the Fianna Fáil Party—the Minister for Local Government, the Taoiseach and others—are like concerned animals. They know they have done wrong; they know they have failed and their only response is to snarl at those who dare to criticise. But we will continue to criticise, even if the worst thing they can say is that we are trying to make political capital out of the situation.
The fact then is that it is the Minister's fault, and the Government's fault, if they allow us the opportunity, if you like, to make political capital out of that situation. If the Minister wants to throw the blame on to the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, he is welcome to do so. But whatever the Minister, or the Taoiseach, says about the people not wanting an election, you can be sure there are 10,000 families in Dublin, or more, who would gladly take the opportunity to throw out of office a Government which failed so miserably to provide within a reasonable time houses for those who were so urgently in need of them. That opportunity will come very soon, but it cannot come soon enough.
What do we find now but a situation that Deputy Dolan wants to glory over. He says great progress has now been made in the housing drive. Let us have a look at it. Taking the year 1956-57 —a shocking year according to Deputy Dolan and his colleagues—the number of local authority houses built in Ireland was 4,784. The number of new dwellings provided in the same year by the Dublin Corporation was 1,564, and all Deputy Dolan can do is to produce a press cutting and quote a heading in a newspaper saying that the County Manager stated he could not get money from the bank. I do not know anything about the financial standing of Deputy Dolan's county council, but this I do know, that it was a great deal easier to get money to build 1,238 houses, which were built last year, than it was to get the money to build 4,784, which we built in one year when we were in power. If Fine Gael had been satisfied then to provide only one-quarter of the number of houses they did provide. I am quite sure that there would have been no difficulty whatsoever in getting the money to do it, notwithstanding the fact that the world at that time stood on the brink of a holocaust and notwithstanding the fact that at that time this country for over six months had been building up reserves of all kinds of materials because of the world situation in which it seemed that this country, among all the countries of the world, was going to be plunged into an international crisis which might well last for several years.
Of course, the Government at that time could have adopted the attitude of Fianna Fáil in 1938-39 and done nothing about it and left the country short of vital materials. They could have clamped down on every businessman, and on every farmer building up his stocks then. That would have been the easiest thing to do. But they did not do that. They allowed buying to go on. It was necessary to fill the warehouses to provide against the Emergency. If in the light of that, the banks got tighter on credit, it is no wonder they did. Notwithstanding that, the Dublin Corporation failed to make use of all the money made available to them and handed back to the new administration £2 million to spend on houses in Dublin, or whatever way it would. Notwithstanding the fact that the incoming Fianna Fáil Government got £2 million back, they reduced the number of local authority houses built in the following year by 1,300 but that was not quite enough for their destructive intentions.
The axe had not been firmly enough implanted, so they cut it down by 1,600 in the following year. Notwithstanding the fact that, according to Deputy Dolan, the money was being pushed out by the Government, they brought about a reduction in the number of local authority houses of 3,000 in a year alone. We have not yet recovered from that position. With the exception of the year 1959-60, when it stood at 1,238 houses, there has been a steady decline in the number of local authority houses built.
I do not think that is something even Deputy Dolan can pretend to boast about, no matter how much he or his colleagues may seek to boast about how easy it is to get money now. The fact is it is always easier to get 5/-than £1; it is always easier to get £5 than £100. But I would not be stupid enough to boast about the fact that I could get a loan of 5/-. I would not try to jeer at somebody who could not get the loan of £1. All the figures which I have given and which have been given by the Minister for Local Government clearly establish that the Government in 1956/57 made money available but that money was not used.
Let us return to this dangerous buildings situation and examine the charge that is being made that it was the unscrupulous landlords alone who brought about the tragedy of the dangerous Dublin buildings. Dublin Corporation have for years owned an institution known as the North Dublin Union. In recent years, they transferred the ownership of that to the Dublin Health Authority but for the purpose of this debate and the principle involved, it is clearly the responsibility of the Dublin Corporation. Some years ago, in reply to an urgent call from the Legion of Mary, that institution was made available to provide care and a home for unmarried mothers and their babies. Whether we like to admit it or not, that problem is with us and it is one which our society is obliged to try to answer.
But one of the buildings the Dublin Corporation had neglected to take any steps about was the North Dublin Union and we had the crying scandal of the Dublin Corporation issuing a seven-day notice to the Legion of Mary, to the unmarried mothers and their helpless children, to get out of that building because it was in such a deplorably dangerous condition. Now, is that something which happened overnight because of the rain, wind and thunder of last June? Did that create that situation?
Some years ago, one of the voluntary helpers of the Legion of Mary was climbing the stairs of that institution when the stairs collapsed and the unfortunate girl is now crippled for life. The only solution the Dublin Corporation could provide at that time was to say: "Do not use that part of the building again." That part of the building was sealed off and apparently it would wait until some mother and her helpless child had fallen through some floor or the like of that before the Dublin Corporation or the Department of Local Government would have lived up to their moral responsibility primarily but the statutory responsibility as well as far as legislation covering dangerous buildings is concerned.Is it any wonder a Catholic priest in Liverpool should have written a letter which some of us would have been ashamed to publish, saying that it was a crying shame that the like of that could have happened in the capital city of this country. But it did because of the gross, total and culpable neglect of the Dublin Corporation in failing to inspect and provide alternative accommodation for the dangerous buildings of this city.
No amount of verbiage and no amount of local inquiries can ever conceal the scandalous failure of the Minister for Local Government in that connection. He knew, or should have known, there were dangerous buildings in this city. One does not need to have statistics to know. One has only to enter one of these buildings to find out what their condition is. I do not mind saying I personally have had to argue with my conscience about going into some of these buildings in case I might not come out alive and leave a widow and children unprovided for. Many Dublin buildings were in such a condition that the floors seemed to sag when somebody trod on them and the sky could be seen through the holes in the roof. In many of them, the doors had to be shaved and cut in order to stop them jamming.
All of that was of no consequence to the Minister for Local Government or the Dublin Corporation until four people were killed. However, I suppose out of the misfortune of the ill wind of last June some good will come because the dangerous buildings department of Dublin Corporation cannot any longer be accused of being guilty of neglect. I do not intend unduly to criticise their activities now but I think they are going berserk altogether. We now have the farcical situation in which the sanitary services and the dangerous buildings sections of Dublin Corporation, who have been more or less inactive for years, are now chasing one another around making contradictory orders in respect of the same premises.
In more than one instance, it has been my experience that the sanitary services department has issued temporary notices requiring repairs to a building when another Corporation department had already served in respect of them dangerous building notices or vice versa. It has happened in the one week that Dublin Corporation have made separate applications in the district court in respect of the one premises, one, for a sanitary services order and the other, for a dangerous buildings order. It is quite clear there will have to be some rationalisation of the two departments, if we are not to have an already ridiculous situation become even more ridiculous.
The local inquiry which was conducted, while no doubt properly conducted by a most eminent senior counsel.Mr. Condon, is hardly worthy to be called an inquiry because it was frightfully biased. The only person or authority represented before this inquiry by learned counsel was the accused party, Dublin Corporation. Nobody else had any senior counsel or lawyers available at that local inquiry. The Minister can answer that had anybody sought the assistance of counsel, he would not have been stopped. But, after all, the unfortunate poor people who are at present housed in these dangerous buildings are unlikely to be able to pay the bill of learned counsel of the calibre of Mr. Kevin Kenny, S.C., Mr. R. McGonigal, S.C., Mr. Thomas Finlay, S.C., Mr. Bacon, B.L., and Mr. Dermot Walshe, Solicitor, Law Agent of the Dublin Corporation who all represented the Corporation.
Can anybody imagine anything coming out of such an inquiry which might adequately place the blame? They were there to ensure that this inquiry did not go outside the terms of reference, which were to consider merely the structural failure of a building at Bolton Street and three buildings at Fenian Street. But, notwithstanding the limited nature of the inquiry, Mr. Condon found himself obliged to emphasise that it had emerged from the inquiry that Dublin Corporation had never complied with Section 27 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1931. Mr. Condon says:
This Section provides for inspection of its District by a Local Authority with a view to ascertaining whether any dwellinghouse therein is unfit for human habitation, and provides that for that purpose it shall be the duty of the Local Authority to comply with such regulations and to keep such records as the Minister may prescribe. Regulations were prescribed by Statutory Rule and Order, No. 5 of 1936, The Housing (Inspection of Districts) Regulations, 1936. Regulation 6 provides for a report which will follow inspection and will deal with a number of matters, including at sub-heading (h) any defects which may tend to render the house dangerous, or injurious to the health of the inhabitants. It is provided by Regulation 7 that a record shall be kept in the form of a book or on separate sheets or cards of the inspection of the District of the Local Authority. No such records or books have been kept by the Dublin Corporation at any time.
Therefore we have a situation in which Mr. Condon, who was appointed to make the inquiry, finds himself obliged to record that the Dublin Corporation had failed to comply with regulations that had been made to deal with dangerous buildings. Why have they not done it? Because the word had gone forth from the Custom House six years ago that there was to be a slowing down on the housing programme in accordance with the Government's First Programme for Economic Expansion which boasted of the fact that there was to be a drift away from social investment such as housing. The result is the failure of the Dublin Corporation to take steps to examine the housing needs of this city and to provide for them.
Today I asked the Minister for Local Government if he would consider having steps taken, by legislation, if necessary, to empower Dublin Corporation to acquire, either permanently or temporarily, all vacant buildings in the city suitable for living accommodation.I regard this matter as an extremely urgent one. The Minister pointed out in his reply that Dublin Corporation already have power to acquire buildings which are considered to be suitable for the housing of the working class. That is a very limited statutory definition and that power is not sufficient or, if it is sufficient, there is no inclination on the part of the Minister for Local Government or Dublin Corporation or any other local authority to avail of it.
One hesitates before suggesting that any extreme measures be taken in relation to control and ownership of private property but there is a crisis. If Dublin were to be bombed tomorrow in warfare and 10,000 families rendered homeless, I am quite certain that nobody would hesitate to use such powers as there are or to create such new powers as might be necessary to take over vacant buildings or insufficiently used buildings. It is necessary to regard the housing situation in Dublin as in the nature of an emergency and to take steps accordingly. It is only necessary to take over vacant buildings for a number of years and I would strongly urge upon the Minister that he should seriously consider an extension of the powers already there and should remove such statutory limitations as there may be now on the definition of fitness for housing of the working class. There are many changes in the housing needs of our people since the statutory conditions were first created and if we are to tackle the problem seriously, we need to be more realistic than to rely upon legislation which does not meet the needs of the people at the present time.
In an effort to create an alibi for the Corporation's inactivity, some people have been suggesting that the underlying cause of the dangerous buildings situation was that the existing laws were totally inadequate to meet the situation. There is no need to labour the obvious answer to that. Only 59 houses were condemned as dangerous in June; within three months, 359 houses were condemned as dangerous. In June of this year, there were some 989 families in 300 houses which were obviously dangerous and in need of demolition and replacement, but nothing was done about it until a tragedy occurred, and then it was discovered miraculously that all the powers in the existing laws were adequate to evict nearly 3,000 people in a matter of a few months.
It must be quite clear that it is not a question of existing laws not being adequate but a question of the deplorable and culpable failure of the Dublin Corporation and the Department of Local Government to use such powers as were there. I do not think any rational person can argue otherwise.If it was possible to use the powers from June to September, it was possible to use them beforehand, if there were even the least will to use them, but unfortunately that will was not there.
In the course of an address to which Deputy Sherwin entertained us last week, he resorted to the minute books of the Dublin Corporation to put forward a number of arguments which pleased the Minister for Local Government or at least caused him to smile. I shall also avail of the same text books because they contain a great deal of illuminating information. He suggested that the only concern of many councillors in 1959 and 1960 was not the need for new houses but the large number of idle houses about which he said the ratepayers were complaining because of the fact the Corporation were obviously not getting any rent from them.
Deputy Sherwin knows well that the essence of our complaint at that time was not that there were large numbers of houses which nobody would go into but that Dublin Corporation housing section was failing to re-let the houses quickly enough. Deputy Sherwin quoted from page 270 of the minutes of Dublin Corporation in 1960. He referred to a question of mine when I asked the City Manager to state the number of Corporation tenant houses and flats vacant for any reason whatsoever on the first day of each of the past 12 months, and the manager in reply stated that he had not got the information in such detail but that the number on the 28th of September was 117. Then Deputy Sherwin went into an impassioned oration, saying the only thing that concerned Deputy Ryan then was that there were 117 houses vacant on one day, and suggesting that there were so many vacant houses then that the Dublin Corporation could not get people to go into them.
Let us examine that thesis for a moment. In the same year, 1960, I had occasion to address a question to the Minister for Local Government which is reported at column 1250, volume 179, of the Official Report of 3rd March, 1960. I asked whether the Minister was aware of the long delays in the re-letting of vacant Dublin Corporation houses; and whether in view of the considerable annoyance caused by such delays to the large number of applicants for such houses and the serious loss of income to the Corporation, he would hold a public inquiry into the matter.
There is no suggestion there of any complaint by me that there were more houses than applicants. There never was any suggestion on the part of any Fine Gael member of Dublin Corporation or of this House that there were too many houses lying idle to meet the demands that were being made upon them for accommodation. Our complaint then and ever since has been, although there is a great improvement in the speed of re-letting, that there is an unduly long delay between the time a house becomes vacant and the time it is re-let. The Minister for Local Government was not even then aware of the delays. He said:
I am not aware that undue delays occur in re-letting Dublin Corporation houses which become vacant. The matter would not be appropriate for investigation by way of a public inquiry. I am prepared to look into the facts of any case where specific evidence of unreasonable delay in re-letting may be furnished to me.
I said:
While I appreciate that he is probably being hoodwinked by the Housing Department of the Dublin Corporation, still, if the Minister takes a stroll through the different building estates, he will see that up to 200 houses are closed up with corrugated iron. In many cases they have been lying idle for over two months.
The Minister then said:
I am not prepared to accept the allegation that I am being hoodwinked by the Housing Department of Dublin Corporation, and I wonder if, during his stroll through the housing estates, the Deputy actually counted 200 houses unoccupied.
I had not actually counted the houses but the City Manager had given us the figure of 200 vacant houses lying idle to be re-let in connection with another matter.
Some time in 1960, the council considered and unanimously accepted a motion moved by the late Councillor Miss Swanton demanding that houses be more expeditiously decorated and re-let. That was the sole purpose of my question in 1960, to which Deputy Sherwin referred, to prove that there was undue delay on the part of the Corporation in the re-letting of vacant houses.
Let us examine Deputy Sherwin's thesis that our complaint was solely as to the large number of houses. Reported at page 62 of the same minutes of the City Council of Dublin, the City Manager told us that in March, 1960, the number of families who had applied for housing by the Corporation was 7,362. Are we to understand from Deputy Sherwin that his allegation is that there could not be found one family in those 7,362 families who would have accepted the houses vacant in 1961 that he so proudly boasted of in this House as an indication of the fact that the Dublin Corporation Housing Department had adequately provided for the housing needs of the people of this city? Is there anything in this contention that the effect of all this is that of the 7,000 odd people who applied for housing, there was nobody who would take the 117 houses lying idle in 1960 and to which I had to draw the attention of the City Council?
Deputy Sherwin then referred to the reply to another question in the same minutes which indicated that there were 625 tenants in Ballyfermot seeking transfers. This was the estate that nobody would go to, he alleges because 625 people wanted to get out of it. But of these 625, only 326 wanted to leave Ballyfermot. There is always, in Dublin Corporation, a large number of people seeking transfers. This is not peculiar to Ballyfermot, as Deputy Sherwin must know, even though he does not represent Ballyfermot and I do. In the same year, in answer to a question on page 334 of the same report, the City Manager stated that the number of tenants seeking transfer at that time was 3,293. Having regard to the vastness of Ballyfermot, which is the largest housing estate in the city, there is nothing unusual in the fact that 326 people were seeking transfers from there when the number of people seeking transfers in the whole city was over 3,000.
We are told at page 335 that the rate of applications for transfers in the city of Dublin was 185 per month. Yet Deputy Sherwin has the audacity to try to mislead the House and to mislead the Minister for Local Government, who knows nothing of the housing problems of Dublin Corporation, into thinking that people wanted to leave Ballyfermot in 1960 to the extent that nobody would go into it. At that time there were 7,300, families looking for houses. I am sure that out of that number there were many more than 117 who would gladly have accepted a house in Ballyfermot or anywhere else and would gladly have done so since.
It is hard to catch up on an untruth particularly one that is published for political motives. Deputy Sherwin made suggestions about lawyers and said that they should not be listened to here because they were so well able to present their case. If that were the only qualification for being a lawyer, then Deputy Sherwin would be a senior counsel. He has presented a very bad case very well here but on the figures I have quoted from the same bound volume of the minutes of Dublin City Council, every one of his arguments is shown to be completely shallow.
Even if we take the Ballyfermot situation and the number of houses that were idle there, we find that at the best, or worst, as the case may be, there were more people on the waiting list for Ballyfermot alone than there were houses available there. Even if the whole 117 houses Deputy Sherwin refers to as being lying idle were in Ballyfermot alone, there were, in 1961, 365 families awaiting accommodation in Ballyfermot about the time that Deputy Sherwin boasts there were 117 houses idle.
In order to show that the picture never changed very greatly, I refer to another reply on page 353 of the 1961 minutes of the Dublin City Council in which it is stated that 6,150 families were seeking accommodation from Dublin Corporation as from December, 1961. Deputy Sherwin, like an unskilled boxer in the ring, decided that Fine Gael were not enough to beat. He then looked to Deputy Barron to hit and at the same time support him. We find at page 19 of the 1959 minutes of the Dublin City Council the motion to which Deputy Sherwin referred. It was moved by Councillor Barron and was seconded by Councillor Brady, a colleague of the Minister's, and was to the effect that the council was of the opinion that no further building by the Corporation on the perimeter sites of the city should be carried out until every available site reserved for municipal building in the centre of the city was built on. The motion was put and an amendment was then moved by Councillor Moore and seconded by Deputy Mrs. Lynch that the motion be referred to An Coiste Teaghlachais. The amendment was carried and was then put as a substantive motion and was carried. There was no division. This was not an effort by Deputy Barron or anyone else to slow down the housing drive—far from it.
The next item on the agenda, which was moved by Deputy Barron and seconded by Councillor Clarke, a Fine Gael councillor, called on the Government to bring forward the 1959 building programme. There was no slowing down there. It called on the Minister for Local Government to bring forward the building programme so as to give immediate employment to the building operatives "whose present plight warrants concern of both Government and City Council". The motion was put and an amendment was moved by Deputy Briscoe and seconded by Deputy N. Lemass that the Council called on An Coiste Teaghlachais to bring forward the 1959 building programme and to give immediate employment to the building operatives. The amendment having been carried was put as a substantive motion and carried. You had unanimity in the Dublin Corporation in 1959; they were crying out for the bringing forward of the housing programme.
Just what was done? In that year, 1959-60, when this unanimous plea was made, with the support of Deputy N. Lemass and Deputy Briscoe and others, only 460 houses were being built against 1,564 built two years before that, when the Government of that day were supposed to be falling down on the job. However, two years later, there was complete unanimity, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour, Clann na Poblachta members in Dublin Corporation were crying out for the Government and the Housing Department of the Corporation to come to the aid of the unfortunate building labourers who could not get work, with the sequel, of course, that people could not get houses because only some 400 were being built. How did the Department or the Housing Section of the Corporation respond to the pleas? There were 279 houses built the following year.
Is there any shame left on the Fianna Fáil benches? Is there any respect left for truth on the Fianna Fáil benches? Is there any understanding of figures on their part? They have made a complete botch of the housing situation in Dublin and they have it on their consciences— that is why they shout so loudly— that there are 10,000 homeless families or families living in overcrowded conditions or in unhealthy conditions. Do the people or the members of this House know the position? The Chief Medical Officer in Dublin may say today of a family that the members are reeking with tuberculosis, that the house is a wet and filthy hovel, that there is every form of vermin in it, but they will not be housed out of it as long as the walls and floors and ceilings are not likely to collapse on them within 24 hours.
That is the situation and I defy anyone to look up the records of the Corporation even for decades past to see if ever such a miserable situation as that existed. Not in the worst days of foreign landlordism has there been such a situation of a local authority being neglectful of its duty. This is because this Government said enough has been spent on social investment and the corollary was that it was more important to give money so that ships would sail the seas under any flag than our own, more important to give a facade of economic activity than to provide for the social needs of the people of this city who are urgently crying out for a very necessary item of decent human living, that is, reasonable housing accommodation.
It is with no pleasure that we emphasise these points but we would be failing in our duty if we did not do so. Even if we are to be smeared as being the only people who want to get rid of the Government, which does not particularly upset us, we will continue to embarrass the Fianna Fáil Party and those who accepted their bidding about the housing needs in this city. The sooner the people get the opportunity to return to power a Party who will quadruple the housing output of this city, the better and the sooner we will achieve something like a real answer to the appalling housing problems.
Let us consider again just how serious the Minister for Local Government is about the building situation. We have asked him for several years past to state the housing needs of the various counties and local authorities. He told us that he started such an inquiry in 1961. Here we are in 1963 and we do not know the end of it. We are still waiting for figures. Figures, statistics and red tape are apparently more important and must be considered before the simple decision can be taken: "Build houses no matter how you build them and house the people and we will provide for whatever difficulties that may create." Certainly they would be minor compared with the difficulties which have been created now and for the future because of the housing situation in Dublin.
If you take the 10,000 families who are accepted as being in need of housing now in Dublin, you are not at the end of it. The Corporation do not know the extent of the dangerous building problem or of the health problem because, according to Mr. Condon, they have not even begun to carry out the inspection or the inquiry which they are obliged to carry out under law and under regulation. They had only two inspectors up to June. Now they have 14, which is an improvement, although they are tripping one another up. It does not suffice to say that it is the Dublin Corporation who are responsible or An Coiste Teaghlachais. Plainly, if he has any function at all, it is the function of the Minister for Local Government to see that the local authorities do their duty.
My only criticism of the previous Fine Gael Minister for Local Government is that in 1956 he did not carry out his threat to abolish the Dublin Corporation. If he had done so, it would be clear where the responsibility lay. Those who started the rot in 1956/57 apparently wallowed in it ever since and all they can do is boast that when we were building four times the number of houses, we sometimes found it difficult to get the money. If they want to quadruple the housing output, I will assure them the Fine Gael Party will not embarrass them by saying: "You will find it difficult to get the money". We would much prefer to see the houses being built.
Another matter which causes me considerable disappointment is the continued failure of the Government to assist Dublin Corporation to formulate a tenant-purchase scheme. This is a very real problem. Dublin Corporation now have over 42,000 tenants. They are by far the biggest landlords in this city. That is creating untold difficulties, as any member of the Dublin Corporation will tell you. The whole Housing Department has become excessively and unnecessarily costly in the maintenance angle and often fails to provide the reasonable amenities for these tenants.
Some time ago Dublin Corporation considered proposals for tenant purchase schemes. We are satisfied it is feasible only if the Government maintain the subsidies on tenant-purchase houses that are now available for tenanted houses. Such subsidies are continued by the Government in respect of tenant-purchase houses in rural Ireland. It baffles us why the Government will not maintain similar subsidies in city areas. The Minister told me on one occasion that there is not the same land hunger in the city as there is in the country and that there is not the same social need in the city as there is in the country. Anybody who makes such a statement is not aware of the pride of Dublin Corporation tenants in their houses, of their anxiety to live in their own houses and, in time, to pass them on to their families.
Problems continually arise where younger members of the family want to succeed to the tenancy of their parents. Invariably, this is refused, and for perhaps apparently fair reasons. We believe it would be better to develop— gradually, if necessary, and area by area, if necessary—a tenant-purchase scheme. We acknowledge that it will create unusual difficulties in the early stages. Some people will avail of the scheme while others will not. In the long run, we believe it will be good and socially desirable. It will release for future housing purposes much of the money now tied up in these houses. On that account, I appeal to the establishment, and I am sure others will join with me in this appeal, to see their way to continue this subsidy if Dublin Corporation introduce a tenant-purchase scheme. I cannot understand the economics which justify refusal. Presumably it will not cost any more to continue the subsidy for tenant-purchase houses. It should not cost any money at all that is not now being paid or that will not be paid in the future but it will mean that, sooner or later, when the houses are actually purchased by the occupants, the subsidy will cease. Therefore, in the long run, it would appear to be of benefit to the Exchequer.
I now come to the question of diesel fumes which are becoming an increasing problem. I do not think we can lightly disregard medical research in various places into the relationship between cancer and noxious fumes in cities. I do not want to create a scare about it but we have an increasing amount of diesel fumes in our cities and towns. Apart from the medical aspect, it is not very pleasant.
The only benefit we experienced in the transport strike earlier this year was that Dublin people were surprised to note how clear the air became. Even a street like Grafton Street, in the middle of the busy peak rush in the evenings or in the mornings, had a comparatively clear atmosphere compared with before and after the strike when buses were going down the street. That experience is all the more surprising when we consider that there were far more mechanicallypropelled vehicles on the roads at that time. There were far more cars. The density of traffic was greater but the buses were not there and they are the most extensive users of diesel oil in the city. I understand there is a law which makes it an offence to expel an excessive amount of exhaust fumes but it is not being used—certainly not against CIE who are by far the greatest offenders in this regard.
I believe we do not have to go abroad to understand our problems or to do anything about them and what I shall say now does not qualify that view which I hold. If we go to our sister city, Belfast, we find that, with as large a bus fleet, it has not got exhausts that are so dirty. The atmosphere of that city, which at one time was regarded as dirtier than Dublin because of the location of so much industry there, is in many respects much cleaner now than the atmosphere of Dublin.
Our research work at present indicates an increasing amount of pollution in Dublin City notwithstanding the fact that a not inconsiderable number of factories are going over to cleaner forms of fuel. The increasing pollution of the air of Dublin, created in the main by the exhausts of diesel buses, will seriously and radically have to be controlled. The attitude must not be not to prosecute CIE because they are a State body. Certainly, they are the greatest offenders.
I come now to plunge into the canal. I fear bureaucracy when it starts thinking of anything. It is now a few years ago since a rumour leaked out that the ESB proposed to demolish the finest examples of eighteenth century architecture we have available in these islands. At the time, there was an official denial that the matter was under consideration and there was an indication that nothing would happen without everybody being given an opportunity to express their views and exert their influence on the decision. We know what has happened since. The matter is practically a closed book now. The deed is done.
About six months ago, I asked the City Manager whether there were proposals afoot to close the Grand Canal and to sink sewers in the bottom. We received a typical bureaucratic reply to the effect that there was no decision in the matter and that, therefore, nobody had a right to complain about it. In that way, bureaucracy, in relation to the canal as in relation to the eighteenth century Georgian houses, tried to stifle criticism, tried to prevent those opposed to such a notion from making their views known before the decision and the subsequent act was a fait accompli.
We now know that the Streets Committee of the Dublin Corporation have decided this. How do committees decide these things? They decide them on verbal recommendations from officials.One of the disadvantages of a committee meeting such as that of Dublin Corporation or of any other local authority is that most of those in attendance want to get the work done without being bothered by "cranks" who may hold other points of view, because "the officials are always right."
A reasonable alternative is available which will answer the sewerage needs of Dublin and preserve the Grand Canal as an amenity and as something to contribute to the economic welfare of this city and this State. The trouble is that this is not now being considered. The only thing that, as I see it, will ever be approved is the closing of the Grand Canal and the sinking of sewers in the bottom of it and the subsequent filling in of it.
There are aspects of this case which were not taken into consideration because nobody wanted to do so. At present, Dublin Corporation have thousands of acres of what the town planners love to call "open spaces" but which I call municipal eyesores, deliberately created. What have we had for years and what shall we continue to have in undeveloped Corporation sites and elsewhere? These open spaces will be deliberately left and not developed as parks until the houses built around them have exhausted anything from one-quarter to one-third of their life span. Therefore, the open spaces, which are supposed to be enjoyed by the people who are the tenants of or were born in the houses, are left there and are certainly not available until a second generation comes.
What relevancy has that to the Grand Canal proposal? It has this. Even if they can go ahead with their plan, it will have to be maintained as a public park, and nobody has bothered to say what will be the cost of railing in that public park and maintaining it. Even a rough guess leads me to the suggestion that if one-tenth of the amount required to maintain it as a park were now spent on keeping it reasonably clean, it would not be the eyesore it so often is at present.
There is a reasonable alternative available which I would ask the Department to adopt without further delay. Dublin needs new sewerage on the south side. At present we have a huge housing area in Ballyfermot. We are unable to provide urgently required industrial employment adjacent to Ballyfermot because we have not the necessary sewerage. We are held up in potential housing expansion in south Dublin because of the lack of sewerage, and from time to time we experience flooding because of that lack of sewerage. To meet that, a reasonable compromise is available. I would urge it be adopted because it will mean the provision of sewerage sooner than if we were to wait for the cessation of all traffic on the canal. Secondly, it would also mean that it would be possible to provide this sewerage without the undesirable action of closing the Grand Canal. That compromise is to sink the required sewerage in the bed of the canal and then to fill the canal with water again instead of dry filling—a simple engineering act.
Most Dublin "jackeens" like myself will have seen stretches of the canal drained from time to time. All that is needed to drain a stretch to put down sewer pipes is to open the lock gates nearest the sea on the stretch in question. If that is done and some excavation is done on the bed of the canal, and the accumulation of old mattresses, dead animals and muck of the last century is removed, it would be quite feasible to put down the pipes and fill it up, not with rocks, but with water. If that is done, it will provide a much cleaner canal than we have at present. The draught will be more than adequate for any of the boats which now use or will use the canal. The reason I am emphasising this is that if this is not done, we are going to carry on for the next decade arguing about whether we should close the canal or not or whether we should sink the sewer pipes along some other route. A compromise which I think will meet most people is to put the sewers on the bed of the canal and fill it up with water. In the process, we will be able to do something with the lock gates and so on which are sorely in need of attention.
The justification for this has been set out daily in the newspapers and I shall not expand on it to any great extent. Bord Fáilte have now invested £100,000 in the development of boating holidays on the Shannon. Whatever one may think about Bord Fáilte or of any Government or municipal council —after all, we know they have not done the wisest things from time to time—we all know that the oil companies would not pour their money down the drain. They are controlled by shrewd businessmen. It is very interesting that more than one oil company in recent times has been providing free fuel for boats on the Shannon. Why are they doing that? Because they want to get the goodwill of the boat owners and to increase the number of boats on the Shannon. They see ahead of us the day on which the Shannon will be covered with as many boats as the Norfolk Broads at present.The banks will then be lined with petrol stations like the roads at present.They see that the development of boating holidays here, and on the Shannon in particular, is a desirable thing and almost certain to come.
The solution suggested by the City Manager in Dublin is to close the canal only from Inchicore to the sea and provide a ferry service on the road for such boats as come to the North Wall or Ringsend. I am not a boating man. I have no particular interest in this matter. I am just looking at the logic of it and the attitude of those who have boats. Any boating man will tell you that you cannot successfully carry a boat any long distance on the road. If we are to tell the British holidaymaker that the only way he can bring his boat to the Shannon is that it must be swung off the ship in Dublin on to CIE trucks, then he will not come at all. The vibration of the lorry and the handling will almost certainly do not inconsiderable damage. People with boats regard them as things of great beauty and cherish them and they will not have them manhandled, which must happen no matter how careful the workers are.