I beg to move the adjournment of the Dáil until 3 o'clock on Wednesday.
DAIL IN COMMITTEE. - THE ADJOURNMENT—HOUSING QUESTION.
Mr. O'HIGGINS
My reason for introducing this matter of housing is in order to give the Government an opportunity of saying in this Dáil and to the country what their future attitude is going to be in connection with it. It must be apparent to them, from the efforts they made last year, that this is a very serious problem. It was very serious in 1914, and in view of the fact that very little has been done, owing to various reasons, between that date and now I think everybody will admit that it has become far more serious, and that it warrants that the Government should take up the matter with a view to solving this very serious and difficult problem. I know the Minister will tell me that they did tackle the problem last year. I am prepared to admit that the Government did act splendidly last year, but I and those who think seriously on this matter, and who are interested in it, consider that the good work of last year should be continued until this matter is dealt with as it deserves to be dealt with. Prior to this country coming into its own one of the principal planks in every political platform was that the people of Ireland should be properly housed, and I think it is the duty of the Government now at the beginning to tackle this question seriously.
(At this stage An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.)
We have power in a free Parliament to do necessary things, and I think that the first duty of every Government is to look after the health of the people, because, after all, the question of housing is one of the fundamentals for proper health. In the various towns and cities in Ireland to-day we have slums that are a disgrace to the country. I know that the present Government are not responsible for that. It was due to the conditions under which we lived, by reason of the fact that we were dependent upon an alien Government in this country. But now that we have come into our own, and have a native Government in the country, I say that it is absolutely their duty to tackle this question seriously and not leave it in abeyance any longer.
I can imagine the Minister telling me that this is not an opportune time owing to the fact that we are just emerging from a civil war, and that there has been no provision made in the Estimates for the Government to grant any subsidy in connection with housing. I am aware of that, and I appreciate the position. But I do think that in consequence of the fact that the majority of the Army have been recruited from these slum areas all over the country that the majority of them are working people, and that they have done their bit to bring this country back to normal, the least that should be expected of the Government is that they should provide these people with decent homes to live in when they go back after bringing about this state of affairs. With regard to the question of there being no provision made in the Estimates, I know that there is a big draw on the resources of the people and that the people are, perhaps, rather badly hit at the moment. But I understand it is the intention of the Minister for Finance, who is himself aware of this very serious problem, to borrow something in the vicinity of £20,000,000 this year. I think the Minister ought to go a little further and borrow £21,000,000, and let us have that extra million for housing. One of the best investments that could be made would be that another million should be put into houses in this country for the accommodation of the working classes. It may not be a good monetary investment, but it is certainly a good investment, because we would secure a more healthy population, and that is a most desirable thing, as in a free nation of this kind we want everybody to help the work of reconstruction that is before the nation.
I am not very conversant with the conditions in other towns, but I do know that in the town of Wexford in 1914 the Corporation, which was not a very revolutionary body at that time, appointed a Committee to examine some of the areas in the town with a view to finding out the exact conditions as far as housing was concerned. They found that in a small area there were 185 houses absolutely unfit for habitation. Coupled with that there was the fact that houses were overcrowded to such an extent that nothing less than 300 houses would meet the demand. If that was the position eight years ago, you can imagine what it is to-day. I submit that this is typical of other towns and cities in Ireland, and I suggest to the Ministry that they are not paying sufficient attention to this serious matter, because there is no use in freedom if there is not a good environment to live in; if a man has not a good home, and if his health is going to be impaired by the conditions of the environment in which he lives.
The Minister for Local Government, when replying to a question the other day, mentioned something about the cost of building. I am of opinion that some sort of a ring has been formed in this country amongst the builders in connection with housing. Although the wages of building employees vary all over the country, we find that there is practically a standard rate prevailing in Ireland for a certain class of house. I think what ought to be done is that the Ministry should get into touch with the building trade, both the employers and workers, and that a Government representative should confer with them with a view to finding out what is the exact position so far as building is concerned. It is my belief that profiteering is going on. If that is the serious objection the Minister put forward why the Government are not interesting themselves in this question, I suggest that the Minister should now get into touch with these interests without delay, and that the Dáil ought to settle down to seriously tackling this problem as it should be tackled.
I would like to support what Deputy Corish has said in this matter. The question of housing is one of the most important confronting the Government and the country as a whole to-day. I would also like to say that the Government did the right thing last year in giving a grant of one million for the purpose of having something done. The problem is, however, a very big one, and even a grant of one million is only an indication of what could be done. The problem cannot be solved unless it is dealt with in a most generous way over a long number of years. It is one that affects practically every town in Ireland, but as it exists in Dublin it is one of very peculiar difficulty and magnitude. For a number of years it has been a theme for all classes of people to talk about. In the old days, when we had municipal elections regularly in October or November, new organisations were formed or old ones sprang into renewed life, and the first plank in their programme was the housing of the working classes. As soon as the elections were over we heard very little about the programme. We know that prior to the European war there was a population of 22,000 families living in one-room tenements in Dublin. That amounted to over one-third of the entire population of the city, and it is only Deputies who have had some practical experience of what it means for an entire family to live in a tenement room can realise the terrible nature of the conditions under which the people were and are forced to live. Deputies will remember that during the big labour dispute in 1913 the matter was brought prominently to notice when a couple of houses collapsed in Church Street, killing some of the occupants. Great attention was devoted to the problem, and then the Government of the day set up an inquiry entirely composed of Government officials, which reported that to deal with the question of housing in Dublin would require the provision of 14,000 self-contained cottages. At that period, or shortly afterwards, all building stopped, following the outbreak of the European war. No building practically went on from 1914 until 1919 or 1920. The problem is now very much more acute than it was at that time, and in addition, of course, we have had a huge increase in costs. A house that would cost £350 in pre-war days will cost something more than double that figure now, so that the financing of schemes is a big difficulty. The Government, no doubt, are of opinion that the price is too high, and that it ought to be possible to build houses a good deal less than the figures mentioned. I am satisfied that there is a ring which controls building materials, and that the Government could and ought to do something to break that ring. The question of materials is bound up with the question of Irish manufacture, and the Government are doing a certain amount, and I hope they will continue to do it, to see that as far as possible Irish materials are used in buildings erected up and down the country.
Here in Dublin the only company producing bricks at the moment is controlled by the master builders, and no doubt they have a special price for their own members, but when it comes to any outsider buying these bricks he finds they cost him from £2 10s. Od. to £3 Os. Od. per thousand more than bricks that can be got in other parts of the country. It has been often put forward also as a reason for the high charges that the workers are not producing all they should produce. Now, I would ask Deputies to bear in mind what occurs in the building trades. The operatives in the building trades have no guarantee of continuity of employment. They are employed simply for a particular job, which may last for a few weeks or a few months. It is not human nature to expect men to look forward to being unemployed as soon as a particular job upon which they are engaged is finished to hurry towards the desired end. It is not in human nature to expect it. I put it to the Government that if they want a greater output they could almost surely get it by taking steps to guarantee something like continuity of employment. In Dublin we have had some interesting experiments with a view to turning out better and cheaper houses and getting quicker building. When the President was Minister for Local Government he lent encouragement to a proposal that the members of the building trade should form themselves into a Building Guild with a view to seeing whether or not they could do better than the contractor. The Corporation also gave assistance and helped in every way possible, with the result that the Building Guild was entrusted with a contract for the construction of 25 houses. This was over two years ago, when the cost of everything was at its highest. The total cost of the houses constructed was, no doubt, high, averaging over £1,000 each, but it was considerably lower than the price fixed by the Corporation and other experts as the correct price, and the building trade saved a very considerable sum upon the agreed price laid down. Later than that a much more severe test was agreed to when the Corporation were giving away some two hundred houses. They divided these houses into three lots, and they invited tenders from outside contractors for the construction of 80 houses. They placed that contract with the lowest outside tender, and they offered a certain number of the same type of houses to be built under conditions similar in every respect to their own direct labour workshops, to see if they could produce them any cheaper. The Building Guild also undertook to construct a certain number of the houses at the same price as the outside contractor, and agreed that if they were able to build them any cheaper than the contractor, they would give the Corporation half the difference between the contractor's price and what the houses would actually cost. This test was started just twelve months ago. A strike took place during the progress of the work. That affected the contractor, because he was one of the ring of master builders, but it did not affect the two contracts undertaken by the Building Guild and the Corporation workshops. As a result, these two contracts are practically finished, while the outside contractor has many months to go. I do not know what the result has been in the case of the direct scheme, but in the case of the Building Guild there will be a substantial saving, notwithstanding the fact that the outside contractor's profit was understood to be a very finely cut one. That is a very interesting experiment, and I am glad to bear testimony to the fact that the present Minister for Local Government has been friendly in every way to the experiment, and has given it every chance of seeing whether it would be a success or not. I would put it to the Government that this whole housing question is a problem that they cannot afford to ignore. They may say, quite properly, that the expenses of the State are very great at the moment, and that it will be difficult to finance schemes, but this question of houses is just as necessary as any other question they are called upon to tackle. It is just as necessary to finance the building of houses as it is to carry on their Army or any work that they regard as necessary. It will not bear to be ignored, and if the Government do so it will be at their peril. If the Government allow the slum conditions existing in Dublin and elsewhere to go on, they will create a state of things that will pull down the strongest State they can build up. The solution of the question is closely bound up with the encouragement of Irish manufactures, and I think that the Minister for Local Government is doing something in that direction to en-encourage the standardisation of various things that can be manufactured in the country, like fire grates and so on. He could do a good deal regarding the output of Irish bricks, cement, slates, etc., and help Irish industry by endeavouring to solve this terrible problem, thus providing employment. I would, therefore, urge upon the Government that, notwithstanding the difficulties confronting them, they ought to tackle this question and tackle it soon. The other day the Minister, in response to a question, said that there was approximately £700,000 of last year's grant still unexpended, and beyond making that available in the current year the Government was not in a position to do any more. I would like to put it to him that it is necessary to have building schemes under way for a very long time in advance. It is only those who are closely in touch with the problem who know how long it takes, even with the best will in the world, to acquire sites, have plans prepared, invite tenders, and have quantities made out, and all that kind of thing. A very considerable amount of time is consumed in this way, and it is therefore necessary to have schemes prepared a very considerable time in advance. It may be quite true to say that the various local authorities which have availed of the £1,000,000 grant scheme are all right for the moment. They may be; but if schemes are to be got under way next year, if there is not to be a big gap between this year's programme and succeeding schemes, it will be necessary that the Ministry should consider what they are to do in the future, and I would urge them that this is a question which they cannot afford to ignore. They will be helping to solve a number of problems in dealing with it, and it will be work that will repay the nation for anything expended on it.
I agree with the statements put forward both by Deputy Corish and Deputy William O'Brien. I think that after the pressing case for the Land Bill that no more urgent matter of internal constructive work could come before the Dáil than this question of housing. We have seen during the last generation Bill after Bill brought forward for farmers, but in over a century there has been only one Bill brought forward to deal with the case of tenants in towns. It is a crying scandal from one end of Ireland to another, and not alone in Dublin or Cork, but in the middle-sized cities and small towns, that the slums are a scandal to our whole status as a people. They are a national scandal, and at the earliest possible moment we should clear them out and erase them from the face of the earth; and if we do not do so we deserve to be held in contempt by any people priding themselves on their civilisation. The sooner we tackle this question from every point of view the better. First of all from the point of view of health, and even from the lowest point of view, that of money-saving, it will produce a better race and will avoid the necessity of perpetual cases for hospitals and of people having to be kept practically at death's door and trying to remain alive under the most contemptible and wretched conditions. From the point of view of getting people into a state where they will have proper self-respect, and not having to live on the level of animals, certainly the abolition of the slums throughout Ireland is a most urgent question. I think the information given by Deputy O'Brien was particularly interesting. As regards the way in which difficulties in carrying out schemes have been met by the Guilds, if that is very largely availed of in other towns it would help undoubtedly to solve the question looked at as a national problem. Now, I remember practically all my life that one Bill after another has been brought forward on behalf of labourers in the country. They have, on the whole, been put into very nice cottages, with good surroundings and clear air and with half an acre or an acre of land attached. But the unfortunate men who work in the towns have not been able to get decent houses or decent apartments. They are often, as is notorious in the City of Dublin, obliged to live and bring up their families in one room. Deputy O'Brien, I believe, was under the mark in saying that there are 22,000 families living in one room in Dublin. I think the number would be at least 27,000 since Sir Charles Cameron gave his report. That is a scandal for us living in a capital city. It is as bad or worse in other towns in Ireland. I think the point Deputy O'Brien made is a most important one, bearing in mind in coming to tackle this question that it takes a long time to prepare schemes, as these involve all sorts of contracts and examination and choosing of sites and plans and all the other practical difficulties in the way. Although provision has not been made in this year's Estimate for a big national scheme of housing, at any rate it would be an advisable thing, and the country ought to have this provision made with a view to having a large scheme put forward, I would not say unanimously by the Dáil, but that the Dáil generally would support it, and that the country would be glad to see it put forward and adopted as soon as possible.
Deputy O'Brien referred to the state of housing in Dublin, and Deputy Corish to the condition of housing in the considerable town of Wexford, and Deputy Cole referred to the smaller towns. Well since the war the housing conditions of the small towns of Ireland have gone steadily worse, and are now, as Deputy Cole says, in a very disgraceful condition. Private enterprise has been entirely unable to cope with the need for houses, and so bad are the conditions in some of the towns in the West of Ireland that the Rural District Councils in several cases have passed resolutions and sent copies of them to the Minister for Local Government imploring him to do something to meet the very urgent need of houses in the small towns. This is a very big problem, and I am very glad to know that we have a very sympathetic Minister and Executive Council to deal with it. They are aware of the terrible need for houses, but they see the difficulty of getting money. Well, I am sure the Dáil will give them all the support possible in tackling this big problem. The cost of these houses will be extended over a period of, say, forty or fifty years, and a working man will be there with his labour all these years, and he will pay his share of the cost of that building. If you go through the City of Dublin you will see great buildings being erected by the banks and other large concerns. No matter who is shot or what bridge is blown up, they have faith in the future of Ireland, and they are going on building. We ought to have faith also in the future of Ireland. The Dáil will, I am sure, support the Executive Council in any bold scheme to remedy the present deplorable situation. I was very glad to hear the suggestion of Deputy Corish regarding a conference between employers and workmen to go into the matter. If they do, and if all the facts are placed before the Minister for Local Government I am sure it will encourage him to bring forward a sweeping measure and face this question boldly. It may be said that we have to raise £20,000,000 as compensation to rebuild bridges and do other work, but this is also necessary work, and it would be a concession to the campaign of destruction if we did not go on with it. Let us show that even if this work of destruction involves us in millions we are still able to do the ordinary decent work of building up the State and properly housing the people. I would join in urging the Minister to tackle this question, and give the town workers a chance of getting houses for themselves, and perhaps owning them, as the farmers own their farms, within a certain reasonable period.
I wish to associate myself with the remarks of the Deputies who have spoken. Half a million still remains of the million grant for housing, and I think it should be utilised immediately for the purpose for which it was given. In Athlone, with a population of 9,000, and despite this million grant, the Council had to strike a rate of 1s., with the result that we managed to get eleven houses built to relieve something like 2,000 unhoused or improperly housed people. The condition of the houses is so bad, owing to the landlord being so miserly, that the military lorries passing through the streets shake the roofs and walls, with the result that the whole cement work is coming down. I hope when the Minister for Local Government replies to the different speeches of the various Deputies he will make provision by which the occupying tenants can buy their houses, when they are built, at a low percentage, and thus automatically become the owners.
Yes, when they pay for them.
I would be very pleased to hear that this Government had decided to adopt the same tactics as those adopted by other Governments against certain landlords who refused to keep their houses in proper repair, and who, owing to their neglect, compelled people to shift their beds when rain comes through the leaking roofs. I may be told that it is impossible to take any action at present against such landlords. One thing I am quite certain of, and that is that this is the burning question at present, this question of housing schemes. We have hundreds of thousands of workers walking about, and they are an incumbrance on the State by being compelled to draw unemployment grant. What I want to bring out clearly is that the remedy at present for relieving the working classes lies completely in the hands of the Minister for Local Government, and I sincerely hope that he will condescend to do everything in his power, and not merely give a million pounds, which is, after all, only a drop in the ocean, to relieve the amount of people who are suffering. Deputy Gorey laughs, but it should be remembered that the people whom he and others have to pay for in sanatoriums and elsewhere are there owing to bad houses. If these people were properly housed the State would effect a great saving. Furthermore, I would like to point out that so far as Irish manufacture is concerned there is a multitude of stuff coming across the Channel. Deputy O'Brien has mentioned the question of bricks, and I may say that I know several brick fields through the country that are closed down because there is no demand for bricks. We realise that every house we build in the Irish Free State puts £100 into England for cement. We could stop that by giving employment at home and by opening the brick-fields. In Longford there are people, father and mother and eight children, living in one room, and in Athlone practically the same thing exists. Even in a small town of 1,400 people there are at present between 100 and 140 persons who are not housed properly. The country that allows such houses to stand or its supporters to live in them should be disgraced, and I sincerely hope that this Government will not see the Irish nation disgraced owing to the way it houses its people. I was going to mention the action of the Government towards some of its previous employees and to ask what they are going to do to relieve those people in order that they may continue to pay rent. Some of them refused to attest as workers and to wear the uniform, and they were turned out of employment. Their landlords now are up against them, and I think it is only right to say——
You cannot go into that question now.
Well, then, I would mention that I am going to raise, on the adjournment next Wednesday, the question of civilian workers in Athlone and elsewhere having to attest and wear uniform. We must demand the freedom to which we are entitled in our own country.
I am in favour of housing. I believe that if a man and his family are not properly housed you are going to have bad citizens, but I also believe in what is called self-help. The whole cry this afternoon here is for the milch cow, the State, to pay subsidies for houses in the cities and towns, while there has not been a word about the rural areas. In the rural areas they are self-supporting. When a house is built, and we collect 1s. 2d. per week for an acre and a four-roomed house which are really worth 10s., the ratepayers out of their generosity pay the difference in order to supply suitable accommodation for the under dog, the labourer.
Labour is top-dog.
I am not playing up to labour in this matter. If this State was paying its way—if, instead of an adverse balance of five or six millions, you had a surplus—then I would say, by all means help the cities and towns to get proper houses; but the rates and taxes are at war standard, and, apart altogether from war and compensation, the current peace establishment of this country is costing £6,000,000 over and above the taxes which will be collected at war rates. Having regard to that fact, and to the fact that the President told us the other night that there were 2½ millions of Free State bills lying in the banks and an overdraft of one and a half millions, I do not think that he is in a position to subsidise any building scheme which requires a subsidy, and which subsidy must of necessity come out of the Central Fund. These are the facts. The Minister for Finance, when he is replying, will, I am sure, if he promises to subsidise any building scheme, do so contrary to what he knows is right. I had a humanitarian idea of building houses. I built them in other countries, and I thought that I could build them here. I had the stone, I had the timber, I had the water supply, and I had the land free, and I wanted to let a house at 2s. 6d. a week. I could not build a house to give me a return of half-a crown a week, although I had all the material, simply because the rate of labour is too high. Although I was willing to spend £100 in labour and provide the materials, I could not get a return of 2s. 6d. per week per house. The interest on £100 in reason ought to be more than the output from what a hen would lay. Now, you cannot say I am wrong. If you get 3 per cent. on capital in a railway company, you are supposed to be getting a tremendous lot, yet you are not getting as much as the egg from the hen. There was a deputation of unemployed labourers came before a certain Council to which I was not attached, but I happened to be present, and they asked us to approach the Local Government to raise money for the purpose of giving employment, and we agreed to do so. I suggest it is better to raise money and to spend money building houses than to spend it in giving doles. Well, we came up here, and after considerable difficulty we succeeded in getting support to raise £5,000 out of the bank on the security of the Urban Council for housing. We built these houses, and now what happened? The Rural Council passed a resolution last week that a house which cost £500 to build should be let at 1s. 2d. per week, with an acre of land. Now, in all honesty it is too much to expect that a house costing £500, and that should bring in £25 a year—10s. a week—it is too much to expect that the ratepayers, who are already overburdened, should be mulcted to the extent of 8s. or 9s. or 10s. per house per week. And the whole object is to provide employment for men willing to work, but who could not get it. I put it to the Minister for Local Government it would be a shame that such a rent only should be charged. I am not a landlord nor a capitalist. I am a working man who owns a piece of land that is not paying, and remember I realise that unless and until we have houses for the working people in proper order we are not going to have a contented country and we are not going to have a contented State, and a contented State is what we are all looking for.
Deputy Wilson, shall I say my colleague, Deputy Wilson——
I think you might.
Has given expression to certain views that are commonly held by people who have not thought carefully about this problem. He has touched upon the question of the economic rent of a house. He says it is impossible to approach the Minister for Finance for money for this purpose, because you cannot get a rent which will pay interest on the capital invested. He quotes a sample house that cost £500 which the local Council want to let at 1s. 2d. per week. Deputy Gorey the other day said something about houses being built in other places by private enterprise and without subsidies. I think he is quite wrong.
No, I am not wrong.
Except, perhaps, for a certain class of house, which may be let to people in receipt of incomes much above the average level of wages, there are no houses being built and let to-day at what is called an economic rent. At the very moment that Deputy Gorey was speaking on that occasion the British House of Commons was discussing certain questions about a subsidy for so many years, something like £6 per year per house. Deputy Wilson touched upon the need for houses in rural districts. I want to put it to him that, supposing you had a house built at half the cost of present-day houses—at £300, say, instead of £600—you would have a rental of not less than 8s., 9s., or 10s. per week. Does Deputy Wilson want to charge that rent to make it an economic rent? He does not. Therefore he wants a subsidy. I put it to Deputy Wilson, and to all others concerned in this matter, that if they are going to demand an economic rent for houses occupied by the working classes, then wages will have to rise very much higher than what they are now. You cannot pay an economic rent, even for a country cottage, on 30s. or 35s. a week.
Some places 25s. per week.
We must get out of our minds the notion that you are going to have houses, within the next twenty years, to let at an economic rent, unless you are prepared to increase wages all round very considerably. There must be subsidies, and the only question that arises is as to how these subsidies are to be found. I should qualify that, perhaps, by saying there must be subsidies, so long as money that is required for building houses is to be borrowed at interest. Everybody agrees that this is a crying need—a grievance that must be remedied—and that the people must have better housing than they have had in the past. Deputy O'Brien has urged the necessity for looking ahead. I would support that appeal to Ministers, that they ought not simply to think of this year, but ought to look forward and prepare schemes for ten years ahead. I believe the right way to tackle this problem—the way the Labour Party for the last three years has been advocating—is that there should be set up a national housing authority to work along with and through the Councils, but that it ought to have very much more power than the Councils to insure that houses shall be built—more power than the Local Government Board exercised in the past. The Department of Local Government is not sufficient. Here is a problem, at any rate, that is going to take half a generation at least, probably a whole generation, to deal with and remedy, and it requires to be dealt with on a national basis. We believe that it ought to be dealt with by an authority which may be represented by a Minister in this Dáil, a Housing Minister if necessary, whose sole duty will be to look after the work of housing throughout the country. Such an authority ought to be representative not only of citizens through the Dáil, but should have, acting with that Minister, representatives of the industries concerned and of the local authorities. It should have powers to step in and utilise building materials, or so use those powers as to compel combines and firms which are acting with combines to bring their held-up materials into use. If there was such an authority, a scheme of standardisation of parts could be brought into operation very speedily, and immediately it could begin to set to work preparing materials for house building for the next winter or next summer, so that suppliers of material could go ahead, with the certain knowledge that there is a market for those materials under the national housing authority. You could get money for a national housing loan, sufficient, I believe, to carry you on quite independent of the national loan that is talked of by the Minister for Finance.
The question no doubt will be raised, as it has been raised, of the labour cost in the building of houses. Deputy O'Brien has touched upon the position that so many men engaged in the building trades are placed in by virtue of the seasonal nature of their occupation, by virtue of the fact that they do not know what they will do next winter, and they cannot look ahead six months for a livelihood. Very many comments are made upon the practices of workmen engaged in the building trades in different parts of the country. Deputy Corish, I think, spoke of the fact that houses run round about the same price for production no matter what part of the country they may be built in. I said on an earlier occasion, discussing this question of Trade Union action, that it does not prevent a cheap house being built in Connacht, but apart from that I want to say that in so far as there are any psychological influences due to this fear of unemployment leading to slower production and difficulties between one trade and another, that in almost every case these difficulties arise from the fact that there is no assurance of permanence of employment. For my part, and I believe I am speaking the views of all my colleagues, if you are prepared to go to people in the building trades, whatever number they may be—ten, fifteen, or twenty, or thirty thousand people—engaged in the building trades all over the country, and say: "Here, we see ten years' work ahead; so long as you are prepared to work, then we are prepared to see you are guaranteed employment," then we can use our influence, and it will not be resented, to see that these obstacles to mass production, cheap production, if necessary will be removed. I put that to the Ministry, and I put it to the members of the Dáil, and to the public, that if you will guarantee to the mass of workmen in the building trades a continuity and permanence of employment you can rest assured that all your objections with regard to the obstacles in the way of quick production will be speedily removed, in so far as they are valid. In discussing the unemployment problem the other day I touched upon this necessity for assurance of a livelihood. Give these men a guarantee of employment for years ahead, and that guarantee will be responded to in a way in which men have not been given credit for by many of their critics. I would urge upon Ministers to think very seriously and quickly of the necessity of meeting this problem in a somewhat different manner than has been the practice hitherto. I believe it would be found a valuable suggestion if this idea were adopted of a National Board to take charge of the re-housing of the people, so that the work could be continued right through the country on a co-ordinated plan, and would be readily responded to by all sections. Such a Board would have powers to proceed effectively. It would carry along with it public opinion, and would have the support of the interested parties. Then you could get money, and you could get work done much more satisfactorily than has ever been the case before. I believe that is the way the problem ought to be tackled, and I would urge the Minister to deal with it on those lines without delay.
I would like to explain my attitude and the attitude of my colleagues and of the people of the country in connection with this question. We are in absolute sympathy with the proposal for building. We are in absolute sympathy with the provision of houses. I ought to know more about this matter than most people, because I am a member of public boards since I was a boy of 20 or 21. I know what the rural districts did in the way of building houses for the people. I know the amount of the subsidies that were given, and I have been voting money for these schemes year after year. I have attended many inquiries as a witness, and I have always advocated that a certain amount of the cost of houses should be put on the rates, leaving a certain amount to be paid by the tenants of the cottages. The rural districts have built houses for all the people in the rural areas. I do not think in my county of Kilkenny you will get twelve people in the rural areas who want houses. We subsidised the building of houses for the people in these districts. Are we, the people of the rural areas, to be asked now to subsidise also the building of houses for the dwellers in the towns? Is that the proposition? If the urban areas have failed to do their work—and they have failed to do it—is the proposition that the rural areas, that have done their duty, and did it well, must bear a share of the burden proposed to be put on the towns? I have heard a lot of points raised in this discussion. The most valuable point that has been raised was put forward by the Deputy who introduced the motion, Deputy Corish. I do not think it is a conference he suggested. I think he suggested to the Minister that an inquiry should be held with regard to the difficulties in the building trade. I think he suggested that there was profiteering or that there was something wrong. That may be so, although I find it difficult to see how there can be profiteering in house building when houses are not being built or in materials when they are not being used. We know that there are houses needed in this country for others than workers. Deputy Johnson has questioned some of my statements made the other day, but we know that in this country, as in other countries, there are houses needed for others besides workers, in the building of which any amount of work could be given and is being given in other countries. I can give the Deputy the actual prices of houses with five or six rooms and reception rooms. Houses that would not be built here for £2,000 are being built in England for £750 or £800. I can show him dozens of these houses in his own county of Lancashire, where he comes from. I think the suggestion of an inquiry is very valuable, and I hope the Minister will not pass it lightly over. If there is profiteering by people who deal in materials or build houses, it is time to find it out. If there is any other cause why building cannot go on, it is up to the Ministry to find it out. There are plenty of figures at its disposal both here and elsewhere. It is a very important question, and I think it ought to be probed. If figures were put up to the people generally, things might be a good deal different from what they are. I think it was Deputy O'Brien who said that slums would be continued by the Government at their peril. I do not know if he meant that.
I did.
I hope also that the Government will not ask the people to work at their peril.
And at your peril.
I am ready to take anything coming to me, and I always have been. I do not like the reasoning of Deputy Johnson with regard to the people who will not give of their best on a short job. If they did anything like their best the jobs would not be short ones. There would be a continuity of work. If a man shows his worth he will be continued at that work. I think that argument is not quite good enough. If a man is inclined to work he will get work. It is no argument to say that because a job is to end inside a month or two that he is to go slowly. I think that is a bad idea—that it is wrong both for himself and everybody else. I agree that the housing conditions in the city are disgraceful. They are a disgrace to any country. I believe there is nothing for it but for the Government to put up the money to do it and to pass an Act of Parliament to force it to be done, because there is no chance of its being done as a business proposition except things are going to improve. I have no objection to spending money if we get anything like value for our money or if there is anything like effort put into the business. Lack of effort will mean lack of work, lack of enterprise, and lack of everything else. It will even mean lack of food later on. There are two things that I want to emphasise. I do not think the Minister ought to treat lightly the suggestion of an inquiry with regard to the cost of building. I think that is a very serious question. I am glad the suggestion was made by Deputy Corish, and I hope it will be acted on. The other point is that the rural areas have already done their share. They have provided for their people. They have given them good houses and good plots of land. They have done well for their people, and in considering this question I think that the cities and urban areas ought to be made do their share also.
I join issue with the last speaker as far as the urban areas are concerned. If the urban areas get money on the same advantageous terms as it was given to rural areas in the past they are prepared to do their duty by their people, and do it as well or perhaps better than the rural areas did it. I have experience of both urban and rural areas on public boards where money was expended for housing. In certain districts in the country the rural areas have done their duty, but that duty is not yet finished. There are more houses required in the rural as well as in the urban areas. There is no use in labouring the question of the need for houses and of the unsanitary dwellings that exist in the towns and the cities of Ireland. The facts are admitted. One thing I think the Ministers should take into consideration, and that is the cost of transit on building materials. I know as a matter of fact where a scheme is in operation in a certain part of the country at the present time, where the carriage of one particular material was as much as the material itself cost. That is a state of affairs I think should be remedied and can be remedied. The materials I refer to are bricks. There are no bricks manufactured within a radius of 30 or 40 miles from the centre to which I am referring. Bricks had to be brought from the Six Counties—from Killough, Co. Down—and it actually cost as much to bring them to the site as it did for the materials in the brickyard. I suppose the same thing applies to slates, timber and all the other things that go to the building of a house. If the Minister or his Department would apply themselves to see how that state of affairs could be remedied I believe it would reduce the cost of housing considerably. The people I speak of tried every means, but could not get these materials brought to the site cheaper. We all admit that to build houses under existing conditions you cannot let them at an economic rent. If you charge an economic rent for a house now I am convinced that no working man can pay that rent on present wages. A worker in a city or town with 40s., 45s., or in some cases 50s. a week cannot pay a weekly rent of 10s.
With 16s. a day.
I know what I am speaking about in this matter, and a man earning 45s. or 50s. a week cannot afford to pay 10s. or 11s. weekly in rent. That is the economic rent of houses being built at present, taking into account outgoings, collection of rent, insurance, etc. You will have to change that if you want to keep on the right side. The working man cannot pay that rent. Houses, I think, can be cheapened if the cost of transit on materials is looked into. I do not believe there is a town in Ireland with a population of 10,000 but could do with 400 or 500 houses. There are demands for houses every day by people living in insanitary homes, living in one room and in lodgings. These people and their families want to be housed. I am not one of those who advocate the building of jerry-built or cheap houses. I want a four-roomed house for every workman. Nothing else is any good. That is the class of house I would like to get, but I cannot see at present that that house can be built to be let at an economic rent unless the State could come to the aid of the local authority with a subsidy, or give them money, if it were possible, at the same terms as the rural areas got it to build cottages. If we could find money on these terms for the purchase of land we could then proceed to build houses in the rural areas and to build them without any loss to the State.
I feel that there is a contradiction between what Deputy Gorey and Deputy Wilson said, but I quite agree with Deputy Wilson that enough attention has not been given to the rural districts. Deputy Gorey stated that the rural districts built houses for all the people who needed them. I disagree with that entirely.
I was only talking about Kilkenny.
Order.
I disagree with that entirely, and I would like the Ministry, if they are to give any money in the future, either as a grant or as a loan, to consider the position of the towns that are inside rural areas. There are some towns in Ireland that have not Municipal or Urban Councils, and these towns did not get an opportunity to apply for portion of that £1,000,000 grant given last year. These towns, I think, are, if anything, in a worse position than some of the municipalities or urban districts. I have one or two in mind. In Charleville, in North Cork, which is in the Rural District Council area, there are a great number of houses absolutely unfit for human habitation, and although sixty-eight houses were built under the ex-Service Men's scheme during the past twelve months, in spite of that there are at least sixty or seventy families living in houses that can only be called houses by courtesy, containing one room, with a wooden partition to divide the sleeping-place from the portion in which they do their cooking and eat their meals. Another portion of Cork I have in mind is Blarney, and I merely mention these two as being typical of many others. In Blarney there is a fairly large population, because 400 or 500 people are employed in the woollen mills there. Blarney has not an Urban Council, and the people there did not have an opportunity of applying for part of the £1,000,000 grant, and I think in future, if a grant or a loan is being given, that the Rural Councils should be treated equally with the Urban and Municipal Councils. There is another thing that I might as well mention while I am on my feat. In the town of Bandon, which is ruled by Town Commissioners, there are about fifty houses, owned by a private individual, for which no rent has been paid for the last twelve or eighteen months. They are small, one storey, two-roomed cottages, and the roofs have been in such a bad condition that the rain is coming in, and they are constantly flooded. The tenants have refused to pay rent, and the landlord simply had not the nerve to ask them to pay rent. Recently the Town Commissioners decided that they would attempt to take over these houses in order to put them into repair, and they applied to the Local Government Department for either a grant or a loan in order to do that. The position at present, I understand, is this, that they offered the owner of the houses £50 to buy them out completely, and they guaranteed to put the houses into a decent condition. Although he had not drawn a penny rent for eighteen months, the owner wanted £500 for these houses. The law, as I understand, prevents a public body taking over houses in a bad state of repair and putting them into a proper state of repair, but as an alternative the owner can close them if he wishes. That law, I think, should be taken into consideration and amended so as to empower any public body that desires to take over the houses, the owners of which refuse, to put them into repair and keep them in repair themselves and draw rent from them. I want to know from the Minister for Local Government what decision has been arrived at regarding these houses in Bandon. I see the Chief Housing Inspector in the Dáil this evening. I understand the Inspector was sent to Bandon to examine the place and report on it three or four weeks ago. There is another thing I would like to mention to the Local Government, and that is that the Skibbereen Urban Council has decided to build some houses, and they have made an attempt to purchase some land to do so. The owner of the land offered them the same site about twelve years ago for £140, and he has offered them that site at the same price at the present time. The Ministry of Local Government sent an Inspector down there to investigate the case, and he sent in a report to the effect that the owner should not get more than £100 or £105 for the land. The people of Skibbereen, because they could not get this land in the past, were obliged to build houses on an unsuitable site between two graveyards. They consider that for the sake of £35 or £40 permission should be given to the Council to purchase this land, as it is the most suitable in the area. I would like to back up Deputy Wilson's scheme that the rural districts should get consideration if there is any money given as a loan or a grant, and that the Rural Councils should be given their share at the same rates as Municipal or Urban Councils.
I would like it to be clearly understood that I did not rise for the purpose of drawing attention to urban houses only, but to housing in general.
Lest I should forget, I might mention the Skibbereen case. The site really was not suitable, and we were not prepared to sanction an exorbitant price for an unsuitable site, and are not. It is not a fact, although one may have gathered it in part, that nothing at all is being done for housing in this present year. Actually there is on the Estimate this Vote of £700,000, which will mean that a considerable amount of work will be done in the present year in connection with housing. In addition, if any local authority can find or devise any scheme for selling houses built under this £1,000,000 scheme in such a way as to get cash or to get any substantial proportion of the price in cash they will be at liberty to use that money so obtained for the building of further houses. In one district a scheme has been put up and approved for the sale of houses. Of course the houses would have to be sold at a considerably lower figure than the cost of building. In some cases the amount of money deposited by the purchaser will be small, and will not count anything towards the building of new houses immediately, but in other cases under that same scheme of sale the purchaser would put down the whole or major part of the purchase money of the house, and that will be in the hands of the Council to go towards the erection of further houses. I appreciate as well as any Deputy who has spoken the importance and urgency of this question of housing. There are at least 40,000 or 42,000 houses required, and I do not know that that would meet every need. To solve the housing problem in any substantial way at all the provision of at least 42,000 houses is required. Now, that is as many nearly as was provided in Saorstát under the Rural Labourers Acts. 47,969 cottages were built, and of these 41,821 are in the Saorstát. As much at least requires to be done for urban housing to solve it to the extent that the rural housing problem has been solved. It has already been pointed out that under the rural schemes there was a State subsidy. The money was lent for most of the work by the Irish Land Commission on land purchase terms. The annuity amounted to £3 5s. per cent., and then 36 per cent. of the total was taken by the State, so that actually on every £100 advanced the Rural District Council paid £2 1s. 7d. per cent.
That is, of course, a great deal less than what has to be paid by an urban authority which goes into the market and borrows money. At present the cost of building to deal with the urban housing problem would require an expenditure of £30,000,000, whereas the same number of houses were built under the Labourers Act for something like £7,000,000 or a little over it. When we come to deal with this I think we must really face the question of getting the cost down to as reasonable a figure as it can be brought. We know it would be a saving to the State to deal with the housing problem. It will be a saving in health; it will be a saving in man power; it will be a saving in police, if it goes to that. It will even be a means for promoting industry, because better work can be done by people who are well housed. It will deal with the problem of drinking to a large extent. The benefits will be inestimable to the whole community and the State. But when we are faced with the question of finding a big sum of money we must take into consideration the means of dealing with that as cheaply as it can possibly be dealt with. It is not merely a question of the State putting up money without requiring the greatest co-operation from the workers in the building trade, and from the local bodies that are concerned. A million pounds, which was voted first by the Provisional Government, will produce, I suppose, about 2,000 houses. Roughly, in the big majority of cases the all in cost was the full £750, and the State had to pay £500 of that. For every £500 of State money expended only one house was got, roughly. It has been represented that at present, at any rate, a subsidy to provide builders with £150 would get a house something the same, or pretty nearly the same, as the house got by the subsidy of £500 to municipalities. Before it became apparent even that the deficit was going to be so large in the coming year, before it became apparent that the bill for compensation would be so high, and the cost of the Army would be so high, and the amount of borrowing would be so great, we had to take into consideration seriously whether we would not have to alter our whole policy with regard to housing subsidies with a view to getting the greatest number of houses for money paid out of the Exchequer. That is a thing we will still have to consider even when the present phase has passed, and when we come to deal with this problem on a scale that will lead to its solution over a reasonable number of years. We have got to see when we are expending State money that good value is given. It is very hard to get down to actual figures about output. You hear the most extraordinary things said by people who are supposed to know. I think it is not unfair to come to the conclusion that output certainly in the building trade is nothing like what it ought to be, and I think when we are dealing with this we will have to deal with it on some basis of being met fairly by the workers and Trade Unions concerned in the building trades. I was very interested in what Deputy Johnson said with regard to meeting the State, and meeting the needs of the community, in that matter, and I think what he said was very important. I believe we will have to make our Exchequer contributions contingent upon being met on the matter of output. I have come across lots of restrictions that perhaps suit a small body of workers, but they seem to me not restrictions that could be stood over very well as being necessary for the purpose of maintaining a standard of livelihood or any sort of human standard for the workers concerned. There are quite a number of these restrictions that have been enforced in connection with the building trade, and which, I think, will have to be dropped in the future. We also have to consider very carefully the whole attitude with regard to Irish manufacture. The great difficulty about specifying Irish manufacture is that if manufacturers know you must go to them the tendency is for them to put up their prices. The matter really should be put, if possible, on a percentage basis. I think the giving arbitrarily of preference to Irish manufacturers is very makeshift. And if we come to the conclusion that purchases should not be made on the open market, and at the lowest prices possible, protection should be given on a tariff basis so that people would know where they are, and advantage would not be unreasonably taken of the desire to provide articles of Irish manufacture.
There are lots of other matters. The Dublin Corporation, for instance, insists on the use of brickwork not only for external walls, but for partition walls. It has been estimated that that insistence has made a difference of £40 a house. Again, Dublin is the only city where cut stone is considered essential for window sills, door steps, and such things, and in a recent case that has meant an extra £20 a house. The insistence of the luxury of cut stone is a matter we will have to consider very carefully. When we are up against the fact that 41,000 houses were got pre-war for something like £7,000,000, and at the present we have to pay something like £20,000,000, we have got to see how the cost of houses can be cut down. I do not believe in cutting down the cost by putting up miserable boxes of houses. We should put up houses that would enable people to live in them properly. Our efforts in cutting down costs should be in another direction than in building houses which would only produce slums. I do not want to go too much into the details of restriction. There are cases where the actual local authorities have imposed restrictions that seem to me might be unobjectionable if costs were low. If we are building at an economic rate, these restrictions would be a really serious matter; but when houses cannot be built at an economic price, when the cost to the State is so large, then we must consider very carefully whether we will not insist, as a condition of State aid being given, that suitable agreements shall be come to, so that unnecessary restrictions that do not essentially concern the welfare of the workers shall not be imposed simply to provide, in some cases, employment for a greater number of hands. It seems to me the way to provide employment for a greater number of hands is so to reduce the cost that with the money available we can put up a greater number of houses, and more employment must follow. The matter is so serious and so big that we cannot have the costs put up in the interests of any one particular group. If the cost can be brought down to some reasonable figure, I believe that it will certainly be as good a thing as the State could do to spare money from nearly anything else, perhaps from anything else— all the money that could be saved—to enable it to be spent upon this matter of housing, and I believe the benefit to the country would be so great that nobody could object to the expenditure of State money for that purpose. I believe that the conditions are such that greater assistance from the State will be necessary than was necessary in the case of rural housing, because costs have gone up to such an extent, and a proportion of these costs has gone up permanently, so that I think the State proportion of the cost must of necessity go up too. But it would be utterly indefensible, supposing it were proven to be true that one could get as many houses put up for £150 by private builders as could only be put up at a cost of £500 by the municipalities, to give State aid; then there could be no defence for continuing a housing policy, or the major part of such a policy, by the municipalities. I know that building by private builders does not touch certain aspects dealt with by municipalities. I believe there are certain fringes of the problem that would always have to be dealt with by municipalities. An enormous amount can be done by private builders, and the big bulk of it can be done by private builders, and if it is found we cannot undertake to have costs brought down in undertakings by municipalities, then perhaps it would be found necessary to drop subsidies to the municipalities altogether.
Now, as to rings, I suppose there are rings, but rings will affect the cost more to the small private builder building a house or two. Where big contracts are in question it will not be found that the question of rings in the matter of materials is such a serious matter at all as when we are thinking of the builder who is putting up one or two houses; and, as a matter of fact, if big schemes were possible and were suitably arranged. I think that competition on the part of the builders and the builders providers could be got. We would not necessarily have to depend on the firms already in competition for them. I believe other firms would come in and would help to bring down the cost, but the thing is a very serious matter and it will have to be faced. We will be casting a very heavy burden upon the State if we indulge in any unnecessary expenditure. Now that we are standing upon our own legs, we must not help to injure the credit of the State by making the cost of money higher still, and for that very reason it is necessary that we should manage, and appear to manage, our business well and get good value for the money that we spend.
I would like just to say a few words on this question. I suppose, like the old war horses when they get the smell of battle, they neigh and snort, and on this subject I have some considerable experience. I would like to deal with the question Deputy Johnson raised of giving a guarantee There can be conversations and agreements as regards output. I put this to the Deputy, that we have evidenced our good faith by making available for housing, within two years, a sum of one million pounds. That is evidence of our good faith. We have recently passed a Damage to Property Bill which will involve an expenditure on building of a very considerable sum, a sum far in excess of what has been spent in this country in any five or ten years. Why not enter into those conversations at once? It is a most important matter for the State. It is a question, as far as the State is concerned, as to whether this particular damage to the property of the State will cost us £15,000,000 or £20,000,000. If there is an improved output I believe that we would save fully a quarter of the money. Deputies know full well that the financial situation is such that we have reached a financial crisis. That is further enhanced, or intensified, by the fact that people who are in the capitalist class, from the repeated conversations I have had with them, are not satisfied that they are being fairly treated by labour. I am not going to enter into the merits of that, but I do say to Deputies that the opinion is widespread amongst that class, and that it is one of the principal difficulties I have in matters of finance. Not to-day or yesterday, but twelve months ago, when having formulated this scheme, which I now admit is a bad scheme—it is an expensive and an extravagant scheme that the State could not afford—I brought it forward in good faith, believing at the time that it was the best scheme that could have been put forward. I do say that the State could not afford at any time to pay £500 of a subsidy for every house that would be built, and the case put up to me by the banking interests I had to approach in order to raise the money was, that this was an impost that no State could bear. At that time we raised money at 4½ per cent. It was raised on very fair terms. The Standing Committee of the Irish Banks agreed to lend at something like a 9 per cent. annuity for 15 years. When the Minister for Local Government was speaking I made up what the £60 extra on houses in Dublin would cost per week. The addition to their cost for the particular items he mentioned, the brick wall partition and the stone cut dressings, would, I found, cost 2s. per week. Let us, for instance, take the case of persons looking for one of these houses, that is to say a house without a brick wall partition and stone dressings, and a house with both of these advantages, and you say to the prospective tenant, "Will you take this one at 2s. per week extra, or will you take the other one?" I think very few citizens would say that they would take the dearer house.
We have got to get down to an economic basis by stages, if not by other means, but we ought to get down as quickly as possible. The housing problem is, perhaps, the greatest of all problems we have got to tackle. Deputy Gorey, I think exaggerated slightly when he said that the rural districts had borne their share. It is hardly fair to say that they have borne their share when the cost of money in the rural districts for housing for fifteen or twenty years was £2 2s. 7d. per cent., while the cost in the case of the urban authorities was £5 2s. per cent. Now, obviously that was not fair to the urban authorities, and the result is to be found in the figures. We have 50,000 cottages built in the rural areas and not 10,000 cottages erected in fifteen years in the urban areas. I am not at all satisfied that the local authorities are the best possible institutions for solving the housing problem. Looking over two particular institutions—one a local authority and one a public company—I am now speaking from recollection, but my figures will not be far wrong—the public company built something like 5,000 dwellings and the local authority built 2,000. The public company, as long as the rents were paid, paid a dividend of 5 per cent. The local authority lost on each house erected from £6 up to £25 per house, the loss running for a period of years from £10,000 to £50,000. Obviously that is not an efficient method of dealing with the housing problem. It is a problem that does not admit of a single penny of waste, and it must be considered not in relation to a particular trades union or a number of trades unions, but to every item of cost that goes to make up the loss that is occasioned.
During the short experience I had of the housing problem last year I found that the towns did not appreciate the difficulty of solving the housing problem. Even with a subsidy of £500 for each house, and allowing for the shilling that was raised in local rates, we found that the actual amount which had to be levied from the tenant was something like £187 10s. for the cost of the house. At 9 per cent. that was something less than 7s. 6d. a week. It was put to me by a very respectable member of a local authority, who was a Quaker—and you can conclude from that that he was not a poor man because Quakers are very good business men—that that was an utterly outrageous charge, and that the people could not bear it. There is a lack of sympathy there, surely, when you are asking a man only for a quarter of the cost of the article that he is to be provided with, and he says it is too much. Take the provision of the rural houses. This is a matter that many deputies were interested in. Deputy Nagle was interested in it. I knew, during my time of office as Minister of Local Government, that in one particular area the local authority had built 1,400 cottages, and it would have paid the local authority to have cut collecting rents. They would have saved by doing so £12 a year. That is to say, that if the local authority had said, "Keep the house and damn the expense," they would have saved £12, and have saved themselves all the trouble of attending to the business and management of these houses. It would have actually paid them to have struck in their estimates all the outgoings, interest, principal, and so on. There is a lack of sympathy in people getting houses and refusing to pay the rent for them, and leaving them to fall into a bad state of repair due to inattention. It shows no sympathy whatever in the working out of the question.
That is not a method of dealing with the matter which would impel hardheaded business men like Deputy Wilson to undertake the construction of a couple of hundred other cottages there. The same thing has happened in Dublin, where rents are not paid. I remember one case during the last few years of a company that had certainly done very useful work. It may possibly have charged a small percentage over the rents which philanthropically-minded people, or purely philanthropic people, might have imposed, but it was only a very small percentage. There were in all three classes of tenants. They had the Sinn Fein tenant, who would not go into the Recorder's Court; they had the non-Sinn Fein tenant who would not go into a Sinn Fein Court, and they had the capitalist tenant who would not go into any court. Between the three of them they almost brought that company down. It may have been a great experiment for them, but the result is that no man with money to invest will invest it in houses. No man will take on the job of having a couple of hundred tenants, having regard to the fact that at a given moment the cry may go out:—"We have paid the cost of these houses; we will pay no more rent." I know the size of this problem. It is colossal. I do welcome the statement of Deputy Johnson, and I do put to him that there is not a moment to be lost in coming to close quarters with the question of an agreement. We have given evidence of our good faith. The guarantee he looks for the people he himself represents can supply. If there is supply there will be demand. There is demand. Then we want supply.
I do not want to pursue the discussion, but I would like to ask the Minister, inasmuch as we shall probably be adjourning until Wednesday, whether he will promise us on that occasion a statement of what his intentions are with regard to the legislative business for the Parliamentary year. Some of us would like to look forward two or three months—to know how long we are likely to be meeting, and what sort of business we will have to go through. There is a good deal of arrears. There are a large number of Bills which were promised in the early stages of the session, but which have not been brought before us yet. I submit it would be an advantage to the Dáil in general if we had some sort of tentative time-table from the Minister as to the business for, say, the next three months. Perhaps the Minister will think over the matter, and consider whether it will be possible for him to give us such a statement on Wednesday.
I will do that, and in the meantime I would be glad if Deputies would acquaint me with their wishes with regard to the Estimates. It may be desired to take the Estimates out of their place, or to take them on particular days and we hope to start dealing with them at the earliest opportunity— probably on Wednesday week. I believe it is usual in other places that particular Estimates should be taken first. If I get no information from any of the Deputies in regard to the matter, I will take the Estimates in the order in which they appear in the book.
Are we to look forward to any further information regarding these two very important Ministries, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce? Are we to look forward to any more details than those supplied in the printed statements? If we were aware of that, it might indicate to us whether it would be desirable to have these Estimates taken first or last.
There are no other details, but if I get reasonable notice of particular questions arising out of the Estimates. I will endeavour to have the information. In the event of the information not being available, we could postpone the consideration of these Estimates until I will have exhausted any sources of supply I am able to get. In the meantime, I hope to have that statement for Deputy Johnson, if not on Wednesday, then as soon as possible after that.
The Dáil adjourned at 6.55 p.m. to 3 o'clock on Wednesday.