The Government, if it has a policy, in so far as it affects urban districts and towns, has made very little impression on the housing problem in these places. In most cases the subsidies have not gone to enable people who live in insanitary houses to acquire sanitary houses at reasonable rents. Most of the subsidies have gone into the pockets of speculative builders, who have disposed of these houses for lump sums or let them at rents beyond the capacity of people most in need of houses to pay.
But even outside urban districts in towns that for a better name I will describe as rural or unurbanised towns, the condition of housing might be described, with no exaggeration, as shocking. You find in almost every town as you come through the country low-roofed houses, with small windows, no capacity for ventilation or lighting, and with no attempt whatever at sanitary accommodation even of a primitive kind. Yet we find that the boards of health have only constructed some 400 houses for these districts. If that is the only contribution the policy of the Department can make towards the solution of the housing problem in these districts, then the Minister must be said to have failed in making any attempt to solve the problem as it exists there. It is very difficult to give an adequate impression to those unacquainted with the country towns of the conditions under which people are expected to live in these towns. You may find a two, three, four, or five-roomed house an insanitary house. The census returns give us some information on these matters. We find in one particular county in the capital town, with a population of 5,518, the number of persons living in one-roomed dwellings is 238, in two-roomed dwellings 980, and in three-roomed dwellings 1,072. In another town, with a population of 3,345, we find 245 people in one-roomed dwellings, 597 in two-roomed dwellings, and 619 in three-roomed dwellings. In another town, with a population of 1,682, we find 52 people in one-roomed dwellings, 228 people in two-roomed dwellings, and 270 people in three-roomed dwellings. In another town, with a population of 1,202, we find 72 people in one-roomed dwellings, 238 people in two-roomed dwellings, and 198 in three-roomed dwellings. In another town of 788 we find 35 people in one-roomed dwellings, 332 in two-roomed dwellings, and 108 people in three-roomed dwellings. This, of course, gives only a very vague idea of the condition of housing in rural towns or unurbanised towns.
In the urban districts the Minister gave us some figures yesterday as to the extent to which he had tackled the problem. He told us of the number of houses built and the amount of money expended, but I do not think it can be stressed too often or too much that it is not so much the amount of money you expend that counts, or the number of houses you erect, as the number of families you take out of insanitary houses and put into clean, comfortable homes. That is the acid test of how you are facing the housing problem. Some people imagine that because you erect a certain number of houses you are making a corresponding incursion into the slum problem. Some people imagine that because you erect twenty or thirty houses you are necessarily taking twenty or thirty families out of slums and small dwellings in the cities and putting them into sanitary houses. You are not. The acid test of how you are biting into the problem is not how many houses are erected or how much money is expended, but how many families you have taken out of insanitary dwellings and put into clean, comfortable homes. That figure should be easily obtainable by the Minister. There are surely available in his Department some returns showing the number of insanitary houses in existence before the Housing Act came into operation and some statistics available as to the number of insanitary houses still unoccupied. The difference between these two numbers is the amount of solution you have produced towards a clearance of the slum and the housing problem. You may waste your money and energy without making much impression upon the slum problem.
It may be no harm to indicate what other people are doing towards solving the housing problem. There was no definite indication yesterday as to what the Minister proposed to do in reference either to cities, urban districts or unurbanised towns. Is it to be the same slap-dash effort, the same draughtboard policy, or are we going to have a policy by which it is possible to achieve something? Other people in the same period of time and with probably the same extent of a problem and the same resources have achieved a good deal in the solution of their housing problem. In Northern Ireland, with a population of something like one and a quarter millions, we find Sir Dawson Bates, the Home Secretary, saying on the 19th April, 1929. "Since 1923 no fewer than 15,643 houses have been provided for the working classes." In the same period of time this State has provided somewhere between 17,000 and 18,000 houses, not for the working classes, but for the entire community, which is a big difference. Lord Craigavon said in the House of Commons in Northern Ireland that he expected to have 20,000 houses built up to April, 1930. Northern Ireland, taking into consideration its population of one and a quarter millions, has practically done three times what we have done in the same period of time with our 17,000 or 18,000 houses for all the community.
Take our friends across the water. In Scotland, with a population of five million, they have built up to January, 1931, in twelve years, 134,717 houses. The boroughs of Scotland have built through local authorities 71,000 houses, and 15,000 have been built by private enterprise. In the counties in Scotland local authorities have built 19,000 houses, and private enterprise has built 9,600 houses in all, 115,000 built with State assistance and 17,000 houses without State assistance. England and Wales completed in 1924 109,000 houses; in 1925, 159,000 houses; in 1926, 198,000 houses; in 1927, 273,000 houses; in 1928, 166,000 houses; in 1929, 223,000 houses, making in all 1,270,000 houses in seven years. In these seven years the number of houses we have built is 17,000 or 18,000 houses. People may say there is no comparison. You may make the relative comparison of the resources of England and Wales and of this State, and the needs of England and Wales and this State, but surely that number does not compare favourably with the work done by our neighbours across the water?
In the matter of the cities, we find that Birmingham, with a population of 919,000, built 4,817 houses in 1926; in 1927 it built 4,849; in 1929, 3,278, and in 1930, 3,629. There is a clear indication that every year there is an increase in the building in those cities, counties, and boroughs across the water, while there is no clear indication here that we are advancing proportionately. In five years in Birmingham they built 22,956 houses; in Liverpool they built 12,843 houses; in Manchester, 9,940, and in Leeds, 3,383. That is how they have faced the problem and made inroads and impressions upon it. If we compare the two countries we find that there has been little or no advance made by the Minister or by the Department of Local Government in this matter. Deputy O'Kelly, I think, was quite right when he said that no appreciable advance will be made in solving the housing problem until the outlook of the Department of Local Government changes in the matter. There is no one-piece policy in the Department of Local Government in this matter of housing. I described it as slap-dash effort and draughtboard policy. It is nothing else, and could merit no better name. If we are to get rid of the slum or the collection of insanitary houses, whether in the city or the town, the problem must be regarded in the same light as a doctor would regard a cancerous growth in the human body. They must be cut out and finished with, and until the Minister takes that as his policy he will make no appreciable advance towards a solution of the problem. The Minister must be forced to realise that every human being is a national asset, and that it is the veriest hypocrisy to talk about equal opportunities or equal conditions so long as boys and girls are unfortunate enough to be born in the conditions that surround them in insanitary houses and in slum quarters. It is useless to talk of equal opportunities as long as these conditions prevail.
The Minister would tell us probably how he would face a menace to this State, or an attack upon this State. He would pool the resources of the State to meet it, but here is a menace, here is an attack upon the well-being of the State, and upon the future of the State and we have heard no well-defined policy from him as to how he is to meet it. I would suggest to him that he should consider it something into which no Party feeling should enter, that he should raise it from what possibly it is at the moment, and put it on a national plane, that he should try to face it as a national danger and meet it by a national undertaking, that he should put the credit of the State which the Minister and the President tell us is very high at the moment, and which I am always glad to hear is high, behind a National Housing Board, which would make such an impression upon the problem that possibly they would find it solved more readily than they think. I do not know whether the Minister is in favour of such procedure. I do not know whether the Minister thinks it is impossible for his Department, with all the other considerations that it has to undertake, to face this problem in its entirety, but I do believe that if he faces it as a national danger and endeavours to solve it on a national scale, he will find every member of this Dáil putting all the force he can behind him in endeavouring to solve it. Not alone will he find every member of this Dáil, but he will find every conscientious citizen in this State putting all the force he can behind him to meet it. Even if he considers it is too much weight on his own hands and that he should get a Parliamentary Secretary to deal solely with the housing question until it is solved, he should not hesitate to do so. If he is big enough and courageous enough to face it in that light he will merit and get the congratulations and respect of this generation and the abiding gratitude of posterity. I hope he will be big enough to do it.