In rising to support this motion, I should like to say that nobody on this side, and, I think, nobody in any part of the House, would suggest that the Government are not most anxious to solve the housing problem. I do not think there is anybody in the House who would speak against it. How is it that we have not solved this problem long ago, because there has been a housing shortage which has grown more and more acute in recent years? We have unfortunately had a six years' lull, because, in spite of some of the speakers' references to satisfactory progress being made in view of the times, nobody would suggest that housing has been going full blast for the last six years. Unfortunately, housing is a very complicated problem. One imagines that it will never be solved until it is put into various compartments, each one being attacked with methods somewhat different from those used in other sections. We have the problem of uneconomic dwellings which has resulted in the corporation and, in the last resort the Government and some philanthropic associations, being practically the only bodies now providing houses for the working classes. The question of building houses as an investment and letting them at a profit is at an end. I am afraid it is very doubtful if we will see it in any very modified form in the years to come. I should like to reproach the Government for, in a matter so important and so complicated, not having had more frequent debates. I think debates on the housing question are somewhat like the meetings of the three witches in Macbeth, and are accompanied by almost the same sounds.
I am speaking about Dublin City and County, although I am aware that there are housing problems in other parts of Ireland. But I suggest they are less acute elsewhere, and that if a solution can be found in the capital city, it can be applied to the rest of the country. Up to a short time ago, certainly until the outbreak of war, a very important question was that of sites. I think the Minister told us that they had about 6,000 sites ready. I suggest that that statement must be taken with a certain amount of reservation. We have the amenities and facilities in Dublin, main roads, sewers, gas, water and electric light, but we have not got the sites. Outside Dublin, sites are available but there are no amenities. These are questions that the Government will have to take up very seriously. Another thing which has complicated the housing problem, and for which the Government are certainly not to blame, concerns the question of building in the centre of the city. I remember one industrialist saying to me, apropos of a discussion as to whether houses were to be put up in the centre of the city or on the outskirts, that industry should leave the city and leave the ground for houses. Of course, that was only a joke, but it serves to illustrate the fact, that there is a great temptation to say that we have to house the workers in the centre of the city, close to their employment, quite forgetting that there is probably a scramble going on in the centre of the city at the present time between industry and housing.
I doubt if sufficient attention has been given as to how the problem grew up. Going back a thousand years or more, the Danes might be blamed. Later the blame might be put down to the fact that this was a walled city, and after that a military city or that wars were going on. That brings us down to the present day. No effort was really made up to the present to ascertain how the working classes were to be housed. I suggest that it was only in the last century that anybody began to think of building houses for the working classes as such, either as a philanthropic duty or as a profitable investment. What happened was that houses in this city underwent progressive alteration, something like what happens to a suit of clothes that an individual buys, which does duty for one section of the community for a time and then is passed on until it is absolutely unusable. Houses are like that. Houses which were put up, perhaps a couple of hundred years ago, by very wealthy people, or possibly as warehouses, have passed through a precarious existence, during which they have degenerated, first into apartment houses, then into lodging houses, and finally into tenements.
There is no doubt about this, that the supply of better-class houses has begun to give out in this city. That has complicated the present situation. We have now reached a position when there are numbers of dangerous and insanitary buildings in this city, but the local authorities cannot enforce the by-laws because the housing shortage has become so dreadfully acute. One hears stories—I do not know whether they are true or not—of tenement houses, where rooms are quartered out and let at 5/- a corner to single people. That only serves to illustrate the tremendous shortage of houses at the present time.
I have already said that building has ceased to be an investment. It has become a social service. I imagine that we are still arguing about principles that ought to have been settled generations ago. I was very much struck by some of the remarks made by previous speakers. Remember, we are dealing with a time when almost any house that can be provided is useful as a solution towards the problem, and when any savings that local authorities can make on their housing estates is all to the good. Deputy Flanagan is not in the House at the moment, but I want to refer to an incident that he dealt with. He was referring to a man who, I take it, is probably an agricultural labourer. This man was either being put into a new house or was in possession of it. He offered the local authority £1 a week, I think, if they would allow him to put in a window in the house and make a sort of huxter's shop of part of his dwelling. I suggest to the Minister that questions of that kind are worthy of some consideration. I suppose the Minister will answer me by saying, possibly very properly, that the local authorities are building working-class dwellings, and, therefore, could not allow a shop to be maintained in that area. What would be the attitude of a private landlord if such a suggestion were made to him? Would he not jump at it and say: "Here is a house that is about to be taken out of the category of being a loss to the rest of the community, and I am most anxious that there should be as small a loss as possible on our housing estate; therefore, I will allow this man to start a shop because, by doing so we will make a profit on it." I want to be perfectly fair to the Minister and say that there may be some reason why that could not be done in the case of a local authority house. If it is merely a question of the law relating to housing, I would like to remind the Minister of a certain king engaged in battle who is reported to have said: "Curse the laws that deprive me of such soldiers." In this case the Minister ought to say: "Curse the laws that prevent me from carrying out that transaction."
I was also struck by some of the instances that Deputy Byrne gave in the course of his speech. I am not going to deal with them in detail. What some of his complaints amounted to was this: that people were being put out of corporation dwellings because they had taken in as residents some relatives, people who, I suppose, were outside the degree of affinity permitted by the corporation by-laws. I may be asked where does that get us? It is relevant in the sense that there is a very acute housing problem which is admitted by everybody. The corporation, and a number of societies which have taken up the burden, are trying to provide as many houses as possible, and to make their pound go as far as it can. The question is: why does it not go far enough? Because they have got all the skimmed milk. The corporation are letting houses, for the most part, at uneconomic rents, while on the other side you have people, with dangerous, insanitary dwellings getting the highest possible rents, who probably would say: "Well, if you pull down these houses you will have to provide the tenants with alternative accommodation; we cannot do anything; we will just continue to draw our rents." There is a great shortage of houses, and some tenants are being charged rents that they should not be charged at all.
What is the solution for that, or is there any solution? I am afraid there is no cut-and-dried solution: that you cannot just wave a wand and say that the housing problem will disappear over-night if the corporation will do this, that or the other. I suggest to the Minister that there is one avenue through which, possibly, some progress could be made. It is not ideal by any means, but, curiously enough, it is along the lines from which the Department has mainly kept away. It is a curious fact, borne out, I believe, by medical authorities, that you can put human beings together to a most extraordinary extent so long as they are warm and fairly well fed. Of course, if you huddle a lot of human beings together in insanitary conditions, with disease prevailing, they will die like flies. As I have said, there is a most serious shortage of houses, and I do not think the building trade is going to solve the problem in the next few years. Even granted that everything goes smoothly, it will take a number of years to make any very appreciable progress towards a solution of the problem. I suggest to the Minister that his Department might absolutely reverse its policy as regards sub-letting of corporation dwellings: that it should allow sub-letting at an increased rent for a limited period to approved tenants. I do not suggest that is the ideal way or, if the problem were not as bad as it is, that it should be undertaken at all.
But what you would have is a selection of the people who really ought to be housed and the people whom we are anxious to house. The corporation would incur a smaller loss on their dwellings, unsound and insanitary houses could be pulled down, and there would be an indication as to the probable trend of the density of population, when it took a free movement, that is, when people were in a position to move as they wished.
I think the Minister should seriously consider that position. It is the only way I can see that offers any immediate prospect of even a trifling betterment of the present acute difficulty. It would bring the time nearer when houses that are not fit for human habitation could be removed and, possibly, sound ones put in their place. I do not know what the Minister thinks of that suggestion. I do not know what the members of the corporation who are present here this evening would think of it. There is no doubt about it that a number of the people to whom I have referred are very anxious to take in relatives and, possibly, friends, which they are not allowed to do at present under the corporation by-laws. There would be a system of selection. The landlord would be living in the house and, presumably, would not take into that house anybody with whom he could not live in friendliness and who was not similar in outlook and standard of living. I make that suggestion to the Minister for what it is worth and when he is replying I hope he will indicate whether or not he thinks there is anything in the idea. It is put forward in all sincerity as being, possibly, the only way in which you can make any assault on the problem at the present moment.
