I have the honour to propose the following resolution:—
That the Dáil is of opinion that the provision of 20,000 more working-class dwellings for Dublin is a major post-war problem, and that the failure of the Government to announce its decisions with regard to some of the aspects of this question is holding back the plans of other Parties who must necessarily share in the solution of this vexed problem, and accordingly asks the Government to make an immediate pronouncement in the matter.
I am quite sure the Government are just as anxious as we are to solve the housing problem. My contention is that they have not given enough consideration to a very complicated question. The Dublin housing problem is a very old one. It has many facets. It is intimately linked up with the twin problem of unemployment, and it has been a major problem in this country for three generations. Why is there any housing problem? Dublin started in early times as a desirable military position. The angle caused by the junction of two rivers, and, more desirable still, high ground in between, made a site which was eminently suitable for military operations in olden times. The Danes were probably the first to seize this advantageous position. Coming down to the Middle Ages, Dublin was a walled city, and, when those walls were done away with, the city boundaries were just as constricting. As an instance of this influence as between Dublin, an old city, and say, Belfast which is a modern one, in the early part of the present century many people started businesses in the latter place, due to a wider choice of location and facilities. This, of necessity, had its attendant repercussions on employment.
Many mistakes have been made in housing. It used to be the aim of most of the city corporators to get a building scheme promoted in their particular ward. Before the boundaries were extended, the corporation objected to promoting housing projects on which Pembroke and Rathmines would draw the rates. Another aspect on which there has been much muddled thinking is where the houses are to be built. This House has heard of the man who works on the docks and lives in Rathmines, but what about the man who works in Rathmines and lives on the docks? If there were a free market and an ample supply, those people could change their houses and get near their work. I remember some years ago hearing of the case of a bus driver who lived in Kill o' the Grange, and sometimes had to leave the last bus into the garage at Donnybrook. When he had left the last bus into the garage he had to walk home to Kill o' the Grange, taking his chance of getting an odd lift from a motorist. Who will deny that manufacturing firms, and especially wholesale ones, are moving out of the city to sites with good roads and sewers, and with gas and water laid on? Is industry to have the centre of the city, and the workers the outside, or are the workers to have the centre of the city and industry the outside?
The 1926 Census showed that in the present city area there were 26,000 families each living in one room, made up of 15,000 families of three persons and over, 6,000 families of two persons, and 5,000 families of one person. Nearly 2,000 insanitary basement dwellings are occupied, as well as a large number of condemned habitations.
Of the candidates for houses, the people from unsound and insanitary dwellings and people suffering from serious diseases have first call on the supply of houses. There is also the normal increase in Dublin's working-class population. Newly-weds have to compete for houses and the chance arrivals from the country swell the number of candidates for corporation houses. Is it any wonder that the ordinary claimant for a corporation house has lost heart?
The high-water mark of building was 2,000 working-class houses per year. The Minister for Local Government told us there were 4,000 sites planned. After the first two years in the post-war period we will probably come to a standstill. How long ago was the clearance of the Whitefriars Street area started? I suggest it is coming close to seven years. If 20,000 sites were planned it would change the face of the city and one would get an idea of the extent of the problem. The Government have elbowed everybody else off the job and I submit they have considered only one facet of the question. They said they were doing their best, and possibly they were doing their best according to their lights. They said no one else could do more and they stopped at that.
There are many other aspects of the matter not touched by the Government. There are many people living in working-class dwellings who could pay for a house for themselves. Look at the number built under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. Many of the purchasers under these grants were potential competitors for a worker's house. Belfast has made substantial progress by giving a free grant of £100 to anyone who built a house to Government specification, and £100 at a very low interest. Private interests have built or taken up many of those houses. For the last 11 years the output of houses has been:—Dublin, urban and rural, by the local authorities, 14,000; private persons, 8,000; public utility societies, 2,000, making a total of 24,500. I have altered the figures slightly so as to make them a little bit plainer.
If one allows for the war, will this rate of progress solve anything? The corporation are doing their best, but the Government will have to approach the problem from several angles. Many more sites than at present envisaged will have to be provided. Anyone who can pay for a working-class dwelling should be given one, and let him go out of the crowd.
I suggest that these figures, though they are very rough and ready, are more or less true about schemes in the centre of the city. It takes a year to plan a housing scheme, a year to acquire the site, a year to clear it and a year to build it. I do not think the ordinary person realises that there is so much preparation before the builder comes on the scene. Some people have jocularly said that the city is falling faster than it is being built. I would not like to say that that is quite true, but it is a picturesque description of a very undesirable state of affairs.
Mr. La Guardia, the Mayor of New York, has spent millions of dollars preparing drawings for post-war building in his area, and if the war ceased to-morrow he could lay contracts in a few days. It is no use the Government saying they will have a wonderful building programme completed in 25 years. Can they start any scheme to-morrow? In England they are turning the plant used on the preparation of aerodrome sites to the preparation of sites for houses in the post-war period. Have our Government got any plans along these lines? If they have, why not make them known?
There are certain reasons for the failure of private enterprise to supply houses. Each one of them has its due weight. I would like to suggest that the housing problem is made up of a number of questions. Each one of them examined by itself is so small that it scarcely looks as if it merited attention. I think housing is about the only want in this city that, certainly before the war, had not been fulfilled for anybody who had money in his pocket to pay for it. I think we can all remember that at the end of the first war there was a whole lot of shortages of clothes and various other things and in a few months there were no shortages at all.
I should like to suggest to the Minister some of the, possibly, lesser reasons for private enterprise having practically ceased to build these smaller houses. One of the reasons is the five-fourths assessment, under Schedule A, which an owner has to pay, and the withdrawal of the allowance for repairs to a man who owns his own house. On the Labourers Bill it was stated that repairs cost from 29 per cent. of the rent in Co. Wicklow to something like 120 per cent. in other districts. The Rent Restrictions Act has prevented the building and letting of houses becoming a commercial probably say: "Oh, well, would you contemplate taking off the Rent Restrictions Act and letting houses go to their economic price?" I do not think I should be prepared to do that, but I should like to suggest to the Minister that for too many years the Government have looked on at that question, and that they ought to have realised that it would ultimately dry up the supply of houses at the source from which they were formerly supplied.
I suggest that the solution of the housing problem calls for an alteration in the approach to it by the Government. I have already said that some of them were very small, but the effect is cumulative. There are not enough sites available, and I should like to suggest that the acquisition and layout of such sites as are available should be gone on with at the present time. No builder gets clear possession of a site, and it is popularly said that most builders, when they are asked to go in on a site and start building on it, use a certain amount of bad language over the way in which they are given a piecemeal delivery of the site. I am not denying that there is something to be said for that on the corporation side also. Is it suggested that 2,000 houses per year is the maximum output of Dublin builders? If so, I should like to deny that. What is wanted is a long-term policy. We have heard about delays resulting from all sorts of things. I have mentioned the acquisition of sites, clearance of sites, and so on, but there may also have been strikes and other things. All these things, however, only cause delay for a certain time, and if enough attention were given to these matters, I feel that these 2,000 houses could be doubled once supplies are available, and, possibly, stepped up still further.
Another point that I should like to make is that a tremendous amount of consideration is given to the selection of a site for housing. I believe that some people who back horses are wont to shut their eyes and point with a pin at the list of starters, and that the horse at which the pin points is the horse of their selection. I think that you can almost approach a map of Dublin with a pin, with your eyes shut, and, provided that you do not land in a river or on an existing building, you can be practically sure that any place where there is room for a house is a desirable site. Dublin is very badly laid out from the point of view of people wishing to cross the city, and if there were more traffic arteries, I think there would be less complaints about housing, particularly from the point of view of the workers who, naturally, would like to be housed as near as possible to their place of employment.
The corporation say, in effect: "We are out to house the poorest section of the community. We want to cater for those people before anybody else. We are not trying to cash in on the demand for housing, but we are doing the best we can to catch up with the demand. Our housing scheme involves a loss of over 2/- on the rates, and we will not build houses for people who are able to build them; we will be putting too heavy a strain on the city finances if we move any faster." The Government, on the other hand, say: "We have used all our powers." Now, most people can agree with those two points of view as a general statement, but where does all this get us? Does anyone think that we will solve the problem on these lines? I would suggest that most of the Deputies in this House will have headstones over them before this problem is settled, at the present rate of progress. Of course, that does not mean that I am wishing my fellow-Deputies any harm, but the problem certainly calls for some clear thinking. How is one to increase largely the supply of very cheap dwellings?