I was dealing, before the adjournment last evening, with what I consider minor matters for this debate, so as to get them out of the way before I would take up what I am most concerned with in this Estimate, and that is the question of housing. Now, local authorities are taking over cemeteries, and I think it is a very good idea that they are and that they should give more attention to them and that there should be more respect for the bones of the dead in this country.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 41—Local Government and Public Health (resumed).
And for the living.
Well, perhaps there is not a lot of respect for the living, but that is another matter. There is one matter in connection with the cemeteries on which I hope to be allowed to particularise. In my constituency there is great congestion in a particular cemetery. There is a feeling there, a sentiment, in favour of an extension of the old graveyard, rather than the acquisition of a new site and the closing of the old place. There is about an acre, or a little more, available for extension purposes. There is no other suitable land adjoining. The Minister, or the Parliamentary Secretary, will probably know the cemetery I am referring to. It is the Skerries cemetery. There is no secret about it; we might as well get down to business. I am quite sure that both the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, if the facts were before them as they are before us on the board of health, would settle the matter very quickly.
A price was agreed upon a couple of years ago. There is an acre and a rood suitable for extension purposes. There are a couple of acres on the other side of the cementery, but they are below sea level. The man who owns the suitable land has been making his living growing vegetables and disposing of them to people at the seaside resort of Skerries during the summer months. If it is a small piece of land in one sense, it is a very big piece of land for this man to part with. Lord Holmpatrick owns the couple of acres of low-lying land and it is from him that this man, Callaghan, has the land rented. Lord Holmpatrick is prepared to sell the land for £40 to the board of health and the board will give it to Callaghan in lieu of what they are taking from him. It is agreed to give £130 to Callaghan for the other piece of land.
The Local Government Department has dealt with the matter very reasonably, except that they object to the price; they say it is too much. This new ground will have to be enclosed by a big wall and a jagged corner would be left if, as Callaghan originally wished, he is allowed to have his little haggard and cow-shed outside the cementery. When we inspected the site we unanimously came to the conclusion that this haggard and cow-shed should be included within the cementery and the few pounds extra we would have to pay for it and for the compensation would go a long way towards being saved by having a straight instead of a jagged wall, and the whole job would be a better one. The price submitted to the Department must not be taken as the price for the land only. You cannot compare that piece of land with the land below sea level that is being bartered in connection with the bargain.
There is no use in wasting the time of the House with details of what is a very local matter. I suggest to the Minister that this is the only land available for extension purposes. Even if we consider the price is high—and I do not think it is—let us consider that we are depriving a man of his cow-shed and his little haggard. He will have to erect similar buildings elsewhere and he will not get much of a cow-shed, to accommodate four or five cows, for £40 or £50. I do not think it can be said that the price of the land is inflated. There is no other land available. The land on the other side is too low-lying.
There is a very strong local sentiment in favour of extending this graveyard. They are very sentimental and localised in their sentiments in Skerries. The conditions at the moment under which people are buried in that cemetery are really shocking. New interments are made anywhere, inside the gate, on the footpath. The only alternative is to utilise compulsory powers and the Minister knows that the cost of putting compulsory powers into operation over a little thing like this would amount to more than the whole price and it would mean a delay of a year or more. I do not find fault with the manner in which this matter has been handled in the Minister's Department, but I would appeal to the Minister to let us extend the cemetery. We are ready to do it.
We are experiencing great delays, and we think we are being unreasonably treated in connection with the granting of approval for sites for labourers' cottages in County Dublin We have also experienced obstacles that have been placed in our way by the Department in the matter of turning down what we consider are suitable sites. Only a fortnight ago we experienced trouble in connection with a site in an area where there is a great demand for cottages. Not long ago we had a scheme prepared for 12 or 14 cottages, and we had eight to ten applicants for each cottage. We have great trouble in obtaining a water supply for cottages. If we can possibly get out of sinking pumps, we do so, because we prefer bringing a pipe line where it is practicable, and we put as many cottages as possible into, you might say, a new village.
We decided on a site of 30 acres. The sewerage is not far away, and the water supply is convenient. I refer to Snugboro, Raheny. On this site of 30 acres we could build four cottages to the acre, and that would make a total of 120. There are that many applicants in the area waiting for cottages, and, if we had the sanction, we could be going on with them. We have the consent of the owner, and it would not be a difficult matter to fix the price. There would be no unnecessary delay in getting started. If the opposite were the case, and the owner was objecting, and we had to seek compulsory powers, we might not be able to start a cottage there for two years. The want is there, the site is suitable, the necessary services are there, and I would like the Minister to look into that matter and, if possible, have it favourably reconsidered.
Some Ministers have a happy knack —and they are not the majority of Ministers—when they get the last shot, of firing not only a deadly shot, but often firing a dirty shot, and unique in that respect is the Minister for Finance. I will deal with his strictures later on.
On this Vote?
In connection with housing finance, which is very closely related to the matter we have under consideration.
We shall see.
We shall see. However, he will not get away with it all. Reference was made by Deputy Dockrell last evening to the unemployment in the building trade. I consider that he under-estimated the figures. He said that in or around Dublin there were 4,000 unemployed, including skilled and unskilled workers, owing to the slump in the building trade. I thought there were more, but, even that number is big enough to concern us. The Minister is aware of the position in the Dublin Corporation where, according to our own survey, we require 17,000 houses to meet the shortage. They are wanted immediately. That would cost £12,000,000. In a city, the valuation of which is under £2,000,000, with a dead-weight debt of nearly £10,000,000 these are staggering figures. If we had a Minister for Finance who carried his responsibilities seriously, he would not be so flippant and vindictive and have such little respect for accuracy as he displayed on the 9th of March. In that state of affairs, the Dublin Corporation is up against a very serious problem in the matter of housing.
Deputies yesterday, particularly Deputy Meaney, referred to the housing policy and housing programme of the Department and what was being done. I am not aware of a housing policy or housing programme. I should have said I am not aware of a housing programme in the Department. That programme must be formulated and executed by the local authority. Our programme is to build 17,000 houses, as quickly as we can.
Of course, we allow a certain amount of latitude when people are presented with a silver key to open houses or when we are on a political platform, although I must pay this tribute to the Minister that, even in such surroundings and in such an atmosphere, he is not given to too much exaggeration.
The feeling that is abroad and which is cultivated in certain quarters is that the Local Government Department is, to a large extent, through the subsidy system, financing house building. They are doing nothing of the kind. The Local Government Department is not paying 1/- for house building. In a recent interview with the Minister, some points of which I will deal with now, it was put to him that, when these subsidies were started, in some cases 66? per cent. of the loan charges was undertaken by the State and in other cases 33? per cent. was undertaken by the State. Since that subsidy system was introduced in Dublin within the municipal area, 1,058 houses got the advantage of the 66? per cent. loan charges and 4,265 houses got the advantage of the 33? per cent. subsidy.
Let us analyse this subsidy and see what it means. On the face of it, it suggests that it is 66? per cent. and 33? per cent., respectively, of the cost. Originally it was, but it is based on a cost of £450 for a cottage and £500 for a flat. The relative costs to-day are £630, or £627 to be exact, according to the latest figures, for a cottage, and £866—call it £870 or £875, for a convenient round figure—for a flat. Where it is a slum clearance case, which entitles us to the 66? per cent., the flat—and we are housing by flats— would cost us £875. We get 66? per cent., not a subsidy towards the cost, but a subsidy towards the loan charges. In other words, the Department will meet that much of the loan charges annually but it is not 66? per cent. of the current cost or the actual cost, but 66? per cent. of the cost of such a flat at a time when that flat cost only £500, and the entire difference has to be made up by the local authority. The same applies to the 33? per cent.
If the Department considered that it was just and equitable, when they started the subsidy, to give 66? per cent. of the cost of a flat or the cost of houses under certain conditions— we need not go into the details of the conditions—why is it not 66? per cent. of the actual cost to-day? In other words, why is the percentage subsidy not kept up to date with the fluctuating cost? I suggest to the Minister that it should. I go a bit further. If the Department considers that housing should be subsidised, why should not the Government start in the proper way to subsidise it? By the principle of the subsidy the Government have accepted this housing problem as being in the nature of a national problem. Otherwise, they would not be justified in paying anything at all from central funds to carry out housing in the City of Dublin. But, having decided to call on the central funds to subsidise housing in the City of Dublin, then why not do it in the logical and best way? As we have learned from existing conditions, the only way that will be helpful is to increase the percentage and apply it to actual current costs and, instead of giving the subsidy as a loan charge, give the subsidy as a capital sum in the beginning. In other words, on a flat that costs £875, a loan charge of 66? per cent. would be payable by the State and, if it was brought up to date, actually 66? per cent. of £875 would be payable by the State. Why should not the State assume responsibility for that capital charge in the beginning? I put it to the Minister that it is the only way to enable the Corporation of Dublin to find the money to carry on the housing programme.
It is time for us to get down to business in the matter of housing: to get off the political stool that we have been standing on and sit on the business stool if we want to solve this problem. I would ask the Minister seriously to consider this, and if he finds that he has not sufficient time to do so by 6 o'clock this evening then let him move, and I will second, that all the time he requires be given to him to deal with this matter.
It is easy for the Deputy to talk. He lives near Dublin.
I heard a moan over there, but I could not make out what it was.
You live near Dublin, and it does not matter very much to you what hour the House sits to.
Deputy Meaney is getting £480 a year, and he should earn it.
We are all getting that.
Well, if we are, we are not grumbling about an hour or two.
We seldom see Deputy Belton here.
I think it is more than some of you could make outside. However, nobody grudges it to you if you will only keep quiet for a moment. The Deputies are not going to hurry me. We are going to have this out, even if we are to sit here until 6 o'clock in the morning. I would like to hear the Minister deal with this matter. The loan charges for which responsibility has been assumed by the Minister would, if capitalised, amount to about £1,500,000. The Minister has taken responsibility for liquidating that amount over a number of years. If that capital charge was now assumed by the Government it would, I suggest, increase the borrowing powers of the Dublin Corporation by £1,500,000, and if that sum was transferred to the Dublin Corporation it would get it out of the immediate difficulty which is pressing on it.
The programme before us is 17,000 houses, at an estimated cost of £12,000,000. There is no use in our deceiving ourselves, or telling the public that we are able to carry through a gigantic proposition of that kind on the resources of the City of Dublin, which has already a dead-weight debt of nearly £10,000,000. I have here a memorandum in connection with our financial negotiations which states:—
"In regard to public issues of stock by the corporation, we are to state that, apart altogether from present market conditions which would render such an issue impracticable, the banks are strongly of the opinion that the uneconomic character of the housing programme, aggravated by the high level to which building costs have risen and the magnitude of the sums required to finance the corporation's projected five year programme of capital works have so affected the confidence of investors that the necessary support will not be forthcoming for fresh issues of corporation stocks. Without reasonable prospects of an adequate measure of such support, the banks would not feel justified in taking part in the underwriting of a public issue."
That is a quotation from a memorandum prepared by the Finance Committee of the Dublin Corporation. There is no reason to worry about the normal current finances of the Dublin Corporation which were never more stable than they are at the present time. The problem that confronts us here is the clearing of the slums to which so much lip service has been given. What any thinking person would have known years ago many people are now learning, namely, that the whole problem is purely a money problem. What is confronting us in the Dublin Corporation is how money can be raised to build the houses required to deal with that problem. It is one also that must confront the Minister, his Department and the Government since they have acknowledged, in part anyway, that this question of housing in the City of Dublin is a national problem.
The Minister is aware that the Dublin Corporation have to raise in the open market housing finance. The poor people who have to be housed are not able to pay an economic rent. They cannot be charged a rent for the new houses that will liquidate the debt incurred. The rent that we charge, plus the subsidy given by the Minister, will not cover all the charges to be met. The result is that there is a deficiency to be made up, and, in the absence of an increased subsidy coming from the Government, the only way in which that deficiency can be met is out of the rates. But if we borrow more money, increase the rates and increase the dead-weight debt on the city, we severely restrict our borrowing powers. We cannot borrow money to use it for a purpose which will increase the rates. I would like the Minister to think seriously over that point because if our borrowing powers are diminished then the whole question of our finances is put out of gear, and to raise another £12,000,000 becomes an impossible proposition. If the Minister, as has been suggested to him before, would fix his subsidy at, say, an all-round 50 per cent., then when they would have a scheme costing £2,000,000 ready all that the corporation would need to raise would be £1,000,000. The Minister for Finance could supply the other £1,000,000 and the Government could regulate the public debt which provided that £1,000,000 instead of the corporation having to do it. If they assume responsibility for the service of that debt, surely they are better able to raise the capital sum than the Dublin Corporation? The Government are able to borrow on better terms than any local authority in the country, and why should they not give the various housing authorities the benefit of that good borrowing? So much for the direct housing problem in the City of Dublin.
In Dublin in the last ten years three times as many houses as the Dublin Corporation have built have been put up by speculative builders as a commercial proposition. The system which has grown up in the city is that certain people who want houses are able to put up a portion of the purchase money, and, from various quarters, the remainder of the purchase money is advanced to these people to enable them to buy their own houses. The Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act has been responsible for this type of building. Close on £1,500,000 has been advanced by the corporation in the last seven or eight years under this Act. The Act originally provided for houses up to a market value of £1,000, with a maximum advance of 90 per cent. of the market value, discretion being given to the local authority as to whether they would give 90 per cent. of less. They had power to give less, but they had no power to give more. The highest that I have known any local authority to give was 90 per cent. for small houses such as would be required by agricultural labourers or people like that who undertook to build houses for themselves. In the County Dublin, we gave these people 90 per cent. For houses up to £600 or £700 value, 85 per cent. of the market value was advanced, and for houses up to £1,000, 80 per cent. was advanced.
Then, without notice and without actually withdrawing that Act the Local Government Department made it ineffective in the County of Dublin, and stringency of finance ended its operations, through the city manager, in the City of Dublin. But, even before the city manager decided that no more operations would be carried through for the present under this Act, the action of the Local Government Department had made it a dead letter. This is the first opportunity I have got to ask the Minister in public why the administration of that Act is being curtailed. The Oireachtas gave power for the lending of public moneys for house purchase and house building up to 90 per cent. of the market value. But an order of the Minister—I think the Minister issued an order—curtailed the maximum loan under that Act to 70 per cent., with the proviso that a larger loan than 70 per cent. of the market value could be given by a local authority if the borrower put up collateral security for the amount advanced over 70 per cent. This collateral security was to be held, not until the excess percentage had been paid back, but until 40 per cent. of the entire loan was paid. In other words, collateral security for any advance over 70 per cent. should be held by the local authority for 22 years in the case of a loan for a 35-year period.
There was nothing at all about this in the Act. The effect of that has been that no collateral security on these conditions could be got, because no collateral security of any use could be accepted by the local authority if they were to adhere strictly to these regulations, which simply stopped the operation of the Act or let it operate where a very substantial deposit was made. Speaking for the constituency I represent in this House, and for the area I represent in the Dublin Corporation, I do not know what they did or omitted to do in Cork and Limerick and other places; but I should like to know whether it was their mistakes or extravagances that penalised us in Dublin. I do know that on the £1,500,000 advanced by the Dublin Corporation in the last eight years the loss does not represent more than .001. What justification, then, had the Minister for curtailing the advancing of money for the purchase of houses, not as a speculation, but to enable people to buy their own houses?
There was one classical case in the area I represent where, by a trick, the value of the houses concerned was represented to the county council as £500. We were advancing 80 per cent. of the money, but these houses were not worth £500. Applications were made to the county council for an 80 per cent. grant, which represented £400 on each house. That was the actual selling price of the houses, and 16 out of 31 of the houses went through. The county council appealed to the Local Government Department to hold a sworn inquiry in that case, but their request was refused. In Dublin City and County this Act was administered efficiently, and, when one glaring abuse was discovered by the county council, they put it to the Minister that a sworn inquiry should be held. Why was that inquiry not held? I know of no other abuse in either the City or County of Dublin, and I know all the details of the administration of those Acts by both bodies. If there were any other abuse, it would have been brought to the Minister's notice. What justification had he for, in effect, suspending the operation of these Acts in Dublin City and County? I am not saying that the Minister did it as Minister for Local Government for the whole country. From what I heard of abuses in other places, I think the Minister had justification for taking some action. I heard of one case in which £800 or £900 was lent to a man who was on the dole. If that was true, the Minister had to take action. It is not fair for me to be making statements on hearsay, but I am satisfied that the Minister would not have intervened and stopped the good work those loans were doing without reason. I should like to hear the Minister state why the operation of these Acts was curtailed, and, eventually, stopped in Dublin City, and why it has been restricted to 70 per cent. in Dublin City, whereas the Act given to the Minister to administer provided for 90 per cent., within limitations. That is restricted by the Minister to 70 per cent., within the same limitations. I do not think that that is fair. In fact, it has stopped speculative building, and it is responsible for the unemployment in the building trade in the City and County of Dublin at present. I know carpenters, electricians, bricklayers, plumbers, painters and house-decorators who bought their houses under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. A number of these artisans bought £600 or £700 houses. They saved up £100 or so, and an artisan in constant employment now, earning £4 a week, is well able to save £100 and to pay a deposit of that sum for the purpose of buying his own house. There should be a scheme of house-purchase and house-building in this city whereby any young man contemplating marriage and setting up a house of his own would, if he could save £100, be able to buy his house. If such a prospect could be held out to such men—if the deposit were less, say, £50 or £60, all the better—half the corporation's housing problem would automatically be solved. The figure of 17,000 could be halved. Artisans and clerks in receipt of moderate salaries see no use now in saving £50 or £100 because they cannot receive the necessary loan on putting down a deposit. They look to the corporation to give them a house and the Minister, who has refused to give more by way of loan than 70 per cent., is prepared to give a subsidy of 66? per cent. in the case of slum clearances and 33? per cent. in the case of other housing schemes in the city. Who will be housed in these schemes? Is it not the artisans? Are not these the very people who are being housed to-day at a loss to the State of 33? per cent. and at a loss to the Dublin Corporation of 2/1 in the £? By making them owners of their own houses, we should be making them good citizens. Not only should the Small Dwellings Acts be reinstated to the position in which they were in Dublin City and County—that is to say, 85 per cent. of the market value being advanced by way of loan—but the full 90 per cent. should be advanced. In the case of the more costly houses up to £1,000, that might be curtailed but, in the case of houses for the lower-paid civil servant, the Guard and people with similar salaries in fixed jobs the full 90 per cent. should be advanced. See the saving that would be.
Where are these people being housed now? They are being housed under Dublin Corporation schemes at a loss of 33? per cent., whereas if we provided them with that loan, there would be no loss. They would put down £50 or £100. On a 1,000 houses, see what that would mean in capital to the corporation wherewith to build more houses, and it would be taking 1,000 houses off the corporation list. I know some of the Minister's arguments but I should like to know how he can go up to a certain point and say he will give 33? per cent. of State money to subsidise the housing of these people while he will not risk a penny of State money, in the other way, beyond 70 per cent. of the market value. Why does he leave such a gap? Not only should the suggestion I have made be implemented by the Minister but he should go further and, by legislation, invest the corporation with power——
The Deputy may not advocate legislation on an Estimate.
Very well. I think the corporation should be directed by the Minister to re-establish an economic house-purchase scheme. That would have many advantages. It would enable those people who are anxious and willing to help in their own housing to so help. It would not be so serious a load—if it would be serious at all—on the credit of the city.
I know and the Minister knows, the questions that are put up when we in the corporation go seeking in certain quarters for the under-writing of our loans. For over nine years past I have been in these negotiations with the under-writers, and I know what they asked of us. They asked first how much the indebtedness of the corporation is; how much of that is reproductive and how much dead. They asked how much of the reproductive part of the loan means a profit to the corporation and how much of it is a loss. If we borrow millions of money, invest it in houses and lose on those houses, we are impairing our borrowing powers. Housing carried through by the Dublin Corporation at the present time means that for every £1 we borrow, we are not only £1 extra in debt, but we use that £1 not to give us a return of that £1, but something less. That method of finance cannot go on. We are up against it. Now is the time to sound a warning. Now is the time for the Minister to devise machinery necessary to enable all these people in Dublin— clerks, shop assistants, and so on—to get houses. Wherever you go you find people ready to put down £60 to £70 as part purchase of their houses. If the State will advance the remainder they are in a position to go and buy their houses. That would put them in a much better position than having to go knocking at the door of the City Hall to get a house. There they will be asked: "How many in family have you; how many dependents have you?" In the allotting of houses in the Dublin Corporation we are now down to families where the total number in the family is eight. No family with a lesser number can get a house. What is going to happen in the case of the newly-married people? It means that they cannot get a house from the corporation because the corporation at the moment are limited to cases where the family numbers eight persons. Then these newly-married people cannot buy a house even after having saved £50 or £60, because the powers of the Small Dwellings Acquisition) Acts are in abeyance. These powers have been taken away. What are these people doing? They are just going to reoccupy the tenements in the slums when the people who did occupy them have been housed by the corporation in the new houses. As fast as the corporation is taking away people from the slums and putting them into the new houses, the new in-flow into the slums is starting the problem over again. By the present methods you can never solve that problem, because as soon as we solve it by taking the tenant out of an insanitary slum, that insanitary slum or tenement is being tenanted again by some newly married people or others.
This problem can be solved by the Government providing facilities for thrifty people, who have made some savings of £60 or £70, to borrow from the corporation the remainder of the money required to purchase their houses, paying it back by monthly instalments. In that way the people will be able to get a home of their own. Unfortunately, when people get into a slum they can never leave that slum unless at the public expense. That is the only way in which they can be taken out of it. I have given a good deal of thought to this matter of the slum problem, and particularly I have given much thought to the financial side of it. I am myself quite satisfied and I think the Minister is in substantial agreement with me in that, that unless you provide facilities for the newly-married people of Dublin to enable them to purchase their own houses, these people will naturally drift into the slums, so that the slum problem is growing at one end as fast as we are clearing it at the other. The broad difficulty is money.
I now put it to the Minister that he should harness the whole building trade in Dublin to solve this problem. In the last few years this problem has come down to the corporation alone to solve it. That is not a satisfactory way, because, as far as the ordinary housing went, the Dublin Corporation has its own technical officers, engineers and architects. To meet a big problem like this the corporation will have to engage many more technical officers. As a matter of fact, these officers have been engaged for some time back in a temporary capacity. It is not fair to the manager to have to get together a temporary staff to do a temporary job. I say that because if the bulk of this housing problem were solved, then the question would arise in the City Hall as to what would be done with the extra staff. In addition the policy that has been pursued for some years past has put other architects who are working on their own and in private enterprise out of business. I am satisfied it is private enterprise that will solve the whole matter. It is private enterprise that has built three-fourths of the houses that are being built in the City of Dublin in the last ten years. Why not encourage private enterprise? Why should not the Minister be put in the position of adopting a policy and attitude of saying to the corporation: "If you get private builders who will build houses to your specifications, put them on." The Minister knows that he will get many builders to do that. I have here a letter addressed to a builder in Dublin. That builder offered to build 1,000 houses. Here is the letter to him from the city manager. I might mention that the scheme was submitted to the city manager and to the Minister. It was kicking about between one and the other of these for nine months. Here is the letter:—
"Dear Sir,
"Your letter of the 24th January last with reference to previous correspondence regarding your proposal to build 1,000 houses at —— and dispose of them to the Dublin Corporation, I have to-day received a letter from the Department of Local Government and Public Health in which it is stated that the corporation have no power to entertain the proposal."
Why not give them the power? On that land that is available these houses could be built and hundreds of men could be employed to-day. Why are they not so employed? We have a rate of in or about £1 in the £. I think we are paying in James's Street something like £300,000 to £400,000 a year in home assistance. And we want houses. It has not been questioned that there are 4,000 building operatives idle in Dublin. Deputy Dockrell mentioned that figure yesterday here and it was not contradicted; these people are drawing assistance or a dole of some kind, while they could be employed building houses. Why are they not so employed? A few years ago when the big end of the Crumlin scheme was on there was a shortage of skilled operatives. We in the Dublin Corporation had a conference with the contractors' representatives and the representatives of the labour side of the building group. At that time there was a shortage in one skilled trade at any rate, and the Labour organisations and unions fell in for some severe criticism on that account. But the Trades Council had shown foresight. Look at the position now. We have those operatives idle. Particularly in regard to the skilled trades, the Trades Council and the trades unions fear—and I think with some justification—that if, in the City of Dublin, apprenticeship is thrown open to everybody and the trades get overcrowded, there will be perpetual unemployment in those trades. On the whole—I need not go into details— they met us fairly on that occasion. Why do we not endeavour to meet them fairly now? Why are they idle? There has been a lot of boasting, particularly in speeches on the last Estimate, about the fact that carpenters, bricklayers and labourers in the building trade now have their week's holiday, which they did not have before. They have months' holidays, but they are not paid for them. Why are they on holidays now? As far as I know operatives in the building trade, and I know them as intimately as anybody in this House or in this country, they would make you a present of your week's holiday if you would give them constant work. That is what they want. That is what they are not getting.
I should like the Minister to address himself to this aspect of the question. The number of technical operatives in the building trade is not inexhaustible. It is, in a sense, limited. Why do we not regulate our building programmes and our building finance in order to keep those operatives in full employment? I know that the concession made by the Minister in the matter of housing grants has kept some operatives working until to-day, or until a few days ago, finishing off work in order to qualify for grants; but in the City of Dublin a very big percentage of those who were working in the building trade during last week will be knocked off this week, so that the prospect is not becoming more hopeful but less hopeful, and it is all a question of money. The Minister is also aware that the borrowing power of local authorities—that is, those local authorities who have to go into the open market and borrow their finances; those who do not get money from the Local Loans Fund—are being greatly diminished because of the magnitude of this problem, and the increasing deadweight of debt. I suppose it is no harm to say that the Government has been requisitioned to help local authorities to borrow, and that we are up against that position now. As I said previously, the normal activities of the Dublin Corporation can be easily financed out of the rates of the Dublin Corporation. They are able to face their current responsibility, but they are not able to face this problem. The Minister knows that, and he knows that the Dublin Corporation recently had to decide on striking out on a new line in order to raise money to meet commitments to which the seal of the Corporation had been given. They had to branch out on a line which their predecessors were never called upon to take. I will not indicate what it is.
The Minister knows also that there have been other developments, in which he himself played a part, and that that also is a new departure in Dublin Corporation borrowing. That is only to meet our commitments. When we had to go on a certain line, we decided on reducing what we considered essential, namely, £3,000,000. Because certain things would not work, we reduced that to £1,500,000, that being the figure to which we were committed. That £1,500,000 is being provided for. I will not say how it is being provided for. It is being provided for in principle in the same way that previous loans have been provided for. I hope that in the circumstances our request to the Minister for the consent order for £1,500,000 will be increased to £3,000,000, because otherwise we will not be able to start any new work. To meet our present commitments we want £1,500,000. We want another £1,500,000 for new works which are ready for tender, but is there a prospect of floating a loan? It will depend on the Minister, and on the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance said that while there was in the Dublin Corporation such an irresponsible chairman of the finance committee as myself we could not get finance. Well, I would guarantee that I handled more private business in the last year than the Minister for Finance ever handled in his life, or ever will. Perhaps I would be trespassing on your indulgence, A Chinn Comhairle, if I were to proceed to answer the Minister.
The Deputy, of course, is referring to the speech made by the Minister for Finance on the Vote on Account?
Yes.
On that occasion, the Minister was called upon to conclude. Let us hope he did conclude.
As far as troubling the Chair with it is concerned, it is concluded, but as far as other opportunities present themselves to me it is only beginning, and we will see what this heavyweight businessman is worth. Now, I think I have already taken up too much of the time of the House, but this is a matter which needs to be dealt with exhaustively. I notice that the Chairman of the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, who said that we would get all the money we want as and when we want it, is not here now. He should be here. On one occasion I attended a housing meeting where he was dispensing hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions, although we had not a bob in the till to spend at all.
Surely that matter can be settled in another arena?
It is pretty well settled now. The other fellow has gone out.
I must in conclusion pay a tribute to the Minister for Local Government and his staff. On any occasion on which we went from the Dublin Corporation to arrange our programme of work, finance, or anything else we always found the Minister ready to receive us, to help us and to treat us sympathetically and never did we come away with an aching heart. Even on a few occasions when the old heart was in a bad condition, the Minister's heart was in as bad a condition. His staff too are always ready to help us. Any criticism I have made here on this Vote, I am sure the Minister, his staff and the Parliamentary Secretary will take as intended to be helpful. My object is to put before the Minister certain aspects of local government questions that he may have forgotten since he left local bodies. It is in that sense and in that spirit that I have indulged in criticism and made suggestions. I am sure that the Minister will consider all these suggestions or at least anything that he considers good in them. When he comes to reply I shall be glad to hear him deal with the few points I have raised.
I wish to detain the House for a few minutes only to put forward a few suggestions in connection with this Estimate. The first that comes to my mind is the superannuation code of local government officials. Representations have been made to me that this matter has been outstanding for a considerable time and that at present it is difficult for the Local Government Officials' Union to provide the necessary benefits for widows of deceased local government officials. I understand that the Minister promised some time ago to deal with this matter by amending the Local Government Act of 1925. I should like to ask him now to consider the matter and to go as far as he can to carry out his promise.
Is this not a question of amending legislation?
I am sorry, Sir. Another point that arises in connection with this Estimate has reference to the supervision exercised by the Minister's Department on roads. I should like to suggest, from a short experience of public works, that in spite of the need for employment on roads, it would be well if the Department exercised far greater supervision than they appear to exercise on the manner in which roads are made and on the cost of roads. As suggested by another Deputy, I think an effort should be made to adopt some standard form of road. I have occasion to travel only too often to the West of Ireland. I travel over 80 miles of road and I cannot help feeling that there is a lack of standardisation in the way in which roads are built. I see a newly-used road which quickly begins to deteriorate while a road which was made four years ago stands the test magnificently. I think that thousands of pounds could be saved if a more efficient system of supervision were instituted. It would be to the advantage of farmers, particularly farmers who contribute very heavily to these roads, roads which are not very much used by them.
Another question to which I should like to refer is the allotment scheme introduced by the Department for unemployed outside urban areas. I myself feel that if the Government were prepared to incur a dead-weight debt of £15,000,000 in order to divide land all over the country, something more should be done to help the unemployed to help themselves by advertising the allotment scheme, and by insisting that, where possible, local authorities should adopt it. I was talking to an unfortunate unemployed man recently, who, through no fault of his own, was unable to obtain work, and we estimated the cash value of the produce he was able to provide through the allotment scheme outside the town in which he lived, and in which he was taking part. The cash value was a very considerable one, one that was of great benefit to himself and his home. I feel that similarly the scheme would be of benefit to all unemployed men. Although I realise that the Minister is loth to incur more expenditure than is absolutely necessary for local government schemes, I would suggest that this scheme is one which local authorities generally should be invited to adopt, and that the Minister should, as far as possible, bring pressure to bear upon them to do so.
I should also like to make a brief reference to the matter of town planning. There are, I think, three of the ugliest towns in the world in the constituency which I represent. The Town Planning Act, which we have just passed, is one of the finest pieces of legislation in Europe, but I think there are very few architects trained to implement that Act. There are very few officials, secretaries of local authorities, or county surveyors, who have been trained into the meaning of town planning. There again, I think, it is a question of the Minister doing something more positive than has already been done in the direction of town planning. I have read the memoranda he issued on the subject. They are very full, and cover every point, but yet I think a stimulus is still needed if local authorities are to carry out their duties. Throughout the whole of Ireland, in towns and villages, there are very many ugly buildings which could be removed without very much cost. Opportunities for beautifying our towns are neglected. I realise that the pressure of the housing problem and other matters takes precedence of works of this kind. Still, I think the Minister would be well advised in connection with town planning to encourage further propaganda for its actual adoption and operation.
The same remarks would apply to the arrangements for enabling local authorities to recoup themselves for losses incurred in advancing seeds to farmers as part of the rates arrangements. I am aware of the fact that many farmers in different parts of the country who suffered terrific losses last year are not sufficiently keenly aware of the facilities provided. I think an effort should be made to remind them that there are opportunities for obtaining seeds through the local authorities, and that the Minister guarantees any loss in the matter. I am sure it would be a great help in the hour of their distress, which in many places is acute.
I shall trespass on the time of the House to call attention to only one other matter. That is to suggest that the school meals scheme should be applied to areas which are temporarily scheduled as congested areas as well as to areas which are permanently scheduled as congested areas. If that were done it would be a great advantage to the poor people in such districts. The people of North Longford, for instance, are not by any means well off, and they suffered very severely last year. They have an agricultural production which is lower than either Galway or Mayo, despite the fact that the land is of a higher valuation. Their agricultural methods are behind those of other counties. I would suggest, therefore, to the Minister, that if he could see his way to extend the school meals scheme to areas which are temporarily scheduled as congested areas, it would confer a very great benefit on the people living in these districts.
I should like to preface my remarks by saying that the figures given by the Minister with regard to the reduction in the number of people suffering from infectious and other diseases, and the improvement in the general health of the people, is very encouraging news to those engaged in social services, in public health work and public health clinics. There appears to be a lot of confused thinking about hospitals, not only inside but outside this House. On the problem of hospital requirements, I believe there is a lot of muddled thinking in the Department. Notwithstanding the fact that we have a falling population in rural Ireland, we definitely require increased institutional accommodation because of the fact that our people to-day are becoming more and more hospital-minded. Our poor people did not want to go to institutions 15 or 20 years ago.
They have a different outlook to-day, and when they are sick they do not want to remain at home, but are anxious to go to the local hospitals for treatment. For that reason, we want more institutional accommodation. We heard many complaints from Deputies of delays in hospital schemes caused by the Department. Taking the type of finance that is available at present for hospitalisation schemes, I think there is a tendency, especially on the part of architects who are working on a fee basis, and who are aware of the huge sums of money available for the purpose, to go in for palatial, elaborate and extravagant institutions. If that is done we will have the inevitable consequence, that the cost of maintenance in future is going to be unduly high, and may possibly be beyond our capacity.
Any delays incurred by close and careful examination by the Minister's staff, and by experts in the Department, are a necessary precaution against the danger of having extravagant institutions. That danger is real, and a number of people appreciate it. Close and careful examination is necessary by experts, so that the institutions provided will be within our capacity to maintain in future. Why I suggest there is not clear thinking in the Department is, because I am not aware of any satisfactory or authoritative statement from the Minister, or from any responsible body set up by him, on this important matter. In the administration of this big sum of money I am convinced the Minister and the Department are absolutely and completely wrong in dealing with our hospital requirements on a county basis, and in a haphazard, piecemeal manner. The Minister told the House yesterday that £8,000,000 was available, and of that amount, £3,000,000 was marked for endowment, that 21 hospitals were completed, and that of these five included county hospitals, five fever hospitals, and eight county hospitals in course of construction. This is a question that we should not approach with a parochial mind. Some people through the country think parochially but I say that the Minister and the Department should not approach it on a county basis. We should have a national scheme, and a re-organisation of institutional requirements for the country as a whole. In his Department, has the Minister any comprehensive policy, and any co-ordinated plan for dealing with hospital requirements?
Has the Deputy read the report of the Hospitals Commission?
I do not think they deal satisfactorily with the country as a whole.
The Deputy has not read the report.
I have. I admit that this is a problem for experts, but people with a good deal of experience of poor law administration are capable of expressing constructive ideas on it. Many people with experience throughout the country do not agree that the proper course in hospital requirements is being followed. I do not agree with some Deputies that we should build cottage hospitals, and concentrate on having surgical institutions in places like Dublin, Cork and Limerick. Neither do I agree that a central general and surgical county hospital with 60 or 70 beds, and with one general surgeon, as the only medical officer attached to the institution, is going to be a success. When we have, according to the present scheme that the Minister referred to in the report of the Hospitals Commission, a number of county hospitals already built, and a number in course of construction, on the basis relatively of a small number of beds, I do not think it is going to be economic to put in a complete medical staff there. What I mean is this, that the modern general and surgical hospital is essentially a clinical hospital. It is a hospital in which you require team work by a pathologist, a radiologist, a gynæcologist, and a surgeon. Will it be economical to supply a complete team of medical men for an institution with from 60 to 80 beds? I believe it is necessary for central hospitals.
I do not agree with Deputies who said that we should build cottage hospitals and send surgical cases to big centres like Dublin and Cork. I can see objections to that. Even at present patients are sent great distances to Dublin from the West and from Donegal. Take the case of a man who gets perforation, and who is 100 miles from a city. If there is not a proper surgical hospital within reasonable reach of that man, he cannot hope to arrive in the city in time and live. There is no hope for him. For that reason, I agree that the policy of providing surgical general hospitals through the country is sound, and I think it is possible to make that policy a success. We should be very careful about the type of institutions we require for the reasons I pointed out, that a medical, surgical hospital is essentially a clinical hospital that requires team work. Will a hospital with 60 or 70 beds be economical and efficient, and can we supply the necessary team work there?
That is the question I am putting to the Minister. What I suggest is that, in areas considerable distances from cities, we should provide regional hospitals.
I am aware that, in some cases, it is the intention of the commission to provide these regional hospitals, but in the case of central hospitals nearer to the city, where it is the intention to provide a 60, 70 or 80-bed institution, I want to know the policy of the Minister in that respect. I do not think that in an institution of that size, it is possible, economically, to supply the necessary medical team. In the bigger regional hospitals which it is the intention of the commission to provide, with a bigger number of beds, it is economically possible, but in the smaller hospitals nearer to the City of Dublin, I suggest that some provision ought to be made for visiting specialists to do clinical work. I do not think that is impossible. You could put your general surgeon in charge of the hospital, but the Minister should try to provide in his scheme that visiting specialists could do clinical work and co-operate with the general surgeon. If that cannot be done, I do not think the general hospitals of the smaller type are going to be a success.
I think, as well, that it is scarcely fair to one individual, no matter how able he may be at his particular work, to put upon him the responsibility of looking after a 70 or 80-bed hospital because, after all, it is a serious responsibility. Very often, it may be a question of life or death, and the full responsibility of making big decisions will rest on one man's shoulders. That does not arise in institutions here in Dublin because the surgeon or physician who is in doubt at any time can call in other medical men and have a consultation. That will not be possible to the same extent down the country where we are building the smaller type of general hospital in which it is proposed to put one general surgeon. You are going to throw great and serious responsibilities on his shoulders and there must be some provision made for supplying him with the necessary co-operation. I suggest that where those hospitals are being built within reasonable distance of Dublin, provision should be made for clinical work by visiting specialists.
Some people, looking at this matter, are inclined to be influenced by the policy that has been in force in this country over a number of years. We have been sending people to Dublin for treatment for a number of years, and some people appear to think that we cannot get away from that policy; but when we come to examine it, we must realise that it is unnatural to transport a man, who is seriously and grievously sick, 50, 60 or 100 miles instead of bringing the man in perfect health down to treat the sick man. With presentday fast cars, it is not a very difficult proposition to get specialists to come down to visit the central hospitals and to have definite days for clinics. There is no reason why the man on such work could not do two, three or four clinics in one day. He could have a definite circuit to do each week and, in that way, I think we could make for the success of that type of institution. I ask the Minister to give that careful consideration. If some arrangement of that sort is not made, I think these 60-, 70- and 80-beds hospitals are not going to be the success we would like them to be.
With regard to the provision of beds in Dublin hospitals, secretaries of boards of health and medical officers find it exceedingly difficult to arrange for beds in institutions in the city. An unnecessary loss of time and expense is entitled in telephoning for beds. In some cases, telephone fees are 10/- and 15/- by the time you ring a hospital here, ask for an extension and find that it is full up, and then get on to another hospital and find that it is full up, too. A medical officer down the country, who is possibly very busy, has to lose a tremendous amount of time in endeavouring to secure beds for urgent cases. There is a very simple remedy for that. The Minister should provide a central bed bureau here in Dublin, in his own Department, if he likes, which would know exactly the number of beds available in each approved institution and from which local secretaries of boards of health and medical officers could get information and arrange for their beds right away. It would simplify the whole matter of securing beds for patients coming to the city. I am told by medical men that they waste a lot of time, and are put to considerable expense, in securing beds, and that simple provision of a central bed bureau would get over the whole difficulty.
With regard to housing, a lot has been said by Deputy Belton to-day, and I do not intend to weary the House unduly on the matter, except to point out that it has been stated and I have not seen it contradicted, that the cost of housing is 40 per cent. higher here than in England, as a result of Government policy. That is operating very much against building schemes at present. The limit up to which subsidy is payable for houses under boards of health at present is £300, and where a local authority exceeds that limit, the local rates have to bear the full burden. I want to point out to the Minister that boards of health in urban areas, where no urban authority exists, have to undertake building schemes, with necessary expense in the development of sites and more elaborate plans, the type of plan that will be approved by the Minister's engineers, than is the case in smaller villages and country areas, and it is not at all possible to build houses in urban areas within that £300 limit. If the Minister wants the boards of health to provide houses in that type of urban area, he must seriously consider an extension of the limit he has set in respect of subsidy. If he is not prepared to do that, I am afraid he is going enormously to slow down the provision of houses in such areas.
In respect of the selection of tenants for houses, and especially for houses which have already been occupied, certain regulations have been laid down by the Minister's Department, classifying the people who are entitled to preference. First of all, there must be a doctor's recommendation that there is tuberculosis, etc., present in the house—at all events, there are three or four definite headings as to the order of preference in which the medical officer must put them, and the local authority is bound to treat them as such. While I agree that that is quite sound from the medical point of view, and from the point of view of the necessity of housing a man who is living under the worst conditions, there is another aspect of the case that ought not to be lost sight of, and that is the economic aspect. Take a house in a rural area where there is perhaps a want of agricultural labour; according to the present scheme you put in a man that is not an agricultural labourer and whom the farmers of that particular area are not anxious to have.
That is an aspect of the case that the Minister and his Department, I think, ought not to lose sight of—that while the scheme is set out from the medical aspect of the case and from the point of view of the demand and the necessity for housing the more urgent cases, at the same time we ought not to lose sight of the economic aspect, and if there is a house situated on a man's farm and he is contributing and has contributed to the erection of that house through taxation, he is entitled to this return at all events: that he should be able to have housed there a good agricultural labourer whom he can secure as a worker. Under the present scheme that does not work out, as a rule, and it is operating against agriculture in rural areas. In the matter of the acquisition of sites for housing schemes, the process at the present time is a very long, tedious and slow affair. It takes the best part of twelve months to complete a scheme. I think the Minister should try, if possible, to have the process of acquisition speeded up as far as possible. It might be possible that the necessary notices, and that kind of thing, prescribed by law at present, could be eliminated.
Now, with regard to the roads and the Road Fund, at the present time about £1,000,000 is contributed in motor taxation to the Road Fund, and out of that there are grants available to the extent of about £650,000. Out of petrol duty, at 8d., the motorists contribute about £1,400,000, and the duty on motor cars and motor car parts is approximately £600,000. That makes a total contribution from motors, lorries and 'buses of over £3,000,000. I calculate that the average motorist in this country contributes from £40 to £45 a year in taxation, and that motorist, as a rule, is a taxpayer, while a great many of them are ratepayers as well. Notwithstanding that fact, local taxation contributes £1,400,000 to the upkeep of our roads and, taking into account unemployment relief grants, local taxation contributes over 60 per cent. of the total road upkeep in this country. I want to know from the Minister, why does not the full amount at least of the Road Fund go to the upkeep of roads? Surely to goodness, it does not cost the difference between £650,000 and £1,000,000 to administer the Road Fund. Apart altogether from what is paid in petrol duty and duty on motors coming in, at least one would expect that the amount paid in road tax on cars would go to the upkeep of the roads.
We have heard it said by Deputies here that there is a lack of standardisation of the roads in the country at the present time. Deputy Childers pointed out that, if you go to the West of Ireland, you may find some excellent roads and some very bad and indifferent roads; some that will stand up well for four or five years and some that do not stand up to the heavy traffic and that give way immediately. The Deputy asked the Minister to introduce some form of standardisation. I am not satisfied that the present Road Fund is being properly administered. I think that the way it is being administered at the present time is seriously retarding the progress of counties, especially counties that have their main roads in good condition. Now, main roads are the principal roads that are declared main roads by the Minister. He is the sole arbiter in the matter of saying whether a road is a main road or not. We have in this country 9,737 miles of main roads and we have a total of 46,798 miles of country roads. We have five miles of country roads to every one mile of main road, and I want to point out that any help local authorities get from the Road Fund is spent altogether on main roads, that is, on the roads that constitute only one in five miles of our total road mileage.
Now, I have shown that these main roads are very limited in proportion to the whole mileage of our roads, and the ratepayers, accordingly, are asked to pay for the upkeep of many more important roads that, with the enormous increase in motor traffic, we are using at the present time. The contribution made from the Road Fund to local authorities is, first of all, divided into two classes of grants—a maintenance grant and an improvement grant. The maintenance grant is based on the sum of money the local authorities spend on the upkeep, it gets main roads. If a local authority spends £70 a mile on upkeep, it gets 40 per cent. of that; if it spends £200 a mile, the local authority gets 40 per cent. of that. Accordingly, it is based on the amount the local authority spends on maintenance. As well as that, there is an improvement grant. In County Kildare the road tax last year was £26,000, an increase of over £4,000 since the year 1935, and the maintenance grant in 1934-35 was just £13,000, while the maintenance grant for this present year was £11,000. Although there has been an increase in road tax contribution since 1935 of over £4,000, there has been a reduction in the grant of £2,000.
That does not look right. The improvement grant is about £11,000. In 1925 you had a national scheme for roads, which was known as the £2,000,000 road scheme. That money was spent in that and in the ensuing year, and it was confined absolutely to the improvement of roads, the laying down and the reconstruction of roads. I think a similar scheme now would be very useful, and it can be done within the finances of the Road Fund, the contributions made by motorists.
I find fault with the administration of the Road Fund in this way: that too much money is being devoted to road maintenance and not enough is going to road improvement. The reason I say too much is going to road maintenance is this. You can divide the maintenance of main roads into two classes. You have one type of road in really excellent condition. You have counties where they have all the main roads in excellent condition. On the other hand, there are counties in which, if the roads are not in good condition, they are not spending much money on improvement work and they are spending most of the money on maintenance. In the counties where the roads are in good condition, in order to continue to secure maintenance grants, the road makers in those counties are scarifying the roads and resurfacing them. That is not an urgent problem at the moment but, if they do not do it, they lose the maintenance grant. If they reduce the amount they expend annually, there will be a reduction in the maintenance grant, because that is based on what they spend.
That type of work could be postponed and that money could be more usefully spent by way of improving other roads that are not classified as main roads. Such work would have a much higher labour content than by devoting the money to the maintenance of those main roads that are already in fairly good condition. In the type of work involved in sacrifying a road that is already in fairly good condition, using very costly materials, such as tar and bitumen, and where you are spraying those roads with the modern tar sprayer, the labour content is relatively small. If that money were spent on improving other roads that do not come under the category of main roads, much more useful work would be done.
That money cannot be spent on those roads, because they are not classified as main roads and the local authority has nothing to say to it. The Minister is the sole arbiter in declaring whether or not a road is a main road. There are many roads in the country regarded by the ordinary intelligent man, conversant with road conditions, as main roads; people are well aware that these roads are main roads, but yet they are not considered as main roads according to the Minister's classification. Many Deputies who have travelled through the country are prepared to say that they have struck main roads in a desperately bad condition and the reason is that these roads are not classified in the Department as main roads and there is no grant from the Road Fund.
There is then the type of main road that has not been reconstructed, that has been reasonably good over a period of years, but has never been reconstructed. It is the old, high-cambered road that is rather dangerous for motorists. It is maintained by being re-tarred and re-surfaced and a good deal of money is spent in gravelling, filling in pot-holes, and sweeping. I think that money is badly spent because, sooner or later, that road will have to be properly reconstructed and, therefore, the money expended under the present administration of the Road Fund is being wastefully spent. The sooner that type of road is properly reconstructed the better, and the more economical in the end will it prove to be. I contend that there will have to be a reorientation in relation to the main roads of the country, or else the Minister should leave the administration of this maintenance fund to the local authorities—to the county surveyors, subject to the approval of the Department's engineers. This money can be spent on county roads, outside of main roads. The mileage of main roads is 9,000, odd, as against 46,798 county roads, a mileage of about five to one. The unfortunate farmers are expected to maintain that huge mileage of county roads and they get no grant whatever from the Road Fund.
In County Kildare the road tax yields £26,000. For this year you have an improvement grant in County Kildare of £11,000, and the amount of money that the Kildare County Council propose to expend on main roads is £23,000. They get a 40 per cent. maintenance grant, according to the road scheme of 1926, which is still in operation, and that amounts to £8,500. That means that they get £19,500 and they pay £26,000 in road tax. That is not a fair representation of the conditions so far as Kildare is concerned, because the geographical situation of County Kildare in relation to the City of Dublin is a peculiar one. We all know that it carries the main arteries of traffic and that it is the corridor to the city from the South and West. There is a tremendous volume of outside traffic passing through County Kildare. Therefore, the amount of road tax collected in the county does not represent the true position, because the number of motorists, motor vehicle owners, living in County Kildare, is relatively small. It does not represent one-sixth, or anything like it, of the total motor traffic passing through the county Dublin and Cork are the big collecting centres for road tax. The amount of tax collected by the authorities in Dublin City and County is relatively more in comparison with the amount collected in neighbouring counties.
I want to make this case, that we are paying in County Kildare, at the present time, by way of road tax, £26,000 and we get from the Road Fund this year £19,500. Those people who are paying road tax, as I said before, are taxpayers and they are ratepayers as well. They are living all over the county on county roads, away from the main roads altogether. There is no attempt being made to supply them with a decent road out of the Road Fund. There is no necessity at all, I am convinced, to spend the money that is being spent on some of the main roads in Kildare at the present time. I am sure the local authority there and the county surveyor would be anxious to get away from the main roads and build up some of the county roads that are not at the moment classified as main roads.
While the 1926 scheme, that is still in existence, was a very good and useful scheme for the last ten or 12 years, in some counties we are arriving at a situation where main road development has reached a very high standard, and where it is time to call a halt. It is time for the Minister to see that some of that money that is being spent at the present time should be expended outside the main road schemes. Either the main road scheme of the country should be extended to other roads or the scheme should be changed. I think it should be left within the power of the local authority, on the advice of the county surveyor and with the approval of the engineers of the Minister's Department, to have that money spent on county roads outside the main roads altogether.
It is most unfair and unjust to ask the unfortunate people down the country, under present conditions, to maintain five out of every six miles of the roads of the country at the present time. That is what they are asked to do. The ratepayers of this country, the farmers, you might say, of the country have to maintain five out of every six miles of the roads of this country at the present time, notwithstanding the huge amount of taxation that is collected through the road tax, on petrol and on import duties. I would ask the Minister to have that matter examined carefully and immediately so that there would be some extension of the present scheme because, as I say, while the scheme was sound up to the present time, a high standard has been reached in a good many of the more progressive counties and that money should be diverted to the county. I am convinced it can be done.
There was in operation here some years ago a Roads Advisory Committee. I would like to ask the Minister whether the Act, under which that Roads Advisory Committee was set up, has been repealed or what has become of the Roads Advisory Committee. I would like to know that because on the Roads Advisory Committee you had represented the taxpayer, the motorist, the labourer and the farmer, to advise the Minister and his Department on the various road problems that presented themselves to the local authorities in the country. If you had that Roads Advisory Committee in operation in the country at the present time the problem that I am putting to the Minister about main and county roads, which has been referred to in a different way by other Deputies, would be handled. Some Deputies who are on local bodies and who are members of county councils are aware of that problem at the present time and the difficulty of making a decent job of county roads, and in regard to some roads that are classified as county roads at the present time, we, from our local knowledge, know that, in reality, they are main roads. Representations have been made to the Minister, but the Minister who, under the law, is the sole arbiter in the matter, has refused to classify them as main roads for the simple reason that he does not want to make those grants available to such roads.
I think that is a matter which calls for immediate attention because, after all, all those burdens of improved road services and increased social services are being thrown back on the ratepayer. It is very easy to improve our social services if you can ignore the capacity of the ratepayer and the taxpayer and continue, without any regard for his position, to improve social services. That is what is happening in regard to social services and that is what is happening on the roads. I think it is an amazing situation that, notwithstanding all the taxation that is being paid in this country, both direct and indirect, on road tax, yet the ratepayer of this country has to maintain five out of every six miles of road in the country.
I note that Deputy Hughes did not refer to the amounts that his county and other areas received as a result of the fund that he referred to, particularly in the years 1925-1930. I submit that, under that system, areas like Kildare, counties of high valuation, fared very well, to the detriment of the poorer counties with low valuations. I further submit that areas like Kerry lost considerably under that scheme and it is only in recent years, since the present Minister took over, that the case of Kerry is being attended to. I would go on the plea that that good work be continued and, in view of the fact that it will take us years before we can be recouped what we lost, I think the Department would be justified in repaying to us by way of extra grants. The fact has not been referred to that over the past four or five years, through the system inaugurated at that period, namely, that the higher the valuation the greater the amount allocated to a particular county or a particular centre, it was natural to expect that areas like Kerry, with a low valuation, would lose in comparison with other areas. A point that was not gone into was the question of traffic. The grant was given on the number of roads, irrespective of the density of traffic, and in a county like Kerry we were unjustly treated. I am glad to say—and I thank the Minister on behalf of the people concerned— that, within recent years, this matter has been gone into and we are, in a small way, getting back what we were deprived of under the previous Government and under that particular scheme.
I maintain that if Deputy Hughes had given proper information to the House on this scheme it would be shown that, for every £1,000 which counties like Kerry received, the counties the Deputy was referring to received something like £3,000. What I mean to convey is that these were the proportions in which money under that scheme was distributed.
It was the same for all.
Mr. Flynn
The last Administration inaugurated that scheme and made it impossible for areas like ours to get the best out of it.
The County Kerry would not subscribe, and that is the reason why you would not get it.
Mr. Flynn
Deputy Cosgrave should have taken all the facts into consideration and stated them, but he did not.
I was speaking about the 1926 scheme which is in operation still.
Mr. Flynn
With regard to the item in the Estimates for the training of native Irish speakers from the Gaeltacht as nurses, I notice that the amount provided for this year has been reduced. There is no indication that the system in operation last year will be continued. We have received representations from intending applicants from the various Gaeltacht districts to be given facilities to attend and become trained as nurses in the Dublin hospitals. The scheme is a good one and we are anxious to see it developed.
I want to refer again to the question of housing. I admit, taking into consideration the sums that have been expended, that the case I have to put forward is a weak one in view of the position in Kerry with regard to cottage rent arrears. But in the part of the county that I am concerned with —South Kerry and the Cahirciveen end of that area—the people there have paid their rents regularly and, in proportion to the amounts demanded from them, are not very much behind with arrears. In view of that fact I would appeal to the Minister to give consideration to the housing scheme that was proposed some years ago for that area. I refer to the town of Cahireiveen in which you have a number of old derelict buildings and hovels in which the people are compelled to live. Many years ago these hovels and old buildings were condemned by the medical officer of health. A housing scheme in that end of the county has been held up because cottiers and others residing in the richer part of the county have not paid their rents as they should have paid them. The fundamental principle that should influence the Minister and his Department is the health and wellbeing of the people. Good housing for them should be considered irrespective of what has happened in other areas. The people that I speak for have done their utmost to meet all their liabilities, and hence I ask the Minister to give special consideration to this area. I admit that, if the other circumstances I have referred to were to have full weight with the Minister, I have a weak case, but I plead with him for those people on the ground that they should not be, so to speak, deprived of a necessary of life so far as the Department of Local Government can provide it for them.
I have also to plead with the Minister with regard to what has now become an urgent question, a hospital for Cahireiveen. The case put forward by the Department, I understand, is that there are more urgent demands to be dealt with from other centres, and that this one for Cahireiveen can be left over. I submit that the hospital that is there could not, in its present condition, be described as coming within the category of a hospital—I mean in the modern sense of giving the people the best medical service and attention. The people there are very far removed from the county hospital at Tralee. Surely the people in Cahireiveen are not to be left as they are at present on the plea that other counties have to be catered for first and that moneys may not be available for this scheme at present. My point is that even if there is a loss, it is the duty of the State to come forward and make provision to meet an urgent district scheme of this kind. It is money that will be well spent. The fundamental consideration with the Minister and his Department should be the lives and health of the people when considering questions relating to hospitals and housing. These should be the prime factor to guide the Department and induce the Minister to assist us. In conclusion, I thank the Minister for all that he has done with regard to road grants, housing and hospitals for our county.
I am sorry that I cannot see my way to join in the hymns of praise with which the Minister has been over whelmed in this debate—to an embarrassing extent, I should say. The Minister is demanding £1,349,000 for the current financial year as against £481,000 in 1931. This, of course, is only a small portion of the expenditure which comes directly under the Minister's supervision. As far as I can gather from the figures supplied, the total expenditure of our local authorities is now somewhere in the region of £12,000,000 a year. That is a colossal sum. Not only have we to consider its magnitude, but the further fact that in the past ten or 12 years the dead weight of debt of local authorities has increased from £13,000,000 in 1927 to £26,000,000 in the present year. Thus we have the position that the ratepayers over that period have been bearing a steadily increasing burden, and at the moment cannot look forward to anything but an ever-increasing burden.
We must consider the effects of such heavy charges upon the rate-paying community, the business man and the farmer. What encouragement is there in such circumstances for any business man to extend his operations, or to the farmer to improve or extend his work on the farm? The prospect before them is one of a steadily increasing burden in the way of direct taxation through the local rates. It may be said that the Minister has not complete control of the local rates, but I think he must take a large share of responsibility for the increases which have occurred in local rates during the past seven or eight years. We must remember that every inducement has been offered to local authorities to increase expenditure.
Every grant for housing, sewerage, and water supplies in our towns, and every grant for unemployment relief work on the road has been conditional on the local authorities putting up an increased amount out of the rates, thus increasing the burden on the ratepayers. That has been the policy of the Minister during the last seven or eight years. Nobody I think will deny that, no matter what good work the Minister may have done in promoting and developing social services, he has laid the whip very effectively and vigorously on the backs of the ratepayers.
The most important question we have to ask ourselves is: Are we getting value for this huge amount of public expenditure? The principal services under the Minister's Department are health, housing and roads. If we take health, we have to ask ourselves, are the general community healthier than they were when the Minister took office? We have the fact, so far as infantile mortality is concerned, that there is no improvement this year as compared with the first two or three years of the Minister's term of office. What are the causes of infantile mortality? Is it not mainly due to malnutrition and to poverty? Anyone who moves amongst the people must realise that the average married women of this country are living in a condition of poverty. The average working man's wife or small farmer's wife is not getting sufficient nourishment for herself or her children. That is a very important consideration. It should be the duty of the Minister to instruct the local officials, such as the dispensary medical officers and nurses, to investigate this question and to make a census of the number of persons under their care who are suffering from malnutrition to any extent.
We have also to ask ourselves are we getting sufficient return for the expenditure upon school inspection. School inspection is a very desirable social service. At the same time, it is costing a considerable amount of money. Are we getting full value out of that inspection? The children are very thoroughly inspected by the medical officers of health and their assistants, but I am not satisfied that sufficiently beneficial results are derived from that. The main feature of these inspections is that the medical officer gives very elaborate instructions and advice to the parents in regard to the care of the children, or the defects from which they are suffering. But in nine cases out of ten these instructions are not carried out. Recently, these medical officers of health have been advising parents to concentrate upon a diet for their children of raw vegetables, such as turnips, carrots, etc. That is, I suppose, sound advice, but it is the type of advice which will be ridiculed by the average parent and no serious notice will be taken of it. I think that if effective steps are to be taken in regard to the nutrition of children it should be through the officials of the Department devising some scheme of school in which children in national schools in which those very desirable kinds of diet would be provided. There is no serious obstacle to the extension of the scheme of school meals to all schools, and it could be very cheaply effected. It would be far better for the general health of the children than the giving of advice, which is usually ignored and very often ridiculed.
We all know that from time unmemorial school children have been inclined, without any instructions from medical officers or anybody else, to concentrate on raw vegetables on their way from school. I know I was often guilty of taking part in raids in turnip fields, and I was often severely scolded for it. But it seems to indicate that I was ten or 20 years in advance of medical science at that time. I do not think that the average parent will take serious notice of advice of that kind Neither can you convince the average parent that the defects in children's health which are pointed out by the medical officers are genuine. In most of the school inspections we find that at least 80 per cent. of the children are defective to some extent. The average parent cannot understand that, and when they cannot understand a thing, they usually think it is not true. Therefore, I suggest that, in addition to medical inspection, there should be provided nutritious school meals in which the articles of diet recommended by the medical officers of health are provided.
We have also the question of the care of tuberculous persons. The Minister pointed out there has been a reduction in the number suffering from that disease. At the same time, anybody who has any close connection with the ordinary people of the country must admit that the disease is very prevalent in every part of the country. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that there are in every county hundreds and, perhaps, thousands of people suffering from that disease who are living in their own homes and who are thereby spreading the disease to the other members of the family. Therefore, it seems to be absolutely futile to have county medical officers of health travelling from one house to another, while, at the same time, it is impossible for them to do anything effective to remedy the disease or to prevent its spreading. The average workman and working farmer will not consider going into an institution until it is altogether too late. If institutional treatment is so effective and desirable as we are led to believe it is, and as I believe it is, the medical officers of health should have far-reaching powers to ensure that people affected with this disease will take advantage of the institutional treatment provided. Nothing could be more undesirable than to have patients suffering from this disease in their own homes, infecting other members of their families.
In connection with institutions for tubercular patients, I should like to draw the Minister's attention to a thing which happened in my own county. There, it was decided to provide a new T.B. hospital as part of a general hospitalisation scheme. The Minister's Department recommended that all the institutions should be centralised in the town of Carlow. The majority of the board of health, however, decided to purchase a site in an isolated country district, five miles from a railway station, three miles from a church, three miles from the residence of a clergyman, and five miles from the residence of a doctor. The majority of the board of health, acting against the advice of their chairman, who is a very able administrator; against the advice of their secretary, who is a very efficient official, and against the advice of their medical officer of health, decided to purchase a site in this isolated district. They approached the Minister for sanction, and most people thought that the Minister would refuse sanction, having regard to the extraordinary place in which it was decided to erect this institution. To the surprise of everybody, the Minister sanctioned the scheme and it will probably go ahead.
This site will cost £2,500. The house is an old one and will be no use as an institution. A new institution will have to be built. There are 41 acres of land attached to the house and these will be of no use to the institution. Yet this farm of 41 acres in a backward district has been purchased for £2,500. The result will be that these unfortunate patients, in an advanced stage of this disease, will be isolated and marooned in a backward country district far removed from spiritual and medical aid and at least five miles from a railway station or a bus service. The staff will be so isolated that it will be impossible to secure efficient officials for such a backward district. In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that highly-efficient officials were against the purchase of this site, the Minister has decided to sanction it. That shows that the Minister is not so absolutely infallible as some Deputies would lead us to believe.
Another point which has been raised is in regard to the extraordinarily high cost of new hospitals. The hospital in Carlow is to cost £120,000, or £1,500 per bed. That seems to be an extraordinarily high figure. People cannot help believing that it is an extravagant figure and that the provision of hospital accommodation should not cost such an enormous sum. In the same way, the proposed county home in Carlow will cost about £70,000, or £700 per bed. There you have a situation in which it costs £700 to provide a bed for one inmate in a county home whereas, although housing is very expensive, you can provide a four-room or five-room house for £300. Would it not be cheaper to provide each of the inmates of the county home with a semi-detached residence somewhere near Dublin? I suppose you could do it for £700. The whole scheme of hospitals seems to be too extravagant, and the result is that the huge sums of money, placed at the disposal of the State through the greed of the general community in seeking to get easy money out of the Hospital Sweepstakes, are not giving a proper result. We have a position in which huge sums of money are being sunk in magnificent buildings and, still, the unfortunate patient, if he has any means whatever, has to pay very highly for treatment. The ratepayers will also have to supply large sums for the upkeep of these elaborate institutions. Would it not have been possible, with proper organisation and consideration and with the funds available through the Hospital Sweepstakes, to have completely reorganised and rationalised the whole system of hospitalisation? If that had been done, it would have been possible to finance a scheme of hospitalisation without any contribution from the local authorities or the ratepayers. It seems to me that the money is not being spent to the best advantage. It is all very well to have fine institutions of this kind but, just as stone walls do not make a prison, neither does concrete, steel or marble make a hospital.
It is upon the energy, efficiency, zeal and loyalty of the hospitals' staffs that the success of hospitalisation or institutional treatment will depend. Here again we have a position in regard to the county homes. Considerably large sums have been spent all over the country on the provision of new county homes while on every road we travel we find buildings that were erected only 60 or 70 years ago have been allowed to fall into decay and ruin. Are these county homes the best possible institutions? In my opinion the county home is a rotten institution. It is not a suitable institution at all. In these county homes you have thrown together the various miscellaneous sections of the community. You have the aged and infirm, the mental defectives, the moral degenerates and the vagabonds all thrown together. A county home should be a model hospital confined exclusively to the maintenance of the aged and infirm. Other types of inmates should be given alternative accommodation. I think if the question were approached in a proper way it would be found—viewed from the point of view of this angle—that the county home should be confined to the class I have stated. From the point of view of expense there would be very little additional. The ordinary working man or woman and even the working farmer could retire to the county home when they reach the invalid stage at the end of their days. There they would be quite willing to pay or contribute for their upkeep. But you cannot expect paying patients to go into the type of county home you have at present. Surely mental defectives require special treatment and they should not be housed in the county home. Married women and children should be specially cared. The casual vagabonds should not be allowed to mix with them. The class of cases I have mentioned require separate treatment; the county home should be confined exclusively to the aged and infirm. If that were done there would be quite a large number of paying patients—people who would be willing to go into these hospitals and pay for treatment there. Something like that is very badly required and it should be introduced at once.
It has been said that the county boards of health cannot handle the enormous amount of business thrown on their shoulders. Here, again, there is need for reform and need for careful investigation. The member of a county board of health is usually a farmer, businessman or worker. He attends monthly or fortnightly meetings, and there he is confronted with a huge amount of very detailed, complicated business. To this he is supposed to devote his entire attention. It is very rarely that any man can give proper and full consideration to the problems laid before him at the board of health meetings. The result is that the work is too often rushed through, and that is very unsatisfactory. Some means will have to be found to improve the present system. I cannot suggest what these should be, for in that case I might perhaps approach too closely to the border line of advocating new legislation.
So much has been said about housing that there is no need on my part to go into the question except just to point to one feature which has not been stressed so far. I refer to the question of housing the population in our rural areas. There are at the present time large sections of the community who cannot avail of any scheme which the Minister has provided. We have the small farmers under £25 valuation. These are entitled to grants, but the grants to which they are entitled are not sufficient to provide them with enough money for the reconstruction of their houses. These people have no credit or capital to supplement the grants. The result is that they are not able to avail of the grants, and many of them are living under wretched housing conditions. The same might be said to apply in some cases where the people are over the £25 valuation limit. These are all debarred from these grants by reason of their valuation. Now many of them are not in a financial position to raise the money by loan or otherwise, so as to carry out the improvements that their houses require. The whole purpose of the Government's housing schemes is to provide for those unable to provide for themselves. Surely the working farmer who has no capital and whose credit is not strong enough to raise capital is at least as much entitled to housing accommodation as the ordinary labourer. Here is a letter which I received to-day. It is from a man whose valuation is slightly over the £25. He writes:—
"I am writing to you again about the state of my house as it is in a terrible state. We had to prop the wall to keep it from falling and we had to stay up stormy nights in this past winter for fear the whole thing would fall. Do you think there is any chance of getting any grant? If not, I do not know what we will do. We will have to leave it and go to the county home—and look at the money they are throwing into labourers' houses."
That is typical of the letters which Deputies in this House receive. Only a short time ago I visited the house of a small farmer in my constituency. He was entitled to a grant of £40, but his house was so bad that the £40 grant would be of no use to him and he had not credit or capital to supplement the grant. It was an old two-storey house. The end wall had fallen out completely and the roof and the first floor were sitting upon the kitchen dresser. I visited that house to see the condition in which it was. I must say that while there I was thinking very seriously of the next world, because I had not very great faith in the staying powers of the kitchen dresser. It was a very ancient structure. These are two cases but there are hundreds of similar ones throughout the country and the Minister should give these some attention.
Again we have the question of the repairs to cottages. I have not here the figures as to what they are costing, but I do know that in every county the figures of the cost of the repairs are enormous. I cannot understand why the cost should be so much. It must be due to either of two causes: (1) that the houses were not built in a satisfactory manner in the first instance, or (2) that the repair work is not being done or is being done very inefficiently and costly. I am at present living in a house which was built 50 years ago at a cost of £150 by country tradesmen. It was built without the help or assistance of architects, engineers or anybody else. Not 1/- has been required for the structural improvement of that house during the last 50 years. Not 1/- either for the walls or woodwork. Everything is exactly as it was when the house was first built. The oldest of the labourers' cottages were built about the same time. I cannot understand how such an enormous amount of money is required for improvements in these houses from year to year. This is a matter that requires investigation. It is a matter that will have to be dealt with on some very carefully organised basis. Either the Minister will have to hand over the houses to the tenants, and let them keep them in repair themselves, or alternatively, he will have to sublet the maintenance of those houses to one contractor, who will be responsible for keeping them in repair. Either of those schemes might be effective, but the present system is costing the ratepayers an enormous amount of money, and no return seems to be obtained.
The condition of the roads throughout the country is causing very great dissatisfaction. We know that, to a great extent, the main roads are being improved and have been improved, but at the same time we have the county roads in every county sinking into a state of very serious disrepair. We must remember that there are thousands of miles of county roads which are carrying a heavier traffic at the present time than the so-called main roads, and the Minister should take into consideration the need for extending the number of miles of main roads for which grants are given, so that those county roads will be eligible for grants. In my own particular area, very strong representations were made to the Minister to have a certain stretch of road from Hacketstown to Carlow—a road on which there is exceptionally heavy traffic, and which has deteriorated very much as a result —declared a main road, but those representations were turned down and completely ignored. The result is that that road is rapidly deteriorating. The same applies to all parts of the County Carlow, and indeed of the country. The main roads are in a fairly good condition, but every day the county roads are deteriorating, because a sufficient amount of money cannot be found for their upkeep. Yet, we find that the motorists, who are mainly responsible for the deterioration of the roads, are paying quite sufficient in revenue for the upkeep of those roads. They are paying £3,000,000, and that amount if applied to road maintenance would put all the roads of this country into a proper state of repair. Instead of that, we have, I think, only £1,000,000 or less applied by the State to the upkeep of roads. Again, we have thrown on the local authorities the burden of relieving unemployment, a burden which should be a national one, and which should be a borne by the National Exchequer. All those burdens combined have increased the rates to such an extent that there is a feeling of deep depression and anxiety amongst the ratepayers of this country. The result is that progress is being seriously hampered, because the ratepayer can see no prospect of any relief. He can see no prospect of anything but being compelled to pay increasingly large sums every year for local services. Until there is some promise that that burden will be reduced, there is no hope whatever for the unfortunate ratepayer.
Also, in regard to Grants-in-Aid of local ratepayers, we have a position in which the grants have been so manipulated that certain ratepayers, certain farmers, have had their rates more than doubled during the past five or six years. In some cases they have had their rates trebled. The farmer who has a large family under 17 years of age derives no benefit whatever in respect of each member of his family. The farmer who has female dependents, either daughters or employees, over 17 years of age, is not entitled to any relief, whereas the farmer with a grown-up son—who would be in a better position than the farmer with a helpless family—gets the maximum relief. The result is that a very large section of the community have had their rates so much increased that they are being put out of business completely. They are being forced to abandon their system of farming, and that is not a desirable state of affairs. You should not increase the burden of taxation on any section of the community to such an extent as to put them out of business. But that is exactly what is happening.
We find that the burden of debt on the local authorities has increased to £26,000,000, and on that burden of debt I think there is an annual charge of £1,500,000. Now, that is a dead weight upon the shoulders of the ratepayers, from which the ratepayers are getting no return whatever. A good deal has been said about the increased costs of housing and housing material. All that is true, but very little has been said about the crushing burden of interest charges upon our housing schemes. Take, for example, a house costing £300. That £300 has to be borrowed by the local authorities. The interest on that £300 at 4½ per cent. is £13 10s. per annum. There you have a burden of £13 10s. per annum for interest alone. There you have a burden which must be met by the local authorities and by the tenants and the general taxpayers. Surely that is a situation which deserves consideration. Surely a house is a permanent national asset. It is as much a permanent national asset as £300 in gold and, surely, if it is possible to issue £300 currency on the security of £300 in gold, it should be possible to issue £300 currency upon the security of a house. There you would have wiped out completely the entire burden of interest, and that, I think, is the only solution of the housing problem. Therefore, I would recommend the Minister to study very carefully the minority Report of the Banking Commission.
My remarks in this particular debate will be very brief. In other circumstances I would have devoted a considerable portion of my speech to the matter of rates, but, rightly or wrongly, I have for some time been of the opinion that the time is rapidly approaching when through force of circumstances, the farmers of this country will be relieved of a great portion if not the whole of that burden. There is one particular aspect of the matter to which I will refer. It is perhaps the annual bee in my bonnet. The Minister is familiar with it, and is probably sick of it, but I will keep harping on it as long as the burden of rates is on the farm. That is the matter to which Deputy Cogan referred in one or two words, the distribution of the Agricultural Grant. I have made various appeals year after year to the Minister in regard to the discrimination between male and female workers in the distribution of this grant. I repeat briefly that I see no reason why farmers who get relief in respect of their workers should not get similar relief for a woman as for a man, provided the conditions are the same and that they get the same wages. I shall say no more than that on this occasion.
Much has been said on the question of roads and without desiring to travel over the same ground, I should like to subscribe to the views of Deputy Childers on this matter. While we can pick holes in the road programme all over the country—Deputy Cogan said that some of the country roads are in a very bad state of repair—I am not going to advocate anything that would possibly cause an addition to the rates but I should like to refer briefly to the condition of some of the main roads for which huge grants have been made. Deputy Childers suggested that there should be some standardisation in the building of roads. Like Deputy Childers, I travel over long stretches of roads and I see various sections that are built on a completely different principle. Some of them are built in an oval manner while others are built in a flat manner with a drop in the centre. I have seen certain roads that have collapsed and have fallen into a state of disrepair much sooner than roads which were built years before them. In my own county we have a particularly efficient county surveyor. I see roads in that county that have been built eight or ten years and they are in a very good state of repair. In my peregrinations to Dublin, on the other hand, I come across certain sections of roads in other counties which were made comparatively recently and they are now in much worse condition than other roads which were built five or six years ago. I would suggest to the Minister that there should be some standard adopted for road building. There may be difficulties in the way of which I am not aware, but I imagine that these could be overcome.
In the matter of housing, I have no desire to repeat what has been already said by other Deputies, but there is one aspect of the matter to which I should like to make a brief reference. It appears to me that while we are building good houses for the people who require them, there might be more variety in construction.
They should be more artistic.
A little more art might be shown in their construction. Travelling along the country by road or by train, one sees on the outskirts of towns large blocks of buildings of an exactly similar type. They would remind you of a military camp in the old days or checkers on a draught board, not at all a pleasant sight. It could be arranged, I think, to have a little more variety in design so that the country would be beautified to some extent. The same remarks apply to labourers' cottages. Most of them are nice houses, taken individually, but in the various counties there appears to be but one design. Travelling along the road, the eye is troubled by houses of an exactly similar type of architecture. There may be difficulties about introducing a little more variety, but if it could be done, in my opinion, variety in building would enhance the scenery of the country.
One other matter in regard to cottages, to which I referred in previous years is that of fencing. Some years ago there was considerable difficulty experienced in getting land for fencing. There was always trouble between the cottier and the tenant of the adjoining land and that trouble prevails even at the present day. In many counties fences are erected around a labourer's plot which are practically demolished before the house is built. In many cases that leads to a row between the cottier and the owner of the adjoining land. The fence erected by the local authority is generally a narrow bank which collapses in a very short time. There is bound to be trouble in such cases. The Minister may not be responsible for this, but he should make some general regulation or, at least, use his influence to ensure that fences of a more substantial kind are erected. I think it is not a matter for which the farmer should be held liable, because the fence is not built on the farmer's land but on the cottage plot. What happens is that the farmer has eventually to put a new wire fence— I have had to do it myself—outside the fence that the local authorities had built eight or nine months before with a consequent waste of land. I think something should be done to improve these fences.
There is only one other matter that I wish to refer to, namely, the question of hospitalisation. I, like many other Deputies, believe that in this, as in many other matters, we may go a little too far with the idea of centralisation. There may be advantages in centralisation, but we could easily overdo it and we may get to the stage when centralisation will result neither in economy nor efficiency. Various aspects of the matter occur to one's mind—facilities for visits by relatives of patients and other matters of that kind. While, as I say, centralisation in most cases is not desirable, in some cases it is even more undesirable than others. Centralisation might be necessary in very scattered districts where the population is so sparse that you could not provide hospitalisation within a limited area, but centralisation in extremely populous districts is quite another matter. In my own county a new hospital is to be built and, probably, it is much needed. Nobody has any objection to it, but there is a fear in the minds of the people that it may have the effect of closing the two existing voluntary hospitals in Limerick. I am not saying that it will have that effect, but there is that fear in the minds of the people. I think that that would be deplorable from every point of view. It would be compelling citizens, if it happened, to attend an hospital two or three miles outside the city, and would have undesirable effects in many ways. I hope it does not happen. In these particular matters I think there might be more consultation between those concerned, between the Minister and the local people. I am sure that in this particular case the Minister, with his usual courtesy—because the Minister is courteous to everyone in this House and outside it—will get into touch with those concerned, when the difficulties that I and other people see might be got over.
Can the Minister tell the House what steps he has taken in connection with the Ring case, which was mentioned here some time ago, and in which there were fatalities? As proceedings were being taken in the courts, it was not possible to refer to the matter in the House while they were pending. Since then there has been ample opportunity offered to make inquiries, and come to a conclusion to ensure that fatalities of that kind would not occur again. In the course of the case it was stated that the British medical authorities or the Government Department concerned had made minute inquiries when they heard about it. The second point I want to refer to concerns the hospitals. Since the inauguration of the Sweep stakes to benefit hospitals, very great advantages have been derived by hospitals generally which, up to that time, were in a serious financial position. As far as I am aware now, in the principal centres, like Dublin and Cork, there has been no addition whatever to the bed accommodation.
That is not so.
Will the Minister say where there has been an increase? There has been an increase in Dublin in the case of maternity hospitals but, as far as I am aware, these are the only ones in Dublin. It ought to be possible to get an additional number of beds at short notice, and when I say that, I mean within 12 or 18 months. I do not subscribe to the Minister's statement, or the commission's observations in connection with the increased deficits of hospitals. I think the natural contraction of subscriptions, arising out of the Sweepstakes, the necessity for improving some of the requirements, and getting requisites, that it was inevitable there should be an increase in the deficits. I also wish to ask the Minister whether anything was done in connection with an hospital for surgical tubercular cases. I do not think anything has been done in that connection since it was mentioned previously. The last matter I wish to refer to concerns housing. If the Minister looks at the returns in the Finance Accounts for the last couple of years, he will find that in 1936-37 something like £120,000 was collected in customs duties, or by impositions in connection with building materials, and that the following year the amount was about £124,000. These amounts do not represent the entire additional cost of building materials, but assuming they did, and that we assess the value of employment arising out of the production of these things at say £100 per person engaged, the duties ought to have afforded employment to 1,200 people on that basis alone. If they are not giving that employment, then the cost of housing is being increased by reason of these charges to an extent beyond the value we get under them. In these days, when everyone is paying attention to every sixpence in connection with building costs, it is essential that every step should be taken to minimise these costs. In these two years, a sum of £250,000 was collected and spent, although whatever proportion of it is attributed to housing by local authorities in respect of grants coming from the Minister, the local authorities alone borrowed sums of money and interest will be paid on them for the next 30 or 40 years. On its face that does not seem to be a sound financial proposition. While everyone is anxious that employment should be afforded, it ought not to be afforded on such an essential service like that unless value is being got for it. It may be that the present slump in housing is attributed to high costs. If it is, then very many more people are being put out of employment than being put into it, assuming that 1,200 people have been employed in connection with the protection afforded.
This morning I understand that special reference was made to me by Deputy Belton. I am in the unfortunate position of always being misunderstood. I informed Deputy Little last evening that I could not be here to-day, as I had to attend a trade board. I attend 19 of such boards and I am chairman of all of them. At the conclusion of his remarks Deputy Belton said:—
"Now, I think I have already taken up too much of the time of the House, but this is a matter which needs to be dealt with exhaustively. I notice that the Chairman of the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, who said that we would get all the money we want as and when we want it, is not here now. He should be here. On one occasion I attended a housing meeting where he was dispensing hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions, although we had not a bob in the till to spend at all.
An Ceann Comhairle: Surely that matter can be settled in another arena?
Mr. Belton: It is pretty well settled now. The other fellow has gone out."
Of course that class of stuff suited Deputy Belton and his pals. It gets into the newspapers. Anything I say in that connection will not get into the newspapers, but will get on the official records of this House, to be used hereafter, should the occasion arise. I notice that the main burden of Deputy Belton's speech consisted in expressions of sympathy for poorer paid clerks, poorer paid civil servants, and poorer paid tradesmen and craftsmen who wanted houses, and would like to buy them, but who had only £10 to put down, and would be glad if there were facilities for paying the remainder. All that sort of stuff was included in the Deputy's speech this morning. What are the facts? The Deputy knows them as well as I do. When the previous Government was in power they very honestly, and indeed I must say laudibly, decided to make an effort, and during their régime 2,000 houses were built, mostly in Marino and in the South Circular Road. These houses were let or sold to poorer paid clerks who could put down £10, and to poorer paid civil servants who could put down £10, and according to the lease they were to repay the cost by instalments extending over 30 or 40 years. That was the effort made by the previous Government. Over 2,000 houses were built under that system by borrowing the money, and when the corporation was restored, about 1930, the then city manager, Mr. Sherlock, presented a report concerning them that was in no way satisfactory. Many of them were in arrears. I am only speaking from recollection, as I had not time since I got the message to make inquiry.
The Deputy was not here to look after the interests of the corporation.
Mr. Kelly
I was looking after the interests of the country. I was chairman of a trade board that met this morning, and for that I do not get a penny. I am chairman of 19 of these boards, and the Deputy should remember that when alluding to me.
Mr. Sherlock presented a report in which he showed that there was a very unsatisfactory condition in relation to these houses. I think the arrears had then accumulated to about £25,000. The people who inhabited those houses found, on going into them, that they were unable to pay the weekly annuity that was necessary. Rents and annuity rents from 11/2 to 17/2 were to be paid and, with other expenses, they found that they could not pay. What had the corporation to do? We had, as best we could, to make arrangements with those who might be able to pay by instalments and to house many of the others in the houses we were building for the poorer class people at 7/6 a week. I said before that the Government had done it with the best intentions, and they also had the best intention in thinking that the rooms vacated by the people going to Marino, South Circular Road, and other places, would be let at reduced rents. Unfortunately, that did not materialise. The rooms they left were let at increased rents.
Deputy Belton's speech this morning would imply that he was ignorant of that, but he knew it, because he was told before about it. He is a member of the corporation and he knew that plan was tried. His speech this morning was entirely taken up with this matter, but the corporation has tried it. It was a failure and they are not going to try it again. He complained that the Small Dwellings Act arrangements were stopped, that, the present city manager stopped them. One and one-half million pounds of citizens' money has been put down to enable people to buy dwellings under that Act and the city manager considered that enough, having regard to the responsibility imposed on him and on the corporation in connection with slum clearance.
He stopped it because he had not the money to carry on.
Mr. Kelly
He stopped it because he believed it was right in the interests of the city not to carry on.
Not at all.
Mr. Kelly
That is the whole trouble with the Deputy. He sells his houses under the Small Dwellings Act and he wants to build more and to sell them. We do not want any more of them at present. We want to attend to this terrible job of slum clearance which confronts us.
Let the Deputy emphasise that.
Mr. Kelly
Of course, I could emphasise it.
And when the public read it they will know the Deputy better than before.
Mr. Kelly
The Deputy has the Press. I said before the Deputy came in that the Press reported him and all his friends, but I must depend on the official record of this debate to vindicate myself before the public when attacks are made on me. The position in Dublin is not so bad as it was a few years ago. Only the other day the Irish Times published a two-column leader attacking the Minister for no particular reason, but that at the moment he was not in the public eye at all. They levelled a collection of charges against him, the main charge being in connection with slum dwellings. I replied to them by letter. My letter was very short, five or six lines, but I began by saying: “A fair do for every man, no matter what his position.” I said that during the present Minister's régime as head of the Local Government Department 7,000 dwellings had been built in Dublin, at a cost of over £3,000,000, representing honest money and profitable employment for the workers. That was his record for the few years he has been in office, and I said that I hoped he would continue there in order that, in a few years more, the slum problem would be almost solved. We are going in that direction. We are on the straight road to it. We need money and we have got the money as we want it. Deputy Belton and his friends say that the corporation has not got a “bob” and cannot get a “bob.” That is a nice statement for a member of the corporation to make of this city.
On a point of correction, I said nothing of the kind. I did not say that the corporation could not get a "bob." I said the corporation was solvent in its present current work, but that the job of building houses to clear the slums was so gigantic and had reached such proportions now, with a dead weight debt of £10,000,000, that we were finding it difficult and that, in the ordinary course, we could not borrow, and the Deputy and the Minister know it.
Mr. Kelly
I dispute the Deputy's figures altogether. It is not £10,000,000 or anything like it.
What is it?
Mr. Kelly
It is not £10,000,000, anyhow.
What is it?
Mr. Kelly
Go and find out, you who know all about it. I have here the city manager's report on the finances of the City of Dublin up to 31st March.
That is to-day. You could not print the position to-day.
Mr. Kelly
Up to 31st March of this year. The financial year begins on 1st April. Do you know that much?
I think, Sir, that the business of the Dublin Corporation should be conducted at the corporation meetings, and not here.
The Deputy is quite in order.
Mr. Kelly
Evidently my remarks are not very pleasant to Deputies over there.
This House has become the laundry of the Dublin Corporation.
Mr. Kelly
If it has, I did not make it so.
Of course, the 7,000 houses to which the Deputy has referred were built by the Dublin Corporation, and financed by the Dublin Corporation, and not by the Minister.
Mr. Kelly
I said that they were built during his term as head of the Local Government Department, and with his co-operation and support. Only for that, we could not have done it.
We did it, and not he.
Mr. Kelly
The Deputy, in his speech, said that he attended the housing meeting where hundreds of thousands and, in fact, millions of pounds were being dispensed, "although he had not got a bob."
And the Deputy was in the chair and shouted "Up Dublin; we will get plenty of money."
Mr. Kelly
It is strange that the Deputy should have been allowed to make these statements about me without any protest being made. Deputy Dillon, who has just come in, constantly refers to me as being asleep. I do admit that, being a man advanced in years, when the air-conditioning process in this House gets going, it affects me for a few minutes and I have now come to greater heights to avoid it. Down in the lower seats, you can feel it and it makes you go asleep. I suggest to the people in charge of that machinery that when Deputy Dillon is speaking again, they ought to send a few extra whiffs over to those benches and they might silence him. It is no laughing matter for me to have to do the nation's work without getting a "bob" for it, to use Deputy Belton's phrase. Here is a report presented by an officer of the corporation:
"Since the 1st April, 1935, the corporation has erected 5,012 dwellings. 2,394 are at present being built. 388 acres (at Cabra and Crumlin) affording space for about 3,400 dwellings have been acquired and developed, 120 acres (at Donnycarney, Donore Avenue, Rialto, Newfoundland Street and Emmet Road (affording space for 2,190 dwellings have been acquired and are awaiting development. Contract documents for 1,500 dwellings are now ready for tender——
Why are the tenders act invited?
Mr. Kelly
——while the planning of sites for about 4,000 dwellings is at present well advanced."
The city manager is about to invite more tenders.
No.
It is extraordinary that a member of the corporation would assume such a position here, shouting out all these noes, all these negatives. I am saying yes, and there is my document. I do not think there is much necessity to say any more in connection with this matter, only to indicate to the human-minded members of the House that this slum question in Dublin is a paramount evil, and has been so for generations. This Government has set its hands to destroy that evil, and the members of the corporation are helping them, and I submit that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of that vast improvement. There has been talk about the increase in the rates. Of course, the rates are increased. Last year the rates were increased from 17/6 to 19/7, a 2/- increase. The Housing Committee estimate amounts to £84,966; it is responsible for what we might call a deficit, and in order to raise that deficit it was necessary to swell the rate this year, and the Housing Department of the corporation was, therefore, responsible for the 1/- out of the 2/- increase.
The contribution of the ratepayers to the housing improvement in Dublin is, therefore, not very big. As I have said, the housing development was responsible for a shilling of the increase in the rates, and I am sure there is no right-minded citizen in Dublin, rich or poor, who will grudge that shilling, having regard to the vast improvement that is in evidence even at the moment, although we have done only one-third of the job. There is unquestionably a great improvement which has contributed to the health, the happiness and the contentment of the poorer people. I may say that what has been done is marvellous. Clergymen, social workers and many other people interested in the wellbeing of the poorer classes, all have the one story, that there has been a wonderful achievement up to this, having regard to the immensity of the work and the difficult nature of it at the start. The conditions were truly horrible in many places. I defy Deputy Belton or any of his associates to go to any parish priest in Dublin and ask his opinion.
On what?
On the housing progress of the corporation and the good it has done.
It was done through the corporation, and we are the corporation.
You are, unfortunately, the principal man in it, because you have the best backing in it.
And it is that backing that has built the houses in Dublin.
The backing of the Government.
Of the corporation. We raised every penny of the money.
And now you say we have not a "bob." You made the same statement the other night.
You cannot look both ways any longer.
We have all the money we want, and if we want more we will get it. We have every confidence in the Government and in the Minister. Whenever the money is wanted it will be there.
Moses will strike the rock again.
And it will be there for the poorer people who are not able to pay. I have here a return consisting of the various housing schemes of the corporation. I will not name them, because it would take up too much time. I am constantly being interrupted by Deputy Belton. I do not want to make a personal remark that might shut him up.
Make it.
I will ask you to stop the interruptions for a few minutes, because I have a very serious job here. I have here a return made by the corporation in connection with a statement that was made by Deputy McGilligan some two years ago. I will repeat it, because it is useful. The statement made by Deputy McGilligan was to this effect, that the last condition of the poorer people in Dublin was worse than the first by reason of the high rents they had to pay. He said that they had to pay 6/- or 7/6 as rent and that was too much for them. He said their means did not permit them to pay it and, consequently, they had to deprive themselves of the necessaries of life, the more humble necessaries that they could command, and sometimes they had to deprive themselves of food in order to pay the rent. That was a very serious statement and it had to be investigated. I have here a return in relation to 13,755 tenancies and of the number of the people in these places receiving poor law relief. I see that the number receiving poor law relief was 1,000.
Then an investigation was made to see if this poor law relief was of such an amount as would prevent the people paying their rents. Naturally, we could not expect rent from them, but in a number of cases it appeared that they were able to manage to pay the rent, while in most cases they could not do so. Therefore, the case made by Deputy McGilligan could not stand. The corporation did not ask the people to pay rents; they were housing them for nothing. I wonder does Deputy Dillon object to people who are living on poor law relief having a decent house to live in, a decent habitation? Would he object as a ratepayer to pay an extra shilling in the rates that would help to give these poor people better accommodation? The Deputy is silent, although usually he is voluble enough.
I fear it is my job to bring Deputy Kelly back to the Estimate now. I have given him considerable latitude.
I have spoken for 20 minutes, and I usually take only ten minutes. I hope I have said enough in the 20 minutes to satisfy myself.
We were very pleased to hear the Minister's report with regard to the question of health and all that is being done to maintain it, but, at the same time, we could very easily get into a false atmosphere with regard to that matter. The position is vastly different now from what it was 20 or 30 years ago if you want to make comparisons. The modern methods of dealing with disease, with appendicitis and infectious diseases and various other complaints, show a vast improvement in comparison with the methods of years ago and, therefore, one could easily be misled into a false sense of security by the idea that the national health was improved. I am afraid it is not. We ought to distinguish between real health and vitality and the art of keeping people alive that has been more or less perfected by the medical profession in the last decade. A lot has been done, and is being done, but the thing is to try to maintain that progress and to prevent anything that will cut across the efforts that have been made and the results that have been obtained. I was going the other morning from the Parnell Monument in a Ballybough bus and half-a-dozen little girls got on that bus. I thought it most extraordinary and unseemly to see these children of 8½ or 9 or 9½ years smoking cigarettes. The little girls were smoking——
I hope the Deputy does not make the Minister responsible for that?
I am not, but what I am suggesting is that it is disgraceful to see these poor children smoking. I do not suggest anything else. I may be old-fashioned and, perhaps, it is not an injury to health. Maybe it is a help to vitality and health, but it seemed to me all wrong.
Did the Deputy say 8½ years of age?
Between 8½ and 9½ years, as far as they appeared to me. I also saw mothers, expectant mothers, pushing perambulators, smoking cigarettes very early in the morning, and this seems to be universal. Something is responsible for the present position of the physique and health of the people of the country since the time I was a boy. There are certain factors to be considered. Either the food is wrong, our habits are wrong, or our mode of living is wrong. I can look back to 35 or 40 years ago and I say that to-day we are not able, in Kilkenny, to turn out, from the whole county, a team with the physique that we used to get in two or three parishes. It is borne in on everybody in the country that that is so. Every county has the same complaint, and the thing is to discover what is responsible for it. I have an idea that it is the food. I have an idea that it is continuous tea-drinking. Perhaps it is smoking. Something is responsible.
Hitherto, the medical profession in dealing with health have concentrated altogether on curing rather than prevention. I admit that all the inducements were towards curing. There was money in curing and very little money in prevention. But, from the national point of view, the prevention of disease and the building up of the vitality and constitution of the race ought to be the main concern, whatever it is from the medical point of view. That is a matter in which I, for one, have no fault to find with the Minister. I have nothing but praise for his efforts in bringing about the position that exists. But I do think that, if something is cutting across his efforts, it should be investigated and, if possible, removed. I know the country for 50 years. I have a distinct memory for 50 years of the vitality of the people and the deterioration that has taken place in the last 20 years. We saw very few anaemic and hysterical people when I was a boy. There were very few suffering from nervous break-down. You can spend millions in curing and the chase after health in your present fashion is costing untold expense, while it would be cheaper and much more effective and economical to deal with the question of prevention.
I do not hold the Minister responsible for what is happening, but I would suggest that we should have something similar to the position in England, where they have clinics and opportunities of hearing lectures every week with regard to what is dangerous to national health, physique and vitality. I do not think those facilities are available here. They are certainly not available in the country and I venture to say they are not in Dublin. I may be mistaken, but I do not think so. The publication of those lectures in the Press would be much more interesting and of much more value than an account of some silly happening in the Dáil. I say that, having gone as far as you have gone, you should not allow anything to cut across the efforts that you have made. In my opinion, the position to-day is not so much that we have a healthier people than we had, but that the skill of the medical profession and temporary reliefs and treatment are keeping life in the people even though they are not really healthy. That is also the experience of men in other countries. Irishmen who have come from South Africa tell me that within the next 40 or 45 years that will become a black man's country simply because the white race will be decaying. Reasonably hard work is one of the greatest inducements to health and vitality, and people who do not work are no good and will not beget a race that is any good. A leisurely nation of people who do not work will never breed a healthy race. I say that the national health depends on the mothers of the nation more than on any other element in the community. National health is in the hands of the present mothers and the future mothers and, unless a proper conception of the necessities of the case is conveyed to them in an intelligent way, and consistently conveyed to them, you will not achieve the object you set out to achieve.
I think the smoking of cigarettes is an evil. I saw here the other day a Minister seeming rather to glory in the position that there was more smoking in the country. I do not think he meant that, but the position is that that is so. The national revenue which is derived considerably from this pernicious habit is, in my opinion, worth less than national health. National health should come far in front of the national revenue. Let revenue come from any other source. I do not care what the vested interest is, either in the consumption of tea or specially-treated white flour or bread or smoking or anything else. I am not in a position to say authoritatively what is the cause of the deterioration in health. How could I? But, whatever it is, no matter what the vested interest is, it should not be allowed to stand in the way of national health for one moment.
I think I have said enough about that. I have drawn the Minister's attention to it, because I consider it is a very serious problem. I had a family of 13 children, and I naturally take a considerable interest in the future of our race. Anybody with any human, paternal instincts would take a very serious view of the future of the race.
I come back to some local matters. I do not intend to delay the House at all. I understand that a labourer with an acre or two in his own right who wanted a cottage built on that plot offered the site for nothing, but cannot get it done. Is that so?
I do not know. I will inquire.
If that is so, and I think it must be so, there must be some obstacle. I do not know whether it requires legislation or if it can be amended by rule. If it can be amended by rule, I should say it ought to be done immediately and, even if it requires legislation, I think legislation ought to be introduced to deal with it. I understand from Deputy Dillon, who has some knowledge of local government, that a local authority could not do it.
Is it not so that a local authority could not build a labourer's cottage for an ad hoc tenant? They must build the cottage and then advertise for applicants for it. They cannot build a cottage for a particular tenant.
Oh, no, they can build for a particular tenant.
I understood that the Roscommon Board of Health would not be allowed to do that.
They can.
I think they probably can but there is a certain form. Have they the option to give it to a particular tenant?
If it is proved to the satisfaction of the board of health that he is in need of a house, they can build one for him.
In the case I have in mind the house has been condemned by the medical officer of health and is to my own knowledge utterly unfit. The labourer in question has three or four acres of ground. I might say that in the division of estates every labourer on the estate got a plot of four acres and would be in the same position.
Did he ask the board of health to build a house for him?
Yes, so I understand. They refused because they thought they had not the power. If you say they have the power, I will be very pleased and a lot of people in the country will be pleased.
I think they have the power, if they are satisfied that the provision of housing accommodation there is necessary for him.
That satisfies me and I will see what can be done in that direction.
I will look it up and write the Deputy definitely on the subject.
Thanks. Reference has been made here with regard to the fencing of labourers' plots after the division of land. The specification usually requires that the base of the sod fence is about 5 or 5½ feet and on each side, from which they got the material for the fence, a further excavation is made of 4½ or 5 feet. In that way, from 12 to 15 feet of land is wasted, and you have a most ineffective fence. Any practical man dealing with cattle knows that a fence higher than 2½ feet with quick thorn is no good. If the fence goes above the shoulder of cattle they scratch it and it will soon come down, whereas a lower fence will prove more effective. My ideal fence would be one that would waste no land. Instead of a fence 5½ feet at the base, I would have one of about 6 inches high. You could have one with a concrete post and wire, or an oak post and wire, or if you like, a white thorn quick fence. One would think from the way fences are made around those cottage plots that we had an unlimited amount of land to waste. I do not know why the fences were ever made as they have been. Perhaps hunting has something to do with those sod fences.
With regard to the repairs of labourers' cottages, it is an extraordinary thing that these are the only houses in the country that need repair. I know houses that have been built for 60 or 80 years, and a slate has never come off them. They have not cost 1d. for repairs. Our houses never need repair except on the north side when a slate might come off due to the fact that the old slater's nail rusted and the slate got loose. But you scarcely ever see a slate coming off on the south side. I built a house myself about 45 years ago in which my brother is residing. It has never since cost 1d. for repairs. The windows, the roof, the dashing and everything else is perfect. It was built by a country mason. But almost everywhere you go you find this huge expenditure of money on repairs to labourers' cottages. The only exception that I know is the direct labour scheme that we carried out in the County Kilkenny about 1910. Those houses were erected under the supervision of an official of the old district council, and have never cost 1d. for repairs since. But in the case of houses erected by contract, and in connection with which the supervision must have been lax, they have cost an enormous sum for repairs. That is going on all over the country. In conclusion, I would appeal to the Minister to turn his attention to building up in this country a national physique, and so far as medical science can help him in doing that he should take full advantage of it. If he does he will have the support of every Party and of every individual in the country.
In dealing with some matters that come under this Estimate, I want to say that I think there is a good deal of looseness in many ways. Deputy Gorey has referred to the cost of cottage repairs. During the present Minister's régime a large number of labourers' cottages have been built in the country. I have visited very many of them, and my experience has been that I found something wrong in nearly every one of them. A general complaint is that the chimneys are not well built, and they will not take the smoke out. I think we have enough of local officials to see that the work should be better done, but yet that is what we find. Applications are even coming in for repairs to cottages built within the last couple of years, but in many instances that is being kept quiet for the present. I do not say that the Minister is responsible, but I think that his Department should see that that kind of thing is not allowed to go on.
The local authorities are building up a huge load of debt in connection with the building of houses. In view of that, I hope the Minister will see that better work is done in the future in the building of cottages. I suggest also to him that before giving his sanction to a building scheme in the future he should make some effort to see that the cost of the materials required is brought down. We have a number of small companies making tiles of different shapes. The tiles are not weather-proof by any means. They are not put through the usual processes, but are simply made up in the raw. In time these little companies will go out of existence, with the result that when the present tiles begin to leak there will be no fresh supplies to replace them, and you cannot fit a slate in where a tile has previously been used. In any event, these tiles are costing too much. In fact, everything going into houses is costing too much. All this will lead to heavy burdens being placed on the people in future.
Deputy Kelly told us that people getting outdoor relief in Dublin were not asked to pay rent for their houses. That is not the position in the County of Tipperary. No matter how poor or how hungry the people are there, whether they are in receipt of a few shillings home assistance or not, they have to pay their rents. I do not know whether it is different in Dublin, but Dublin does not concern me at the moment. I ask the Minister to get his Department to investigate the matter of house-building thoroughly, as the country cannot continue piling up this terrible load of debt. If building is to go on it will have to be done much more cheaply than at present.
Another matter to which I wish to refer is old age pensions and widows' pensions. Some years ago, with a great flourish of trumpets, we were told that there was no bother about getting old age pensions. Then we had widows' pensions brought in later on. Three or four years ago, when the Minister was not long in office, there was no trouble in getting an old age pension. It was a matter of going to a Deputy, if you were of the right colour, and getting your old age pension. Since then the Minister has begun to tighten up this scheme. What has he done? He has brought into all the areas in rural Ireland a number of investigation officers and taken out of the hands of the excise officers the duty of investigating claims for old age pensions. In each town in Tipperary we have one or two investigation officers who are working in the district for 15 or 20 miles around. In addition, the excise officer is following them on the same route. That means a terrible duplication of work. These investigation officers, who came in without any practical experience of the people or of conditions in rural Ireland, and who had just read the Act, are carrying it out to the strict letter of the law.
The Minister has no control over the investigation officers. They are not under his Department.
I submit that you should not have a duplication of officers motoring round the country, with all their expenses paid. The new investigation officers have not the same amount of knowledge of the people.
The Minister has nothing to say to the investigation officers.
They are working under your Department.
When the Minister says that he has no responsibility for certain functions, the Deputy must take that. As a matter of fact, the Chair must take it. If it is not a matter for the Minister, there is no use in discussing it on this Estimate.
Who is responsible for the investigation of claims for old age and widows' pensions?
It is not part of the Minister's function.
Then I will leave that. I can ask a question about it some other time. The Minister has a big staff at his disposal, and none of us would like to see them increased. At the same time, I feel, because of some things which I see happening locally, that the Minister's supervision is very bad in some cases. There is the case of the Cashel county hospital, about which I put down a question some time ago. People are beginning to talk a lot about that; a lot of foolish talk goes on, I admit. This hospital was started—perhaps it should never have been started—over four years ago. The contract was to be finished in two years, but it is not yet finished. The work was carried on in a defective way from the beginning. The lowest tender did not get the contract for that hospital. In addition, the terms of the contract were not carried out, because, according to the contract, the stones and other materials belonging to the old hospital were to be piled up and were to be the property of the county council. To the knowledge of some of the leading lights of Fianna Fáil the stones of that hospital were sold to another contractor. That hospital is not yet finished, but the contractor for it has now got another contract in addition to that one. That second contract was never advertised and that contractor got it, although the work he was doing was defective and he has not yet finished the first contract. As I say, it was never advertised and nobody knows what the price is. The Minister and his Department have some responsibility in a matter like that. I do not care who is concerned with it in the Department, the responsibility must be placed somewhere.
I asked the Minister a question the other day about the 400 per cent. increase in the water rents in Roscrea. I believe he was right in telling me that that was a matter for the board of health. The position is that the existing waterworks were constructed 45 years ago and the capital cost would have been paid off in two years' time. With the building of new houses, etc., in Roscrea, a scarcity of water was threatened, with the result that a scheme was put up some seven or eight years ago costing £13,000 in the first instance, and £3,000 later on. There has never been a pint of water got from that scheme, although the people had to pay for it. The matter is still being discussed. But, without any guarantee of a water supply in future, the board of health decided, even though the ratepayers had to pay their share of the £16,000, to increase the rents by 400 per cent. The ratepayers want to know where they are to get redress for that. There are matters for investigation by the Department of Local Government.
There is just one other matter I want to mention, and that is the unemployment schemes carried out under the Minister's Department by the county surveyor for which the people have to pay a share out of the rates, the remainder coming from the Central Fund. In these cases, I notice that no matter what scheme is put up by the surveyor or his assistant it will be carried out before any scheme which is put up locally, although the scheme put up by the people locally, where there is no grant from the ratepayers, may be ten times more important. I know of schemes which have been put up by the local people and the answer year after year is, "We will consider it next year; there is no unemployment in the district." The reason there is no unemployment in the district is that the county surveyor or his assistant is carrying out a scheme which is of very little importance just to employ these people. I hold that there should be more co-operation between the Minister for Local Government and the Office of Public Works in these matters; that the most important scheme and those which would be of most benefit to the country should be carried out first; and that schemes should not be carried out haphazard at the instance of the county surveyor because they relieve unemployment. The other scheme will relieve unemployment in the same way and, therefore, the best scheme should be carried out first. If we are to spend money, it should be spent on the most productive schemes. I mention this matter in the hope that the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Finance will have some discussion on it and that, in future, they will have the most necessary and the most productive schemes and those which will return most money carried out first.
We have had a very interesting discussion on this Estimate. Almost everybody who spoke on the Estimate paid tribute to the Department for the efficiency and expedition with which its work was carried out and for the courtesy that is always shown to Deputies and to members of the public who come in contact with the Department's officials. With these tributes to the officials of the Department, I heartily concur. Long before I became a Minister, I had intercourse with officials of the Department and no question was ever raised by anybody in the Department, high or low, as to who the man approaching them was or whether he was a person of importance or not. So far as I have ever heard, everybody who had any business to conduct with the officials always found them—no matter what section they belonged to —courteous, attentive and most anxious and willing to oblige the caller and to give him all the assistance and advice in their power. I am glad that that good tradition continues to be kept up and that there is nothing but praise from all sides of the House for the manner in which the officials do their work. So far as I recollect, only one Deputy did not agree in this connection. He made an attack on civil servants in general. I think he said that civil servants were not even civil, but he did not attempt to particularise or make a charge against any one official. He tarred them all with the same brush as an uncivil and, as far as I could gather, inefficient lot. That remark came from Deputy Corry. Those of us who have experience of Deputy Corry here and elsewhere know the extravagances and the buffooneries of which he can be guilty. This was just another example and I think the less we say about it and the less notice we take of his remarks on that subject the better.
The criticism of the Estimate revolved round four or five main heads —hospitals, housing, roads, rates and sanatoria. I have taken quite voluminous notes of the criticisms and I shall answer, as best I can, those which appear to me to be the principal ones. All I can say with regard to the others is—I have said this before—that every time a criticism is made, it is noted here by me and by the officials. No criticism goes unnoticed. It is brought to the notice of some offical in the section of the Department concerned. If the Deputy concerned is still interested and wants to follow the matter up he can get, in a short time, an answer to his criticism. That answer may not, of course, be satisfactory but, if he does not get it, I will. I invite Deputies who are anxious to follow up complaints which they have made to take the matter up with me later and I shall be able to give them some kind of answer which may not, of course, be to their satisfaction.
It is true that there has been an increase in rates generally—in the rural areas as well as in the urban areas and county boroughs. That would be natural even if we did not take into account the enormous improvements in public health services and social services of all kinds which have been introduced since this State was established. In the statement I read in introducing the Estimate, I was in the happy and pround position of being able to tell the House and the country of the marvellous improvements achieved in public health. Any Minister coming here and being able to place on record the splendid achievements in regard to public health to which I have referred should feel very pround and happy. He should be glad to get the opportunity to come and tell the House of the return they are getting, and have got, for the large amount of money which has been spent on public health services and social services in general. It would be improper for me to claim that the credit for these great achievements belong entirely to this Government. It does not. The credit belongs to everybody. Perhaps we should even go back, to some extent, to the past— to the time before this State was created. Though we do not owe a great deal to that period, we do owe something to those who laid the foundations of these services in those early days. Ever since this State was established great efforts have been made— at great cost, undoubtedly—not alone by the Government and the various Ministers for Public Health but by the members of the local authorities, no matter what Party they belonged to. They have done a great deal to improve the services given generally to the people and, in particular, to public health services. These services have been improved, year after year, and money has been spent on them to a greater extent almost every year. The results we are able to announce to the House and to the country these days would, in my opinion, be sufficient to justify the great effort, the thought, the energy and the enthusiasm that not alone the members of this House and members of Governments and local authorities, but their officials of all kinds throughout the country, put into this work of improving public health.
These combined efforts and the expenditure have brought about the satisfactory position in this respect which I read out to the House yesterday. There has been an enormous reduction in mortality from infectious diseases of all kinds. I will not again go over the figures that I read to the House yesterday. These have been published in this day's papers. Typhus fever has disappeared. There has been a reduction in scarlet fever. There has not been such a big reduction in mortality, but still a reduction compared with the last few years in infant mortality.
There has been an increase in infant mortality.
No, there was a record reduction in 1934. There was an increase in the three years following, but there has been a reduction this year.
There has been a reduction on the average of the ten years?
A considerable reduction on the average of the ten years. As regards the criticisms about the increases in rates, I think there would have been an increase in rates if practically none of these great improvements in public health services had been effected. That would be because of the difference in the value of money to-day as against 20 years ago. There is now a considerable difference in the value of money as compared with some years ago. Going off the gold standard has contributed towards that reduction in the value of money. That inevitably brought about an increase in figures in the money spent, though not in the value of the money. But we had a very big increase in the services on health in the last few years, since I became a Minister. The amount of money provided for improvements in public health services has increased almost ten-fold. We have encouraged the local authorities everywhere—I do not deny that at all—to go in for improvements in public health services. Every Deputy in the House knows that there have been widespread improvements. Numbers of towns and villages, not to speak of what has been done in large towns and cities, have now developed water supplies and sewerage disposal schemes on a very satisfactory scale— a scale that is quite enormous compared with ten years ago. Admittedly all that has to be paid for. Where these new services have been installed; where housing has been improved as it has been improved, there has been brought about a position in which happily I was able to report to you yesterday the great improvement in public health generally and the decline in mortality with regard to a variety of diseases that generally affect our people.
In housing we have done magnificently. That word is not too strong. I repeat we have done magnificently in housing and I do not think anybody will contradict that statement. In Dublin City we have not done anything like what I hoped we would have accomplished by this time. But, generally speaking, all over the country—in the rural areas and in small towns—the improvement in the housing conditions of the people has been a change that is long overdue. It is something for which every member of this House and every member of a local authority who has helped to encourage this housing programme to be carried through is entitled to claim credit; credit can be given to them all for that. The Government brought in the Bill and carried it through, but it was with the co-operation of the local authorities of all Parties so generously and enthusiastically given that the programme has been carried through. I give them thanks for that. Without their splendid efforts the things to which I have referred could not have been accomplished.
As Deputy Belton is here, I might deal now particularly with the question of the housing conditions in Dublin. Deputy Dillon has emphasised and truly emphasised, that Dublin is the real problem in this matter of housing. The problem is not so serious in many parts of the country as it is in this city. There are some who estimate that in Dublin we still require 17,000 houses. I think that when the survey that was asked for last year is completed and when we see its results it will be found the number will be greater than 17,000.
Greater?
Yes, greater. I believe 17,000 will not meet the demands that even now are being made on the local authorities in the City of Dublin. Long ago, when I was a member of the Dublin Corporation Housing Committee, I remember saying, to the horror of many members present, that we would require to build 3,000 to 4,000 houses a year in order to overtake, in a reasonable time, the housing problem in Dublin. The corporation is much better organised now; it has a much greater staff and that staff has every facility that the corporation could place at the disposal of the city manager in the matter of housing. But they have not yet been able to build more than 2,500 houses a year. If they have built 2,500 houses a in any one year that was as much as they have been able to do. At that rate they are barely keeping pace with the ordinary needs that would arise in a city like Dublin for housing the working classes. They are doing little or very little to make up the deficiencies that were there and are bound to be there owing to the increase in population. The corporation have got to the position that they can, with the facilities provided for them, build 2,500 houses a year. They have a good organisation and they have a good staff to direct building operations. Their housing work has been very creditable so far. But a difficulty has arisen in the last year or less than a year that has slowed up to some extent the building of houses. I refer, to a large extent, to the money difficulty. That is not entirely the fault of the corporation, or of the Government, or of the banks. But every reasonably-minded person in this House knows that in the last 12 months we have been going through a very difficult period, financially. In the first half of last year we had the settlement of what was called the economic war. There was the necessity for raising a large loan in connection with it. The raising of that loan had naturally its effect on the money market. It ate up a very considerable portion of our national savings at the time. Some months later when it would have been reasonable to expect that a loan could be floated by the Dublin Corporation there came the financial crisis.
In every part of the globe it became difficult to get money for almost any purpose except war. There is always money available for that. Whatever money was available was being put into armaments or other preparations for war, and such things as housing or public health services, and the like, had to take a back seat. We have not yet got over the financial crisis of last September and, in fact, we will be lucky if there is not a repetition, or a similar crisis in the course of the next few months. Therefore, we have been going over a rough period, financially speaking, and it has not been easy to raise money for any purpose. It has not been easy for the Government or for the Dublin Corporation or for the Cork Corporation to raise money. What is true of ourselves here is equally true of other countries, except that, as far as we know, other countries seem to have been able to provide lavish sums for investments in armaments. It is, as I say, possible that the crisis, and the financial troubles which resulted from it, and prevented our getting readily money for housing in the last few months, will become serious. I hope it will not become serious. Somebody passed me a note to-day telling me that, as a result of a statement on the international situation made by the Prime Minister in the British House of Commons this morning, the stocks in England had falleu very considerably lower than even in last September. I have not seen the figures, and do not know how far that is true, but a Deputy of the House passed me that note.
War loan went down to 94.
That shows the position we are in. No country can stand absolutely alone financially. Our position is that a great deal of our money, for good or ill, is invested by our citizens in foreign securities, and if the effect of crises abroad were that this money could be brought home—if we could induce our people to keep the money here and invest it in such useful work as housing and the like— it might be a good thing, but we do not always seem to be able to make that impression on the people who have large sums of money to invest. As a matter of fact, I think in regard to our own loans floated here at home, whether by the Government or the local authorities, the great bulk of the money is usually subscribed by people who have only small sums to invest. That is all to their credit. What I want to say is that the Government's desire is that there should be no cessation in the building of houses in the country. So far as the Government is able to raise money for the housing programme, its best effort will be put forth towards solving the slum problem all over the country, but in particular in Dublin City. But I must say this to Deputy Belton: it certainly does not help the Government, and it does not help the Dublin Corporation to have statements made by a man who ought to be a responsible member of this Body and of the Dublin Corporation about there not being a bob in the exchequer of the Corporation.
The loan exchequer.
The Deputy knows the effect of those things as well if not better than I do. Any reflection of that kind on the credit or good name of the body of which the Deputy is a distinguished member does not help. When I hear statements of that kind from Deputy Belton I often wonder whether he is playing politics. I often ask myself: "Is he really anxious to have the housing problem sabotaged? Would he be more pleased if the Minister had to write to the Dublin Corporation and say, ‘We cannot get the money'? Would he be more pleased to be able to shout and cheer and say, ‘We told you that those fellows would let you down'"? I do not think I would be right in believing that, but the Deputy's statements sometimes give one reason to think it would be more pleasing to the Deputy that we should fail than that we should be able to get the money for the Dublin Corporation.
The Minister is altogether wrong in that impression.
I am glad to hear that. If I might presume to advise the Deputy, I would say, "Help us in a better way in the matter of getting this money. You can best help us by keeping the credit of the corporation and everyone connected with it as high as it always has been."
I have always done so.
Not by some of the statements which the Deputy has made even to-day in this House. I do not think I need say any more on that subject. In regard to the other subjects in which Deputy Belton was interested, that is, the provision of money for those who wish to buy houses, what I have said about the difficulty in getting money for the ordinary schemes of the Dublin Corporation applies equally to the particular matter Deputy Belton has in mind, that is, the financing of the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. When asked by the late city manager of Dublin, and by the present city manager, as to their position with regard to the Small Dwellings (Acquisition Act), I said—and I repeat—that I should like to see money available for the operation of that Act, but that the first duty of this Government and of the corporation, in my view, is to the slum dweller; that their responsibility primarily is the clearance of the slums.
Does not the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act help in that?
It does to some extent. I quite agree that it does help, but the corporation's job primarily is to use the machinery that they are bound to use in order to provide houses for people who cannot even put down a £10-note to become the owners of their own houses.
And to keep those who can from going into the slums?
I think I know the arguments for and against.
Hear, hear!
I know them very well, and I am not alone anxious to see the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act operating, but to see money made available as easily as possible for people who want to purchase their houses, even outside the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act—the building societies and the like to which Deputy Dillon referred. I agree that all those things help, and I agree, too, that the responsibilities of the corporation, the responsibilities of the local authorities in Dublin and elsewhere, would be much lighter if all those sources could be tapped and they could help to provide the housing accommodation which is now perhaps being sought from the corporation. I have given a good deal of thought to the question of building societies in Dublin, but might I put it to you first: Is it fair to come to the Government and say it is the Government's duty to see that money is provided for those people who have money, and who have positions and income that will enable them to purchase their own homes? Deputies have been quoting for me the splendid position of the building societies in England. Every building society in England was built up and its prosperity established on self-help. The organisers and promoters of those societies built them up out of their own resources without any Government grant or support or help. They have got it in recent years, but at the time when they needed it most it was not available. Why can we not have a little bit more self-reliance at home?
There is one old building society, the Civil Service Building Society, whose assets, I think, are now well over £750,000. All credit to that body. There are other building societies. There is a new one, the Educational Building Society, which is a small society, but it has done good work and it is going to do better. All credit to these people who have gone out on their own without any profit to themselves because there is a profit under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act for those people who operate it. The building societies have gone out without being able to pocket any profit and are doing excellent work. I have recently tried to investigate what the possibilities are of helping those who help themselves, and I hope to be able to do something in the next few months. It will take some time to conduct investigations and to put up propositions to the Government, but I hope it may be possible for the Government to help building societies to help themselves and to help the people who go to them. I do not want to say anything more than that at the moment but certainly the question of building societies and of helping them along is occuping my attention.
Before the Minister leaves that, can we have an assurance that they will be more strictly supervised than the public utility societies?
I have not gone into the details at all. The only thing I have investigated at the moment is the possibility of assisting them to raise finances.
Would the Minister at this stage give his views as to whether he would consider a change from a subsidy on the loan charge to a capital contribution?
That is not possible under present conditions. It is out of the question at present.
If it is not possible for the central Government to increase its dead-weight debt, how is it possible for the local authority to increase its deadweight debt and to keep up its credit?
The corporation's credit, as far as I know, stood high and it has never failed to raise a loan on its own on the market, until recently, and that is not altogether its fault, as I explained earlier. Circumstances had a lot to do with it—the circumstances of the time at which it was necessary to go on the market. The Government on the last loan has come to the help of the corporation and, with the banks, has promised to underwrite the last loan for housing.
I am aware of that. I hope it will be for the larger amount so as to enable new work to be started.
New work can be started.
If we have the money.
You can enter into contracts now.
There will be no new contracts unless there is new money.
I do not think I shall say anything more on the subject of housing at the moment. On the subject of hospitals in general, I was glad to hear Deputy Dillon yesterday in reference to that matter. I thought, with all respect to him, that his remarks were wise. I hope that every Deputy, and particularly every member of a board of health, who heard these remarks in this House or who may read them, will take these words of his into consideration. First of all, there is not a board of health that has ever come to me on deputations—and many of them have come from almost every county in the country—that did not want the largest county hospital they could get, several district hospitals in addition and the usual sanatorium and fever hospital. The fight always was to get them to see reason in the number of beds they wanted to provide in their county. The argument always was to point out the great cost that would be upon themselves and upon those for whom they spoke, the ratepayers, if they were to build these hospitals for which they could not get a full grant and the great cost that would afterwards be involved in maintaining and staffing these hospitals. It was very hard to knock commonsense into members of boards of health. There is not much difference between them when it comes to a question of looking for grants, loans or anything of that kind. They all want as much as they can get. I want to underline for them what Deputy Dillon said and what others said before him. I want to emphasise that in the case of all these new hospitals, big or small, county or district hospitals, fever hospitals or other hospitals—usually, now, we build first-class hospitals whether they are district or county hospitals and equip them at a great cost—the cost of maintenance of the ordinary modern hospital is very high. I advise every member of a county council and board of health to be very circumspect in asking for large amounts to be expended on big hospitals and on costly equipment. The Sweepstakes may not always be there and, hereafter, the cost of maintaining and supporting these hospitals will fall on the ratepayers.
The question of hospitals and their staffing is a very big and important question and there are differences of opinion on it. Some Deputies to-day and yesterday pressed strongly on me that every district should have its own hospital and that the people should not be taken too far away from their homes for ordinary medical treatment or for treatment in fever hospitals. But modern medicine and its development, because of the costliness of it, does not make it possible for a local authority adequately to staff a big hospital in numerous local centres. In the ordinary county hospital, whether in Portlaoighise, Ennis, Tullamore or whatever town it may be, if you find two or three doctors, that is the most you will get there generally, but you will find it difficult to get the local authority to pay an adequate staff, even of two or three doctors, for the running of that hospital.
The modern hospital requires a much bigger staff adequately to treat patients, in the fashion they demand to be treated in these ultra-modern days of medicine and medical and surgical treatment, and when we are asked, so to equip these hospitals that the most important surgical and medical work can be done, I would like that Deputies and members of local authorities should know that is an impossible demand. You cannot, in these smaller county hospitals, equip them with men or machines in such a way that they will be fit to deal with the most important, and the most serious operations that have to be performed, sometimes, by physicians in modern hospitals. Therefore, they are unwise from that point of view, and also from the point of view of the patients and the ratepayers, to be clamouring that these county hospitals should be fitted with the most costly and the most delicate X-ray machines. To use and manage these X-ray machines would require, at least, one man's whole time, as well as a couple of assistants, highly trained specialised nurses to assist, and maybe medical assistants as well. You cannot have that in the ordinary county hospital. You cannot get men or equipment to run it, and you cannot afford the expense. Therefore, all who are interested in county hospitals, should try to accommodate themselves to the circumstance, that most patients who require the most expert and surgical treatment for serious operations will have to be sent to Dublin and Cork. We tried to get another centre in Limerick, but we are meeting with a good lot of opposition there.
I should like to say, for the benefit of Deputy Hughes, that a survey has been made of the hospital position in the country as a whole by the Hospitals Commission. They have gone over the country very thoroughly and very carefully, and they have in their reports, issued a short time ago, made recommendations to me. Certainly, that is true of the first report, as it is equally true of the others, although there has not been so much publicity or talk about them. The scheme outlined in the first report of the Hospitals Commission, for the reorganisation of hospitals all over the country, was welcomed by medical men and others interested in the subject everywhere. There was hardly a word of adverse criticism of the national scheme outlined. It is one thing to get a good scheme outlined and recommended to the Minister by those who have been charged with the responsibility of investigating the matter and carrying it through, but it is another thing to put it into operation. No sooner do you come up against local or vested interests but you are in trouble and in hot water with every vested interest concerned. We have a particular case in Limerick. Deputy Bennett referred to that and talked about it on a question that was asked here a few days ago. We are trying, if we can, with the consent of the local authorities and the local hospital authorities, if possible, to get a regional centre established in Limerick.
We have centres in Dublin and Cork. These are important centres from many points of view. There is the importance of the medical schools, and the success of these medical schools, and the education of our future medical men. All must depend on the quality of the medical schools in Dublin and Cork. I have given a good deal of thought to that and, in my view, nothing should be done by the Minister for Local Government, with the aid of the sweepstakes money, or moneys at his disposal, that could in any way affect the splendid work that has been done for a couple of centuries, at any rate, in the medical schools of Dublin and Cork. Anything we can do to improve hospitals that are attached to, or working in co-operation with, these medical schools we should do. Deputy Hannigan asked yesterday whether it was my intention to establish a municipal hospital. It is not. I hope the programme we have agreed upon, in consultation with the hospitals authorities in Dublin, will be adequate to meet the situation arising in Dublin, which is largely one that arises from the attendance in Dublin of people seeking medical advice and assistance, as well as the numbers that come to these hospitals from the city itself. I outlined briefly in my opening statement what our intentions are in that regard. I think it was Deputy Hughes complained of the cost and the difficulty that a secretary of a board of health or a doctor had in getting into contact with Dublin hospitals, and securing a bed for a person from the country.
A great deal of the delay that has occurred in putting into operation the recommendation of the Hospitals Commission, with regard to the extension of the hospitals in Dublin, occurred because of my endeavour to set up a hospitals bed bureau. It took me more than a year in negotiating with the hospital authorities, medical and otherwise, to get agreement on a scheme of beds. I refused to decide what my policy would be with regard to Dublin, until I was satisfied whether we could get a bed bureau operating in Dublin. I am now satisfied that such a scheme is possible. As a matter of fact, we have a scheme drafted in consultation and in co-operation with the representatives of all the hospitals concerned. It will require legislation to put it into operation, but that is being attended to. It will be some time before the bed bureau actually comes into operation, but my scheme for Dublin was based, as a preliminary, on acceptance by the hospitals of the foundation of a hospitals bed bureau, which they themselves would largely control. The hospitals and their representatives and the medical staffs will largely control it, and local authorities will have representatives on the directorate. It took me over a year to get that idea accepted and adopted. We have got it, and it will come into operation at some date later.
Having got that, then I decided to adopt the recommendation of the Hospitals Commission, and to use the Sweepstakes Fund to provide four large hospitals for the city, two on the south side and two on the north side. On the south side three hospitals are to be amalgamated. The terms on which they are to be amalgamated are almost complete, and I hope before long to be able, with the consent of the bodies concerned, to introduce a Bill to implement the agreement we have arrived at. By the agreement, Sir Patrick Dun's, Mercer's and the City of Dublin (Baggot Street) will be one large hospital. There will be a new hospital, I hope, erected by the authorities of the present St. Vincent's Hospital on the site they have secured at Elm Park, and on the north side we will have the Mater Hospital. They did submit plans for the reconstruction of their present premises, but they have abandoned these plans, and now propose to go ahead with a new hospital on a site that is available, or that will be available, near the present premises. The Richmond, Whitworth and Hardwick Hospital—it is generally known as the Richmond Hospital—I hope, will be provided with a new site and a new building, not too far removed from the present site of the Richmond Hospital. The preliminaries with regard to the Richmond Hospital are fairly well under way also.
What are you going to do with the old buildings?
They are falling down.
You are going to take them down?
If we do not, they will fall down before very long. Some of them have fallen already.
The Mater Hospital will stand for a good while still.
I was referring to the Richmond Hospital.
What are you going to do with the old Mater if they build a new hospital?
I do not know whether I am at liberty to say what they propose in that respect. They have a proposition to deal with it and to keep it usefully occupied. All this preliminary work has taken a long time, but I think that, on the whole, it has been time usefully spent. In that connection, I have often read in the Press, and even some distinguished medical men, some of them friends of mine, have challenged me with the statement, that not even one additional bed has been provided during the last few years in the City of Dublin. Deputy Cosgrave repeated that statement to-day. It is not true. There is not a lot to boast about, but there has been some improvement of a temporary nature in most of the cases in regard to the number of beds within the last two or three years. In the Meath and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospitals there has been an increase of 35 beds; in the maternity hospitals there has been an increase of 109—the Coombe, 26; Holles Street, 70, and the Rotunda, 13; in the children's hospitals there has been an increase of 94; in the cancer hospital, Northbrook Road, 8; and in the county, Cappagh and Linden, 218; making a total of 464. That is not a lot to trumpet abroad, but it gives the lie to the statement that not an additional bed has been provided.
There is another aspect of this matter to which I referred in my opening statement. Deputy Cosgrave said, and I agree with him, that, as a result of the coming into being of the Sweepstakes funds, there was bound to be a considerable falling off in the subscriptions to the voluntary hospitals and that the cost of maintenance, cost of living and cost of treatment in these hospitals has gone up in recent years. That is true, and it is true also that it is not unnatural to expect that there should be an increase in the deficits. There has been an enormous increase in the deficits since 1934, and it has had this effect, that where we thought, a year and a half or so ago, that the setting aside of £2,000,000 out of the £8,000,000 we have as a capital sum to provide the income necessary to pay these deficits would be sufficient, we now find that we have to put £3,000,000 aside. If the deficits go on at the same rate, in another two years, we will possibly have to put another £1,000,000 aside. That is all eating into the sums we have set aside for the building of these four great hospitals and other hospitals in Cork, Galway and elsewhere throughout the country. That is why I emphasised, for the benefit of those who control these hospitals and are interested in seeing the enlarged hospitals built in Dublin, that they would have to watch their expenditure carefully and see that the deficits do not increase at too rapid a rate.
Mr. Morrissey
Before the Minister leaves the question of hospitals, I should like him to say something about the number of beds provided in the hospitals built down the country. I agree very largely with what the Minister has said about the impossibility of providing the equipment and the staff necessary to meet every possible sort of case that may arise, and have it dealt with in the county or district hospital, but I do suggest that we will be missing the full benefit of this hospitalisation if the number of people who can secure the benefits of the new hospitals and the new equipment are to be limited. I am speaking only for my own district. I do not know whether it is the same elsewhere, but I assume that it is. At present the number of beds available is very limited, and the number of people who can get the benefit of the new hospitals and the new equipment is not at all as large as it should be. I recognise that it is, to a large extent, a question of expense and, perhaps, even more a question of getting the staff, but I put it to the Minister that it is a very important matter. I think there could be additional beds. The margin between the present number of beds in the new hospital and the number that would be sufficient to meet the requirements is not very great, and the additional expense would not be as great as it might appear at first glance. I know that the Minister does not want to have such an impression amongst the people, but there is a definite feeling in the country, and particularly amongst the poor people, that they are not getting the value they ought to get from this expenditure out of Hospital Sweep Funds in the new hospitals and the new equipment.
I do not know what answer I am to give the Deputy, but take the hospital in his own town. It is a beautiful building, provided at great cost, and it is a credit to everybody concerned. I think it increased the number of beds available.
Mr. Morrissey
No.
Not at all?
Mr. Morrissey
Maybe by one or two, but that is all.
That is not my recollection.
Mr. Morrissey
I think the Minister will find that I am right.
The Deputy is more familiar with the details there than I am, but I will look it up. My recollection is certainly that we increased the number by 20.
Mr. Morrissey
Probably, what the Minister is thinking of is the increased number as against the number first suggested. My point is that there are no more beds available in the new hospital than there were in the old hospital. There were as many beds available in what was purely a local district hospital as are now available in what is supposed to be a county hospital.
You have what is practically a new hospital provided in Thurles, and there were additional beds provided there. I am as sure as I am standing here, however, that there is scarcely one of these hospitals from which there will not be a demand, in four or five years' time, for an extension or an increase.
Mr. Morrissey
The demand is there already. The Minister need not wait four or five years for it.
That is probably true, and it is probably because the the people feel that they will get more attention now and the benefit of better equipment, and, therefore, feel a little safer going into a local hospital rather than travelling all the way to Dublin or Cork, that they are more willing to go into these hospitals than they used to. That will have to be met some way or another.
I do not think I can go into all the questions that were asked by all the speakers during the discussion, but I shall run through my notes and refer to the most important ones as I come across them. I shall deal with the last note first. Deputy Jerry Ryan, of Tipperary, referred to Cashel hospital, and referred—rather mysteriously, I thought, to some grave defects in the building. I never heard of any defects in the building, and I do not think it is true that there is any defect, but there was delay—who is at fault exactly, I cannot say—in the equipping of the hospital with central heating and light. There was considerable delay in that regard, but I do not think the hospital authorities, the board of health, were worried about the delay there—the thing is being looked to now—because I think it is their intention, before opening the hospital, to wait until a new water supply has been provided in the town. Whether they will wait until that is completed or not I do not know, but there is a necessity for an overhauling of the waterworks or the provision of new waterworks in the town of Cashel, and it is all the more necessary because of the building of the new central hospital there. That fact may have had something to do with causing the delay in opening the hospital, but certainly it is not due to any grave defect or any other defect in the building.
With regard to County Roscommon, several Deputies spoke of the delay in the provision of the hospital at Boyle. Well, I am sure that there is not a Deputy in the House here who could not complain about the non-provision of a hospital in his own county. Hospitalisation work has been completed in a few counties. In County Roscommon a great deal of money is being spent at present. We are putting up an auxiliary mental hospital there at great expense—a considerable amount of money is being spent on that—and we are putting up a county hospital in the town of Roscommon, also at considerable expense. I think, therefore, that county Roscommon, for the time being, has done well, and I do not care what complaints they make or how impatient they are, they will have to wait.
Then God help Deputy Dan O'Rourke; he will be eaten alive at that rate.
And so will many others have to wait. There are some six or seven counties where we have not spent a penny yet, and so long as that is so, places like Roscommon, where hundreds of thousands have been spent or are being spent, are doing very well.
I do not want the Minister to be caught out, but his Department has represented to Roscommon Board of Health repeatedly that the reason for the delay is the necessity for amendment of plans. What the Minister has said could be represented to mean that the Department were deliberately holding up the plans because of a lack of money at the moment. I would not wish the Minister to say inadvertently something which could be misrepresented. Does he wish us to understand that he has given instructions to hold up the Boyle scheme because of lack of money on his part at the moment, or is it the amendment of plans that has deterred the Department from going ahead?
I cannot answer that right away, because I have not the notes with me. Possibly, there has been a delay about the amendment of plans, but I say deliberately that the Boyle hospital will not be gone ahead with in the immediate future.
And I repeat, Sir, God help Deputy Dan O'Rourke.
Well, God help anybody who refers to it, and God help the Minister, too, perhaps. What I say about the Roscommon and Boyle hospitals applies equally to Cahirciveen hospital, about which Deputy Seán Flynn spoke to-day. County Kerry got a lot of money. That county got the first new county hospital in the country—they came in first and got theirs completed first. In Tralee, Killarney and Edenburn, money has been spent also. A considerable sum of money has been spent in hospitalisation there and, as I say, there are other counties on which, as Deputy Belton would say, not a "bob" has been spent yet, and they will have to be looked after before any county can say that they have got everything while some other county got nothing.
Imitation is the best form of flattery.
The Minister for Lands will want a holiday, too.
Well, I am sure that if he works as hard as the Minister for Local Government and Public Health he deserves it.
According to what the Minister for Lands told us in Roscommon, he was going to run the Minister for Local Government ragged if he did not build the hospital in Roscommon forthwith.
Well, I have often been run ragged, but I am here still. Now, with regard to roads, I think I had better put a lot of people out of pain. They have been getting on the subject of roads, the necessity for increasing the road grant and using the revenue derived in any form from the users of motor cars in order to help the expenditure on roads. There is not a chance in the world that that will be done. The Road Fund, such as it is at present, will have to do all it can to help the local authorities to keep the main roads and other roads in good order.
What justification is there for taxing motors?
The main roads in this country are not badly kept, and the county roads in many counties are good, but while that is so, even our main roads, generally speaking, cannot compare with modern roads in up-to-date motorised countries. I am not going to try to compare our roads with roads I have seen in the United States —main roads—or roads in Germany, or even some in France, which are not quite so good as in the other two countries. We cannot go in for the elaborate and costly series of wonderful highways that some of these countries have developed in recent years, but even our best roads, from the point of view of their width, are not anything like adequate to the demands of the increased traffic of these times, and a good deal more money will have to be spent on even the best of them in widening, taking off dangerous corners, banking roads, and generally improving them; and that we are trying to do. The engineers of my Department, in consultation with the county surveyors of the whole country, have big plans and big ideas in mind as to what should be done, but they are restricted because their resources are limited. If we had the money, however, I am satisfied that the county surveyors of the country and their assistants and staffs, in consultation with my chief engineering adviser and his staff, could produce as good roads as any to be seen in the United States or Germany or some of these other countries, but we have to measure our ambitions in accordance with our resources. Of course, I know that it is no harm to keep advocating and trying to get more money, but I see no hope in the world of getting for use on the roads and the improvement of roads the revenue that is being derived from the sale of petrol.
Perhaps the Minister might mobilise his unmarried employees.
Even then you would want a lot of money.
Or suppose you taxed the bachelors.
The Deputy is getting personal.
It is the Minister who is getting personal now.
What I have said about roads, I think, is largely true of the reforms that have been advocated with regard to the Grant-in-Aid of the cost of the upkeep of inmates in mental hospitals. That is a hardy annual—a pretty old hardy annual by now. I remember—I think it was in 1908—that I happened to be chairman at one time of the finance committee of the Dublin Corporation, and went with my colleagues on a deputation to the then head of the Local Government Board, putting up exactly the same proposition to him. I think the answer that I will give to-day will be just similar to what I got 31 years ago.
You never forgot the follies of your youth.
The conditions now are very different to what they were 31 years ago, because there are Grants-in-Aid now that were not thought of in those days. The Grants-in-Aid in mitigation of the heavy rates are quadrupled, at least, compared to what they were 31 years ago. Maybe that is not enough in the view of many ratepayers and representatives of ratepayers, but it certainly is true that conditions are very different now, even in regard to that matter, than what they were 31 years ago.
One of the reasons being that the rates are about twice as high?
That is not unnatural. Look at the value given for the rates, and look at the value of money.
And you are about to increase the valuations.
There were a lot of thoughts suggested by Deputy Dillon in the interesting speech he made yesterday, thoughts that I would like to elaborate and give my views on. There was one thing he mentioned that I would be deeply interested in, and that is the question of family allowances. I do not know, as Deputy Dillon said, that it would be enthusiastically received by any of our Parties, but it is an idea that will grow, and as soon as people get more time to think about it and discuss it and find out its merits, I am sure there will be more voices than Deputy Dillon's heard to advocate a reform of that kind.
There were two other things that Deputy Dillon mentioned yesterday that I must refer to. One was with reference to an appointment in the Department of Local Government. So far as appointments made by the Civil Service Commission are concerned I, as Minister, am in exactly the same position as the members of any local authority. When a local authority ask the Local Appointments Commission to select a person for them, when the members of the commission make that selection and send the name to the local authority, the local authority is bound to accept the name under the law. If they do not do it, I am bound, as Minister for Local Government, to set the law in motion against them to ensure that they must appoint the person named by the Local Appointments Commission. Similarly, with regard to the Civil Service Commission, when they send me, as Minister, the name of an official for my Department, I am bound to accept that name. The person Deputy Dillon referred to was selected by the Civil Service Commission and sent to me and appointed by me in accordance with the law. I heard rumours, nasty rumours that people circulate, about this particular appointment and I made inquiries and I am satisfied, from all the inquiries I have made, that the Civil Service Commission did their work as well as they always do it. They selected the best qualified person. That person got the appointment on her merits and on her marks, as examined by the Civil Service Commission.
I accept that without reserve.
There is one other matter, and this is not such a pleasent one. It refers to the remarks Deputy Dillon made with regard to Dr. Ward, the Parliamentary Secretary. I have known Dr. Ward as a fellow-member of my Party since the Party first came into the Dáil, and I have known him as a colleague in the Local Government Department since I became a Minister and he became a Parliamentary Secretary. I have found him able, courteous, efficient, honest and straight in his dealings with me and with everybody. That is my experience of him. I was astonished to hear the Deputy impute to him that he was using the Department of Local Government for his own Party political ends. Now, that is a grave reflection on me as well as on Deputy Dr. Ward.
I have never had that charge brought to my notice until Deputy Dillon brought it to my notice and, therefore, I have never had any reason to examine it. If anybody brings a charge of that kind against me, or against my Department, I am quite prepared to have it examined. I am quite prepared at any time to put all my cards on the table, all the files anywhere available, for examination by, I do not care whom, members of the Dáil. I repudiate the suggestion that the Department is used by Dr. Ward or by any official for Party political ends. I would be long sorry to think that could be possible. I am only sorry that the Deputy saw fit to make such a grave charge. I do not think there is a scintilla of foundation for it. That is my belief.
I do not believe the Parliamentary Secretary would be in the least surprised to hear the charge I made or the allegation that that impression was widespread in County Monaghan. The Parliamentary Secretary is present. If he desires to challenge my statement, publicly made, that that impression is widespread in County Monaghan, he is quite free to do so.
I can scarcely answer for the impressions that may be abroad in Deputy Dillon's Party in County Monaghan, but I think, when he makes a charge such as this, that he ought to give particulars and he ought to accept the Minister's challenge to come forward with these particulars and have these allegations fully investigated. I have no doubt that he will be satisfied—he is probably misinformed—after such an investigation, that the charges are entirely without any foundation. Deputy Dillon would probably find, if some of these cases were examined—I think it would be safe to predict that he would find— that people who make charges like that are people who probably were formerly followers of mine and did not succeed in getting me to do the things that they wanted me to do, or to obtain for them privileges that they were not entitled to, legally or morally, and they are now political victims and they are on Deputy Dillon's side. I think that occurs in nearly every constituency. I am glad that the Minister has made an offer to Deputy Dillon to get right down to the bottom of this thing and I have no doubt that, as a result of that, Deputy Dillon will be fully satisfied that there is no foundation whatever for such a suggestion.
I think there are one or two other matters to which I would like to refer. One is the Ring case that Deputy Cosgrave asked me about. We are in a peculiar position with regard to the Ring case. The Ring case arose out of the ordinary practice of a private medical practitioner being called in by a very great friend of mine, the head of the Ring College, on advice, and not as the medical practitioner who was the medical officer to that school—brought in to attend children in the school and inoculate them against diphtheria. In the course of his practice he carried out that inoculation on a large number of children and, to the great regret of everybody, the calamity that we know and have read of happened. One child died and three or four were gravely injured in their health. I think these three or four are still under medical care. Investigations were made because the Department of Local Government was very deeply interested in the case, having recommended the practice of inoculation against diphtheria, and stressed the value of it, and urged on every county medical officer of health and every dispensary medical officer of health to get the people to adopt the practice of inoculation. Then again, we were interested because the material used by the doctor in the case had been obtained from the county medical officer of health. We were brought into it, if you like, in that way, but in a very remote way. But, it was a case of a private medical practitioner and his private patients. Some of the parents whose children were affected came to see me on a deputation about the treatment of their children. Some of them demanded that the Department of Local Government should take charge of the treatment and, as they announced to me that this case was going to be taken into the courts I, therefore, realised that we had to be careful. I told the parents that in anything that the machinery of local government could do for them I would encourage the local authorities concerned to go out to the fullest extent to help these parents and their children in providing for them every kind of treatment of the best class that could be got for them anywhere. The Department had no funds directly to meet such cases, even if they wished to do so, but we got in touch with the local authorities of South Tipperary, where the parents of some of the children live, and of Cork County and Waterford and the local authorities, some of them acting through commissioners, set themselves out to do everything that was possible. In all cases the parents have expressed themselves as satisfied with what has been done. There is one parent who thinks that greater expense should have been gone to. However, that has been taken up with the local authority. In all the other cases, so far as I know, the parents of the children are fully satisfied with what was done for them by the local authorities. I do not think there is anything more I can say on that matter.
There were many other questions raised about the school medical service and the building, equipment and repairs of labourers' cottages. Some of these questions we have heard discussed over and over again and I do not think we need go into them now.
Might I ask the Minister a question? Does he contemplate increasing the housing subsidies to represent similar percentages on actual present-day costs? The Minister understands what I mean?
I do, well. I do not think it is likely under present conditions.
It is not likely?
No.
Is there any likelihood of any increase at all?
We always live in hope.
There is just another matter that has been brought to my notice since I spoke this morning and on which I would like to ask the Minister a question. I am aware that he has heard of it before. There is a Building Society Bill about to be introduced in the British House of Commons which, it is contemplated, will give power to British building societies to operate outside the country, possibly here. Would the Minister welcome their coming or would he aid their coming to finance housing here?
I have already expressed my view on that to the Dublin building associations when I met them.
And the Minister will go no further?
Not beyond what I said to them that day.
It is necessary, as the Minister is aware, that some initiative be taken by our Government. Will he take the initiative?
I would like to examine that question.
Would you receive a deputation on it?
I will.
I refrained from speaking on this Bill to give the Minister a chance of finishing, but there are two questions which I will put as shortly as possible. One question concerns rats. It is an important matter. There has been a great prevalence of rats in this country owing to the increase in the growing of beet. Rats are very fond of beet, and these rats have become the carriers of a peculiar disease called Weil's disease, a form of yellow fever. In the South the deaths of very prominent men have been caused by this disease. I would ask the Minister if he would, through his county medical officer of health, have inquiries made as to the real extent to which this disease is prevalent and what steps can be taken to combat it or to eradicate the cause of it. It is an important matter.
The other question is this: Some years ago a Bill was brought into the Seanad dealing with the question of pensions for nurses and that Bill was withdrawn, I think, on the understanding that the Minister was himself about to examine the question. I would ask the Minister if he has any scheme in mind at the moment or if he has considered the question with the intention of framing such a scheme that will be satisfactory from the point of view of the nurses?
On the first subject that the Deputy mentioned, I have to confess my ignorance. I do not know anything about it. I will make inquiries.
I am glad the Deputy mentioned the second matter. I had intended to mention it. I am interested in the subject of pensions for nurses. I cannot see any immediate prospect of bringing in a Bill. I do not think we have enough moneys in the funds of the Sweepstakes at present for the primary purpose for which it was established, even though there is not any more deserving purpose than pensions for nurses. I would like to say this much, for the benefit of some of the nurses concerned, and with whom I have been in contact that, more than two years ago, Senator Sir Edward Coey Bigger and Senator J. C. Dowdall brought in a Bill into the Seanad. It must be three years ago. They were interested in the subject of nurses. The Bill was just a nominal thing. It did not pretend to be a scheme of pensions for nurses. They came to see me about it afterwards and we had a discussion as to what was possible. I then told them that the first essential was to know exactly the size of our problem, how many nurses there were, their ages and their conditions, and, generally, all the particulars possible about them. They said they thought, through the organisations that existed, that they could get that information for me. They came back about a year later and said they had not been able to get it and the reason was primarily that the organisations had no money to get the information. I asked them how much they wanted and they said they thought if I gave them £100 that would be sufficient to get the information. I said. "That is ridiculous. If you asked me for £500 I do not think you would be asking for enough for that purpose." They said: "Will you give us £500." I said "I will, and more if necessary, to get the information." That is two years ago. I have not got a line on it yet. When I had a deputation from people interested in the nurses I have told those to go back and tell those friends of theirs, the nurses' organisation, to get the information. That, at any rate, would be one preliminary useful step and as soon as we get that, then we may have time to think further on the subject.
I think the Minister's frank statement will help the subject.
Vote put and agreed to.
Progress reported.
The Dáil adjourned at 4.20 p.m. until 3 o'clock on Wednesday, 19th April.